If God is good and all-powerful why does evil exist?

Our remote ancestors figured out that wholesale slaughter was more expedient and had better results (for the survivors) than debate and gradual cultural conversion some time ago.

Looking at the Middle East situation today I'm beginning to come round to this line of thinking.

Isn't the very obvious answer that God doesn't care if evil exists, that our human notions of evil are way below his plans for reality and the course we should be taking with our lives?

I'm not religious but that just seems blatantly obvious to me

Good and Evil are concepts created by humans in order to coexist as a community. What's be considered evil by one group of people may be considered good by another.

I agree, but the bible implies good exists as a concept, it's pretty central really.

>Can god make a burrito so hot that he himself couldn't eat it?
You're placing human limits of conception on to an omnipotent and omniscient god.

*what would

>We don't know
>LITERALLY the the WORD of GOD tells us

Are you being serious right now, you fucking heterodox piece of shit?

Yes, that is a problem. That's why I'm not Catholic anymore.

I started the road to apostasy because muh teenage rebellion, but really internalized it due to this myself.

Well, I don't think the Bible completely consists of historical accounts or the direct word of God. I'm not religious, so I'm inclined to believe most of those holy visions and prophecies were either lies, schizophrenic episodes, metaphors, or drug trips.

My case was basically the same, except my parents were the ones to initiate the move from religion, then I figured out why it didn't work over the next few years and became atheistic.

Good is pretty much defined all over the bible. Love God, love humans, do good to all humans but above all obey God. There are the rules about what not to do, but if you love God and humans then it's pretty obvious what you shouldn't do

What is love though? And again, if your brain is ruled by cause and effect, then how can you be free to love? Wouldn't that mean you have neither free will nor any form of responsability?

Good is to evil what light is to dark. Darkness isn't a thing in itself, but instead describes a lack of light.
To give more specific examples: you can't be brave without danger, or charitable without inequality.

>Can humans be good if our brains are bound by the laws of cause and effect?
I've met lots of people who have made this argument but have yet to meet someone that actually believes it. If there is no free will, why would you ever become frustrated or pleased with the actions of others, knowing that they had no conscious choice in the matter? If we deem it right to judge others, then we must deem it right to believe that they have agency.

I do understand people who stray further from God because no matter how hard they try they can't believe

But I don't understand people who choose to. See, when I was a teenager, I was pretty rebel so I became an atheist. As I grew up and gathered knowledge, I realized it was a horrible mistake. I had depression and almost killed myself a few times. Life wwas pointless to me. But one day I went back to God. There is no evidence he exists, but it made me happy. I realized that it doesn't matter if God exists or not. I was happy there was an afterlife. And the price was just being nice to everyone, which I always did

free will

yes, it's that simple

Your belief in God is insincere, so you're still going to Hell.

>Can god make a burrito so hot that he himself couldn't eat it?

If you believe in the trinity, yes

Emotive responses to the actions of others like pleasure or frustration is our limbic system telling us things are going well, or badly and therefore are in need of changing.

That is not an answer though, defining good or evil by pointing to the other is not a definition, would you define good?

>If there is no free will, why would you ever become frustrated or pleased with the actions of others, knowing that they had no conscious choice in the matter? If we deem it right to judge others, then we must deem it right to believe that they have agency.
Both because of a biological structure born of evolving as a pack species, and because of pure pragmatism, I'm just lucky i was born superior to a large percent of humanity (writting about the concept of good or evil does imply that, everyone here as a rule has been pretty lucky), and for pragmatical reasons most of the concepts taht form good and evil are pretty handy for society, that doesn't mean they are more than constructs.
Saying that people don't truly understand they have free will is not an argument either, people can't understand the concept of millions of dollars or stars due to biological limitations either, but we still have economists and astronomers.

>what if your brain is ruled by cause and effect
Then you are not following God's rules. You mustn't do something just because you want to go to heaven. You must do it because you love God.
>what is love
Love God, as seen in the bible, is a bit hard to explain to someone who never were a christian. Loving God is realizing how small you are and how great God is. It's willingly sacrifice everything you have to God.
>then you don't have free will
According to the bible, everyone has free will. But the christian must pretty much sacrifice his to God.

