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Pope Leo seems to be a nice bloke; yet he developed lung cancer. Other world leaders are killing people left & right, yet keep on living. How can this be explained, other than God doesn’t exist? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 day ago* by to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[–] 17 points 1 day ago (10 children)

This always boils down to the Epicurean Paradox.

So, most religious mythology (including Christianity) defines its god as 3 absolutes:

  • All good (not a shred of evil)

  • All powerfull (its will is our reality, period)

  • All knowing (it's fully conscious of literally everything that happens in its universe)

So how is it that evil can exist? Cuz we can see that clear as day, everywhere. God either...

  • is aware of it, has the ability to stop it, and chooses not to, in which case it is not all good.

  • is aware of it, wants to stop it, but doesn't have the ability to, in which case it isn't all powerful.

  • Has the power and desire to stop it, but isn't aware it's happening, in which case it isn't all knowing.

Every single attempt to answer the Epicurean paradox does so by rugpulling one of the three pillars and presenting god as instead only being two of those absolutes. (and if anyone reading this takes that as a challenge, feel free to give it a go).

How can this be explained, other than God doesn’t exist?

Either Christianity and most other religions are being deliberately dishonest about the nature of their gods, or, as you said, god doesn't exist.

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  • [–] 4 points 21 hours ago (7 children)

    Ehhhhhhh. You're conflating this existence with all of eternity. Those are very different things.

    Consider God as a parent. I used the example in an earlier response but my friend took her child to be vaccinated. For a baby, that's a very unpleasant day. In a week, she won't remember it.

    Similarly, an all powerful, good God can be okay with someone suffering for a momentary blip because the end result is an eternity of paradise. (What is a lifetime of suffering against infinite years of happiness?)

    "But wait!" you cry, "surely an all powerful God can skip the ANY suffering bit, right? He's just choosing not to because he's a prick!" Which misses the possibility of self imposed constraints on power. If I build a system and choose to work within that system, that's still me being all powerful. And if, as an all knowing being, I know that a half moment of unpleasantness means an eternity of bliss (so I can reward free will, instead of just creating a bunch of automatons), that's a tradeoff a good and all powerful God may make.

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  • [–] 8 points 18 hours ago (6 children)

    You’re conflating this existence with all of eternity. Those are very different things.

    Those are very different things, but I don't see how or where they were conflated. Nor how conflating them would even be problematic in this context: they'd both be within god's full scope of control, right?

    Similarly, an all powerful, good God can be okay with someone suffering

    So, not 'all good'.

    self imposed constraints on power. If I build a system and choose to work within that system, that’s still me being all powerful.

    And if that system you just built includes evil, again we're in not 'all good' territory.

    I know that a half moment of unpleasantness means an eternity of bliss

    According to self imposed rules that include evil

    that’s a tradeoff a good and all powerful God may make.

    A tradeoff? Why would god need to trade? If he wants something, he just makes it so -- unless he isn't all powerful. Or unless we're still in the self-imposed-rules that allow for evil, which again is claiming that god is evil.

    (so I can reward free will, instead of just creating a bunch of automatons)

    Yeah free will usually comes up in these conversations, but right out the gate that's an attack on god's power: does he not have the ability to grant free will without also allowing evil? And even if he can't, and ignoring that that claim is that he isn't all powerful: why is the ability to commit evil always a criteria for free will? We can't fly, shoot lasers out of our eyes, or fart out unicorns either, so with or without the ability to commit evil our freedom is still not absolute - does that make us a bunch of automatons?

    Or rather, if the ability to commit evil was taken away from us, would we lose our free will? Let's look at your freedom of choice within the context of dinner. Half a second's thought, and I've got dozens of restaurant options, or grocery stores that allow me to cook up something that might fall outside of what the restaurants here offer: the number of options, while technically finite, are so mind-bogglingly huge that it might as well be infinite: so I'm gonna say my freedom of choice here is almost literally absolute.

    One of those dinner options is to kidnap my neighbor's 4-year old, throw him in the oven, and cannibalize him. Why? Cuz god lets me, right? Sure it's illegal, but we don't care about legal authority, we care about god's. So if god snapped his fingers and changed our reality so that I'm no longer even capable of considering that, let alone committing it, evil is officially off the menu... but the billions of other possible combinations are still open, so I'd argue that my freedom of choice didn't actually change all that much. Does that make me an automaton?

    ...and what about the things that I already don't have the freedom to eat? Most of our reality isn't edible. And even if it was, I can only fit a few handfuls of it into my belly at a time - I can't have the moon for dinner, it won't fit. ...does that make me an automaton?

    Point is our free will already exists within a system that has limits. Evil is one of many, many, many parts of that system, so even ignoring Epicurean Paradox, why is evil always a focal point of free will?

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  • [–] -2 points 15 hours ago (5 children)

    Those are very different things, but I don’t see how or where they were conflated.

    Because a moment's or even human lifetime's suffering is effectively nothing when compared to eternity. Show me someone who wouldn't trade a hundred years of suffering for an eternity of bliss and I'll show you a silly goof.

    So, just like my friend's kiddo getting jabbed, yeah, sucks in the moment but no reasonable person would really call it horrific suffering given that, while unpleasant, it lasted under a day compared to her (hopefully) ~ 35,600 days on Earth. Saying because suffering exists on a human time scale when you're talking about infinity is similarly silly.

    You keep coming back to this "why can't God make free will without evil? If he can't, he's not all powerful!"

    But it's a basic definition problem. You're effectively asking God to make 1 = 1 AND 1 = 2, which fine, could do but it eliminates the entire usefulness of 1 as a number.

