One atheist’s idea on how to prevent evil

[LuisDantas]

There are too many "its" in your post, and I do not know what you mean by "it."
I cannot respond unless you are more direct and to the point.
One of the parameters of the God of Abraham is what?

Never mind. You are stuck on a barrier of your own making, and I warned you enough already.

 

[Trailblazer]

Never mind. You are stuck on a barrier of your own making, and I warned you enough already.

Vague, very vague.

 

[viole]

Sorry, I did not understand the point you were making as it relates to my OP.

God could have programmed humans so that they felt the same disgust when they sin, preventing thereby that from happening.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Koldo]

Yes, it would ruin God's plans for us because God ants us to try to mitigate our own suffering and endure what we cannot mitigate.
Give me one good reason why the world should be free of all suffering (other than the fact that you don't like it.).

God has all power, but give me one good reason why God should use His power to remove all suffering in the world (other than the fact that you don't like it.)

Do you even entertain the possibility that God knows more than you do and that there is a good reason for suffering or are you only able to think of one possibility -- God is omnipotent so God should remove all suffering.
Such simplistic thinking does not bode well for atheist's ability to think rationally.and complexly.

There is no good reason that would justify it. I have thought this through, trust me. 'Should' doesn't enter the picture for me. It is just that if God doesn't prevent pretty much all sorts of suffering he is either evil, powerless or clueless. I don't need any 'should' to say that.

 

[Erebus]

Me particularly? I believe no god exists.

I am merely stating that one can remove "evil" from that equation. If you shoot someone in a video game is it evil what about in a dream? We can tweak the meaningfulness of this life and any alleged afterlife to any degree when dealing with an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent god.

One of the ways to resolve the conflict is to attack abstract notions like "evil." Can we really pin anything down as evil? If so why do we consider it "evil." Because it causes suffering? If suffering in this life we currently experience doesn't matter then how is that said thing really evil?

Fair enough

An important point to note there is that you've removed omnibenevolence from that concept of God which means that the problem of evil is no longer applicable. In fact, taking a moral nihilist stance removes omnibenevolence by default and thus avoids the problem of evil. It's also worth pointing out that the problem of evil doesn't apply to the majority of god concepts.

An interesting alternative take on this would be to make the claim that all things are equally good and therefore an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god holds up. There are a couple of issues with this though, firstly because it's difficult to maintain that all things are good. A very common rebuke would be, "well to me X is evil" at which point the problem of evil returns in a subjective manner. Secondly, this view would then be incompatible with a deity who creates rules or desires a certain form of behaviour. That's kind of a major feature of the forms of theism that fall foul of the problem of evil.

 

[LuisDantas]

Vague, very vague.

How vague can "you are stubbornly refusing to accept that this is a criticism" ever be?

 

[Koldo]

Why should God care if He is considered 'good' by everyone?

There is no 'should'. It is just that many people won't consider God to be good if he doesn't meet their criteria.

How many people do you think believe that God should erase all suffering in order to be good?

I don't know. I just see that number increasing everyday though.

Not everyone is going to be happy with what God ordains but how does that make God less than good?

How can an omnipotent and omniscient being that doesn't prevent suffering of all kinds be good ?

No, I did not mean might makes right, but it means we cannot thwart God's will.
The only way we can know that God is benevolent is from scriptures. That is the only way we an know anything about God. If we try to use our own criteria for determining what God is like we will be wrong because people project their own thoughts and feelings and thus their expectations onto God.
The only way God is not benevolent is if all the scriptures are wrong, in which case there is no reason to even believe God exists.

How did you reach the conclusion that God is good ? Do you mean the scriptures said God is good or do you mean that what the scriptures said about God have led you to the conclusion that God is good ( as in all the actions and intents described count as good to you ) ? If the former, what sort of evidence, if found, would contradict that ? If the latter, why do you think it is perfectly alright not to prevent all sorts of suffering?

 

[night912]

God created us and nature as being imperfect. It is our imperfections that are the source of all that is evil in the World. Everything in life is about choosing to be good and in tune with God's perfection in spite of all our imperfections. This is why we have religion. Religion exists to help us get over the hump of our evil nature.

I could not have stated that better.

I, on the other hand, could state that better. Since god is the source of our imperfections, god purposely created us to do evil. So god is the creator of and responsible for evil because evil would have to exist before humanity. It first existed whithin god. That would make our imperfections not the origin of evil as you suggest. Our imperfections is just a result of another evil act.

And before you even bring up free will and choice, as I already explained it in a different thread, it's only an illusion and doesn't exist in accordance with the existence of god. I'll do a quick explanation here.

The way many theists tries to solve the problem of evil is to take god out of the equation, in other words, make god nonexistent. But there's problems in doing that. First, obviously, that would make the existence of god to be false or at very least, not the creator of all existence, making god meaningless.