You keep missing the point though, cause and effect ruling the brain means that we are predetermined through our entire lifetime to one continued line from which we can never stray, so if we were born into this universe to disobey god, we cannot not disobey him, that negates free will.

Theodicy

Bro -- I'm also not religious but what the actual fuck are you talking about.

If you don't have free will then why are you trying to decide whether or not free will exists -- you're already predetermined to know what you know because hurr durr no free will

Do you honestly believe that if you raise your hand right now, you're not able to choose whether or not to move it to the left or to the right?

>BTFO

boil to fucking oil?

I can in appereances, the sets of rules and causes make the effects impossible to calculate, but since they are there at the end of the day (my upbringing and how that makes me more or less likely to do X, the day i had and how that would affect my mood, the evolutive leftovers that subconsciously steer me to a set of decisions, etc) make it so that a hypotethical computer with an infinite storage space and computing capability which had every set of rules that govern the universe and the original state of it would be able to predict what i would do for my entire life.

In my day to day, that affects nothing, by all intents and purposes i do have a free willish life, but for ethics and religion, free will does not exist, and with that goes the concept of modern good, responsability, etc.

Nevermind that there are plenty of recent studies that show that most of our decisions are made subconsciously before we even think about them.

>you can't be brave without danger, or charitable without inequality

If someone is shy but ventures to talk to chat with someone, is that not brave? There's no danger involved. As for charity, if both my neighbor and I have an apple each, and I give her mine- is that not charitable?

>defining good or evil by pointing to the other is not a definition

Can you define darkness without explaining light? You cannot, because darkness does not exist. You cannot define evil because it also does not exist. Good is truth, bravery, charity etc. Evil is lies, ignorance, cowardice and greed. It can only properly be defined by what it is not.

>Saying that people don't truly understand they have free will is not an argument either

My problem is that people do understand that they have free will, but they are engaging in doublethink. Day to day, people hold themselves and others to standards of responsibility that only make sense if you believe in free will. However, once they get involved with this debate they say that the big bang was a highly complicated dice roll and everything since then has been effectively predetermined.

I agree, but consciousness gives us an experience of being within ourselves, like a pilot in a cockpit, which allows us to have at least minimal control over how we respond to stimuli.

Someone has not read Plotinus

Suffering =/ evil
Why would disease be evil?

Well, that's just a theory. You can't explain that using christianism, since it doesn't say that cause and effect rules our brain. The bible just tells you that you have free will, it doesn't explain how.

And if you mean that, if God knows our past present and future, it means it's determined and therefore there is no free will. Well, this question has been answered a few times, but none are satisfactory. I read a book answering that and many other questions related to christianism, but I lost it. The book basically gave two possible answers: God does not know our future due to our free will, or we do have free will, but God already knows what we will do with it. Is it still determined? It depends on how you see it

>human ideas of god are shoddy therefore god does not exist

That is not a definition of good either, because those concepts are undefined too, bravery can be the bravery of charging a mass of soldiers before anyone else, to be able to take the most captives, is that bravery good? truth can be telling a little boy he's going to die in three weeks despite there being no need to make him suffer that which he isn't able to grasp.

>Day to day, people hold themselves and others to standards of responsibility that only make sense if you believe in free will. However, once they get involved with this debate they say that the big bang was a highly complicated dice roll and everything since then has been effectively predetermined.
That does not undermine the argument, because like i said
a) it's hard to overwrite millions of years of instincts
b) In a cold, pragmatic way, they are a good way of social contract, instead of them being based on good/evil, they are based on justice/injustice amd how lucky or unlucky you were to be born the way you are.

>You can't explain that using christianism, since it doesn't say that cause and effect rules our brain.
Because it is an old mythology book, it wasn't prepared for the concept of science, and that's what's going to eventually destroy it in the long run.

>God does not know our future due to our free will, or we do have free will, but God already knows what we will do with it
This is a theory in so far as that everything is unprobable, but it has a lot more basis than the concept of divine free will, so it has to make way.
If god already knows what will happen, and that making the world a certain way would make each and every human be a certain way, doesn't that mean that he pretty much dictated how every human would be and act? even if he were to change stuff in the way, he would still know how that human would react.

