The Christian God is laughably evil

[obligatoryshackles]

Recently, there was a certain individual who claimed that God loves someone who had trouble believing in God due to their suffering in life.

Let's say that's true. Let's say that God was actively watching someone he supposedly loves suffering day after day, with the presumed outcome that this person eventually breaks down and commits suicide. Is the idea that... God, despite being literally all powerful, was just watching someone he LOVES suffering to the point of suicide and did... nothing? Oh, and as a bonus, he sends that person to the infinite torture dimension after they die. Nice!

Like, maybe God does love you, but if this is how he treats people he loves... How can you claim that God is good...?

If a parent watched their child get bullied by their siblings until the child committed suicide and literally did nothing, I'm pretty sure you'd have a few problems with that.

I do want to hear the counterpoint to this because I'm 100% sure someone in the last 2000 years has thought of the same problem and the Catholic church would have had to think of a response, so someone qualified please explain to me how you can see this and still believe God, as depicted according to the mainstream canon, can be good.

 

[traumatologia]

There's no counterpoint. God was a genocide in the old testament. He had childish tantrums because things were not done the way he/she/they/it/whatever wanted, or at least that is how the church interprets it (that's another point: versicles...they are all interpretations). At least Jesus was a cool guy who wanted to help people. I really like Jesus, but I don't believe in the thingy Jesus=God=Holy spirit and all that stuff.
(Sorry for my bad english)

 

[xlostie]

Idk if god's purpose is to be good as we understand it I guess it's more about the justice. If someone has been living their life doing the wrong things, having bad motives behind their actions and doesn't pray and confess to god, then god punishes them. Even though i know good people who suffer, but still I can't be sure about their motives, maybe god isn't satisfied : D or maybe it's part of their journey, obstacle they have to overcome in order to be accepted in heaven. If they choose suicide they sin so they go to hell. Tbh i would also feel good if someone I truly hate is having a hard time :') not to the point they can't take it anymore but maybe something to make them learn their lesson.
I'm not someone who believes, im just making assumptions.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I have to say firstly- I'm not qualified to answer this properly- as I'm not that knowledgable about religion. What I have heard from others though is things like:

- Oh- but that's not God's doing. That's the Devil/ Satan. But then- surely God must be more powerful than Satan. Wasn't Lucifer a fallen angel? Created by God? But then- was there some 'evil' force before Satan? When did The Garden of Eden take place in the timescale? Why is Lucifer so bad anyway? Because he disagreed with God as to who should be admitted into heaven? Doesn't sound super bad to me. Lucifer sounded prejudiced certainly but- to be condemned to the underworld for challenging God? Yikes!

- I've also frequently noticed that- when religious folk don't want to try and answer an awkward question- they will say something like- 'We aren't able to comprehend God because we are mortal.' Like- there IS some good, pure reason behind all this shit but we can't hope to understand it with our little brains. Some will take it a step further and say we don't even have the right to question. God knows what's best for us and the even more cringy one- God won't give you more than you can cope with. (Yeah- right.)

- The only thing that makes any kind of sense to me is something I actually detest the thought of- reincarnation. If we are supposed to be experiencing struggle in life in order to learn- presumably- that has an end goal- surely? We must be in training for something... but- what? I can't believe it's either an eternity in heaven or hell- all based on whether you made the right or wrong decisions in the miniscule (comparitive to eternity) time you spent as a mortal human. How about babies who die? How about still borns? How does God judge whether they were a good Christian? Nah- it seems like- if we're supposed to be learning and developing through struggle- we should be developing into something. What if we are training to become Gods ourselves?!! What else would it be useful to know every facet of human experience for?

- Of course- I don't believe that! I think it's a typically narcissistic human view that we're oh-so important that there HAS to be something more. We CAN'T be just mere mortal meat sacks. Honestly- I kind of hope we are because any reasoned thinking about the alternative is too terrifying to contemplate. I think if there is a God- unless it's true and there is some incredible plan we can't even comprehend- we're f*cked basically.

 

[xlostie]

- The only thing that makes any kind of sense to me is something I actually detest the thought of- reincarnation.

