How can you refute this Veeky Forums?

God cannot abolish evil as such because it results from All-Possibility, which is ontologically “prior” to the personal God; consequently, God can only abolish a particular evil to the extent that, in so doing, He takes
account of the metaphysical necessity of evil in itself. The second answer in a way goes beyond
the first, to the point of appearing to contradict it: God, being good, in fact abolishes not only
particular evils but also evil as such; particular evils because everything has an ending, and evil
as such because—being subject in the last analysis to the same rule—it disappears as a result of the cosmic cycles and the effect of the Apocatastasis. Thus the formula vincit omnia Veritas applies not only to Truth but also to the Good in all its aspects. And this means likewise that there can never be any symmetry between Good and evil; evil has no being in itself, whereas the Good is the being of all things. The Good is That which is; Being and Good coincide.

Evil is part of God's Divine Plan, but no one can know the mind of God. Catch-22.

So how do you know that evil is part of God's plan?

You just gotta have faith that the contradictory statements are true, user.

Read Gravity and Grace

Are the fragments of Epicurus worth reading?

>But there must be some sort of prime mover, all motion has a mover and at some point there must be the first mover who is himself not moved
wtf how do you know this?

I fucked up that posting attempt w/e

Because suffering evil is the expense of a discriminating free will, and it is the existence of evil that allows for good.
Without free will, man would be like an animal, not knowing good from evil and resigned to a lesser existence. Without evil, there would not be a good to adhere to; if God is Good, then without a good to adhere to man could not possibly strike to be God-like.

This OP. It unironically gave me a suicidal nervous breakdown and brought me home to the Catholic Church.

Sometimes suffering causes people to turn away from God. Is that going to help them in the future?

Christian worldview is that all things are ordained by god (but NOT WHETHER OR NOT YOU GO TO HEAVEN OR NOT THAT'S PREDESTINATIONALISM REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HERESY).

So even if you fell out with God, by Christian worldview you'll just get a "divine moment" and suddenly lolconvert. Or you enjoy hell, lool!

Good vid on this by an Anglican priest
youtube.com/watch?v=vggzqXzEvZ0

the only two logically coherent doctrines on the matter are predestination and universalism and I believe the Catholic church rejects both

Have you read the book of Job?
God literally fucks his life on a bet... God is humanity.
>What Doth life?

Yeah, but it's a test. Go to /pol/ and take part in the Bible studies. Jesus Christ is calling you to his arms.

So the devil asking him if Job is truly pure though God has blessed him was a really thought out plan?
The devil convinced God to doom him.
Seems evil enough to me. No matter if in the end he's more wealthy.

There's a couple routes you can take.
1. The material world is an illusion and therefore our suffering is ultimately an illusion also. When we "wake up" the worst of our material sufferings will seem like a fading bad dream, like running around in your underwear in high school in front of the girl you like in your sleep. When you wake up, the feelings that were so real and powerful in the dream seem laughable now, because not only was the dream an illusion, the "you" that you remember going through it was also a kind of illusion, because he only thought and felt through the dream's parameters.
2. The suffering is deserved because we are all spirits that committed great sins in the true reality and were imprisoned in a material existence in order to pay for those sins. Our state of ignorance of the spiritual, or "outer darkness", is simply part of the punishment.
3. Evil is a natural result of free will. God values free will in man and so allows it to take place although evil naturally comes along for the ride.
4. Suffering is not deserved but is a kind of test for the righteous man and allows him to assert his righteousness before God, Who then rewards or punishes him appropriately.
5. Your suffering is deserved because of your actions in a previous life and your failure to ascend to the spiritual planes.

Could probably go on and on with more actions. Many of them can be married to each other if one desires.

Satan is just an expression of God's personality. Specifically he's the expression of God's vengeance and desire to test humanity. Satan's goal in Job is to demonstrate to God (the All-Personality) that Job is not righteous. His argument is that he can find a situation in which Job will not act righteously but sinfully, thus proving that Job is not a righteous man but rather a man of circumstances.
Interestingly, God offers a few claims that many Christians today would consider blasphemous
>God says that Job is perfect.
>God says that Job acted correctly in his response to Satan's actions.
>God says that Job did not deserve what happened to him.
>God says that Satan convinced Him to strike Job for no reason.