>If someone is shy but ventures to talk to chat with someone, is that not brave? There's no danger involved.

There is. You could become embarrassed, ostracised, or hurt the feelings of the other person if you make a mistake.

>As for charity, if both my neighbor and I have an apple each, and I give her mine- is that not charitable?
This scenario doesn't really make sense because you didn't provide enough information. Is only one apple required to sustain someone? If so, you're committing suicide by giving away your apple. If two apples are required to sustain someone, giving away your apple would ensure your neighbour would be able to sustain themselves whilst you die. This is self-sacrifice.
If this is a real-world situation and we both have enough food to sustain ourselves, but I give him one of my apples anyway, then the act of charity is diminished because the potential evil that could be caused by not sharing the apple is negligible.

My point is that the definition of evil is that it is not good, and the definition of good is that it is not evil. The good and evil ramifications of a dilemma are unique to that dilemma, and should be the subject of scientific debate on a case by case basis. I wasn't claiming that truth or bravery were absolutely good.

Oh, i thought you meant only good exists but evil is just the absence of it.

Then i'm sorry but you are pretty wrong with your example. Darkness is the way our brains "understand" the absence of light hitting the receptors in our eyes in different degrees, but light exists, it's photons, we interpret those as light but they exist as a physical concept.

You can't define X by it being the abscence of Y and Y the abscence of X, it's a fallacy, at least one has to exist, so please, what is the definition of good? Or evil? there has to be a quantifiable definition of it for it to be a real concept and not a mere construction.

And really, answer these too please.
a) god doesn't know how humans will act and be, then he is not all knowing, this is not possible according to the bible, so we can safely assume that
b) he knows how they will act and be, but since he made the initial conditions of the universe, he is dictating how humans will behave, remember, he can't not know the rules that govern the brain either.

Obviously everything isn't conscious, but you can consciously choose the framework through which you analyze decisions and the way you lead your life, which impacts your subconscious decisions

Also, you didn't answer my question

Raise your right hand right

Do you have the choice to move it to the left or to the right?

Yes

Checkmate

wtf I hate God now

naw its cool.

The answer I determined for myself is that the existence of evil should not preclude the instantiation of good. "Before" God created the world, He knew it would be composed of good and evil as we know it, but for the sake of the good's existence He permitted the existence of evil.

It might be objected that God could simply choose to instantiate a world of good without evil, which is logically possible. This is J.L. Mackie's argument, and I believe it's a pretty good one, but I would reply that while such worlds are logically possible, they would not be this world. If God did not instantiate this world, then He would not be instantiating this world's goodness. As such, it remains for Him to instantiate such worlds as ours if He is determined to make the maximal amount of good exist, of which the existence of evil does not detract.

I could argue from a Taoist direction and argue that "good" and "evil" are a matter of relative appearance, and only exist in our perception of the world. Our perception of the world is faulty and limited, and distinguishes good and evil for the sake of the convenience of our existence, but otherwise in the grand cosmic sense there is no actual good or evil, only the Tao which cannot be named.

>you can consciously choose the framework through which you analyze decisions and the way you lead your life
Can you? I don't think so, the infinite variables of your life have already been put in place, so every decision you make is already predetermined.

>Do you have the choice to move it to the left or to the right?
No, i don't, i think i do emotionaly because i'm a stupid ape, but the way my brain will react to this challenge is determined already by the laws of causality so complex i can't even realize they are acting on me, but they are there, so i can't truly choose wether to move it left or right.

Checkmate.

The comparison to light is a metaphor, lel. I think you're stretching it.

I'm quite tired, so I might be slightly contradictory in places or unclear so I apologise for that.

Good is active and evil is passive. Good is an altered state and evil is a natural state. This can be assumed due to my previous statement that good can only exist where there is evil. Good is ultimately the prevention or correction of evil, I suppose you could say.

What evil is is up for debate. Like I said, not all moral standards are absolute so each dilemma has to be debated scientifically. Christians would argue that evil is everything that is contrary to God.

>Can you?
Yes

How do you propose we resolve this disagreement? It seems like you're citing pseudo-science -- there are certain things that aren't determinant and can't be known until they happen

échec et mat fagot

you say he's citing pseudo-science, yet you are citing nothing. you're just saying you are right...