Christians doesn't believe in reincarnation, so we are left with nothing that really makes sense :')
And i think all babies have place in heaven because they are pure.
I don't know much on the topic as well but I've read about Christianity in history and there were a lot of messed up things as males self castrating themselves to serve god, mass hypnotisation in churches ending with orgies. Some cults still do toxic shit like taking a percentage of the salary of the members and making them starve for days (even the children).

 

[Andro_USYD]

U have to remember that on the Christian perspective dying doesn't necessarily mean the end. Also having free-will is a factor, you have to choose what type of person you are. A lot of the theological/philosophical questions can be answered on Reasonable faith. Also draw the distinction between the logical problem of evil and suffering and the emotional problem of evil. On e.g. atheism there are no moral values (since ultimately you'll just end up dead anyways) so y not live Ur life like John wance Gacy? Take a look at the moral argument after this article: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/videos/lectures/the-problem-of-evil-and-suffering-gracepoint-church

 

[obligatoryshackles]

U have to remember that on the Christian perspective dying doesn't necessarily mean the end. Also having free-will is a factor, you have to choose what type of person you are. A lot of the theological/philosophical questions can be answered on Reasonable faith. Also draw the distinction between the logical problem of evil and suffering and the emotional problem of evil. On e.g. atheism there are no moral values (since ultimately you'll just end up dead anyways) so y not live Ur life like John wance Gacy? Take a look at the moral argument after this article: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/videos/lectures/the-problem-of-evil-and-suffering-gracepoint-church

It's an interesting perspective on the idea of God's existence despite his allowance of suffering.

But I guess my problem isn't that at all - I'm asking for a theological explanation about how you can believe God is good - not if he exists. It's about how God literally punishes people for suffering - not whether or not suffering existing in the world is paradoxical with God's existence. About how the mainstream Christian community believes that someone who has suffered so much that they felt they needed to use their free will to end their own life will proceed to be sent to hell by God.

My premise predicates that God does exist but that he must necessarily be evil, so it's hardly what this article addresses. Do you think there might be something else on this matter on reasonablefaith.org?


As for the moral argument, I think that's a silly circular argument. Why can't morals exist without God? It hits you with a classic "Morals exist because of God and God exists because of morals" loop. That premise kinda leaves out a massive burden of proof on the Christian side - where is the proof of "1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist"? It's pretty clear that most of human society was "moral" long before they heard the word of God and still continue to be "moral" despite not being Christian.

I will further argue that any moral evil that humans commit unto one another is a result of the world's construction, not out of their free will. Humanity is not inherently evil - at least in my eyes (and if they were, that would be God's fault since he made us that way). We are forced to fight one another because God didn't give us enough food to live otherwise. We are forced to misunderstand one another because God didn't give us perfect means of communication. We lie, we steal, we kill, not because we're evil but because that's what the world we live in has forced us to do for survival. If we gave those things up, it would be tantamount to committing suicide.

I mean, should people just choose to just starve to death instead of stealing if they are disabled, unable to find a job, and have no access to any kind of support? If they can steal food to survive, then isn't choosing not to do that literally suicide? They may have free will but their two choices are to commit suicide (go to hell) and to steal (go to hell). What kind of free will is that? That's the evil I'm talking about - built into the world's construction entirely outside of any human's control. It's this delusional belief that all evil comes from humans that ultimately pisses me off I guess.

There's more stuff on free will and the definition of suicide I want to say, but I don't want to make this post too long.

For example, I'm not arguing from an atheist perspective, but... "why not live life like I'm John Wayne Gacy" if I don't follow God? Because we have basic empathy. You do not need to worship God to have fucking empathy. Also pretty laughable argument given the Catholic church's history with regard to sexual abuse.


Last thing: It's funny that this article addresses another point I have a problem with - whether or not people who didn't know about God could still go to heaven. It notes that God gives an equal chance to those who were not given the opportunity to know about God. That's a pretty classical argument, but it does, hilariously, paint any Christian who spreads their faith as unintentionally sending people to hell, since the people who hear their message will now "know" about God and therefore MUST convert to avoid hell, whereas before they heard the message they would have had a reasonable chance of going to heaven just by being good.

