It seems that in the end it’s one of two things… There’s what’s known as the Epicurean paradox or the problem of evil, where the confusion arises from many sources: forgetting about the existence of free will and the causal chain of events, semantic nonsense or even simple immaturity. This is the one that’s just all fluff, all wind, but words can kick one’s ass, especially if you live more in words than in reality.
I am assuming we are speaking about the Christian God in this context.
God is all knowing, and omnipresent. This means that God knows in advance the result of it’s own decisions.
If God granted free will to humans knowing that humans would commit horrible acts with it against each other, how can that God be considered benevolent?
And then there’s the one that I respect a little bit more: while the beginning of the causal chain that we can conceive (so, embedded in/attached to space and time) is evidently not a source of it, but also since things exist today we can’t deny the ‘proto-thing’ existed then I can somewhat accept you telling me that this essence we call matter and energy was always there and God is not necessary and etc etc. God has been understood for millennia as the ‘prime engine’ and unmoved mover, behind the universe and before it, the One that ‘comes from nothing’ that we have to accept because nothing comes from nothing and things exist. But many folk just skip that part and say “things exist, that’s all I can see and that’s all I will believe in”. That’s fair, but I better not see you making any logical inferences then, lol.
The question remains both Theologically and Scientifically unanswered: If “nothing” can come from “nothing”, where did the “thing” that created “everything” come from?
If we accept the Big Bang or Creationism as two theories explaining the same event from a different point of view, what was existence prior to that? Did God simply exist in infinite nothingness up until the point of creation? Wouldn’t the existence of God contradict “nothingness” simply by existing?
The mystery is why He created anything at all, sure, but our existence and everything that surrounds us is a net positive, a free gift that we can always opt out of if we truly wish and bring it back to the zero that nonbelievers believe in. Nothingness is just a rope away after all, right? Every truly happy person out there, believer or not, sees it as the gift it is. God didn’t have to make anything, yet He did, and my life despite its hardships, created by other people, has been a very enjoyable experience. Now, the promise of God (yes, we’re talking about Abrahamic tenets here) is that of eternal life as long as you keep Him in mind and act right (pretty small price for some, seemingly impossible for others). In that context, sure, God is inherently, supremely benevolent (first you get a life for free that can honestly be great and you can always opt out of… although you can also suffer and 99% of it will be due to someone else, of course; but then you get another one that depends entirely on your own deeds and nothing else). But even without it, how could I reasonably blame God for other people’s amorality when, as a moral person or at least one who tries to be one, I understand it’s not that difficult not to cross some major lines? That’s it’s entirely in their hands and they just decided they didn’t give a fuck? That’s the immaturity I’m talking about. You might as well complain to your parents that they brought you into the world, lol, right? There’s no cause and effect chain here between my childhood bully, his abuse and God’s will, there’s just one between (for instance) his childhood trauma, lack of information on his situation, lack of self control, lack of reflection and, finally but perhaps more importantly, lack of empathy and ‘humanity’. It’s not ‘unfair’ that God endowed us with free will, it’s just the way He wanted us to be, for whatever reasons He had, and whether we like it or not (another function of free will, lol) it’s what we’re left with. And the world could be close to utopia if dads raised their kids, husbands didn’t beat their wives, Casey Anthony didn’t murder her daughter, of course! All we can do is invite people into morality and then reprimand/banish/incarcerate them if they poop on the invitation.
For the second part: you’re thinking of God as a thing. Or even worse, as a man, maybe (Christians do this, probably due to their creed’s Roman origins, lol). God is not here, God is outside. The Creator cannot be constrained in its creation! It would mean that the creation came before the Creator, lol, which is obvious nonsense. And so this creation is at least a level beneath Him, and in the same way that Stan Lee is not carbon on paper and text bubbles, God is not matter nor energy. I can tell you that much with logical certainty. Whether you wanna stop at “things exist, at times in shocking order, and compose a chain of cause and effect that takes us to the beginning of time and space, and that’s all I can say with any degree of material certainty”, or follow up it up with “and I believe that, because of this complex existence, a ‘higher level entity’ with more complexity than existence itself made it and sustains it”, is up to you. I haven’t really found any connecting arguments or whatever, which is why I respect an agnostic position if you reach this conclusion, but maybe there are not and they are not necessary (belief can only happen in the absence of material information, after all [Jesus’ “belief in the unseen”]). Also, there’s only so many things you can communicate through words!
I rarely get into these sorts of debaters because they’re almost always pointless, however a few of the things you said made me want to answer this.
You’re completely missing the point for the first argument, people can’t choose to fly or kill each other by staring, so if humans were created by God then any flaws in humanity, including but not limited to ability to suffer and cause suffering, is part of God’s design that he could have removed. In other words, if God gave people the option to cause harm knowing they would (omniscience, remember) then he’s directly responsible for everything bad that happens, it’s like a father that gives a sharp knife to a kid and tells him to go run and play with his friends. God could have prevented suffering to begin with, therefore the fact that it exists proves that suffering is part of his plan. If that’s the case then yes, you being bullied and your bully being in an abusive home is all done by design, which is very twisted if you think about it.
