long winded fool

Most of your objections don't even address my argument since they are all explained multiple times, but I'm glad to see the honest point of contention spelled out here:

Would it have been "bad" of God to create us to always love Him instead of giving us the choice to love Him? Because "forced" love doesn't really fall under the category of true love, and since true love is considered good and the so-called "love" of an automaton with no choice in the matter is not really considered love, and since beings incapable of choosing something other than love ironically can't be capable of love, (the very term being utterly dependent on the existence and accessibility of the state of being unloving) I used this as an axiom to build my argument on. I think most people would agree that love is meaningless without choice. Things must have become this way in the first place because human beings have free will. If love can't exist without choice, then "wrong" must coexist with "right" in order for love to exist. Interchange whatever diametrically opposed terms you want with wrong and right. "Good" and "Evil" are good ones.

Unless it is true that it is more loving to physically force someone to take your advice and avoid suffering than allow them to ignore it or use it incorrectly and suffer, we can assume an all-good God would never want to eliminate evil, because he would never want to eliminate free choice, because he would never want to eliminate love, because love is all-good.

Llyricist

Ummm no, they have been brought up multiple times, and you have yet to explain them. Your analogies to "loving fathers" allowing children to make mistakes and learn from the consequences all FAIL to match the reality that the consequences appear to be felt by those NOT making the mistakes in the question of the OP. The one analogy that came closest to reality was the Coach analogy, though drill sergeant would perhaps be even better (ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die), but then, a coach or a drill sergeant is NOT a loving father, so the analogy falls flat.
Do you mean, "Would it BE bad for an omnimax God to create us to always love him"??

No, by your own logic, by definition an omnimax god can do no bad...... right?


Then I guess the love a mother feels for her children cannot be considered "true love" ...... Right?? Just ask any mother if they have any real choice in the matter
I'm reminded of the running gag in the old "Monkees" TV show.... "who Writes this stuff??"

BUt I thought Jesus was incapable of NOT loving according to Chriastian theology. you are just a walking contradiction aren't you? In fact this whole thread is based around the idea of God being always a loving father or not, So now you seem to be saying that God could not achieve such a state, which actually WOULD settle the problem of the OP LOL so he just allows that suffering because he can't always be loving by your mangled definition requiring unloving for loving to exist ...... WOW.

I think you are quite wrong!! Ask any mother, and many fathers as well, and many children about their parents, many husbands, many wives how much "choice" they had in the matter of their emotions toward the object of their love. I have to wonder if YOU have any idea of love is!!


This is purest non sequiter, how do you get one from the other??? there is NO connection between these concepts, except your VERY shaky assertion of the neccessity of duality.

But God doesn't allow them to ignore and suffer.....he allows them to ignore and CAUSE OTHERS TO SUFFER!!! You keep repeating this over and over and over, and it does NOT address the original complaint.... You have NOT addressed the original complaint because it is perfectly valid. All the sophistry and logical fallacies you can muster cannot fit this contradiction into reality.

scombrid

Of course this fails to acknowledge that none of the descendants of Adam and Eve are truly given a choice. We are all born with an evil nature that predisposes us to wrong action (or so I've been told all my life by the religious). Had we been created neutral and allowed to choose that would be more along the lines of true free will. As it stands suffering is garranteed regardless of our actions because we ourselves are born evil and all our neighbors are born evil. Were are fallen from day 0. Those neighbors that don't hear the word are garranteed to cause us suffering (there are billions that haven't been taught the Gospel and even if they have been exposed to the gospel have probably been exposed to the wrong one since there can only be one true path).

Again your loving father analogy fails because evil befalls people without them making a wrong choice. Your analogy conflicts with observed reality. In your analogy the daughter only suffers at the hands of her own mistakes. In reality the daughter might suffer at the hands of a bad suitor, but she might also get septic shock and die from a fin prick when she goes fishing (this happened to a guy here locally recently). Is fishing a sin? In reality a fat man might develop heart disease from years of glutany but a child might be born with a congenital defect that renders the same consequence through no fault of the child.