>Yes
Nuh uh

>there are certain things that aren't determinant and can't be known until they happen
Such as? Don't say quantic physics because they are determined, we just aren't capable of measuring them

I propose a duel with daggers under the moonlight

Jaque mate

>god doesn't know how humans will act and be, then he is not all knowing, this is not possible according to the bible, so we can safely assume that
Can God be aware of all scientific facts and yet be unaware of future events? If future events haven't taken place yet, then they don't exist and therefore aren't included in the list of things you would need to know in order to know everything.

Nah m8. And we agreed to all covenants because we were spooky sperm in a ballsack.

Amd this for sure is Veeky Forums can discuss this but you have to be specific to works and/or writers

>he knows how they will act and be, but since he made the initial conditions of the universe, he is dictating how humans will behave, remember, he can't not know the rules that govern the brain either.
You first have to demonstrate that we don't have free will

But in our determined universe, knowing the rules and the original state means that you know future events, we imperfect beings have to reason them, but an all knowing entity would not even need to reason it, it'd just know it from the start.

>lit/ can discuss this but you have to be specific to works and/or writers
nice, discourage the one thread that is at least tangential to literature amid countless threads of irrelevant bullshit

Not if we have free will, which humans can use to behave in ways that defy circumstance

To be honest, as an outsider I read the bible and look at the moral standard God sets and find it inadequate.

I get that according to Christian doctrine God is the source of all good and is therefore always good and right no matter what he may do.

But frankly, I was raised to believe that being good to other people is an end unto itself, and if God's definition of good seems inadequate by my measure I feel no obligation to change my definition of good to match what it says in a late iron age fairy tale book.

>have to demonstrate
That isn't how science works amigo, i already gave my theory
that the human mind and being are physical entities housed in our brains
that our brains are ruled by cause and effect, be it from internal sources (reasoning)m or external (upbringing, experiences, diseases or medical treatmens like lobotomies, etc)
Therefore, all human actions and minds are predetermined by law and effect, now you have to bring evidence of why this cannot be and i have to defend it.

Summa Theologica

>As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): "Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.

It is simply beyond my capabilities for me to demonstrate my experience of consciousness to you

>discourage the ... thread that is ... tangential to literature
Dumbass comment bruh. And not even discouraging, rather encouraging actual Veeky Forums threads.

If we go through that carthesian hole then this entire discussion is moot, and so is your concept of god, since you can't really know anything except you are conscious.

Now, let me help you, you can either say that science is wrong and there is a miraculous way in which free will is instilled into humans (the soul), or that science is wrong because it is wrong, but that leads us to an impasse were we can't really talk each other out of the other's beliefs, so, we must knife fight to see whose reality has the right to prevail.

>citing wrong things is better than citing nothing
>citing human experience is apparently "nothing"

>Nuh uh
Uh huh

>don't say quantum physics
Quantum Physics -- how is it determined?

> encouraging actual Veeky Forums threads.
you must be new here

>we just aren't capable of measuring them
The inability to measure would appear to be a fundamental property of the universe.

>Quantum Physics -- how is it determined?
When you look at it as evolving probability fields it's deterministic. Whenever it comes to measuring particles it's probablistic.

Old as shit bruh.

My position is more that God *can* exist. I've explained the two main reasons why.

If God can exist, then following Pascal's wager, God must exist.

>If God can exist, then following Pascal's wager, God must exist.
Not quite but alright.

Not really, that just means that if god can exist, it's in your best interest to act as if he does.

How dumb do you have to be to not understand pascal's wager?

>Uh huh
Nope

what user said Now choose what kind of knife you want.

I do understand, I'm just tired

As far as I'm concerned, if the probability of God existing is greater than none, then it must be treated as though it is certain. I don't see any advantage to being an atheist

>act as if he does
Eh, you actually do have to believe in God
if you just act like it you still go to Hell
Hence "must"

That depends on how you live your life, believing in an all powerfull, all knowing god just to get on his good side is a pretty dumb idea, you should rather try to live the best life you can hoping that's the life the giant puppetmaster in the sky will reward.

I also can't understand people that can will themselves into a belief, it comes to me as very weak willed, shallow.