The end result is that Job (who represents the Noble Sufferer, a good man facing down a horrible world) is validated by the test as righteous and rewarded by God.

what the hell religion is point 2?

Why Catholic and not Orthodox?

Without Evil, we wouldn't have anything to talk about here. There would be no Homer if there were no war.

>let me tell you how God should act
Epicurus was a hack

>>let me tell you how God should act
Don't every organized religion and most philosophers do this?

I was born into Catholicism, and I'm not an ethnic minority that has an Orthodox Church. I do have a deep appreciation for the Orthodox style of theology, and borrow some of it when its compatible with Catholicism, like the Orthodox view of Heaven and Hell as the same place. Really, if you strip away all the trash punitive theology that emerged during Christendom, Catholicism and Orthodox are not that different. And beside that, Catholicism just resonates with me more.

In the aristotelian line of argument I would definitely say yes because the prime mover ordains the world as something intelligeble, but Augustinian and Thomist arguments make a stronger case for it.

>God says that Job is perfect.
It is fine to say Job, and the saints in general, were "perfect" in the sense of living in accordance with God's commandments and eschewing evil. In another context, St. Paul talks about how Christians know "all things" by the Holy Spirit, but that is not to imply blasphemously that somehow Christians are omniscient like God.

>God says that Job did not deserve what happened to him.
He didn't. The saints in general are given burdens and crosses that they don't absolutely deserve, in order to atone for the sins of mankind through participation in the mystery of the cross of Christ. In fact, many of the saints specifically asked God to give them increased sufferings precisely for this reason.

St. John Chrysostom

Well, let us act in the same way in the case of human beings also: let us determine what is the virtue of man, and let us regard that alone as an injury, which is destructive to it. What then is the virtue of man? Not riches that you should fear poverty: nor health of body that you should dread sickness, nor the opinion of the public, that you should view an evil reputation with alarm, nor life simply for its own sake, that death should be terrible to you: nor liberty that you should avoid servitude: but carefulness in holding true doctrine, and rectitude in life. Of these things not even the devil himself will be able to rob a man, if he who possesses them guards them with the needful carefulness: and that most malicious and ferocious demon is aware of this. For this cause also he robbed Job of his substance, not to make him poor, but that he might force him into uttering some blasphemous speech; and he tortured his body, not to subject him to infirmity, but to upset the virtue of his soul. But nevertheless when he had set all his devices in motion, and turned him from a rich man into a poor one (that calamity which seems to us the most terrible of all), and had made him childless who was once surrounded by many children, and had scarified his whole body more cruelly than the executioners do in the public tribunals (for their nails do not lacerate the sides of those who fall into their hands so severely as the gnawing of the worms lacerated his body), and when he had fastened a bad reputation upon him (for Job's friends who were present with him said you have not received the chastisement which your sins deserve, and directed many words of accusation against him), and after he had not merely expelled him from city and home and transferred him to another city, but had actually made the dunghill serve as his home and city; after all this, he not only did him no damage but rendered him more glorious by the designs which he formed against him. And he not only failed to rob him of any of his possessions although he had robbed him of so many things, but he even increased the wealth of his virtue. For after these things he enjoyed greater confidence inasmuch as he had contended in a more severe contest. Now if he who underwent such sufferings, and this not at the hand of man, but at the hand of the devil who is more wicked than all men, sustained no injury, which of those persons who say such and such a man injured and damaged me will have any defence to make in future? For if the devil who is full of such great malice, after having set all his instruments in motion, and discharged all his weapons, and poured out all the evils incident to man, in a superlative degree upon the family and the person of that righteous man nevertheless did him no injury, but as I was saying rather profited him: how shall certain be able to accuse such and such a man alleging that they have suffered injury at their hands, not at their own?

>- Epicurus Quote implying atheism, implying he was a dumb fedora
>how to refute this?

Easy.
By quoting his Letter to his friend Menoeceus where he urged him to believe in gods, and a supreme God above them all.

"First believe that God is a living being immortal and blessed, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of mankind; and so believing, you shall not affirm of him anything that is foreign to his immortality or that is repugnant to his blessedness. Believe about him whatever may uphold both his blessedness and his immortality. For there are gods, and the knowledge of them is manifest; but they are not such as the multitude believe..."

