/lit/ - Literature

>>6635658
Because you just said he was all-powerful not "all-good"

>>6635658
If you were God would you care about humanity? Think about it, he's omnipotent and immortal. To him we're dust, risen from dust.

God wouldn't care about humanity. It would be like us caring about the ants beneath our feet.

God doesn't create the evil in our world either, so you can't blame him. When things are fucked its usually our fault.

>>6635658
The problem of Evil is essentially stating that there is no definition of omnipotence compatible with any possible correlating system of morality.

There are numerous such combinations that have been proposed.

Therefore the Problem of Evil can only be used against certain theological-ethical systems, not all. As it claims that ALL conceptions of omnipotent Deity and ALL conceptions of morality are incompatible, the problem is therefore false/invalid.

>>6635658
GOD HATES FAGS!
Westboro Baptist church knows it's shit. They're probably the best thing in... Anywhere.
They also have catchy songs on their website.

"Evil" (more precisely, sin) is a turning away from God. God could not force you to love him, because that wouldn't really be love.

>>6635685
Then, no reason to concern ourselves with him if he even exists.

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

>>6635685
God is what maintains existence, he obviously cares.

>>6635709
Do you really care about every arts and crafts project you make?

>>6635709
You think that comment actually merits a name? Fucking sad.

>>6635715
No, you don't understand. He didn't just create it, he *maintains* it. If God disappeared, there goes everything.

>>6635709
You can care a little or a lot. "Care" is a pretty empty phase here.

>>6635679
all good necessarily follows

>>6635658
It's malevolent, think Lovecraftian deities.

>>6635730
Considering he was willing to be scourged, crucified, separated from himself in total pain, feel the guilt of all sins in all times, die, and go to hell, just out of love for us, I'd say he cares a lot.

>>6635742
How does omnibenevolent follow from omnipotent?

I accept that omnibenevolent is pretty much consistently taken as part of the nature of at least a Judeo-Christian God, I just don't grasp your specific argument here

>>6635749
God creates, instills and maintains all which is good, he is by definition omnibenevolent; he is the fountainhead of all benevolence.

>>6635749
a god that doesn't have unlimited empathy and ethical autonomy wouldn't be omnipotent, it would just be an unstoppable force

>>6635755
>>6635759
How do you know? Provide logical proof please.

>>6635759
How is an unstoppable force not all powerful?

>>6635745
That old lie.

>>6635755

When God killed the couple who embezzled church funds, is he prescribing the death penalty for embezzlement? Are we just supposed to accept this as "good?"

>>6635769

>>6635742
as does all evil, and everything else for that matter.

Is the negativity of god, it's an all-powerful uncomplete absolute that needs the negativity to be true

>>6635658
Who defines evil? How do you know the human definition of evil isn't just random and the actual 'evil' in the universe is purple unicorns (which, mind you there are none of in the world)

Checkmate, atheists.

>>6635658
God is dead

>>6635767
an soley omnipotent force wouldn't be god if it also wasn't autonomously ethical/omnibenevolent. omnipotence simply isn't the definition of the greatest possible being. the greatest possible reason, within the context of theology also implicates a value system which, in turn, as a byproduct, implies value in ethics. this isn't new stuff. i'm doing a piss drunk interpretation of alvin plantinga n' augustine

>>6635658
>evil

so you admit that there is such a thing as good and bad?? hmmm, where do you think that comes from???

>>6635792
No I'm not.

>>6635709

How the fuck do you know this?

>inb4 "bible says so"

>>6635766
>the Apostles just took the body out of the tomb and made it up for fun, each fully aware they were lying, and were will to die for it
Nah

>>6635774
It's about the bourgeoisie (or whatever you'd say they were back then), not embezzlement in general

>>6635820
>wiling to die

>>6635817
Do you even Aquinas? His proof for God doesn't depend on God creating everything (which he says can only be a matter of faith when it comes down to it), but maintaining everything.

>>6635824
Aquinas's proof for God was obliterated eons ago. Read Hume and drop trip, you waste of space.

>>6635829
I have read Hume. Hume only addresses miracles and the idea of God creating everything, he doesn't address Aquinas's proof.