Sorry for going off. I'm mostly venting. Just needed an outlet for my thoughts.

 

[Andro_USYD]

Thankyou for your long response, it shows you're taking the reasonable faith content seriously, I'll make a post this afternoon in response to Ur points and I agree that the moral argument isn't one I personally use for God's existence since the non theist could simply say that they're subjective moral values. I think you mentioned the euthyphro-dilemma. I'd say that it's not wrong because God says it's wrong I'd say it's wrong because God's very nature is good. I'm personally a Deist, I believe there is a God yet I don't really identify with any particular religion (more or less Christian) . The Bible says "the moral law is written on the hearts of everyone", for those who steal out of necessity, commit crimes because they have or are in a state of emotional or physical suffering deciding to CTB, they're not committing crimes because a maximally great being could understand their situation, it's more or less a choice to do good by others. I think it's important to note that the world "Sheol" is only actually mentioned either 3 or 8 times in the Bible, the majority of references when translated refer to the grave and not necessarily a place of eternal damnation. You have to realise we were created with free-will. If we didn't I'd argue that everything is the process of a biological unguided process and that our brains would only develop for reproductive purposes and not truth value. If there isn't a God everything is ultimately meaningless so even if the majority of people would follow their empathic nature and still not do wrong, there's no objective reason to not commit crimes BC there's no foundation for morals e.g. ultimately we just die on atheism it's a matter of what you can get away with really and there's no foundation for moral values aside from the police and potentially going to jail.

 

[obligatoryshackles]

Yeah, maybe there just is no objective reason not to commit crimes, Christianity or not. What's wrong with that? Laws are subjective in the first place. That's why crimes still happen happen even in the most extremely Christian societies. Christianity doesn't solve crime, so I don't think its a valid citation for a solution to the motivation for crime (not to mention the roughly 6 billion humans on the planet who are not Christian and nonetheless have functioning societies, sometimes with significantly lower crime rates than Christian nations).

But I will also argue that there is a very strong subjective reason not to commit crimes for a vast majority of people - it just feels terrible to knowingly hurt other human beings, it's as simple as that. Maybe it's a moral code written into our hearts, maybe it's just an evolutionary trait where people who felt no remorse for hurting others were quickly stamped out of the gene pool because they were terrible for communal living, but at the end of the day most people do not like to hurt other people.

There is, of course, the problem hurting people without knowing that we're hurting people. Empathy is a strong force, but if it doesn't turn on, it fails. But that applies to Christian faith too - if we don't know we're sinning, we fail to stop ourselves from sinning. At the end of the day, it's because of the limitations of our senses and informational processing, not a lack of faith or empathy. Since God designed us that way, the responsibility would fall on him.

Also, if moral law is already written into the hearts of everyone, I guess I fail to see the purpose of Christianity other than to please God's vanity through demanding worship.


As for "Sheol" and direct biblical citation, I think that has little to do with what I'm addressing. My concern is with the popular mainstream beliefs of Christianity as a whole, and it's pretty clear that most modern Christians believe in eternal damnation. If you personally don't, that's admirable, but it does not represent the "other side" that I'm arguing against.


Free will, though, I will make an argument against. I believe that it cannot exist in any meaningful form. Further, I believe that the idea of free will is actively harmful because it places all responsibility on the individual instead of the circumstances they faced. It turns "this is a situation we should actively improve to prevent this from happening again" into "this person made the wrong choice, it's their personal choice so we can't do anything about it".

And what is free will really? It's a pretty nebulous term, so I would like to hear your exact definition of it. Certainly, humans constantly decide on things, but it's always based on prior information and internal biases. How do you know people had the ability to make a different decision at any given crossroads? People always make their choice for reasons, no matter how small the reason, and whether or not they're aware of those reasons. I just don't believe people have the power to make a different choice under the same circumstances. But if you can alter the circumstances by providing new information or change the choice altogether, you can get a different result, albeit still deterministically.

