Llyricist

Okay so Radorth is speaking in tongues

Projecting HIS making up definitions on us who merely use the dictionary to decide.

Radorth

Too bad you overreacted to the teaching and decided to put all Christians in one little basket. We could have had a rational and useful discussion. I hate discussing intelligent questions by myself.

Rad

Llyricist

Try every theist who ever used the "free will defence" against the PoE instead of your contrived argument.

Radorth

Well I think most of them here would accept some limits on free will, while you insist on no limits whatsoever to "omnimax."

Your arguments would look more intelligent on a Baptist website frequented by fundy headbangers.

Were you going to answer my questions, or should we quit? I don't want to nag.

Rad

scombrid

Yeah, lets see. I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church, went to Episcopal, Lutheran, and Catholic schools and was active in a Church of Christ and Freewill Baptist youthgroup. My basket is pretty large.


I went through a rather long period of being a very fervent believer that rebelled against the hypocritical religious establishment but that strongly believed in god. My disbelief does not stem from an "overreaction" to anything and your implying it is simply taken as an insult. I mentioned having a background in the church simply as a matter of pointing out that your impotent (compared the the Bible god anyway) deity does not jive with widely accepted theology. You might as well be putting forth the Raelian concept. A rational and useful discussion about the Christian god is not occurring when when you seek to define god's attributes as something other than what is implied in the bible.

Dr Rick

Okay; how about accepting those limits on free will that merely prevent evil and suffering?

Radorth

I'm afraid you're begging the key questions as well. There I presented a hypothetical question intended to elicit a discussion about whether we all could call God "good" even if the earth had flaws. You seem to want to have a detailed discussion about what's wrong with what I believe, or whether I should be shunned as a heretic.

I further asked, several times, exactly what good it would do an all-powerful God to fix all of its flaws, pointed out that Jesus did stop a storm, and invited you to argue God was not "good" because he is arbitrary or he doesn't work enough miracles. That's a good argument, if you can show what good they would do him in achieving his ultimate goals. I also asked how "omnimax" God would have to be, and what he would have to do for you in order to secure your happy and willing obedience.

These are worthy and pointed questions, and I think they go unanswered, or poorly answered, because they cause us to think more than some here would dare.

Rad

Llyricist

But Dr Rick, Then we wouldn't have Moral Freedom, That is SOOOO important to god. Sooo important that we have the ability to freely choose his way.......... Under pain of eternl torture!

long winded fool

Again, evil doesn't have to necessarily be actualized, it must be accessible. It must "have existed once and could exist again." If evil can never and will never exist, how can it be possible to will evil? Both clouds and humans exist. If I desire to turn my enemies into clouds, I do not have the free will to do this act, (for argument's sake, I'll say. Technically humanity can find a way to do just about any evil thing it desires including vaporizing a human being.) However the desire itself is what is evil. Having evil desires means that evil exists. If evil didn't exist, then how could we possibly call anything "evil," including our desires? Wanting to do something evil is evil. Being physically prevented from wanting something evil and therefore being evil is to contradict the notion of free will. Renaming it solves nothing, of course. Therefore, whatever it is that we call free will cannot exist without whatever it is that we call evil. To assert otherwise is necessarily after the fact. It is very easy to wish evil eliminated. Just ask any Miss America contestant. It is another thing entirely to speculate on what if it never existed in the first place. While both contradict free will, the first requires more logical contemplation than most people are willing to give a wistful speculation to realize that no evil=human slaves. The second is a little easier to discern, if you look at it objectively from a cause and effect position.

Ah, so the PoE relies on a definition of evil that is not biblical, and this presents a biblical contradiction? Convenient.

Llyricist

No those are incoherent, ignorant or non-sequiter questions that don't have the possibility of an answer.

Sure, you MAY be able to call such a god good (depending on what else we know about him), so it begs the question, what else DO we know about him? But you couldn't call him all good much less perfect regardless.
okay this time the question is almost coherent though one of your proposed answers is just silly. The arbitrary answer is a good one, though I haven't seen YOUR coherent response to this. It is non-sequiter to expect an atheist to speculate about the ultimate goals of a being they have no belief in.
This is non-sequiter out of order and just silly, you first have to establish this being's existence before you can ask what it would have to do to secure "happy and willing obedience"