>>6635658
>If God is all-powerful, why is there evil in the world?
Dualism

>>6635795
I dunno, omnipotence is simply the to ability to do anything you want. Ethics are just the systematization of proper conduct. Certainly, God wouldn't or shouldn't dictate human ethics. Bound himself to working that out or following it himself. Or follow his own ethics. That would restrict his limitless ability to act upon the world if he had rules he could break. The lawless nature of our world is probably the only solid ground that there is an omnipotent God has to stand on in the first place.

>>6635729
Why are you acting as if it's somethig that he has to actively maintain?
Surely he could create an infinite number of other worlds.
And i doubt keeping himself 'alive' is something he does for us.

>>6635887
He could create as many as he wanted, but it's not as if he's some skydaddy that makes a world that can run on its own and he just intervenes sometimes. That modernist thought. He would have to maintain every one.

Free will.

Surely, everybody worth their salt has read Paradise Lost.

>>6635894
>He would have to maintain every one.

Why? What makes you say this?

>>6635894
>but it's not as if he's some skydaddy that makes a world that can run on its own and he just intervenes sometimes.
Why?
>He would have to maintain every one.
Why, are you saying he is not omnipotent?

Also, i find it funny that you believe he intervenes from time to time.

>>6635912
Aquinas

>>6635921
No, I'm saying without his maintenance would be like civilization without the sun.

Can someone please tell me why people always refere to god as both omnipotent and omnibenevolent, why not just omnipotent, whose idea was it to put both?

>>6635933
So you have nothing?

>>6635933
>Aquinas

So you literally have no argument of your own and run to daddy Aquinas to make all the bad men go away?

>>6635934
Goyim. The Jewish God is a Judge.

>>6635695
Hurricanes are not sin, but they still cause pain and suffering

>>6635945
It is Aquinas who informs my position...this is like saying to a Platonist that they can't come up with arguments on their own, they just have to run to daddy Platonists.

>>6635949
Might consider the things that make hurricanes happen, and how our world would be without them.

>>6635954
You can use Aquinas as source for your argument but not name drop him in substitute for an argument. Cite your source. I can't be arsed to read all of his work just to understand your reasoning.

>If God is all-powerful, why is there evil in the world?

Wow you just answered your own question

t. Book of Job

>>6635972
We don't have to re-word THE WHOLE FUCKING ARGUMENT for you if you're too fucking dishonest to give your opinion on the matter without being well-read in the relevant literature.

>>6635972

>>6635954
>It is Aquinas who informs my position

>>6635792

A good God, if he is real, would be a non-participating God. Why bother with mortal lives?

Would you hold your kids hand their entire lives? Humanity wouldn't even be human if we personally met him. We'd just be either followers or rebels to him and things would be a different kind of fucked up. He'd just become a scapegoat for everyone's issues.

>>6635979
But it can and it has been proven that the world didn't always exist.

>>6636000
But it wasn't in Aquinas's time.

>>6635967

Not that guy, but if the hurricanes are a sort of punishment for sinful behaviour, and if sin originates from ignorance of the God's word and lack of faith, and if this both this ignorance and the lack of faith is potentially caused by the fate of the individual in question, e.g. his whole family gets killed off in a hurricane, and he copes with it by being a bad person, isn't the whole system kinda ultra-dickish reciprocal circle?

Also are you implying that only sinful people suffer?

>>6635979
What fucking non-reasoning.

>>6636004
Then, why continue to pay a faulty argument so much lip service?

You've not read Hume.

>>6635979
Reminder that this argument doesn't imply a benign good.

>>6636014
i thought he meant the phenomena that made hurricanes happen, he didnt mention sin whatsoever

>>6636020
hume is bullshit

What if God is not meant to be a sentient all-powerful being but instead he is the good factor on one side of the balance that keeps everything the way it is meant to be?

>>6635658
>implying evil is real

>>6636020
What? The world having existed for a finite amount of time doesn't impact the argument. Aquinas is assuming it did anyway, but whether it did or did not doesn't affect the argument, since the argument isn't about God having *created* the universe (which Aquinas believes), but that he *maintains* it.

I have read Hume. If you're going to argue that this theological proof has no merit because it relies on causation, then you can apply the same argument to even natural science, and there is no way to prove anything to you except mathematics, but even those are a construction and Hume was an empiricist anyway. If there is no way to prove anything to you, then this discussion is pointless.