As for the second argument you admit that things exist outside our universe that can affect it, if that’s the case you don’t need God to create the Universe, we could be the result of a collision between two extra dimensional rocks. And that’s sort of the point of that argument, i.e. that you don’t need God to explain the beginning of the Universe because whatever question you have about the origin of the Universe can also be directed at God (e.g. and what caused that) and whatever answer you give using God can also be used for a non-God answer (e.g. extra dimensional causes)
Extra dimensional causes for creation, sustainability and order? Yeah, that’s what we call God, lol. And it has to be One, for actual reasons (read Ibn Arabi).
And I know God could’ve made the human equivalent of calculators, but he didn’t want to. There’s no other way to ‘make people that cause no harm’. I mean, many of my sad memories involve only words, should God have made people mute? You can forget the hands too, lol. He wanted intelligent beings with freedom. He made a sandbox and put us in it. Everything you’re talking about is nothing but the product of human ingenuity (and even before knives we were using sticks and stones), and all the evil you’ve been subjected to is the product of the misuse of human freedom. We wouldn’t even be able to reflect on things like we are right now if it weren’t for it! You want a world in which PEOPLE are not people, and are disappointed in God, instead of being happy of being alive for free (and I assume you’re enjoying it because you’re an adult arguing online, not the e-ghost of a man who roped some years ago) and being disappointed in people misusing their freedom (if you’re a correct person as I hope you are you see how easy it is not to be blight on the world). It’s immature and the product of a misunderstanding of reality. And I didn’t have a bully, I was the ‘bully’! But I wanted to make it ‘relatable’. And yes, you can 100% act right after a very difficult childhood. Knowing this is how I know the people who in their adulthood are still misbehaving are simply being willingly lazy and dgaf and/or hiding their heads in the sand in cowardice…
Nope, just extra dimensional cause for creation, no higher purpose required, for all we know whenever two rocks collide in that scenario they create a universe.
Also no, you’re completely missing the point, if God is omnipotent he could have made humans to never suffer and still be free, in theory most Christians believe that Heaven is free of suffering, do you cease being yourself when you go to heaven then? Just because you or I can’t imagine a world where humans are free but can’t hurt one another doesn’t mean that’s beyond the realm of possibilities, and if your counter argument will be that then we wouldn’t really be free, I tell you that humans can’t explode someone by looking at them, so he already imposed some limitations on the amount of harm we could cause to each other, yet you don’t see this as less freedom because you just accepted that’s the natural state, I propose there could be a natural state where humans can’t cause harm to each other and are still free.
No, you’re picturing impossibilities because not every thought is rational, thinking they could become realities and being disappointed about it and finally blaming God for it. “If God were truly omnipotent he’d make 1=0 and A≠A!”. And perhaps only those who were tested and showed, at least by the end of their days, that they were people who refused and would never cross (again?) major moral lines are accepted in a place with no lackings and no stress, which means Heaven can actually be entirely utopic. And if humans had lasers coming from their eyes from birth then we wouldn’t have made it past our first cave and God would’ve just had to make humans like us so we could actually develop a little bit, lol. Thank God he didn’t make us with lazerssss! 😂 Or claws or fangs, for that matter. At least we developed/were given moral codes that we can easily understand and willingly follow early enough in our civilizational development, cause we were dangerous and impulsive enough without them and now we have nukes… But of course He didn’t, cause we might be stupid AF at times but He’s on the opposite end, in a category of His own.
I am assuming we are speaking about the Christian God in this context.
God is all knowing, and omnipresent. This means that God knows in advance the result of it’s own decisions.
If God granted free will to humans knowing that humans would commit horrible acts with it against each other, how can that God be considered benevolent?
The question remains both Theologically and Scientifically unanswered: If “nothing” can come from “nothing”, where did the “thing” that created “everything” come from?
If we accept the Big Bang or Creationism as two theories explaining the same event from a different point of view, what was existence prior to that? Did God simply exist in infinite nothingness up until the point of creation? Wouldn’t the existence of God contradict “nothingness” simply by existing?