He thought there were gods and an ultimate God, but they were concerned with Godly matters, not human affairs, so human prayer was ineffective and we need not fear the gods intervening in our fates.

So you see he wasn't a complete retard, the only thing he was wrong about was ineffectiveness of prayer, in fact it is effective but not how the masses think it is, the purpose of prayer is not to change the will of God but to change the nature of the one who prays. And this change is divine and not merely material.

What do you think about Vatican 2 CCC # 841? Seems like absolute heresy to even flirt with such a phrase.
>"841 The Church's relationship with the Muslims. ".amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day"
"together with us adore the one, merciful God, mankinds judge." ?????

This phrase right here is utter rubbish. Catholics worship the Trinity, the God who incarnated, the one who judges mankind is Iesous Christos, not Muhammad's Allah.
I'm not even Catholic but it irritates me when people try to say things like "oh jews, christians, muslims, we all worship the same God even if we have some differences..." No we don't. Lord have mercy.

inb4 read the full context, no salvation outside the church blablabla...I know the full context. It's that specific verse that is total garbage and heresy.

What happened to medieval Catholicism? Pic related. This is the right view towards Islam, not this liberal, universal pseudo-ecumenism garbage.

t. eastern ortho

They worship God the Father. If we Christians tolerate jews we should tolerate muslims.
>inb4 hurr we shouldn't tolerate jews or proddie moon god theory

If I remember right Hillaire Belloc considered Islam to be a heresy of Christianity that went way too far and has persisted to the present. So for the Church to say that Islam worships the same God are Christianity is not that outrageous, and I feel that it's in part a call for Muslims to see conversion to Christianity as a small but fruitful jump.

In other words, I don't think that 841 amounts to the facile syncretism that you seem to think it does.

Not that user, but I am Catholic and I'll give you an answer.

Basically, the fathers of the Second Vatican Council thought that the best approach to evangelising the modern world was to be conciliatory and speak more about where we agree with other religions, rather than our differences. Arguably this approach has yet to bear fruit.

>"841 The Church's relationship with the Muslims. ".amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day"

This statement is true subjectively, not objectively, i.e. it is true to say that Muslims THINK that they worship the one God and judge of mankind, but not true to say that they objectively do so. So the statement would be more accurate if it said:
>these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and similar to us claim to adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day"
Famously, the documents of the Second Vatican Council, which the CCC quotes, contain ambiguous wording that has come under heavy criticism.

>What happened to medieval Catholicism? Pic related. This is the right view towards Islam, not this liberal, universal pseudo-ecumenism garbage.

I agree with you. The stance since the Council has been that the Church should enter the liberal "marketplace of ideas" and stake its claim there, but the popes prior to the council constantly warned that the Catholic faith cannot be put on the same level as merely human or natural truths, or with false religions. This stance hasn't done much except to water down Catholic faith and practice among the faithful, in a bid to make ourselves more accommodating to a modern world that ultimately despises us.

>They worship God the Father.
"he who doesn't have the Son doesn't have the Father." 1 John 2:23
they don't worship the Father, since the Father is a Trinitarian hypostasis, whom the Holy Spirit and Son proceed from.

>If we Christians tolerate jews
>tolerate
has nothing to do with my point. We "tolerate" (terrible word) all sorts of heresies these days, but that doesn't mean we should unify with them or equate their beliefs to ours. It's simply dishonest and blasphemous.

>ambiguous writing
true.

>I agree with you. The stance since the Council has been that the Church should enter the liberal "marketplace of ideas" and stake its claim there, but the popes prior to the council constantly warned that the Catholic faith cannot be put on the same level as merely human or natural truths, or with false religions. This stance hasn't done much except to water down Catholic faith and practice among the faithful, in a bid to make ourselves more accommodating to a modern world that ultimately despises us.
thanks good answers.

>we Christians
>hello fellow Christians, how do you do?
lel, not buying it. terrible answer.

Thanks for clarifying that you're just faking to be Christian to larp as a crusader. I wish the rest of the board was this honest.

>Heh, you reject Islam? Then you're not a real Christian
Yep, impeccable logic. So tolerant. Wow. Such equality.