>>6635745
So he's a masochist?
What's your point?
If you couldn't actually die, wouldn't you experience death just to have done so?
I would.

>>6636083
No, because he had to go to hell, and while it was only a couple of days on earth, it wouldn't necessarily be that in hell. He had to feel the pain of everyone's sin in all places and all times.

>>6636089
I would volunteer for a limited time in hell as well if I could leave as soon as I chose.
Being omnipotent and all.

>>6636089
If he's omniscient, doesn't he know what he's getting into ahead of time and how it will work out anyway?
It's all in the book.

>>6635685

>God doesn't care about humanity
>Sent his son to our planet to die for our sins

>>6636089
Why would he go to hell and break his own rules about good people going to heaven? And what is all that pain to him when he was the one who created it and maintained it? Why does he give us free will if he's just gonna punish us for it if we don't follow his every word? Do what god says or burn in hell forever; it's like he's holding a fun to yr head, some free will that is. And if there's no free will then what's the point of all this and what's the point of sinners?

>>6636117
He couldn't leave as soon as he chose, he had to do what the Greeks could not.

>>6636120
Yes and no. He's 100% divine, which knows, but he's also 100% human, which doesn't have omniscience; he knows, while experiences the agony of not knowing. He's God, but the wages of sin are also a separation from God, so he has to fully feel what that is like for humans ("My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?")

>>6636125
When you are all powerful, all knowing, infinite and eternal, what really has value other than experience?
He chose to experience things from out point of view.
He lived a full life for a human being at that time.
He experienced a great many things and died a very full death as well.
I don't see what's so impressive about this.
Does god have limited resources?
Could he not choose to do it again?
Is he not all knowing?
Not all powerful?
Not the source of all things?

>>6636133
>has to fully feel what that is like for humans
But if he were human, he'd still be in hell.
>which doesn't have omniscience
But if he knew that he was the son of god, an incarnation of god on earth, then could he not reasonably know that his suffering would be limited and his reward would be guaranteed?

>>6636139

You clearly need to start with the greeks and then work your way up to Augustine and Aquinas.

I'm not going to give you a Theology 101 crash course on a shitty animu imageboard. Just not worth my time.

God be with you and maybe you'll embrace his love one day.

>>6636155
His sacrifice is less than the sacrifice a human makes to protect another.
For a regular person, everything in life is a gamble. God and a possible afterlife are entirely based on faith and not true knowledge.
Not any more than any other intentional self deception we feed ourselves with obvious logical fallacies.

>>6635658
original sin

>>6636161
So god cannot have another son?
He cannot choose to re-do?
Omnipotence isn't all it's cracked up to be then.

>>6636155
>But if he were human, he'd still be in hell.
No, because he rused Satan
>mfw Protestants don't know this

>But if he knew that he was the son of god, an incarnation of god on earth, then could he not reasonably know that his suffering would be limited and his reward would be guaranteed?
Yes, the 100% God did, but the 100% human did not.

>>6636171
Why would I know anything about a Christian god?
I'm a dirty heathen.
Why are all of this god's followers such condescending, self righteous assholes?
The last time someone was whole heartedly trying to get me to go to his church, he ended a lengthy conversation with:
>"But if there's one thing I do know, it's that Jesus was not black."
We hadn't discussed Jesus, black/white or otherwise. He just had to throw that out there like it was eating at him.
Several others have just been creepy in their behavior and I was worried I might meet more like them in an enclosed space where they run the show.

>>6636185
Which denomination was it?

>>6636171

Isn't it a heresy to differentiate between the human Jesus and the divine Christ? I'm pretty sure it is, the dogma is that he is both :)

>>6636187
The one who was concerned about a black Jesus?
Evangelical.
But I've been invited by Jehovah's Witnesses, Baptists, Pentecostals and Catholics.
Southern Baptists and Pentecostals are definitely on the high end of creepy.

>>6636185
I'm not an apologists for self-proclaimed Christians in general, some people have used Christianity to justify slavery, some have used it to justify abolitionism, and neither side looked favorably upon the other.

If you thought I was condescending, I am sorry. Christians ought never to be condescending.

>>6636195
He is, which means he felt both perspectives simultaneously.

