/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15026852]

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?" -Epicurus


Rationalize this for me christcucks.

[Anonymous No.15026908]

>>15026852
>Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Does not follow.

[Anonymous No.15028029]

>>15026852
are threads with this quote bait? A literal middleschooler could refute this

[Anonymous No.15028036]

>>15026852
What if God wants both good and evil to enjoy sunlight?

[Anonymous No.15028044]

>>15026852
Imagine thinking that God has a "will" of it's own and is not just the natural force that propels all the universe into motion

[Anonymous No.15028048]

>>15026908
Yeah, I never understood how it logically followed that unwillingness to radically alter events = malevolence.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15028056]

>>15028029
It’s not something you can refute, you have to choose one.
Yhwh is malevolent. Jesus is not omnipotent. Together they are not a god. Christians can’t reason their way out of a paper bag

>>15026852
Do read up on him, OP

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15028072]

>>15028044
So your god is the unconscious universe itself.
Mother Nature.

[Anonymous No.15028086]

>>15026852
> No extant writings of Epicurus contain this argument.[116] However, the vast majority of Epicurus's writings have been lost and it is possible that some form of this argument may have been found in his lost treatise On the Gods, which Diogenes Laërtius describes as one of his greatest works.[116] If Epicurus really did make some form of this argument, it would not have been an argument against the existence of deities, but rather an argument against divine providence.[116] Epicurus's extant writings demonstrate that he did believe in the existence of deities.[107] Furthermore, religion was such an integral part of daily life in Greece during the early Hellenistic Period that it is doubtful anyone during that period could have been an atheist in the modern sense of the word.[107] Instead, the Greek word ἄθεος (átheos), meaning "without a god", was used as a term of abuse, not as an attempt to describe a person's beliefs.[107]

[Anonymous No.15028100]

>>15026852
>evil

[Anonymous No.15028107]

>>15028048
I guess we know where God stands on the trolley problem.

[Anonymous No.15028115]

>this thread again

[~[[[-_-]]]~ Urantia Thought Ad(...) No.15028150]

God allows potential evil because the value of a free will universe is the higher good.

And God does fight against evil, through those humans who freely choose to do God's will.

[Anonymous No.15028210]

>>15028150
If (the Christian) God believes in the value of a free will universe, why was He so pissed at Adam and Eve for eating the fruit of Knowledge?

[Anonymous No.15028295]

why was I fucking born, then
what was the fucking point

[Anonymous No.15028340]

>>15028295
No real reason. Chances are you'll die and be forgotten in two generatons like the majority of mankind, so may as well try to find some deeper meaning in the sensations you feel

[Anonymous No.15028343]

>>15026852
>babbys guide to morality

[Anonymous No.15028470]

>>15028086
Thanks. Do you have a source on that? I’ve been confused as to why an Ancient Greek would be talking about the abrahamic God

[Anonymous No.15028491]

>>15028210
Was he pissed? I don’t remember him having an emotion it was just m, “You ate the fruit and now are aware and now you have to leave”

[Anonymous No.15028522]

>>15028044
Extremely based
>>15028072
> So your god is the unconscious universe itself.
God is the concepts and laws that govern the nature and processes of reality and the universe not the universe itself.
>Mother nature.
You can’t help but be extremely cringe and normalfag can you mothnig? You must be baiting to ascribe human properties like sex to the kind of God being described in this situation.

[Anonymous No.15028568]

>Then from whence comes evil?"
Then they need not simplify, they need not try to change my words; they need not somehow convince the other that there is no contradiction. They should be clear about it: "Looked at logically there are contradictions; we don't deny it. All that we ask is, please don't look logically, because that is not the right way to understand this man."

"He is not speaking logically, he is speaking truthfully. So if there is contradiction in life, that will be reflected in his words. And he has no obligation to any system of logic. He is obliged to express existence as closely as possible." Then you will not feel in a difficulty.

There is no need to defend me.

You cannot; there is no need. You can simply make the situation clear, that logically there are contradictions. But to look logically at a man who is not speaking logically is fundamentally wrong - when he is saying himself to look existentially. And then all contradictions appear to be helping each other; so much so that one cannot exist without the other.

You can see that difficulty even when people try to create fiction - if they want it to have some quality of life. For example, they created God, which is a fiction - but immediately they needed a devil; otherwise God would be meaningless. He needs an opposite polarity, and both are struggling. It is a fiction - there is no God, there is no devil - but because they had to create God, they could not avoid the devil. No religion that has accepted God has been able to avoid the devil. Religions that have not accepted God, have avoided the devil completely.

There is no devil in Jainism because there is no God. The devil comes in just to make God a reality - at least in appearance. He gives God life; without him, God is meaningless.

And then there is tension and struggle between the two forces - the forces of the divine and the forces of evil. And nobody can win, because that will be the end of the game. They can only continue to struggle, but never at any point of time can any one of them win. Otherwise it would have been simple for God to finish the devil, rather than allowing him to corrupt the minds of millions of people and make them do things which they don't want to do, and for which they will have to suffer in hell.

Why not destroy this devil - just a single person - and all sin disappears from the world; everybody becomes a saint because there is nobody to tempt him. It is strange that God goes on allowing the devil to influence people. And the devil is more influential than God himself, because there is a majority of sinners, and rarely_a very small minority of saints. So God does not seem to be as convincing as the devil.

But God cannot kill the devil, because in killing the devil he will be committing suicide. He cannot destroy sinners, because in destroying the sinners, he will be destroying the saints. He cannot destroy hell, because in destroying hell, he will be destroying heaven.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15028594]

>>15028522
>decoupling the how from the what
>normal rational is so cringe
>I’m a proud penis child
Okay zoomer.