>reddit memes
Hello r/thedonald

>Satan is just an expression of God's personality
t. Heretic

>wow you're against abortion, islam and gay marriage? I thought you were Christian, you know Christ taught tolerance?....
>have u read the bible where it says not to judge and like love everyone or something??
t. liberal atheist

Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

But suffering happens because of humanity's fall from grace you dumb shit, God let humanity be fooled by Satan and punished them with a shitty world because he's a hard cunt.

what do you think that verse means?

>so they may as well be considered the God
No because God is an incredibly loaded term, this kind of sophistry is what makes people think the cosmological argument proves the God of Christianity. There's nothing in the argument that demonstrates the prime mover is intelligent.

kill people indiscriminately, duh

>the Catholic faith cannot be put on the same level as merely human or natural truths
Yeah because when you judge its claims like you would others you see it's got flaws. This kind of holy nonsense only works if you create a special bubble for your theology that doesn't allow a critical approach.

The Bible’s command that we not judge others does not mean we cannot show discernment between good and evil, heretics and saints, criminals and heroes. Immediately after Jesus says, “Do not judge,” He says, “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs” (Matthew 7:6). A little later in the same sermon, He says, “Watch out for false prophets. . . . By their fruit you will recognize them” (verses 15–16). How are we to discern who are the “dogs” and “pigs” and “false prophets” unless we have the ability to make a judgment call on doctrines and deeds? Jesus is giving us permission to tell right from wrong.

Elsewhere, Jesus gives a direct command to judge: “Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly” (John 7:24). Here we have a clue as to the right type of judgment versus the wrong type. Taking this verse and some others, we can put together a description of the sinful type of judgment:

The jist of that verse is a warning against hypocrisy, a person enslaved to sin X or Y should not be hasty to correct others before he corrects himself, for "by the measure you judge others you too will be judged",; it's a warning against hypocrisy and pride.
A person who has overcome sin X is in full authority to discern, correct and judge someone who is still enslaved by sin X. In fact it would be good to help the sinner overcome his faults.
Hope this helps.

>i'm a christian because it lets me condemn the anti-white sjw degenerates
>deus kek brother
>what do you mean none of this has any basis in scripture?

You have yet to refute the argument at hand, which is not contingent on him or his personal beliefs.

>anti-white
Where did I mention race, are you feeling okay? Anyway read this
If you have questions about scripture or what we believe I can try and answer.

The answer is that God is both willing and able to eliminate evil, and will actually defeat evil and dispense the appropriate mercy and justice to all. All evil is fundamentally transient and is being destroyed. Only the good will prevail into eternity.
In the final judgement the scales will be balanced. "When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all." 1 Corinthians 15:28 but for the time being God allows humans to "stumble" in order for us to express our free-will and genuinely come to him out of free love, not coercion nor compulsion. This freedom necessitates an open space of risk, the risk includes the manifestation of evil.

>dw guise God is just letting bad stuff happen because we have free will, nevermind that his punishing wrong-doers doesn't take away from their free will any more than society doing so.

>brahs come to me out of free love, or else I'll torture you for all eternity

>lol God just set up a system of suffering for shits & gigs, yeah yeah you're born into a north korean prison camp so what? deal withj it faggot who am I to fuck with the guards free will? What? Either a combination of his environment and genetics drove him to these acts or because I made him that way? shut up faggit also you're gonna burn in hell for not having found god there haha check mate

>then he is malevolent

Yeah... He is.
I don't see why the argument would have to go any further. I agree with that and I'm a Christian, not some larping pagan that thinks edgy gods are cool

Muh freedom

>>brahs come to me out of free love, or else I'll torture you for all eternity
>>God tortures you

the Orthodox Church teaches that both Heaven and Hell are being in God's presence and that there is no such place as where God is not. His presence is punishment and paradise depending on the person's spiritual state. For one who hates God and is spiritually weak being in His presence would be the gravest suffering. For one who is faithful, pure of heart and loves God His presence will be a beautiful Heaven. All will encounter God though.

>>lol God just set up a system of suffering for shits & gigs, yeah yeah you're born into a north korean prison camp so what? deal withj it faggot who am I to fuck with the guards free will? What? Either a combination of his environment and genetics drove him to these acts or because I made him that way? shut up faggit also you're gonna burn in hell for not having found god there haha check mate

1. Since God himself suffered, was beat and crucified, why should humans feel they are above suffering? Seems arrogant to me.
2. God suffers along with us, like a father seeing his children hurt. The difference is we forget our past sufferings, while God can never forget, not even the smallest detail remains clear to him forever.
3. All suffering is transient and is literally being destroyed. Everyone will get what they deserve. In light of eternity a few decades or even centuries of suffering is not something to have an existential crisis over. The real crisis should be your potential to damn your soul forever out of pride, egoism and pettiness.
4. Neither pleasure nor pain should enter as motives when one must do what must be done. Our incessant focus on pleasure and pain blinds us to the real meaning of life.

>not even the smallest detail remains clear to him forever.
>not
*even the smallest detail remains clear to him forever. He never forgets. You know what I mean.

The popes were talking on societal level. Religious doctrine should not be surrendered to a "market place of ideas", because then the religious foundations of society would be undermined and you would end up ultimately with nihilistic chaos and societal collapse into hedonism and oppression ... o wait.

>Ya I think God is evil and I'm Christian btw
>Meat? Ya I eat meat, and I'm vegan, so what?
>I'm a woman, but I identify as a man sometimes, what's the big deal?

Didn't Epicurus just believe in the traditional conception of Greek divinities, and that they did not get involved in human
affairs?

>the Orthodox Church teaches that both Heaven and Hell are being in God's presence and that there is no such place as where God is not. His presence is punishment and paradise depending on the person's spiritual state. For one who hates God and is spiritually weak being in His presence would be the gravest suffering. For one who is faithful, pure of heart and loves God His presence will be a beautiful Heaven. All will encounter God though.
No hell, that's good. You mentioned "hates God" and "faithful, pure of heart". How about neither, one who just does not believe he even exists without either loving or hating him (in the same way I don't hate/love Satan, just as fictional as God).

>1. Since God himself suffered, was beat and crucified, why should humans feel they are above suffering? Seems arrogant to me.
If this guarantees I'll get to go to heaven, sign me the fuck up. I already suffer temporarily for longer-term gains, i.e. running (hate running), healthy eating, lifting etc etc. I'd take this deal any day of the week.

>God suffers along with us, like a father seeing his children hurt. The difference is we forget our past sufferings, while God can never forget, not even the smallest detail remains clear to him forever.
I have no idea how you can possibly claim to know this. That goes for 3. too, just sounds like wishful thinking and making up God according to what you'd like him/the state of the universe to be.

>4. Neither pleasure nor pain should enter as motives when one must do what must be done. Our incessant focus on pleasure and pain blinds us to the real meaning of life.
1. There's no inherent "what must be done".
2. There's no inherent "real meaning of life".
Feel free to prove me wrong on either count.

God is such a douche

>what if I'm indifferent to God, neither hate nor love, can I be saved?
if a man is indifferent to God he puts something in place of God, even if he doesn't realize it, some other ideology or passion or meaning as his "highest value", which would be idolatry. Death would involve separation from your idol and encountering God, so it could be a dissatisfying eternity perhaps not totally painful, but I doubt it would be a heaven.

>God knows and suffers with us. I have no idea how you can possibly claim to know this.
God is omniscient, God loves us and is benevolent. It follows that he knows our suffering and feels for us and never forgets. Jesus wept for Lazarus. God is a personal being.

>1. There's no inherent "what must be done". 2. There's no inherent "real meaning of life".
How do you know? How do you justify this in your worldview, where is your proofs, have you dug deep into life and know what its all about?

I would say you are wrong because God is the origin, end, and meaning of our lives. He is where we come from and where we return. And God's will is "what must be done". I know this by logic, intuition, and revelation.

>Go to /pol/
No thanks I don’t have brain damage

>if a man is indifferent to God he puts something in place of God, even if he doesn't realize it, some other ideology or passion or meaning as his "highest value", which would be idolatry. Death would involve separation from your idol and encountering God, so it could be a dissatisfying eternity perhaps not totally painful, but I doubt it would be a heaven.
I don't see why this necessarily has to be the case. Any reason why you would assert this to be true?

My "highest value" is living a good life, but that's nowhere as high a value as I'd place on a God, were I to believe one existed. This is not an idol and therefore, by definition, not idolatry. What you assert death to involve is something I just don't believe to be true, and that there's no good reason to believe to be true from an outsider looking in (i.e. not already convinced of this being the case and fearing hellfire, cognitive dissonance or a meaningless life or whatever it may be were one to leave).

>God is omniscient, God loves us and is benevolent. It follows that he knows our suffering and feels for us and never forgets. Jesus wept for Lazarus. God is a personal being.
I have no idea how you can possibly claim to know this either.

>How do you know?
I don't, I'm just stating my belief in lieu of evidence pointing to anything else. This would be the null-hypothesis and so far nothing has shown it to be wrong.

>I would say you are wrong because God is the origin, end, and meaning of our lives. He is where we come from and where we return. And God's will is "what must be done". I know this by logic, intuition, and revelation.
Again, I don't see how you could possibly claim to know this to be true. What, if anything, is pointing to this being the case?

>God is omniscient
Does God know what decisions I’ll make?

Yes, and foreknowledge does not imply interference with your free-will, nor does it imply hard predestination. He knows everything, including your choices because he is beyond time and knows your character perfectly.

>how can you know God is good and benevolent and omniscient
follows by definition, like how a triangle has three sides or a bachelor is unmarried, except with God even his existence is logically essential to his nature, so is his all goodness and omniscience, transcendence, etc. Evil is a deprivation of good, a shadow of existence, God is absolutely real, the realist 'being' there is with no deprivation, pettiness or ignorance in him.
God is also the causeless, timeless cause of life and the world, without God there would be nothing, in fact there wouldn't even be "nothing", since nothing can't exist or be a state of affairs, by definition. The only rational and true option is God exists as the fundamental ground of being and he is the origin of all things, the sustainer of all things, and to him all things return and find their judgment and measurement and purpose.

Plenty of logical and intuitive arguments point to these things. Also we have revelation via scripture. Anyone who perceives the world honestly will see its design. Anyone who ponders causality will realize the necessity of a causeless cause, something that would satisfy the initial conditions of the possibility of the world, without itself being contingent and in need of conditions and causes, otherwise we get an infinite regress, no initial condition would ever be satisfied, nothing would exist, in fact less than nothing would exist.

>My "highest value" is living a good life, but that's nowhere as high a value as I'd place on a God, were I to believe one existed.

Goodness divorced from God and its transcendent, eternal nature, its moral order, its teleology is not good at all. But just a creation of our own, an idol.

The kingdom of God is not of this world. Does not scripture describe the devil as the Prince of this world?

>Yes, and foreknowledge does not imply interference with your free-will, nor does it imply hard predestination. He knows everything, including your choices because he is beyond time and knows your character perfectly.

How exactly does this not imply interference with my free will or predestination?
All this implies is an illusion of free will.

>If you cause a child extreme pain in order to save their lives in the future is that evil?

Yes, extremely so.

Is God the utilitarian monster?

>you have free will, but all your choices are already known. You just have to act them out and pretend lmao

Were you shaken as a baby?

Everything follows from a contradiction
Contradiction is God
The strongest force in the universe is entropy
Entropy is God
God is love
There is love and there is Love
Love in Undertale is Level of Violence
Brute force
Brute force is God
Teleology is God
God is dead
Death is the seal of all
God is the seal of all
God is death
Death is dead
Teleology is the movement of contradiction
A perfect being moves
God is teleology
God

God is when you take a fat shit and your asshole rips

Because it's you who does the choosing, whether its in the past, present or future, it's on you. Foresight does not interfere with your decision making process in any reference frame.
And to be precise God doesn't really have "foresight" he doesn't predict what you will do like a clairvoyant, he knows the beginning and end of all things timelessly.

evil does not exist, but is a state of a person's heart. A la designations

It casts things like good and evil into bizarre binaries. There is no room in this formulation for say, God to be generally but not perfectly Good.

It also presupposes that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent deity is the ONLY possibility, or at least the only possibility worth worshiping, without any real justification of that stance.

>Because it's you who does the choosing
And? All of my decisions are known anyway. Literally my whole life's choices, from start to end, are already known. What's the point? I'm going to do A instead of B anyway.
>whether its in the past, present or future, it's on you.
Evidently not.
>Foresight does not interfere with your decision making process in any reference frame.
So can I make a choice that God did not know about?