    Similarly, if the idea of free will is to find and reward good people and punish those who squander free will (by being jerks) free will probably necessitates the capacity for evil. (Otherwise, just stick with angels. Haven't read the bible thoroughly but I'm pretty sure that's basically the point of angels, perfect beings incapable of doing evil except for the one God made rebellious etc.)

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  • [–] 2 points 24 minutes ago

    Because a moment’s or even human lifetime’s suffering is effectively nothing when compared to eternity. Show me someone who wouldn’t trade a hundred years of suffering for an eternity of bliss and I’ll show you a silly goof.

    And if that were a real scenario a mortal was faced with, yeah it'd be a good tradeoff; but we're talking about god, and he doesn't need to make those kinds of decisions.

    So, just like my friend’s kiddo getting jabbed, yeah, sucks in the moment but no reasonable person would really call it horrific suffering given that, while unpleasant, it lasted under a day compared to her (hopefully) ~ 35,600 days on Earth. Saying because suffering exists on a human time scale when you’re talking about infinity is similarly silly.

    The vaccine makes sense for us to do despite the pain because failing to do so leads to more pain - but all of our options regarding vaccines are all within a system that includes pathogens. If we had the option to just magic our immune systems to perfect without any suffering at all, you bet your ass that's what we'd do. But vaccines are the best we got. But god made the pathogens, and god gave us vulnerable immune systems to those pathogens. God had the power to create a universe without them, or without our susceptibility to them, but he chose not to, allowing us instead to suffer at his whim. Not all good.

    You keep coming back to this “why can’t God make free will without evil? If he can’t, he’s not all powerful!” But it’s a basic definition problem. You’re effectively asking God to make 1 = 1 AND 1 = 2, which fine, could do but it eliminates the entire usefulness of 1 as a number.

    Did you just skip over that whole spiel? I gave an example of free will without evil. So, now you're just just whipping up some strawman bullshit about '1=1 and 1=2' - I've already explained why that's not the case. You also skipped over why the ability to commit evil is always so pivotal to the concept of free will. Again, in the system that god made that is our universe, I'm not free to shoot lasers from my eyes or fart out unicorns: why are those any less of a requirement to having free will? Without those freedoms, we're just automatons, right?

    Similarly, if the idea of free will is to find and reward good people and punish those who squander free will (by being jerks) free will probably necessitates the capacity for evil. (Otherwise, just stick with angels. Haven’t read the bible thoroughly but I’m pretty sure that’s basically the point of angels, perfect beings incapable of doing evil except for the one God made rebellious etc.)

    Yeah you might want to read it a little more thoroughly before trying to defend it: scripture is pretty explicit about not giving a fuck about you living a sinful life, so long as you repent in the end. ...you're familiar with Jesus, right? That's kinda his whole story. Like, you could live absolutely stuffed to the brim with sin, defraud your way into a position of high office, use it almost excusively for greed and to do things like start wars to distract the world from your visits to some sketchy island to rape children... and then open your heart to Jesus on your death bed, and enjoy eternity in heaven with no consequences at all.

    And going even further than that, according to scripture you can live an extremely moral life and still get thrown into hell if that moral behavior was for its own sake and not as a function that repentance. One of the stories is about the Pharisees, which is a big cautionary tale about walking the walk without actually believing in the message. Doesn't matter if you're doing good, if you're doing it for the wrong reasons, yer gonna burn!

    ...I grew up in a Christian household, church, sunday school, the whole 9. If your only exposure to it is through sermons and things like sunday school, you're not going to notice all the red flags, cuz they're not gonna talk about them. Start reading that shit on your own, and take the time to really understand what it's saying... it gets pretty fucked up. But again, don't take my word for it - read the fuckin thing.

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  • [–] 3 points 13 hours ago (1 child)

    So if there will be no suffering and no evil in the eternity, why can't it be like that already? If one is incapable of doing evil in heaven does he have free will? If your answer is that he will not be willing to do that, why? Because here on earth one can be good and die and one can be good and turn evil in the end, what makes heaven different and why it wouldn't be possible right here right now?

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  • [–] 0 points 48 minutes ago

    If one is incapable of doing evil in heaven does he have free will?

    What evil could you do in an eternal paradise? And similarly, in a paradise, what sort of temptation to evil do you foresee?

    what makes heaven different and why it wouldn’t be possible right here right now?

    Again, if you want to reward people who are good, you need a proving ground. In a paradise, anyone can be good. When life is harder (or has more temptations) that's when our character shines through.

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  • [–] 4 points 13 hours ago (1 child)

    This weighing of temporary suffering against eternal bliss is just another example of what a lousy game God is playing. He could have come up with something else - but he didn’t. That makes him, in any case, a huge masochistic asshole.

    And even if all of that were actually true, the question arises as to why anyone would ever regard such a being as the measure of all things, let alone worship it.

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  • [–] 0 points 43 minutes ago

    This weighing of temporary suffering against eternal bliss is just another example of what a lousy game God is playing. He could have come up with something else - but he didn’t.

    Wait, why is an asshole move? He figured out a way to figure out who ought to be rewarded for all eternity after a moment's existence, that's pretty amazing. Think how much of art etc is grappling with the concept of death or non-existence. God instead figured out, "hey, here's a way to sift through a bunch of people with free will and temptation and reward the good ones for all eternity." I'd be impressed!

    a huge masochistic asshole.

    I mean, I agree but only because I think you're not using the word you mean. (Masochist enjoys harming themselves, you probably mean sociopath or somesuch.) And yeah, I think you'd have to be a masochist to create this potential for infinite reward and then have ungrateful snots running around bitching about a temporary inconvenience.

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