An extreme example, but if faced with the choice of saving a loved one at literally no cost versus choosing not saving them, could you ever make the choice not to save them? I don't think so. I don't think you actually have free will in that situation to make the other choice. I think that scenario could play out in a billion different universes and you would ALWAYS "choose" to save your loved one. The internal bias and learned information over the course of your life that tells you this person is important to you always makes that choice for you.

If you think that level of ability of choice constitutes free will, then I guess I won't disagree that people have "free will". I just don't think that this implicates anyone for the choices they do make. It's really no different from determinism, it's just masked over with individualism and the illusion of free will.

The alternative, I think, would be the ability to make any choice, entirely free from rationale, prior information, or internal bias. But then what's the point? If you are not influenced by prior information, reason, or even personality, can that be anything other than a roll of the dice?

But if you are influenced by prior information, reason, and/or personality, it must necessarily become deterministic by nature. If the same person, under the same circumstances could make a different choice, then it could only be the result of some randomness in the process, not an active choice. Perhaps you can cite the soul as the source of the choice, but that's just another internal bias which must either be deterministic or random.

 

[Andro_USYD]

The problem with not having free will comes from the evolutionary argument against naturalism - that, if it's all the process of a mindless unguided process then our brains wouldn't evolve for the purposes of truth, it would evolve in a way that allows simply for reproductive purposes and not logic or reasoning by natural selection. This reasoning extends to the very belief in E.g. determinism. You wouldn't be able to trust your senses from the very beginning if U weren't endowed with a soul. But we're clearly able to construct skyscrapers, build planes, fly rockets to space etc. An argument for the existence of the soul is that people are an "all" or "nothing" concept, there's no such thing as 50% of a person because they're either there or they are not. Material objects on the other hand are dividable. You can have people who have lost portions of their brains (literally) e.g. Phineas Gage and the French guy who had something like 10% of his brain that was feeling only muscle weakness and fatigued. There are more reasons, for instance intentionality the aboutness or of'ness of a thought, U can think about Ur summer vacation or of your father but nowhere in the brain does that thought actually exist, the brain is a physical object with a certain density, mass, location. In e.g. Wilder Penfield's book "Mysteries of Mind" Penfield said "when I have caused a conscious patient to vocalise or get them to twitch their finger, invariably the response came back "I didn't do that", they suspected the doctor was involved but never said they were responsible for vocalising or twitching their finger, despite him hooking up electrodes to their brain and trying to tamper with it they never once said the tampering (vocalising) was an action which they themselves intentionally did. It's for these reasons and more that I believe in dualism, that the brain influences a lot of our decisions but it's similar to a piano and a pianist, the pianist may have the capability to play music but with a broken instrument it would sound bad, it's always been known that changes to the brain influences our behavior from ancient Greek times but to give another analogy a pilot flying a plane. The pilot uses the rudders, elevators, flaps and such but with a broken plane they can only do their best to control it e.g. if it lost all hydraulics they could potentially use the engines to stabilise the plane. It's true that even in Christian countries there are high crime rates but it's about the objectiveness not how individuals act within a country. I don't claim U need God to be a moral person. There is no moral authority for objectively thinking it's wrong to do certain actions. But this argument has never personally convinced me because yeah they can just say that it's subjective. It's not about how we come to know they exist it's about why they're there in the first place. If you've even seen Dexter the TV series the guy is a sociopath living a functional life as a blood splatter analyst who has an urge to kill people, he doesn't however kill innocent people but decides to track down really bad people and kill them (not that anyone should have a right to take someone's life) but an example of someone with no empathy in television. I have very reduced empathy but the question isn't about crime rates in Christian/non Christian countries and needing a creator in order to be a good person, it's about justification. Because if life ends at the grave it doesn't matter whether Ur Jeffrey Dahmer or the Pope you could if you wanted to be a bad person and no one would have the authority to say Ur a terrible person, these are just against the sociatal conventions.