long winded fool

Very true. Suffering isn't really a "divine spanking" according to the Bible, though it can easily be portrayed as such from an ignorant or uninformed point of view, (see my earlier analogies) and suffering isn't solely the product of human error. I did go through this in detail in the first part of the thread despite Llyricist's insistence to the contrary. The biblical teaching is that suffering is not equivalent to evil. Earthquakes and tornados aren't evil. Jesus said he'd abandon his entire flock (to the wolves or the elements, one can assume) to save one lost sheep. "It's better in God's eyes for a million innocent Christians to die than one guilty heathen." Why would this be the case? The existence of Heaven and Hell solves this dilemma. Christians can die in the millions without a "bad" thing happening. This isn't evil if we're assuming the nature of God as defined in the Bible. We don't like seeing someone die, but we are essentially unaware of any afterlife. If the afterlife exists, and if it is better than physical life, (both of which are assumed by the Bible and thus the initial argument) then death is not bad. Choosing something other than God (not-God, aka Hell) is bad. In order to accuse God of being unloving by allowing the innocent to suffer or die, death and suffering must be worse than life and happiness, and this is not the case according to the reference where we get the description of the God we are contemplating. It is better to be a miserable Christian than a happy heathen. (Again, assuming we are dealing with the God of the bible. If you abandon the Bible and redefine God to be refutable by this argument, then this doesn't apply and you can be confident in your atheism by assuming that refuting a god of your own subjective creation also refutes the God written about in the Bible because they have some similar qualities.)

Suffering is an important part of life without which we could have no free will. (An important part of omnibenevolence, I assume you agree.) Understand that anything that we would rather not be the case can be understood as suffering. Even if the only unpleasant thing that could ever possibly occur was spilling ice cream, one could say that if God were omnimax he would prevent spilled ice cream and therefore eliminate suffering. He hasn't, therefore He doesn't exist. Whatever you want to call unpleasantness, whether it be spilling your ice cream, getting in a car accident, being raped and murdered, or obliterating a continent with nuclear weapons, it all must exist or be able to exist if free will exists, and free will must exist if human love exists, and human love must exist if God is omnibenevolent. Since the argument assumes both an omnibenevolent God and the existence of freely choosing humans, suffering then must logically exist. It is a prerequisite in the same sense that humans are a prerequisite for human culture. Of course suffering would exist without God too, but the argument is that suffering contradicts God and I've shown, if we're assuming the God of the bible, that this isn't the case. I'm not trying to prove the biblical God, I'm pointing out that He can't be disproved with this line of reasoning so don't waste your time.

scombrid

Why?

Llyricist

Well that's not surprising, since the Biblical god is not even definable with the Bible. Is he the vengeful, jealous god to be feared of the old testament? Or the loving, forgiving god to be adored of the new?? is he somehow both?? (suure )

And the only loving father analogies you could make were the consequences of your own actions analogies. Everything else was just asserting that god doesn't give a crap about what happens to us in this life, which canNOT be reconciled with the idea of a loving father, no matter how well you do verbal gymnastics, of which the rest of your post consists.

You keep asserting "the god of the bible" and "this is how it is explained in the bible" but you haven't actually cited the parts of the bible that support the paradigm you expound. In fact all your ideas are quite foreign to many that have studied the bible, so the support you claim seems like hot air. Not to mention how your idea of love seems utterly disconnected with anyone else's idea, not to mention that your arguments bear little resemblence to reality..........

long winded fool

Originally posted by long winded fool
it all must exist or be able to exist if free will exists, and free will must exist if human love exists, and human love must exist if God is omnibenevolent.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not A must be able to exist if the choice between A and not A exists. Define A as the kingdom of God, aka the absence of evil, aka the absence of suffering, aka absence of death, aka absence of anything unpleasant (spilled ice cream through worldwide genocide) etc. If we have the choice to choose the kingdom of God or to reject it, and if the Kingdom of God is defined by the absence of anything evil and therefore the presence of all that is good, then we have the choice to choose A or not A, therefore not A must logically be able to exist. Not A then would be described as rejection of God/evil/suffering. If the consequences of the rejection of God are equal to the consequences of the acceptance of God, (no suffering, no evil) then there is no freedom to choose. There is, in fact, no way to tell the difference between the two. The consequences of choosing to reject God are always evil, however suffering always afflicts people whether they accept or reject God, therefore suffering is not used as divine punishment and is also not necessarily evil. It can still be a teaching tool because evil results in suffering, however just because suffering is a consequence of evil, it is not necessarily inherently evil. (I.E. just because I'm suffering doesn't mean I've done anything evil.) If my free will to inflict suffering on the innocent is revoked, then I've lost my freedom to choose not A. This is fine in human society to control crime, however it doesn't work on the grand scale of a God allowing the innocent to suffer. If God "incarcerated" (read: prevented from doing harm to the innocent) everyone who rejected him before they actually harmed an innocent person, how could humans be said to have free will? How could anyone ever choose not A?

Free will must exist for love to exist because free choice is a prerequisite for love. No matter what the situation, there is always the option to love and to hate for a reasoning human being. If there is no choice, (complete reliance on instinct/programming) there is no possibility of love in the Biblical sense.