[Anonymous No.15028597]

The loss of God's ultimacy is correlated with symmetry breaking in the fundamental origin point of the universe. At first, all that existed was God, embodied in the physical dimension by a perfect balance of all the physical forces. Then the materialist, evil shadow world of existence came to pass when one of these forces fell out of balance, triggering the big bang. since then God has been scattered, we exist in God's blood and entrails as it seeks to eventually recombine and reintegrate itself at the end of time.

[Anonymous No.15028614]

>>15028568
Is this from Heismanns suicide letter? It sounds familiar

[Anonymous No.15029055]

>>15028044
Isn't that exactly Epicurus point though? That the gods are perfect and therefore not involved in the regular business of this world - not pushing the Sun every morning, not forced to do anything or they wouldn't be gods. He's a greek through and through, for him working is beneath divinity.

[Anonymous No.15029161]

>>15028594
>decoupling the how from the what
To some extent yes, because otherwise pantheism gets misinterpreted by morons who identify God with very mundane aspects of reality associated with their feelings not their minds and an obsession with being “in touch with nature”, when reality in any possible form is in touch with the nature of a pantheistic God, it is as in God’s nature to have a plastic processing plant as it is to have a forest.
>normal rational
The obsession with the term Mother Nature is not normal rational, because it is not rational in any way, it is a lazy banality employed by retards who can’t cope with abstract thought and have to anthropomorphise everything to cope
>I’m a proud penis child
What did you mean by this? Is this your schizo side reaching fruition?
>zoomer
It’s certainly less embarrassing to be a sooner than to be a lonely middle aged catlady still posting on a board that hates you because you never did anything significant or fulfilling with your life.

[Anonymous No.15029244]

>>15028210
>when you're euphoric and you read the creation story as literally as a creationist

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15029428]

>>15029161
>God has to exist. Life would be too mundane without Him.
>Describing god as a feminine entity is also mundane! God is a man!!
>Zoomer cope insults just to spite

[Anonymous No.15029692]

>>15028210
>There are people on this board who unironically argue from the POV that the Bible is literal

[Anonymous No.15029717]

>>15028048
>yeah dude I pushed the kid into the lake and then stood there while he drowned but I’m not malevolent haha

[Anonymous No.15029744]

>>15026852
Christian here. There's plenty of theories but none resolve the issue imo.
Best we can say is it's a mystery and God is overcoming that evil in ways we can't understand.
In the final analysis justice and mercy will win...
As the bible says, "who are you oh man?" to even question God?

The atheist has a double problem though, he has to not only explain evil, but account for the good as well.

[Anonymous No.15029756]

>>15029692
Christians believe the bible is true and inerrant, allegories exist but turning genesis into pure myth is heretical and blasphemous.

[Anonymous No.15030622]

>>15029161
t.brainlet
read shankara

[Anonymous No.15030631]

The Lord rebuke thee, Satan

[Anonymous No.15030668]

>>15030622
whether you read shankara or don't read shankara, it makes no difference. his system just eats itself

[Anonymous No.15030682]

>>15026852
what the fuck is evil lol

[Anonymous No.15030685]

>>15029744
>The atheist has a double problem though, he has to not only explain evil, but account for the good as well.
damn

[Anonymous No.15030693]

>>15026852
>from whence
who translated this lmao

[Anonymous No.15030727]

>>15029161
good post

>>15029428
He never said God was a man idiot. I think you are missunderstanding the pantheistic God with the visual abrahamo-indo-european image of a masculine prime being.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15030750]

>>15030727
Ah! You’re right.
Still he claims I’m obsessed with claiming god is feminine. Symbolically speaking only, the universe births all, so symbolically it makes sense. His obsession to denounce the symbolism is what threw me. I wasn’t paying attention. Oops
Further; a pantheist is calling me a schizo. C’mon now.

[Anonymous No.15030776]

>>15030750
Understandable. But for pure synchronicities sake when talking about God as a anthropomorphic entity, the father figure is most fitting simply due to the patriarchical religions of the west, both abrahamic and indo-europian, and since mother nature is usually symbolically more interconnected with the biological rather than the universal. (uranus, gaia, etc). tbqf I dont really care, but I think in terms of intellectuall geneology the masculine seems more fundamental from or cultural sphere and the feminine more a reactive one.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15030783]

>>15030776
I couldn’t disagree more.

[Anonymous No.15030805]

>>15030783
Im not opposed to the contrary if you would enlighten me. But seeing as a lot of the contingent origin for what we consider the "west" is largely greco-roman and abrahamic in nature, I tend to default to a roman jove, a platonic Demiurge, or Isaac's YHWH. Im not disputing that there may have been alternatives before, but as a piece of cultural symbology, those come first to mind.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15030831]

>>15030805
I just prefer the older model.
It’s a fascinating travesty when early cultures turned to masculine gods

[Anonymous No.15030834]

>>15026852
BASED AND CHRISTBACKTHEFUCKEDUPED

[Anonymous No.15030853]

>>15030831
I can understand that malaise from a meta point of view. However, I think it hard to escape from the geneology of symboligy just as much as it is hard to escape the geaneology of morals. even an outright rejection of it is only an antithesis to a thesis, by definition bound by and defined by its seminal nature as a foundational cultural building block. Not saying that pre-patriarchical fundiments are not there, as at some point there may have been a fundemental all mother that inspired the likes of gaia, however, its potentiality would almost certainly be a synthetic one nowadays.

>>15030834
It annoys me that you did not end that phrase with PILLED. Can you please conform to memetic template next time.