Does God Have Morally Sufficient Reasons for Suffering? | Reasonable Faith

Hi Dr Craig. I’m currently being challenged by an atheist friend of mine, for whom I don’t have many answers. What is it about having morally sufficient reasons that make it morally good for God to allow evil, temporarily withhold the antidote for evil, and do things that humans might call evil...

www.reasonablefaith.org

Why Does a Just God permit Me to Experience Good? | Reasonable Faith

Good day, Dr. Craig. In my never-ending quest for the truth about God (if he exists), and in the numerous discussions I have had concerning his nature, the most puzzling and yet most oft-repeated concern people seem to have with the existence of such a divine creator is almost always something...

www.reasonablefaith.org

Navigating Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape | Reasonable Faith

A great merit of Sam Harris' recent book The Moral Landscape is his bold affirmation of the objectivity of moral values and duties. To say that moral values and duties are...

www.reasonablefaith.org

Edit: sorry for all the links I just think after reading them you will gain an understanding of this better. The third one is a response to an academic but I couldn't find the link I was looking for because it's probably in one of his podcasts

 

[obligatoryshackles]

Would it kill you to use paragraphs? That's hardly readable, lol.

The problem with not having free will comes from the evolutionary argument against naturalism - that, if it's all the process of a mindless unguided process then our brains wouldn't evolve for the purposes of truth, it would evolve in a way that allows simply for reproductive purposes and not logic or reasoning by natural selection. This reasoning extends to the very belief in E.g. determinism. You wouldn't be able to trust your senses from the very beginning if U weren't endowed with a soul.

So let's start here again. You have not addressed the actual paradox of why free will is fundamentally impossible. It's either deterministic by nature or it's random, there is no other possibility. It doesn't matter where it comes from. Also, please give me your definition of free will first. We can't argue about a term with no defined meaning.

Why would an "unguided process" be unable to produce a brain for the purpose of truth? Roll the dice enough times and you're bound to land on it. Further, evolution isn't an "unguided process" - at some point in our development, having a mind for reasoning was clearly favorable to survival and that's why we got one.

Further, you literally cannot trust your senses. They deceive you all the time. They are powerful tools and very accurate most of the time, but they are not the truth. Very much accurate enough to tell you how to construct skyscrapers or fly to space with enough accumulated information, but never to arrive at absolute truth. Heck, for all you're able to perceive you could literally be a Boltzmann Brain, formed from eventuality in the endless random accumulation of particles after the heat death of a universe.

An argument for the existence of the soul is that people are an "all" or "nothing" concept, there's no such thing as 50% of a person because they're either there or they are not. Material objects on the other hand are dividable. You can have people who have lost portions of their brains (literally) e.g. Phineas Gage and the French guy who had something like 10% of his brain that was feeling only muscle weakness and fatigued. There are more reasons, for instance intentionality the aboutness or of'ness of a thought, U can think about Ur summer vacation or of your father but nowhere in the brain does that thought actually exist, the brain is a physical object with a certain density, mass, location.

This one's actually really funny, because only in the last century have we come up with a really good example against it. Have you heard of a computer? Did you know that if you remove 90% of its RAM it still works just fine, just with a substantial decrease in speed, like its weak and fatigued? Did you know that a computer has memory caches that point to where all of its memories are located and can access them at will? Did you know that a computer's memory is a physical object that can store complex information by encoding it in a simpler form just like the brain? That's pretty weird, since I don't think computers need souls to do that.

In e.g. Wilder Penfield's book "Mysteries of Mind" Penfield said "when I have caused a conscious patient to vocalise or get them to twitch their finger, invariably the response came back "I didn't do that", they suspected the doctor was involved but never said they were responsible for vocalising or twitching their finger, despite him hooking up electrodes to their brain and trying to tamper with it they never once said the tampering (vocalising) was an action which they themselves intentionally did. It's for these reasons and more that I believe in dualism, that the brain influences a lot of our decisions but it's similar to a piano and a pianist, the pianist may have the capability to play music but with a broken instrument it would sound bad, it's always been known that changes to the brain influences our behavior from ancient Greek times but to give another analogy a pilot flying a plane. The pilot uses the rudders, elevators, flaps and such but with a broken plane they can only do their best to control it e.g. if it lost all hydraulics they could potentially use the engines to stabilise the plane.