>I also can't understand people that can will themselves into a belief
It's not so much "willing" myself, it's more that simply makes sense given my other thoughts on the subject

reaching a belief in god via pascal's wager is a logical reasoninf, so the basis of your belief is reason, not faith, therefore, it's be invalid for the fucked up hebrew/christian god, it's a pointless mental excercise.

It only makes sense if you already look at it from an already christian view, it's pretty pointless really.

So many shit r9k threads are made there just have "what books do you know for this feel?" At the end of their post. Somehow this is worse.

People have been name dropping anyway so it's all good

This is one of the calmest, nicest, most author based and least shitposted discussions of religion and morality i've seen in Veeky Forums, i'm pretty amazed.

Then why does he seem so human when he talks in the bible?
Or why wouldnt he explain it in a clear way?

Because the judeo-christian god was second only to the greeks in fucking with people for shit and giggles.

People are uncomfortable with the fact that their morals might not line up precisely with God's, and so they reduce him to essentially a person with magical powers. Why he never uses them is ignored or excused in various ways.

The price is intellectual suicide

This problem is part of the reason I became a Christian again. It's funny you mention BTFOing your parents because this is exactly the kind of question that would really BTFO teachers at my school when kids would ask it. And because they were so flustered and incapable of discussing the question many students used that as an example to disregard their faith and be edgy atheists attending Catholic school.

The problem is very much like those greentext posts which pose three things and then say "pick two". Pick-two, triple constraint, whatever you want to call it. Being that the theist, at least Christians anyway, are unwilling to imply that their god is either not good or not omnipotent they must make due with explaining away evil. This can be done in many ways, but in my experience the most effective is to say that evil is the privation (absence or removal) of good.

Someone has already offered an analogy using light, which is satisfactory but has little impact. My preferred analogy is to use the concept of heat. Areas with less heat feel colder, but hotter areas simply have more heat, not less cold. We know from the 2nd law of thermodynamics that heat will spontaneously move to areas with less heat (from hot to cold). So when your coffee cools down, technically your coffee transferred the heat to its surroundings, the cooler room did not transfer its coolness to the coffee. Cold is not a substance, energy or force (whatever you want to call it).

This is how we can think of good and evil. Like hot and cold, a duality emerges where there really is none. All there is is heat. Some places have more, others have less. In theological terms, evil can be considered as distance from god.

The eastern orthodox concept of hell and heaven further shows how false dualities appear. They believe that heaven and hell are not separate. Rather, we all are in the presence of god after death. And depending on our spiritual state this presence of god is either paradise, or complete torture.

Some may argue "well if evil is the absence of good, then why can't good be the absence of evil?" This is a fair question to ask, but as the problem states "If god is good and omnipotent why does evil exist?" this is not possible. Since god is wholly good, he is the absolute and only source of good. If good were the privation of evil then that would imply that god is wholly evil and this is theologically unacceptable.

What is good though, just the presence of God? Why does the Bible say certain actions are good when they don't necessarily contribute to more godliness, either personally or in the community?

I do like this explanation though because it makes the leap of faith really the only problem left, and it's not like that one can or should be solved

The leap of faith removes the make up and leaves you with what christianism really is though, a sect that indoctrinates people.

google 'permissive will' dumbass

>appear as a bush that is on fire but the bush itself doesn't burn
>"looks pretty human to me"

The leap of faith is something you can only really make after having been atheist for awhile

People who were raised Christian haven't really made any sort of leap yet because God is presented to them as basic fact

So yeah popular Christianity is kind of a cult, shit sucks

>People who were raised Christian haven't really made any sort of leap yet because God is presented to them as basic fact
I'll add, most won't ever do that leap of faith.

if you could argue with christians they would not be christians

Sometimes God is just like some sky dude or some walking around dude for sure. But he also appears as that other user said as weird shit like a burning bush. And there's a fair few lovecraftian "the angels were these unimaginable things and God was even weirder!" bits too.

Why are these threads always made by barely literate atheists?
Read a book nigger, there are hundreds of quality Christian books, don't be a faggot, ask for a recommendation, read it or fuck off.

this post gave me second hand embarrassment. get a hobby mate

>evil

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy