Are there any good refutations to the Problem of Evil?

Read some theology

How can I make an argument when you don't understand the premise?

Jesus. Veeky Forums is shit.

>what God considers evil
Condoms and pig meat?

I don't see how directly aiming your insults to me help in any regards to refute the argument I originally posted.

If you have any decency I would like you to elaborate your points and tell me where is that my original statement lacks a logical structure.

What or who is this god that you are talking about and why it should be relevant to this conversation?

Are you saying that evil cannot exist without this god thing that you are talking about?

>i don't want to read ;cccccc
Back to plebbit

Show me in the Bible exactly where it says god promises everyone a life free of suffering on Earth.

Great elucidation you cock gobbler.

Evil isn't real, and only exist as an inconsistency idea.

God is, in one sense, the thing which is responsible for reality existing instead of nothingness.

In another sense, God is not anything you can point to. God is not any concept you can have in your mind. God is nowhere to be found because God is not of space or time like everything else we think of.

God is the transcendent One, the "cause" of the universe that lies outside it.

I also think God loves humans in some weird Godlike way. God wants us to look for God.

t. first world sheltered faggot whose only "suffering" he had to endure was being rejected by girls

I'm not sure that God necessarily wishes for humanity to refrain from condoms and pig meat. But God certainly would prefer us to act in a certain way. God likes it when we take time for others, to get to know them, to see ourselves in them, to love them and to work together with them.

God might want humanity to refrain from eating pigs and using condoms as part of this broader desire for community. I'm not sure.

But I don't really care that some people think God proscribes lobster and others think God proscribes shaving. These might seem quirky and odd to me but if people recognize and remember that there is a God at all, then they are friends in my book.

Jews and Muslims have written a lot on this and many have made the argument that "It doesn't matter why the law is there, it's the law." I find that convincing. Following the Law of God is the central component of following God in these traditions.

So God wants us to suffer for character building's sake? Is God so alien that what we perceive as evil is not to Him? Are the legion agonies that befall the innocent just part of the test of life?

No, OP, there aren't, because it all reduces to self-defending Mystery, History, or else god is an asshole which can't be allowed by the historically existing systems.

This is literally correct. Apologists wish to dismiss this kind of thing with an appeal to heaven, a pointing-out of the petulance of the detractor, etc. It always fails on its own intellectual merits, and the real tragedy is that so many people fall for it, exactly because of the human predilection to believe in a deity (offshoot of story-telling) where no such belief, /especially with specific autistic attributes/, is warranted or justified.

And here, you lose your own argument. I am glad that you have phrased it in such clear terms, because now it can be wholly dispensed with for the OP's own edification, as well as your own.

Take Christian hell as the stake, for discussion. You are born in the wrong country and never become Christian, you go to hell. You're a murderer, you go to hell. You're a mild-mannered Indian who did his best, and was a loving person, and you go to hell. For some higher reason, God's reason.

What might such a reason be? /It doesn't matter./ /Because it ends with you in hell./ That is why a rational human neither can nor should respect the authority of such a creature as described in, particularly, the Abrahamic tradition, /even and especially in the case that such a creature regrettably might exist/. The only "reason" of above obedience is, in the one imagining, simple hell-avoidance

Let's say: humans mostly have to go to hell in order to save more important being XYZ in teh Q galaxy that only God knows about and we don't? Well what the hell is that? To hell with them all! Better them than me.

That is true wisdom.

Of course, other models apart from hell-avoidance may be considered. But where the problem of evil in conventional Abrahamism is concerned, I am unimpeachable and I win the argument on moral grounds, even and especially if it still lands me in hell.

So this concept of god is the sum of the unknown reason that the respond the why of things that people doesn't understand.

Sounds like the result of lazy mind trying to grasp the infinity of the universe.

But it intrigues me that you mentioned that this god thing loves humans which implies it is a sentient being, with paternalistic traits. Quite primitive indeed.

Is there any argument or evidence that proves its existence as a real being or is just a proto-mary sue?

Thank you.

Evil is just a feeling from actions that disagree with your moral compass.

Yes, yes, and yes, at least as far as Christianity is concerned.

So why they would idolize such sadistic and uncaring entity?

>So this concept of god is the sum of the unknown reason that the respond the why of things that people doesn't understand.

Nope. God is not a shorthand for "things that have yet to be known or explained."

As long as we are unable to answer the question "Why are there things that exist instead of nothing," (cute logic aside-- "because nothing literally cannot exist!" -- and for God's sake if you bring up quantum fluctuations in the void I'm leaving the thread)

then we may thing of God as having something to do with the unattainable answer.

Just that one, specific question.

By what you have said so far it appears to me that this god thing is but a fictional character.

Leave Judgement and salvation to God. Leave the problem of the interfaith to God.

You are a creature. You must figure out how to do what God wants in your own life, here and now.

>for your own edification

Suffering is sad and it hurts. Nothing will change that. When I see people suffer I do not say, "Aha! I do not need to help them, since God has suffering figured out, since God knows the meaning of this suffering!"

I say, "I have a chance to be an instrument of God, to act in a way that comforts, to recognize and dignify this person's suffering." And then I have to wrestle with my own selfish desires to ignore it just like everyone else.

As an old Marxist the maya analogy always bothered me immensely. If you take the truth of the transience of suffering and divorce it from other truths like the existence of God and the possibility of humans to be more or less in pursuit of God and the good, then you get Ayn Rand. Walk on by.

But when you remember that whole truth it's clear what must be done when we encounter suffering, and we encounter it every day, and it never ceases to make demands on us.

"The work of love is never over"

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

The idea of God is, quite literally (I'm paraphrasing CS Peirce) the greatest idea humans can conceive of. It is not an easy one to digest or understand.

As many have pointed out we learn God primarily by what God is not: a long process of sifting through idols.

Nor will one learn it entirely from books.

I am familiar with the notion that God is a silly fictional character made up to make people feel good. This was my own perspective 6 or 7 years ago.

At least trust me when I say you will not come to decide God exists overnight or in the course of an argument. You will slowly learn things if you look out for them.

(It would be more correct to say "You are a fictional character. God is the author who wrote you.")

Would you stand before the Lord of All Time and All That Is And Ever Shall Be without bending your knees?

Would you say, "Creator, though you have made me I refuse to bow to you. For though you are infinitely powerful you have allowed us creatures to suffer!"

Would you fail to remember that your life itself is a gift from this God? That water is sweet when it could be bitter? Would you fail to attribute all pleasantries and joys you and all others experience to God too?

Would you forget your place, talking like a fool before the One who knows and designed your very thoughts?

That sounds quite condescend, seems that you imply some kind of wisdom poetic stuff.

Also the premise of this Peirce guy is based in the assumption that ideas have a perfect state that mundane ones can only hope to grasp, just how like plato believed.

In any case It always revolve around the fact that this kind of discussion are usually based around a vague and circular representation of that god thing in order to make it irrefutable.

God is neither sadistic or uncaring. Remember that he made humans a paradise where there was no suffering. Humans chose to have free will and suffer rather than be happy, yet ignorant.

You don't seem to have suffered nearly enough to get a glimpse of what suffering is. You've been pricked a bit and it stings and you're having a fit against these thorny bushes all about you. You've armed yourself with a sturdy machete and you have a plan.

I don't follow those who trough coercion desires to govern over me. And the evocation of fear is not an argument that proves that such thing is real.

Assuming that this god create those humans, Why would it give them the ability to betray him, is it that stupid and shortsighted?

Read the fucking book

Except you do, statist cuck.

wow hold on there my political confused boy, where that comes from? are you some kind of anarchist or something?

Seems like you don't know how to answer that.

You're thrashing madly about. You've resolved to take your trusty hatchet right to the root of these bushes. You're going for the bush boss himself and you're going to clear a path to enlighten and shine the truth through this tangle of thorns.

A poor old man brought a stray dog home. He shared some of his meager supper with the dog, dropping a few bones and some vegetables into a bowl next to the table.

The dog ate quickly but was still hungry. It pawed at the old man once and then twice. It tipped its empty bowl on the ground until it rattled. Finally, in a rage, the dog bit the man as he finished his plate.

Oh I see, you are a dog.

But really that kind of induced guilt in such insidious metaphor doesn't prove the existent of that god thing. Also put a clear example on how missioners use to appeal to those uneducated persons that where trouble by the need of a reason of their existence.

The metaphor is simple. The difference between a human and God is far greater than the difference between a dog and a human.

The dog thinks the man is being unfair by withholding food. But the dog has no understanding of economy, of the man's poverty. Furthermore it has no appreciation of being taken into his home or being fed in the first place.

The things God knows about this world that you do not! It is astonishing to think that you would go up to God and chastise him!

How can you be so arrogant?

This is in response to "So why they would idolize such sadistic and uncaring entity?"

It is not meant to convince you that "God exists." It is meant to convince you that, assuming the existence of God for argument's sake, you have no place being upset with God for the state of the world or to call him wicked because of this or that private drama.