Wow, did no one just tell you that not all of your actions are done consciously before you read that? Did you just discover the unconscious portion of your mind then? If every single process in your brain went through your conscious thought process you would hardly be able to think because you'd be too worried about breathing. Are you intentionally giving every muscle command involved in walking? Are you conscious of every breath you take?

If this is about free will, I've already addressed this. wherever your actions come from, they are either deterministic or entirely random. Even if it's from beyond the brain.

What point are you even making with this section? That we have an unconscious part of our mind? That if your brain is broken it doesn't work very well? I don't really understand what you're trying to get at here.

It's true that even in Christian countries there are high crime rates but it's about the objectiveness not how individuals act within a country. I don't claim U need God to be a moral person. There is no moral authority for objectively thinking it's wrong to do certain actions. But this argument has never personally convinced me because yeah they can just say that it's subjective. It's not about how we come to know they exist it's about why they're there in the first place. If you've even seen Dexter the TV series the guy is a sociopath living a functional life as a blood splatter analyst who has an urge to kill people, he doesn't however kill innocent people but decides to track down really bad people and kill them (not that anyone should have a right to take someone's life) but an example of someone with no empathy in television. I have very reduced empathy but the question isn't about crime rates in Christian/non Christian countries and needing a creator in order to be a good person, it's about justification. Because if life ends at the grave it doesn't matter whether Ur Jeffrey Dahmer or the Pope you could if you wanted to be a bad person and no one would have the authority to say Ur a terrible person, these are just against the sociatal conventions.

Ok, you can't cite a fictional story for a person without empathy, even I can think of a few real humans who are like that, c'mon.

So I guess I don't see why the last statement can't be true. It's not exactly clear to me why it would be so hard to accept that there is no objective good and evil and that no one has the power to judge whether you're a terrible person. These ARE just societal conventions, though our most internal biases help most humans throughout history and today form at least partially overlapping ideas of good and evil.



Also, if you're not actually going to address anything I'm saying I'm not gonna bother responding again. I don't even know why I'm now making basic points for atheism, when my original post never questioned the existence of God, only whether he is good or not within even the Christian framework itself. Let me tell you, I believe that God exists and I believe that he is evil. Any "heaven" made by this capricious being is not a place I want to be. If you're not going to argue against that, then I'm sorry, but that's not the conversation I was looking for.

 

[Andro_USYD]

Okay Ur taking a stance against me rather than looking for truth value but first off free-will is the ability to choose between A and B being algebrtic values for the decision you make. You could be a Boltzmann brain but do U seriously believe this? No one in their right mind would think this is true as there's no warrent for believing this? You could adopt the view solipsism and think you're the only person in the universe and everything is a construct around you but would U seriously believe this? The point is humans are all or nothing constructs and there is no such thing as 50% of a person regardless of whether you like it or not. And yes I'm a computer scientist so I definitely do understand RAM, the point is that U either exist or don't exist and there's no in between as all mater is dividable. And you didn't address the problem of Wilder Penfield's argument that despite electrodes being placed on the person to activate twitching or vocalisation they invariably stated that it wasn't them. That evidences free will because as my analogy of the pianist and piano goes.... If keys on the piano are pressed for you (as dualism) you would not acknowledge them despite the piano being played for you (consistent with dualism).




The reason an unguided process would not evolve for truth value is because it's all about reproduction on natural selection, it's all about passing on your genes and this "luck" sounds like the anthropic principal, the problem with that is where does it come from? It doesn't actually answer the question of why. It simply begs the question
".It's either deterministic by nature or it's random"
Why? I've given evidence for the soul, it seems like a fallacy that there's no other option. The fallacy of the excluded middle

 

[CW36]

Perhaps the fact that you're lacking faith, is the very reason why you're so lost.

 

[obligatoryshackles]

Perhaps the fact that you're lacking faith, is the very reason why you're so lost.

It seems you must be quite lost yourself if you assume anyone questioning your faith must be lost.

 

[CW36]

It seems you must be quite lost yourself if you assume anyone questioning your faith must be lost.

When did I mention anyone questioning my faith? Are you able to read?

 

[obligatoryshackles]

When did I mention anyone questioning my faith? Are you able to read?

