Jerry Smith

Luvluv & other theists:

Rachel is real. I am not talking about a hypothetical. I am not a god, and I did not have the power to prevent the harm that came to her. But if you know someone who did have that power, and who did not use it, I would very much like to have a word with them. They have a LOT to answer for.

99Percent

luvluv: Where are you from? Over here in the US, Pat Buchanan is a libertarian. I've always interpreted as a republican who wants the government out of the market and out of our social life.

I am Mexican/American. Anyway you should check the <a href="http://www.lp.org" target="_blank">Libertarian Party</a> web page before saying that Pat Buchanan is a libertarian. He is a an extreme right republican winger, very far from a libertarian perse as libertarianism is neither right or left extremism, but totally the opposite ;-)

luvluv

"I do not ask to abdicate my choice or ask God to take away my moral freedom. I ask only that He ensure that no one other than me suffers from my misdeeds."

How exactly would he do that? By stopping you from commiting that act? By making everyone else impervious to your acts? By constant, instantaneous miracles occuring around the perpetually wicked? It's a nice theory but I'm afraid the practice of it would be impossible.

Freedom entails that God not follow you around and clean up your mistakes. I feel for what your niece suffered, but if you extrapolate out what it would mean if ALL such acts of evil had to be cleaned up by God as they were happening... I can't imagine that would be a world worth living in. And again, I can't see how it would work logistically. When you speak of your masterbating not hurting anyone, what about the women who might be the subject of all of these fantasies? Are you suggesting that the women in these magazines and videos are not harmed by the pornography industry? What about their mothers? Their children? Are they harmed by the fact that their loved ones participate in pornography? And what happens when one of them prays to God to stop you from looking at her daughter? Does God now make you go blind anytime you look at her image? Or confuse your mind everytime you try to picture her? Do you see how this would cascade out into every decision you make all day long. It's functionally impossible to remove the consequences of every evil act on every person other than yourself. And why would God let you hurt yourself, when if you have loved ones, you hurting yourself is hurting other people? I'm sure your loved ones would care if you became a raving alcholic, in fact they might be hurting from it more than you. So then should God stop you from drinking? Or make it impossible for you to get drunk? Would people who weren't prone to alcholism still be allowed to get drunk? Would the laws of the universe shift with the intent of every moral act?

I think that the universe you blame God for not creating is not a universe that is possible. I feel for your niece, but I don't know that there is a conceivable alternative to moral freedom besides moral slavery. Either God allows us freedom, or he takes it away, or he follows behind us with a cosmic pooper-scooper cleaning up all of our mistakes, making our freedom functionally useless.

There's only one person who had the power and the responsibility to prevent your niece from being assaulted, and that was the person who did the assaulting. Again, I am sorry for what happened, but God is no more repsonsible for that action than He is responsible for anything wrong that you or I have done. That man had a choice, and he made the wrong one. I certainly hope the state of whatever country you live in sees to it that he doesn't have the opportunity to make another such mistake, but lets not take the responsibility of our actions from ourselves. God probably gave that man every opportunity in his life to not be a child molester, and he made the wrong choice. I don't believe you can blame God for that.

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

99Percent

luvluv: God is no more repsonsible for that action than He is responsible for anything wrong that you or I have done...

So God is not omnipotent or omniscient or omnibenevolent?

Sorry, luvluv, you cannot mix-in the word "no" with the word "God" in any sentence from now on, agreed?

luvluv

The fact that God has power to do things does not mean that he did them or didn't do them. He certainly has the power to control all of our actions if He so chose, but the fact that He values our freedom and chooses not to interfere with it does not make him any less powerful.

That's one of C.S.'s points in the book, that while God can do anything, he can't do mutually exclusive things at the same time. He can't give freedom and guarantee that everyone makes the right decisions. You should really buy the book it will cost you all of 5 bucks and its at every major bookstore in the US.

99Percent

sorry luvluv you just violate the omniwhatever rule in the following statement: he can't do mutually exclusive things at the same time.

Try harder.

Malaclypse the Younger

luvluv

If a god exists then it can or cannot stop one from committing an evil or harmful act is. We know it is logically possible (police officers do it all the time). If a god cannot, it is not omnipotent.

If a god can, then it is plain that it chooses not to. Either it is morally right or wrong to stop an evil action. If it is morally right, then if an god fails to perform a right action which is within its power, the god is not acting morally and is not omnibenevolence. If it is morally wrong to stop and evil action, we must morally denounce the police, government, law; indeed one must embrace practical moral nihilism.

The omnimax attributes with the observation of moral evil lead to a dilemma:

<ol type="1">[*]a omnimax god does not exist[*]We must morally embrace practial moral nihilism[/list=a]

This is, of course a dilemma only for believers in an omnimax god. Also note that there's a parallel argument for epistemological nihilism as well as practial nihilism.

Side note: If something is nice in theory, it entails no practical difficulties for an omnimax deity.

Again it's noted that you are equivocating freedom with moral freedom. The existence of moral freedom does not outweigh the evil acts performed by people; were it not so, we must conclude that it is immoral to interfere with anothers' freedom regardless of the consequences.

The failure of your imagination is not a persuasive logical argument.

Keep in mind that no one is asking you to implement the logistics. The triviality of the logistics is entailed by the omnimax attributes of the deity.

How can someone be harmed by a fantasy? This is absurd.

I would not only suggest but assert it. Of course, some people are harmed by almost any job. That's why we have OSHA and lawyers.

What about them?

Nothing, as god doesn't exist.