>>6636187
His name was Caleb.
Other than that, he was a real nice guy.
But that rubbed me the wrong way.
My understanding is that he probably looked like a Jew from that time period in that region.
So Arabic.

>>6636199
Is that an actual denomination? I thought it was a category of denominations

>>6636205

Yeah, but can you then seperate the two substances from each other?

>>6635658
>too lazy to read the enormous amount of Orthodox Christian scholarship on Theodicy throughout two millennia: the thread

>>6635658
Why would an all powerful being be concerned with evil?

>>6636205
Well, if you're going to be serious I suppose I'll not be an asshole and poke at your beliefs like I'm trying to stir up trouble.
Way to ruin a potential amusement brother.
One of these days maybe I'll get around to reading it.
It's literally on my book case next to the King James, a Quran, the Dhamappada and the Tao Te Ching ( the second two which I read because they're short). I did read Genesis, but I suppose that's just scratching the surface.

>>6636216
No

>>6636234
It's an absurd notion. If you want to understand the important of paradox in Christianity, see Kierkegaard or John Milbank, who both see paradox as fundamental to Christian faith. This is why Kierkegaard said a leap of faith is not a one time deal, and people who didn't frequently cope with faith had probably just turned their brain off to the absurdism of the dual nature of Christ; but for Kierkegaard, the basis of the awe of Christianity is that paradox, so during your brain off to it is ignoring the basis of the faith.

>>6635658
God is neutral

Evil and Good are both moral constructs created by humans.

>implying animals can sin

>>6636254
Animals are not moral entities anymore than volcanos are.

Not that hard, guys: Because He fucking gave us free will, in His image. In our earthly life we can choose what to do, and then pay for it, supposedly, knowing the consequences. We can sin AND repent for ours sins, that is His way of being "all good", allowing us to try to undo our evils.

I bet you are all a bunch of protestants.

>>6636259
http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/do-animals-have-souls-like-human-beings

None of Aquinas' proofs make for the Judeo-Christian case. In fact, you can find the opposite in his proofs for a God who is omnipotent cannot have will.

>>6636272
Catholics aren't concerned with Judeo-Christianity, so I won't be addressing that

>>6636268
It's so odd to me that religious people will believe just about anything, like

>Since animals and plants are living things, they have souls, but not in the sense in which human beings have souls. Our souls are rational--theirs aren't--and ours are rational because they're spiritual, not material.

without (seemingly) ever even realizing how self-serving and proofless the assertions are.

>>6636259
>>6636268
That's the issue here. Morality has degrees.

We know that apes can tell lies and cheat each other. Monkeys have very similar social structures to ours (see Bonobos).

The problem of sin arises in it's self awareness and thus degree of suffering.

>>6636292
>proofless
im going to leave this here guys http://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/courses/43151/ross-immateriality.pdf

>>6636292
>without (seemingly) ever even realizing how self-serving and proofless the assertions are.

"Soul" can be measured by the degree of self-awareness and reflection. A mosquito has very little knowledge of itself and how it interacts with the environment, thus it's soul is less than mine.

>>6636272
the fifth proof shows that God has intellect, and thus has will

i dont know what youre trying to get at

>>6635658
>implying that both good and evil arent just constructions of human spirit and God isn't above both.

>>6635841

What about monistic dualism? Aren't good and evil two sides of the same coin? Aren't humans somewhere along the edge, neither good nor evil?

>>6636303
>thus it's soul is less than mine.
>self-awareness
But not by much in your case.

>>6636303
This is you: I read Hofstadter and bladebla bla bla repeat repeat repeat parrot parrot parrot bla

>>6636261
so wait, under that logic could i be a serial killer/rapist and continually apologize and repent over and over again?

>>6636448
In the eyes of god, yes.

>>6636292
"Soul" (psyche) in Greek literally means "breath" (and you will find it in the Septuagint that animals have souls for that reason). But Plato and other thinkers used to mean our rational faculty.

>>6636261
Meme rider detected

>>6636503
wait really? i should just be catholic then. i can live like everyone else AND have a sick afterlife

>>6636524
Pretty sure if you confessed that to your priest, he'd report you. Just like psychiatrists have to break confidentiality if failing to do so seriously jeopardizes the lives of others.

