Bible Humper

The problem of evil:

1. If God is perfectly loving, He must wish to abolish evil

2. If He is all powerful, He must be able to abolish evil

3. But evil exists.

The problem is, if you affirm two of these facts, you cannot affirm the third.

4. Therefore, an all powerful, loving God does not exist.


The theistic defense I have seen to this argument is that Yahweh must allow evil for the sake of free-will. The free-will defense contradicts many fundamental Xian claims, alas, which I'll get to in a sec.

Free-will to believe....or not

The theistic rationalisation of why Yahweh doesn't clearly present himself in an unambiguous manner to the world also uses the free-will defense, the claim being that Yahweh must allow us the "option" to faithfully believe or not so that the decision is meaningful.

The related idea of "divine foreknowledge and human freedom being incompatible" is absurd for reasons related to the "can God create something so heavy that even he can't lift it?" problem. Basically it is saying that the omniscient deity created souls so unpredictable that even he can't make predictions regarding them. Nonsense.

The use of the free-will defense has many unforseen implications for the religion's most important claims:

The first and most obvious are the numerous fantastical stories found in the Bible, the common Xian claim that the Bible is a credible eye-witness account needs to be abandoned if they are going to answer the above questions with the free-will defense. Xians who are fond of the free-will argument need to admit that the bible isn't credible enough to be evidence of anything.

Secondly, we have the Xian testimonies that claim the believer "felt the Holy Spirit" or "communicated with Jesus during prayer". These claims seem especially contradictory, how can one have free will to decide to believe if the deity makes it's presence manifest? Could these perceptions be compared to the make-believe lalaland which imaginative children inhabit, and could the Xian's alleged communication with Jesus be compared to the child's communications with his imaginary playmate Pete the bunny-rabbit?

Third is the christian philosophy itself. Is it believable to claim that the christian philosophy came from the omniscient mind of an unearthly entity? If "the Word" was as profound and inspirational as one would expect from the deity, and indeed as profound as has been claimed by Xians, it would contain ideas that clearly could not be the product of human thought and would remove all doubt of the Bible having been inspired by an actual deity. Incidentally, there would also be a uniformity of interpretation, human inventions would be unable to even approximate the diety's profundity so the correct interpretation would be apparent.

Fourth is the credibility of miracle claims, which are the foundation of the religion. Despite the fact that all religions have claims of amazing magical phenomena, we are supposed to reject the claims of all other religions as "tall tales" but take the Xian claims seriously. If the Xian miracles have credibility that the others lack, the free-will to believe in Yahweh or not has been taken away in a rather ham-handed manner. Blatant magical events are nothing less than absolute proof of supernature, though the Xian miracles in reality don't seem to have any credibility that the others lack.

Fifth are the claims that prayer results in actual intervention by the deity on behalf of the Xian. If the deity was to actually intervene in a manner that allows for the free-will to believe or not, then he would have to do so in a manner that allows natural explanations and especially "coincidence explanations", in which case it is obviously wishful nonsense when the Xian proudly proclaims that the deity helped him out. Especially silly are the claims that the deity always answers prayer, just that the answer is often "no", if all events in the believer's life that he applies prayer to are manipulated by the deity, how can you invoke the free-will defense?

The free-will defense seems to fill a vital role for theologians by attemping to offer a rationalisation for why the world works the way it does despite the benevolent attentions of an omnipotent deity. It fails.

Yahweh Wants Us To Believe In Him?

Think about it, this perfect deity created us with the ability to reject him, hides all evidence of his existence, obscures the issue even more by allowing other religions to flourish which makes him seem to be just another fairy tale among many, but gets pissed off enough to send us to sizzle eternally for not believing in him?

Alternatively, this perfect benevolent deity has presented enough evidence that it is unjustified to not believe, and has distinguished himself sufficiently from alternate religions, but doesn't intervene in the suffering of the world despite the fact that he is already "apparent" anyway?

My Point?

If Yahweh needs to preserve free-will to believe or not, all alleged "evidence" of his existence is nothing of the sort. This has the ridiculous effect of causing one to believe in the deity's "plan", and also his power, based on the fact that there is no credible reason to believe in him! "Wow, there is absolutely no rational reason to believe in Yahweh, this is proof of his power and wisdom! Bow down!"

If the "evidence" for Yahweh is thought to be sound, then Yahweh has already removed the possibility of coming to the conclusion that he doesn't exist with one or more of the pieces of "evidence" I listed above (atheists and other theists "reject God" rather than "don't believe he exists"). In this case the problem of evil and the question of why he would hide from us both become crucial.

beliefisbunk

"Free Will" is a bogus contradiction.

If we get free will, then what is "divine intervention"...and what are "miracles"? Christians/Catholics/et al. seem to want it both ways.

Even more hilarious...

1. Many Christians/Catholics believe that all things, good or bad, happen for a reason. (Rather then contest the "bad" things, they cower away from why "god" would "allow" such a thing or even QUESTION whether the existence of a god is fathomable.)