Second, god exist and is the source of evil, him being the uncaused cause or creator. To go further, in which the notion of free will(or lack of) comes into play. Humans cannot have true free will because their lives are predetermined by god. Since god has foreknowledge of future events, he knows for certain, every single "choice" that each individual is going to make. This next part is where those theists drops god from the equation. Having that foreknowledge he created the first humans, designed with specific programmng in order to make he exact "choices" to properly end up where we are today. Those theists now all of a sudden are not recognising god as the creator anymore.

In conclusion, it's comes down to either god is not the source of evil making him nonexistent or not the creator of all existence, makes him meaningless. Or god exist and is evil being the source of evil.

The act of creating something to do evil is in itself evil.

 

[night912]

Do you mean God would have made us all good with no ability to do anything bad?
In that case we would just be robots with no free will to choose.

Nope, you'e wrong about that. For the sake of argument, let's say that both god is all good and free will exist. If god made us all good with choice of evil ever existing, there would be no evil in the world and still maintain free will.

 

[PruePhillip]

There is no good reason that would justify it. I have thought this through, trust me. 'Should' doesn't enter the picture for me. It is just that if God doesn't prevent pretty much all sorts of suffering he is either evil, powerless or clueless. I don't need any 'should' to say that.

You "should" love your brother.
You are given a choice - freedom is the greatest gift next to our life.
But you are responsible for your behavior.
And you are Judged by it.
That's the biblical POV.

 

[night912]

Not really. If I offer my kids steak or hamburger and I know they will 99% of the time choose steak, I'm still giving them a choice and they can choose hamburger anytime.

What part of foreknowledge, "knowing for certain that something will happen" don't you understand? You knowing that 99% of the time means that you don't know what is going to happen. If I know 100% that your kids will choose steak when you offer them the choice, then they will choose steak. Don't confuse probability with certainty. The first one is chance, while the latter is guaranteed. Probably still means that you don't know which choice they will pick.

 

[night912]

If he cannot tell me how God could do it then he does not have an argument. He can't just say god can do it because god is omnipotent. That is dumb.

I agree with what's in bold. But that's not what he did according to you.

He says that god could arrange it so only good choices are available for people to make and that would prevent evil.

Atheist: Try having a real omnipotent god who could see to that.

Your atheist friend did explained how. That's all the explanation that's needed. Just because you can't refute it, it doesn't make it dumb. Or are you suggesting that the all powerful god is incapable of doing it?

 

[night912]

You "should" love your brother.
You are given a choice - freedom is the greatest gift next to our life.
But you are responsible for your behavior.
And you are Judged by it.
That's the biblical POV.

Actually, you're not entirely correct. According to the biblical POV, god created man in his image. And since god didn't love his brother(s) and/or take responsibility for many mistakes that he made, instead he blamed humanity. And since humans were made in his image.....

 

[night912]

That would require taking away our free will to choose.

No it won't. You would still have the free will to choose to do all the different good things that we're capable of doing or provided to us. You cannot choose something that is not available and/or undesirable to you.

No, I do not feel I have no free will when I have no thoughts or urges to do evil because I do not want to do evil,[/B] but a murderer might feel like he has no free will if he wanted to do murder someone and couldn't because God fixed it so people could only make good choices.

Since you stated above in bold, you would then agreed that the "murderer" would feel the same as you if he/she does not have the urge to do evil. So how is it that free will is taken away from us?

If you would to argue that choices are taken away from us, then you have even a bigger problem.

 

[PureX]

We are choosing how we define "evil". And then we are blaming our definition of it on God because God allowed us to define "evil" into existence. That doesn't make any sense at all.

 

[Jos]

We are choosing how we define "evil". And then we are blaming our definition of it on God because God allowed us to define "evil" into existence. That doesn't make any sense at all.

That's not totally true. Many Abrahamic theists, for example, believe that God is the one who defines what is good and what is evil. They believe that we humans don't get to decide what's good or evil, only God does.

 

[PruePhillip]

Actually, you're not entirely correct. According to the biblical POV, god created man in his image. And since god didn't love his brother(s) and/or take responsibility for many mistakes that he made, instead he blamed humanity. And since humans were made in his image.....

What mistakes? Even driving the Jews out of Israel in the First Century wasn't
really the result of a mistake - it was prophesised way back in Jacob's day that
God's faith in the Jews would ultimately be misplaced. It's complicated.

 

[Koldo]

You "should" love your brother.
You are given a choice - freedom is the greatest gift next to our life.
But you are responsible for your behavior.
And you are Judged by it.
That's the biblical POV.

I am arguing for is exactly judging whether someone is good or evil, be they humans or gods, based on their behaviours.

 

[Koldo]

We are choosing how we define "evil". And then we are blaming our definition of it on God because God allowed us to define "evil" into existence. That doesn't make any sense at all.

I don't think that is quite correct. I think it is more like: let's just use our everyday definition for evil.

 

[Trailblazer]

God could have programmed humans so that they felt the same disgust when they sin, preventing thereby that from happening.

God wants humans to learn that sin is bad on their own, and thereby choose not to sin.
Some people learn and some don't.

God wants humans to make their own choices. That is why we have free will.
If God had wanted robots, God would have made robots.