>>6636545
i didnt mean being a rapist/serial killer, those are just extremes.
thats why i said
>live like everyone else

Because you can't have good without evil.

>>6636551
abusing of God's mercy is a sin
and it's morally dishonest for you to do that, why would you do what you know to be evil?

>>6636551
Yeah, but if it's too harsh, you can't receive the Eucharist anymore. For instance, if you commit adultery or get a divorce, you can, but if you remarry, you can no longer take communion.

>>6636545
the seal of confession is unbreakable, even if the priest may go to prision or face authority, if he breaks it he gets excomunicated

>tfw when nobody has it right

'EVIL' is necessary for Humans. 'EVIL' does NOT exist outside of the Human Scope.

'EVIL' is part of DIVINE PLAN for Humans to STRUGGLE, DEVELOP and ultimately ASCEND TO THE HEAVENS.

Stop downplaying God to some Zeus-character from the Simpsons. Reducing the Creator of time/space to base arguments such as "...but evil!" is just fallacious.

>>6636552
/thread

>>6636572
I doubt he would, after the cover up of all the rape scandals. If he excommunicated for reporting someone who was regularly murdering people, people would desert the Church in droves.

cuz free will ya beesh

>>6636602
oh please, it isnt even the same thing, the seal of confession exists so that nobody gets discouraged from confessing sins in the first place. Just like lawyers cant reveal if their client is guilty, etc.

It would be a complete tyranny if the government forces priests to break the seal of confession

>>6636629
We're not talking about past crimes, we're talking about reasonable suspicious of future ones. If a lawyer has reasonable grounds to believe his client will raping or killing someone soon, he absolutely has to inform the police of his suspicions, because otherwise he is jeopardizing lives. The lawyer has no obligation to report past crimes, and indeed would be disbarred if he were, but that's not the same thing.

>>6636655
still, no priest can use any information he acquired through confession

He may try to convince the confessed to turn to authorities, or something similar, but not directly reveal sins

Free Will

>>6635658
>because muh metaphysical free will cop out

Remember, all arguments for religion are metaphysical copouts.

>>6636720
>all arguments for religion are metaphysical copouts.

This. You have to appreciate answers like "it is beyond the understanding of moral men" or "the Lord works in mysterious ways" for just how ace-up-the-sleevey they are.

I'm not well read on this issue, but I've always reasoned that life cannot be meaningful without the presence of will, and will cannot exist without the possibility of evil. So God allows us will in order to give our lives meaning, and grace is his way of saving us from the negative consequences of that will.

>>6635658
Because god likes to party.

>>6636683
Spook

>>6637602
>here you can skin the cat with this cat skinning machine I bestow upon you
>which can only be used for skinning cats
>I forgive you for Skinning the cat
>mfw

>>6637602
How can will not exist without the presence of evil? Do you not believe that you make a choice in how best to do a good deed even when your hand is not forced by "evil"?
Are your actions predetermined when not dealing with things you view as evil?

Ultimately even your internally inconsistent philosophy does not solve the problem of evil.

If you observe a deed you can call evil that exists in reality (for instance, you may say The Holocaust or an individual's rape or homicide is evil) then that evil is yet to be explained.
The question is merely transformed by your answer, it begs the question: "Why can God's grace not circumvent all evil outcomes?"

>>6636720
>>6636746
>Why isn't there a God?
>"It is unnecessary"

>>6635658
Because everything that is, including evil, is God manifested into identifiable segments. God is pre-universe consciousness that wanted to commit suicide but can't, so it wills a material universe, forcing it to have innumerable separate bodies, the vast majority of which can't think. Life is the nightmare God has before it wakes up and either gets a new perspective of itself or tries again.
yfw the music of the stars is CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES
THIS IS MY LAST RESORT

>>6637626
How is this a cop-out?

Arguments for the existence of god have long centered around his necessity, and that necessity has been shown to boil down to a need for faith in Him.
If faith (unfounded belief) is needed to see further things are evidence for God's necessity, then God is an unfounded belief.

If you have no faith then you only look at the observable, knowable world. There is nothing in the observable and knowable world that needs explanation by the unobservable.

If you do not need God for any purpose and have no observable phenomena as evidence for his existence, then why would you believe in God?

If you believed that this is a cop-out because it was never explained to you in full, then let this post serve as one such simple explanation.