Again, we are noting that the logistical problems are trivial for an omnimax deity. Perhaps he would make our biological makeup such that photographs of naked women didn't turn men on. &lt;shrugs&gt; I'm not omniscient. A god could think of something, though.

This is not an objection. My particular nature (which I didn't choose) already cascades out into every decision I make all day long.

No it isn't. If it's logically possible, an omnimax god can do it.

Why indeed? Again, solving this problem poses no difficulty for an omnimax deity.

Why not?

Please be precise. We don't blame a nonexistent deity for anything. We are showing that your concept of god is contradictory and your logic fallacious. We don't blame a god for much of the moral evil in the world, we blame your (and others') deluded cult indoctrination.

Slavery implies a contravention of will; removing moral freedom does not entail moral "slavery", as an omnimax god could do so without contravening our will.

And we are already in natural "slavery"; we cannot break the laws of physics at will. So a god does not seem to have a problem placing limitations on our will.

Again the argument is that the existence of moral freedom contradicts the idea of an omnimax (including omnibenevolence) god. You have not made the case that the preservation of moral freedom is deontically morally good.

This is simply false. The police, the government, the courts, bystanders all have both the power and the responsibility to prevent assault.

This is the heart of your contradiction. If the state sees to it that he doesn't have the opportunity to make another such mistake, they are constraining his moral freedom. If this is morally wrong, you should not wish for it. If it is morally right, and a god exists, why did not a god not do so?

As noted, one can't blame a nonexistent being (or, at least a being one does not believe exists). However if an omnimax god did exist, it most clearly would have prevented it; thus the occurance is evidence for the nonexistence of such a god.

Frankly, I don't know that you understand benevolence much less omnibenevolence.

Malaclypse the Younger

luvluv

It does not make a god any less powerful, it is evidence that god is not benevolent.

Right. So the benevolent thing to do is to take away our freedom to do evil. To argue against this is admit that the freedom to do evil is more good than the evil one does; and it is contradictory that you yourself should prevent evildoing.

Lewis doesn't impress many of us.

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: Malaclypse the Younger ]</p>

Vorkosigan

He can't give freedom and guarantee that everyone makes the right decisions. You should really buy the book it will cost you all of 5 bucks and its at every major bookstore in the US.

This is nonsense. Anybody guiding anyone knows that an excellent teaching method is to give people enough rope to hang themselves, then yank them away from death at the last moment so that they understand what could have happened. My kids can do whatever they want so long as no permament harm is done. That in fact is how they learn independence and freedom.

You see, Luv, you don't need the actuality of pain and suffering, only knowledge of their potential. When my son messes with the stove, I take his hand away and then show him by burning something what happens to something stuck in the flame. Dead dogs in the street show what happens to creatures hit by a car. In point of fact, I have never been hit by a car, but I am quite certain that the experience would do terrible damage to me. No need for me to learn firsthand. It would be quite possible to give humans greater freedom than they have now, and create a world full of love and free of pain.

Much suffering on earth has nothing to do with the will of the sufferer. My son did not ask to be born with a defective cognitive apparatus. My daughter did not choose to be born with a defective heart valve. My sister did not re-arrange her genes so that her senses are defective and she is slowly dying of a degenerative nerve disease. There is nothing to do with "free will," and no sin is worth condemning someone to die in pain like that.

The truth is that the universe is choked to overflowing with pointless suffering. Even the attempt to find a moral justification for that is sick; let alone believe that a being who could create all this pain is worth worshipping.

Michael

Jerry Smith

luvluv:

Malaclypse has dealt affectively with your reply to me, so I will only add one or two points:

I will go along with you that the pornography industry causes harm to women. This does not change the truth of my statement, and here's why:

1) I can masturbate without viewing pornography.
2) Women choose to pose for pornographic pictures. God has the knowledge and power to intervene if someone attempts to take that choice away from them.

One could make the argument that the loved ones of a model who participates in pornography are harmed or saddened. In some cases we are morally justified in non-intervention when we are aware of harm and have the capability to intervene. This may be the case where it involves the kind of emotional harm done to the loved ones of the model.

1) God has other options than to stop my drinking.
2) If my drinking is causing my family harm, should you or the police intervene to stop it? Perhaps it depends on how severe or what kind of harm I am doing to them. If I am drinking and then violently assaulting them you probably should. If I am drinking and setting a poor example for the children, maybe you shouldn't.

If it is RIGHT for you to intervene in any given case, and WRONG for you not to intervene in the same case, why is it not also RIGHT for God to intervene and WRONG for God not to intervene?

If God is all powerful, then in this case there were THREE people who had the knowledge and power to prevent my niece from being molested. They were the person who did the molesting, his wife, and God. None of them did. God, like the molester's wife, is not responsible for molesting my niece, but he IS responsible for sitting on His Fat Ass and doing nothing about it.

I have no reason to believe in God. The world we live in is obviously not ruled by a God that is Good and All-Powerful. You have a choice to make, and these are your only options:

1) It would be good for you to sit on your ass and do nothing when you witness a rape, child abuse, etc..
2) Your God is not Good (and hence is Evil)
3) Your God is good but he is impotent
4) There is no God

The state of Georgia, U.S.A., put him in jail for what he did to Rachel and a number of the other neighborhood children (whom his wife babysat). That was 5 years ago. He is out of prison now, and living in my sister's old neighborhood. When he was released, her family moved away from that neighborhood.

Normally I would not have discussed this thing on the internet, or with anyone outside my family. The fact is, I made a mistake in judgement last night because I had been drinking when I posted. I could have contributed to this discussion at least as well without bringing the calamities of real people and my family into it. I will not be discussing this on these boards any longer.