The arrogant in this discussion is you. You are obscenely trying to make me believe in something that has no logic or evidence that back up its existence as a real entity and that it does not only exist as an a convoluted and inconsistent idea.
And you also have the nerve to try to coerce me into idolizing such idea not by its merits but by fear and allegedly some mystical duty.

It seems that you do not understand that all the commodities that are near to your access are granted to you by the work of other human being and not by a fictional paternalistic entity that exist in your mind just to hold your false paradigm about reality.

>and I win the argument on moral grounds
You mean, you win the argument on practicality and selfishness. You can't argue that a theoretical omnipotent God is "Wrong," you can argue you don't benefit at all from this God's declaration of what is "Morally Right."
As a last note, imagine that no one has the right to go to heaven. It's simply an extra bonus that is undeserved by everyone, better to ask why you can believe some things and 'deserve' to get in rather than why so many people wouldn't be allowed in.

Not that most Christian sects believe they know who gets into heaven and why. Jesus did say "the only way to the father is through me" but honestly who knows what that means.

Fear and awe are appropriate reactions to God. We are afraid of Him.

We wanted to do such and such with our lives but He calls. He makes demands on us.

Following God is radical abandonment of all earthly hopes, of every dream we have ever had for ourselves. It is wiping the slate clean and starting over. It is admitting that when we look into the mirror, a big, black void is all we see.

Anyone can make a ignorant child fear the boogey man, does that means its real? No it doesn't.

You are assuming that I have adversary feeling against this entity but that isn't possible since such entity isn't real.

If there is any disgust in my posts those would be direct against you who are unable of presenting any reasonable and logic sound argument in favor of the ideas that you hold.

Are you sure you don't believe in God because of rationality? Are you sure you don't just like being in charge of your life?

We don't want anyone to tell us what to do. If there is a Creator who Asks then that is the end of our arbitrary selves.

I must ask you, oh fan of Logic and Rationality. Who was the greatest Logician of Antiquity? Aristotle. Who was the greatest Logician of modernity? Kurt Godel.

Both of them believed in the Almighty One.

It is of course not a matter of fact that Logicians believe in God or whatever. Russell certainly did not. But you must ask how a great master of logical thinking like Godel could believe something you consider so illogical.

And don't pin it on the mental illness of his later years. He was a believer when he did his best work, in his prime.

Can you phrase this question in the form of a Veeky Forums related one?

>Humans chose to have free will
>Humans chose
>Implying humans had free will before their inability to choose ANYTHING
That makes no sense. Humans couldn't have chosen to have free will BEFORE the obtained free will. Which means that god gave them free will, regretted it when they disobeyed him, then literally gave them hell for it. At worst, god puppeteered them into obtaining free will and then blamed them for a situation they would never have gotten into without his specific instruction.

Your feelings don't matter because you're an old Marxist who fell too late into the other lie. You are not wise despite your age. You tired of feeling the one way, and so you were obliged to feel the other way. It never entered your head to think and to do a rational utility analysis.

Taken as a compliment regardless of you (it might even sincerely have been intended as such).

>Your feelings don't matter because you're an old Marxist who fell too late into the other lie. You are not wise despite your age. You tired of feeling the one way, and so you were obliged to feel the other way. It never entered your head to think and to do a rational utility analysis.

Not really. The moment I stopped being a Marxist was in a Buddhism class. It occurred to me, quite terrifyingly, that history is a vast swirl of events heading nowhere in particular. That's closer to a "Buddhist" view of history.

I began to realize I was basing my identity and my sense of good and evil on a historical progress narrative.

The point I stopped being an atheist was long before this. It involved me noticing Godel wasn't an atheist and Russell was. I asked why that was the case and I hit that question honestly and seriously. I learned an enormous amount of math/logic in the process. I never got to the level that I could read Russel or Godel's mathematical work, but I got a strong feel for the limitations of axioms and logic, and gave up searching for Truth in and of itself.

I never got into utilitarianism because it seemed obvious to me that wants/needs are incommensurable. How are we to make sense of a system which equates a single life-saving medical operation with 1200 cups of coffee? Why is a bottle of water 1 dollar regardless of whether I'm about to die of thirst or not?

>it's a belief in god equates to belief in the christian god episode
getting real tired of this one

Without Evil free will's pointless. Also without Evil- without danger at every turn- life ceases to be an adventure. Is not Might makes Right really Evil makes Right in disguise? If it isn't then it is thoroughly indifferent as a maxim..

I wonder if God solely exists because men created it, and actually shaped their terrestrial world in accordance with how they think life should be to be compatible with Its will.

I wonder if one thing having a name is sufficient for this thing to actually exist.