I thought Christians opposed nihilism

Suffering is mainly pointless. Beyond the Materialist-Structuralist explanations of pain, which are absurd even within the confines of Materialism-Structuralism, there is only the Subjective aspect of fearing annihilation and desiring salvation. The idea that you can be destroyed at all or that you are not yet perfect becomes less and less plausible the less you fear and desire.

>All of my decisions are known anyway.
Yes all of your decisions. They're yours, you do them, you're responsible.
The fact that a transcendent, all-knowing entity knows the beginning and end all all things doesn't negate your responsibility and your choices and your genuine desire to do A instead of B at some point in the future.

>What's the point? I'm going to do A instead of B anyway.
The point it's always you doing the doing.

>If I can't surprise God with secret intentions then I don't have free-will
No.

if you don't torture people they committ crimes and become abominations. Like native americans and nazis

>Yes all of your decisions. They're yours, you do them, you're responsible.
How am I responsible? I'm literally following a set path, given to me, under the illusion that I am charting my own course. My past, present, and future choices have been decided for me already, because God already knows what I'm going to do. Unless I am greater than your god, I can only follow what his knowledge says I will do.

>The fact that a transcendent, all-knowing entity knows the beginning and end all all things doesn't negate your responsibility and your choices and your genuine desire to do A instead of B at some point in the future.
So does this mean I can I make my own choices?

>The point it's always you doing the doing.
See the first point

>No
So can I make a choice that God doesn't know about? Or am I just following a script?

>My past, present, and future choices have been decided for me already
The decider was always you.
God simply knows you and your decisions perfectly.

This is like complaining that you can't change your past decisions. Yes, they were already determined by past-you. If I were to know all your past decisions would this invalidate your choosing them? No.
Similarly your future choices are determined by future-you; choices don't get negated by God's omniscience.

Perhaps I don’t understand. I am the one who “chooses” to do something, correct? However my choice is already known by God, as is the outcome.

In my mind, that would seem to be only an “illusion of free will”

Am I right or am I misrepresenting the argument? I guess I genuinely don’t understand

Newton's Third Law , every action must have a cause. Our reality exists, so there must have been some sort of creative force that caused it to exist.

Nothing I said pointed to the idea that God is Christian, if that's what you infer then that's up to you. There's no reason to think the prime mover is Christian, although that is certainly a popular interpretation. It's just beyond reasonable doubt that there must be some sort of prime mover. I don't know how such a concept could be thought of as unintelligent. A prime mover would have to have free will, the freest will possible, and free will is not an unintelligent concept.

Start with the cheeki breeki

Plantinga's Free Will Defense seems to me like the best way to do it.

It's basically the idea that if there was a choice between having evil and letting humans have free will, letting humans have free will would be a better world to live in.

It still has problems though, mainly the question of why there are natural disasters and other evils that aren't caused by humans. So the problem isn't definitively solved. The Greeks were geniuses. This and the Euthyphro dilemma are such great questions and have such big implications even today

>Newton's Third Law , every action must have a cause. Our reality exists, so there must have been some sort of creative force that caused it to exist.
Applying physics law to metaphysics lol, epic fail

>epic fail
I take this as a sign that you're shitposting

No seriously, why do you think a physics law applies to METAphysics

Its like applying a biology law to physics

why would a law of physics that is inductively based, have any bearing on metaphysics?

a scientific law is basically just a statement based on past events which may or may not necessarily be true in the future, depending on we observe next. either way, newton's version of physics is objectively wrong anyway (although we still use it for its predictive power).

there is no reason why anyone would assume that everything has to have a cause. the reasoning would go something like this:

1. Everything that we have observed has had a cause.
2. Therefore, everything must have a cause.

That's not deductively valid. It's the same as saying

1. All swans we have observed have been white.
2. Therefore, all swans are white.

Then they found out that black swans existed, and they changed their conclusion. Science is based on induction, and it is incredibly hard to ever make a conclusive statement based on things like that. You can say that you're sure about something with 99.9999% certainty, but there's always a chance that a new piece of evidence will prove your theory wrong.

This is not the case for deductive logic. I can definitively say that there will never ever be a round square, because my argument is based on the definition of the word "square".

Sorry, I was wrong. You guys are right.

>Our reality exists, so there must have been some sort of creative force that caused it to exist.
Kant BTFO the cosmological argument in the critique of pure reason, read it, it's kinda hard but very rewarding.