Human love must exist if God is omnibenevolent, because human understanding of goodness indicates that allowing someone you love the freedom to choose their own path is better than physically forcing them to think the way that you think. Giving good advice to a reasoning individual is better than physically preventing disobedience. The ability to love indicates our freedom to choose not-love. Our freedom to disobey. Therefore, this freedom is necessary if love is good and if God is omnibenevolent.

Because (or if) love exists, free will exists. Because (if) free will exists, suffering/evil exists. Because (if) all these things exist, if there is also a God, he can reasonably be, and probably is, omnibenevolent. Because the God of the Bible can reasonably be omnibenevolent while evil/suffering exists, the Problem of Evil does not present a logical contradiction to an omnibenevolent god like the one described in the Bible.

Llyricist

Wow, what a tangled mess of non sequiter, self-contradiction, false assertion and general horse poop, hard to even know where to start. Not to say the problems don't glare out of the text, just they are so tangled in the running monologue it's hard to make a linear analysis.

Why must the choice exist again??
Okay your running with the assumption that choice must exist is an axiom I guess.....
okay, back to this in a minute

Then how can you tell the difference of your choice? There appears to be, in fact, no way to tell the difference.

Furthermore, here you say suffering is not necessarily evil, BUT the second sentence of this paragraph you DEFINED suffering AS evil:
Consistency is not your strong suit apparently. Of course it isn't a strong suit of the Bible either.

No it cannot be a teaching tool since we have no way of knowing from whence the evil came, as you as much as state right here. and consequently:
You have achieved the very thing you sought to avoid just a few sentences before in the same paragraph! except that you always get the opposite consequences

By the fact that many "evil" choices would not involve harming the innocent, that the harm, the consequences can and should be felt only by the transgressor And ONLY then could the evil be said to provide a learning mechanism, and ONLY then would the choices become distinguishable!

Mere assertion that I dealt with before. Love is NOT a reasoned choice, unless this biblical sense of love has no relation at all to any other usage of the word. And even assuming the ability to reasonably choose to love, this brings us STRAIGHT back to the OP.

HOW can anyone reasonably choose to love an all-powerful god that allows innocents to suffer? The idea of reasoned choice to love pretty much revolves around respect and admiration for the good someone has done. God has demonstrated little to warrant that respect or admiration. So on what basis should people choose to love him again?

Umm people don't even have the ability to physically force anyone to think the way they think, so this argument is Moot.
For a human, yes. An omnimax god however could do it transparently, you wouldn't even know you were coerced.... We would feel no less free.
Besides where exactly do we find the clear, unambiguous good advice from God again? The Bible is NOT it.

So God has that freedom too, yes? Apparently, Since all indications are that he has chosen NOT-love (assuming he exists)


Riiiight, the Bible supplies quite enough logical contradictions of its own

On edit: This is in no way comprehensive, there are many other problems with the post that I did not take the time to dissect. For instance, I let the non-sequiters stand in persuit of the contradictions etc...

Dr Rick

Perhaps an another analogy would help.

Knotty pine must be choosen from pine if it's to exist, so what I say must logically follow. Let me give you an example:

Define Keanu Reeves, aka Mr. Anderson, aka Neo, hold the sprinkles. Now suppose my wife wants to date him because he's handsome, rich, and doesn't spend time trying to understand gibberish. Now, I could have more ice cream, but because I love her, the sunglasses will be purchased at a discount. Does not diminish my love or omnibenevolence? Intuitively, it seems like a contradiction, but logically, it's irrefutable. There is, in fact, no way to tell the difference between the two. Free will must exist for love to exist because free choice is a prerequisite for love.

Here's an analogy: "Divine Spanking" can now be bought on DVD, though it can easily be viewed as such from an adult site, (see my earlier analogies), and it can be shipped to your door. I did go through this in detail in the first part of the thread despite Llyricist's insistence to the contrary. Spanking is an important part of life without which we could have no fun (An important part of foreplay, I assume you agree), but I still prefer blondes.

Let's assume. It then only logically follows if the consequences of the rejection of God are equal to the consequences of the acceptance of God, (no suffering, no evil) then there is no freedom to choose.

I have logically shown how my conclusion follows from my rejection of the first premise. If you disagree, you aren't right. My argument is logical and irrefutable, and that's why I keep saying so.

You say I'm not rationale, when it's everyone else but me that doesn't understand logic. If you disagree, show me where my argument doesn't follow. You can't, because a series of letters, spaces and punctuation marks must logicallly follow from my premises. I have logically proven my point, which I posted somewhere on the thread earlier, along with a refutation to anything you might post in the future.

I would like to thank those of you have taken the time to consider my brilliance, and now stand in awe; I know you're out there somewhere.

Llyricist

Dr Rick
:notworthy :notworthy :notworthy :notworthy
I still shaking from the laughter.....dayum