When did I mention I was lost? Are you able to read?

 

[CW36]

When did I mention I was lost? Are you able to read?

Uh kids Ignored.

 

[obligatoryshackles]

Uh kids Ignored.

I'm not the one going on people's posts and claiming they're lost as if I'm some kind of holy shepherd, but if you want to have a proper conversation feel free to start a chat.

 

[kevinj430]

I agree. I grew up in a strong Catholic family, very hypocritical.

It is no wonder so many criminal organizations originate within a Catholicism background

 

[Andro_USYD]

I'm not the one going on people's posts and claiming they're lost as if I'm some kind of holy shepherd, but if you want to have a proper conversation feel free to start a chat.

Break it up guys, Ur both just having a go at each other and it doesn't do anything but cause a dispute.

 

[obligatoryshackles]

Break it up guys, Ur both just having a go at each other and it doesn't do anything but cause a dispute.

Oh that's alright, the guy is pretty obviously a troll given their responses on other posts. I don't think it would have been possible to have a good faith discussion with the guy, not to mention they've already either deleted their account or been banned at this point based on the account name being crossed out, lol.

 

[chris1979]

I respect everyone's beliefs and opinions. But I find it hard to believe in the God in most religions because of bad actions.

 

[lachrymost]

If there isn't a God everything is ultimately meaningless so even if the majority of people would follow their empathic nature and still not do wrong, there's no objective reason to not commit crimes BC there's no foundation for morals e.g. ultimately we just die on atheism it's a matter of what you can get away with really and there's no foundation for moral values aside from the police and potentially going to jail.

I don't see how objective morals in a meta-ethical sense can exist regardless of whether there's a god or not. What is it about God's moral opinions that make them objective? (When I was a Christian kid I used to worry, "What if Satan is the good one and God is the evil one? How would I know for sure?")

 

[Brown-Jacket Revy]

The only form of Christianity that makes sense is Catharism.

 

[snowlance]

Ive thought about this with transgender recently. I dont know why people don't understand that some people don't want to be the gender they were born with, especially when you don't get the choice in the matter.
"God made you to be that way" is the most common thing I hear and it's like, yeah? Why did he make me have these feelings of wanting to be the opposite gender then? If he made me this gender, he'd make me comfortable with my gender and body too right? Not make me feel repulsed by my own gender.

 

[Average Enthusiast]

I think Christian beliefs say that God originally was going to create a "perfect world" however he did not give humans free will, and because of that, it wasn't perfect. It's a bit of a mess really cuz free will can cause sin, so the world can never be perfect. So the reason things like cancer exist is because the world itself is plagued with sin. People tend to believe that God is "All forgiving" but he is far from that. It was more so Jesus who was forgiving because he died on the cross for all our sins. I'm Omnisexual which is a sin because there's attraction to the same sex, however in Christian beliefs I would still go to heaven because Jesus essentially took that "sin" from me. So, Jesus is a good guy, God is a mess. A lot of the sins and guidelines that God created contradict eachother. (Btw, I'm not Christian or religious, I just find stuff like that interesting)

 

[Andro_USYD]

This sounds a bit like the euthathro dilemma, I would say because God's very nature is good that we should strive to be the same what makes them objective is if deism/theism were true life doesn't necessarily end at the grave and you will be judged accordingly. Whereas if atheism were true what you do doesn't necessarily matter because the result is the same for everyone (the grave). What you need is a foundation for objective morality however this argument (the moral argument) has never really convinced me personally since the non theist could just say they're subjective and I don't really have a counterpoint to it other than to state that things like abuse, torture, rape are in fact really wrong.

If you're wondering about the problem of evil and suffering there's a lot written on this and lots of good videos out there: maybe if you have the time you could check this one out:

 

[whywere]

We are ALL the same with different views sometimes. That in itself makes for not only a thoughtful discussion but the ability to evolve and see other viewpoints, regardless of if one agrees or not.

Millions of minds make a whole person(s).

Walter

 

[Andro_USYD]

An actual philosophical argument for the existence of a deity is The Kalam Cosmological Argument which is going to be one of the main arguments I will be writing about in my master's degree.
1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2)The Universe began to exist
3) Therefore the universe has a cause.
So what makes this argument so powerful? Firstly the philosophical argument against infinity. Imagine U were to count to infinity: 1,2,3... etc. You will never reach it. This is because any finite number N +1 = another finite number. Think which number comes before infinity? It's mearly a limit or potential and even if you removed the factors of death and boredom any finite number will just turn into another finite number when accumulated by 1. If there is no such thing as reaching infinity you also could not count from -infinity to reach 0(they're the same numbers in reverse). Also a hyperbolic equation Y= 1/X approaches infinity at X = 0 but if you let X actually be equal to zero you will get 1/0 which is just an error because it always approaches but never touches the line.

Now imagine that time is the 0 point. To make it easier to think of, imagine time just stopped, you'd be left with a 0 point. If the universe didn't begin to exist it must be eternal and go back infinitely in the past as a change is an example of an event and the number of past events must be finite as of the philosophical problem of having an infinite past. Now physical things always change at least at the atomic and molecular levels and since a change is an event and the number of past events must be finite it means the cause isn't physical either.

Some people say that it was caused by nothing. But it's an equivocation on the use of nothing. Nothing is not the quantum vacuum (empty space filled with vacuum energy) it has no potentialities, "not anything" simply put. To give an analogy imagine the cause of water freezing is the temperature being below 0°. Any water frozen from infinitely back would still be frozen indefinitely, there just would never be any changes to the water freezing if the temperature remains as it is. Now for example say the cause is endowed with free-will example a man sitting from eternity back decides to stand. It's for this reason the cause is not "frozen from infinity in some timeless state (like the frozen water example) the cause could actually will to do something.

A common objection to this is to ask well what about God, who caused God? If something exists timelessly which I'd say is the case with God there's no time t at which it could've been created as it's always existed prior to T. So if you say it was created at T = t, well it's preceded that moment and hence cannot be created at t because for any moment it has preceded it.

About the concious portion of the mind point, about Wilder Penfield's book Mysteries of Mind the idea that by stimulating certain regions of the brain would just be stimulating regions that Ur unconsciously aware of why is it that nothing stimulated resolves in you saying "I did that" are you saying it's somewhere deeper in the brain? Or a different region? It would be a good idea to actually read the book as its very scholarly done by a top Stanford University professor who studied the brain for a living. As the brain is all that exists in a deterministic universe so the points specifically stimulated should resort in you saying "yes I just twitched my finger" because the brain has characteristics like a certain mass, volume, if they choose to vocalise themselves they would invariably say they did that. So by hooking U up to a machine and copying stimulating those regions of the brain themself with electrodes you'd think at least some of the time (whether vocalising or whether twitching your finger or whether doing any action at all) at least some of the time you would achnowledge that you were the one to do the action. I mean they are hooking U up with electrodes and using the exact brain scans of you conciously making the effort yet it never actually results in them saying they did it. Then where in the brain would these decisions be made? Penfield was not a nobody far from it and I just think it would change Ur mind by reading the results in the book "invariably they stated I didn't do it" and even suspected the doctor, these are the very exact brain actions which you would normally use to e.g. twitch a finger. Surely an action as great as that isn't for no reason just not consciously noticeable. I'm aware at least of every twitch in my body yet on determinism there is no soul so the brain is all that there is. Btw if I'm not making any of my points clear U could always read the book. We actually know a lot more about the brain than U seem to think.

Edit: For more information take a look at Doctrine of Man parts 10-12. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-2/s2-doctrine-of-man

 

[redndwhite]

:: i will gladly answer anyones questions on this!

god does not 'send people to hell', by sinning they are saying they do not want to be with him. he would not force you to be with him, as he gives you free will.

god cannot kill satan (who causes things like ctb, murder, etc) because this is satan's world. soon, god will destroy earth and built a new earth.

satan is nowhere near as powerful as god. when satans army saw jesus, 3/4(not sure of this number) of them instantly killed themself! when satan tried to fight god, he couldn't eve get to god, as he was overpowered by an archangel.

while some of the shit he did was insane, that's just how it was.

love u all!