>>6637626
Thanks for reminding me I need to finish the 1st season of K-On.

>>6637624
The definition of evil is irrelevant for the purpose of my argument. It can be said that people typically act out of self-interest, and that those actions sometimes have negative repercussions on other people. What is good for one person can be bad for another. Having will does not mean that any one person necessarily has to perform acts which harm other people, but it does mean that inevitably there will eventually be people who do. This is just a social dynamic corroborated by ecology, game theory, psychology, and any other field dealing with the nature of animal behavior.

The problem we are concerned with is the existence of bad things in life, so it doesn't matter how we categorize these things (e.g. between "good" and "bad", or "bad" vs. "evil") as long as we can generally agree that some events in life are undesirable and cause suffering.

God's grace does not mean he preordains events so that nothing bad can happen to anyone. Actions having consequences is a necessary part of experiencing will, so disallowing the consequences of certain actions would nullify the will. Grace is the act of God allowing us to come to know him and to seek salvation. Original sin is the perfect representation of the paradoxical nature of will, simultaneously making human lives meaningful and damning them without the re-intervention of God.

still don't take my word for this, since like I said I am not well read

>>6637643
I don't think there is a meaningful distinction between choosing whether or not to believe in God. Neither proposition holds any more power to explain the existence of the world than the other; it is just as absurd to assume that the source of everything that exists is conscious or intelligent as it is to assume that everything exists accidentally.

I really think it comes down to an aesthetic or romantic choice between which axiom you want to use to interpret the facts of the world. It is unnecessary to believe in God but also unnecessary not to believe. Specific religious doctrines are where things get complicated, and I think that's where some people get confused. It takes a lot more work to explain how scripture fits into our observation of the world than to simply propose that God exists.

>>6635658
>If God is all-powerful, why is there evil in the world?

you can't rationalize God. you see good and evil. dogs don't see the color purple. doesn't mean the color purple doesn't exist. maybe there is some other consideration you're not aware of. I'm not saying this is how it is. but it's a possibility.

>>6637833
If it does not achieve a purpose, and there exists no evidence for it, then your belief is both useless and unfounded.

The reason people do not dwell on your dichotomy of equal uselessness but rather go beyond it, is to assure that their time and effort is not wasted doing useless things for no reason.

>>6635658

>ctrfl+f
>Boethius
>Consolation of Philosophy
>No results

Why?

>>6635729
yeah but saying "he" "maintains" is a metaphor. Physically reality emanates from the godhead by necessity. And God could not "disappear" since he exists necessarily (if he does in fact exist).

>>6635658
Because there are fallen angels in the world, and wicked people in the world.

There was no evil before this creation, and there will be no evil after this creation is completed.

>>6638268
I fucking love that book. I know that Boethius was heavily influenced by Plato and Aristotle. I have read both of them, but rather sparsely. I was wondering, is the philosophy laid out in Consolation just a complete rehash of earlier Greek philosophy, or are there actually unique arguments in there (albeit heavily influenced by Plato and Aristotle)? I'm thinking especially of the last part about the problems of free will and an omniscient God.

If he is just basically rehashing previous stuff, can someone say what?

>>6637833
Bizarre how what you think only effects you, huh.

>>6635658
Because God dont exist

>>6638925
/thread

>>6638855
>I was wondering, is the philosophy laid out in Consolation just a complete rehash of earlier Greek philosophy,

Not necessarily. Boethius is much more Platonic than Aristotelian in his thought. The Consolation is interesting because even though Boethius is very clearly a Christian, he doesn't take a dogmatic or even strictly Christian stance. He only attempts to reconcile the concept of the good (as understood through Platonic forms) with the idea of a transcendent all-loving, all-good God. While these ideas weren't strictly his own, his reconciliation of the idea of the "Good" with the idea of "God" was unique for its time. Boethius is often considered the father of middle ages philosophy/theology for this reason. His idea that evil is entirely dependent on the good is pretty unique, even if it's an expanded treatise on Socrates understanding of good.

Has no one here read City of God?

Free Will

If there was no Evil there would be no Good. What makes people moral is choosing to act in a good way rather than a bad way. If there was no Evil then we would not have the free will to act wicked. This would eliminate the moral choice.