2. Many Christians/Catholics who believe that their relatives went to a "better" place in many headlining events. In re: to 9-11, one mouth tells us that it was "their time to go", and on the other mouth is anger that it wasn't God that cut their life short, but a bunch crazed Islamic terrorists who should be brought to justice.

I think all the idiotic contradictions in such newsmakings matters, along with the Catholic Church Sex scandals, will cause more people to change their minds about a "higher authority".

luvluv

What, again?

David M. Payne

Let me get some popcorn, pull up a chair and watch the fun!

Hey LL, again and again, until you guys cry uncle!

David

Philosoft

Is free will 'good' because God says so, or did God choose to implement it because it is intrinsically 'better' than the alternatives?

Fair warning: I'm going to get unruly if the 'God's nature as revealed by the Bible' argument rears its head.

99Percent

You can't have free will with an omnipotent god.

Simple as that.

Bible Humper

Hello Luvluv,

I haven't seen this argument from this angle. Would you answer, please?

Liquidrage

Free-will, even if it does exist in the typical Xian used sense is not enough to explain suffering caused by humans.

I can not choose to jump to the moon. Yet I could easily choose to kill a fellow human. Surely a benevolent and omnipotent god that gave us free-will and yet clearly did not give us unlimited choices could have not given us that ability to so easily kill each other.

As to the "what again". Yup, we've been here before, but not all topic have been seen by everyone nor is everyone opinions static nor is there anything preventing the discussions from being refined. So "why not"?

Amos

Hi Bible Humper, I am not sure if I address you question in particular but here is a free will argument that will allow me to zero in on anything you may wish to explore.

Let me first state that if God is hiding from us there must be 'two of us' because he is not hiding from all of us. As you may have noticed, some of us recognize God and some of us don’t while others are on fire for God.

The 'two of us' in my argument are our God identity and our human identity (or ego identity) and it is in our human identity wherein we have 'self-worth' as humans (and we will enhance this with power, wealth and beauty whenever we get a chance). This “self worth” is sometimes a problem because it can increase and decrease with age, sex, race and even the value of our currency. Because of these variables we must constantly work on our self worth and this is where the concept pleasure and pain becomes the medium. Since I mentionned "WE," for D-503 it was the Intergral and for Dean Jocelin it was "the Spire."

Michelangelo made a painting to show this dual nature of ours and it is located on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for the world to see how Catholics view God and our human nature in relation to God. It is called "The Creation of Adam" (?) and clearly shows Adam outside the skull of man to emphasize this division.

The reality, is that God did not create our human identity because whatever God creates finds existence or we would have no knowledge thereof. Since our ego has no corporeal existence God could not have created it and therefore remains a complex identity of our imagination (the proof of this is that it can vanish in rapture). If this is true the concept evil is not of God and so God has nothing to do with evil nor can God allow evil because God has nothing to do with evil.

Since our ego is ours, I, we two combined as a going concern,* do have free will and must be held accountable for our actions. However, since we are divided between our ego and God identity can it be said that we do not have a free will but are determined creatures by our persistent but submissive God identity until such time that we become one with God in the Beatific Vision and will henceforth be of singular identity in the I AM. That is the time when we truly have a free will and is also the time that evil is no more nor pain and suffering because our ego will have raptured (or has been crucified). In other words, when the ego raptures that which remains is in heaven.

As I understand it the free will concept presented by the Catholic Church is there to encourage its members to go out on a limb and built Spires and Integrals that later are retrieved to become our riches while in eternity.

Here is my favorite line from the Spire which is placed at midpoint in life (chapter 6 page 111) describing the moment of "realization."

". . . ; whinced at any rate up here, where solidity balanced in midair among the birds, held its breath over a diminishing series of squares with a round hole at the bottom which was nevertheless the top."

* In Zamjatin's "WE" there are four identities as in, "I, we four." They include Eve (I-330) Adam (D-503), Mary (O-90) and Christ (S-4711).

Keith Russell

Greetings:

People are not always rational; they often hold contradictory ideas--sometimes they even do so consciously.

People look for comfort, and it is comforting to think that those who die violently, or 'before their time' are 'in a better place'.

One who places comfort over truth will have no problem believing such a comforting claim. If the person wants to believe it (as most theists wish to believe in a peaceful afterlife), it will be very difficult--if not impossible--to persuade them of the irrationality of their beliefs.

Once a person has accepted an irrational belief (one that is either supported by no evidence, or which contradicts known evidence), what is to stop them from believing anything?

Why is it so difficult to accept that such a person (who has already accepted the contradiction of an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniloving 'God') will somehow be repulsed by the thought that, while our loved ones were 'called home to 'God', we need to nonetheless punish those who caused this senseless tragedy?

Why expect people (who have already embraced irrational ideas) to be rational about their irrationality?

Keith.