The mystery is why He created anything at all, sure, but our existence and everything that surrounds us is a net positive, a free gift that we can always opt out of if we truly wish and bring it back to the zero that nonbelievers believe in. Nothingness is just a rope away after all, right? Every truly happy person out there, believer or not, sees it as the gift it is. God didn’t have to make anything, yet He did, and my life despite its hardships, created by other people, has been a very enjoyable experience. Now, the promise of God (yes, we’re talking about Abrahamic tenets here) is that of eternal life as long as you keep Him in mind and act right (pretty small price for some, seemingly impossible for others). In that context, sure, God is inherently, supremely benevolent (first you get a life for free that can honestly be great and you can always opt out of… although you can also suffer and 99% of it will be due to someone else, of course; but then you get another one that depends entirely on your own deeds and nothing else). But even without it, how could I reasonably blame God for other people’s amorality when, as a moral person or at least one who tries to be one, I understand it’s not that difficult not to cross some major lines? That’s it’s entirely in their hands and they just decided they didn’t give a fuck? That’s the immaturity I’m talking about. You might as well complain to your parents that they brought you into the world, lol, right? There’s no cause and effect chain here between my childhood bully, his abuse and God’s will, there’s just one between (for instance) his childhood trauma, lack of information on his situation, lack of self control, lack of reflection and, finally but perhaps more importantly, lack of empathy and ‘humanity’. It’s not ‘unfair’ that God endowed us with free will, it’s just the way He wanted us to be, for whatever reasons He had, and whether we like it or not (another function of free will, lol) it’s what we’re left with. And the world could be close to utopia if dads raised their kids, husbands didn’t beat their wives, Casey Anthony didn’t murder her daughter, of course! All we can do is invite people into morality and then reprimand/banish/incarcerate them if they poop on the invitation.
For the second part: you’re thinking of God as a thing. Or even worse, as a man, maybe (Christians do this, probably due to their creed’s Roman origins, lol). God is not here, God is outside. The Creator cannot be constrained in its creation! It would mean that the creation came before the Creator, lol, which is obvious nonsense. And so this creation is at least a level beneath Him, and in the same way that Stan Lee is not carbon on paper and text bubbles, God is not matter nor energy. I can tell you that much with logical certainty. Whether you wanna stop at “things exist, at times in shocking order, and compose a chain of cause and effect that takes us to the beginning of time and space, and that’s all I can say with any degree of material certainty”, or follow up it up with “and I believe that, because of this complex existence, a ‘higher level entity’ with more complexity than existence itself made it and sustains it”, is up to you. I haven’t really found any connecting arguments or whatever, which is why I respect an agnostic position if you reach this conclusion, but maybe there are not and they are not necessary (belief can only happen in the absence of material information, after all [Jesus’ “belief in the unseen”]). Also, there’s only so many things you can communicate through words!
I rarely get into these sorts of debaters because they’re almost always pointless, however a few of the things you said made me want to answer this.
You’re completely missing the point for the first argument, people can’t choose to fly or kill each other by staring, so if humans were created by God then any flaws in humanity, including but not limited to ability to suffer and cause suffering, is part of God’s design that he could have removed. In other words, if God gave people the option to cause harm knowing they would (omniscience, remember) then he’s directly responsible for everything bad that happens, it’s like a father that gives a sharp knife to a kid and tells him to go run and play with his friends. God could have prevented suffering to begin with, therefore the fact that it exists proves that suffering is part of his plan. If that’s the case then yes, you being bullied and your bully being in an abusive home is all done by design, which is very twisted if you think about it.
As for the second argument you admit that things exist outside our universe that can affect it, if that’s the case you don’t need God to create the Universe, we could be the result of a collision between two extra dimensional rocks. And that’s sort of the point of that argument, i.e. that you don’t need God to explain the beginning of the Universe because whatever question you have about the origin of the Universe can also be directed at God (e.g. and what caused that) and whatever answer you give using God can also be used for a non-God answer (e.g. extra dimensional causes)
Extra dimensional causes for creation, sustainability and order? Yeah, that’s what we call God, lol. And it has to be One, for actual reasons (read Ibn Arabi).
And I know God could’ve made the human equivalent of calculators, but he didn’t want to. There’s no other way to ‘make people that cause no harm’. I mean, many of my sad memories involve only words, should God have made people mute? You can forget the hands too, lol. He wanted intelligent beings with freedom. He made a sandbox and put us in it. Everything you’re talking about is nothing but the product of human ingenuity (and even before knives we were using sticks and stones), and all the evil you’ve been subjected to is the product of the misuse of human freedom. We wouldn’t even be able to reflect on things like we are right now if it weren’t for it! You want a world in which PEOPLE are not people, and are disappointed in God, instead of being happy of being alive for free (and I assume you’re enjoying it because you’re an adult arguing online, not the e-ghost of a man who roped some years ago) and being disappointed in people misusing their freedom (if you’re a correct person as I hope you are you see how easy it is not to be blight on the world). It’s immature and the product of a misunderstanding of reality. And I didn’t have a bully, I was the ‘bully’! But I wanted to make it ‘relatable’. And yes, you can 100% act right after a very difficult childhood. Knowing this is how I know the people who in their adulthood are still misbehaving are simply being willingly lazy and dgaf and/or hiding their heads in the sand in cowardice…
Nope, just extra dimensional cause for creation, no higher purpose required, for all we know whenever two rocks collide in that scenario they create a universe.
Also no, you’re completely missing the point, if God is omnipotent he could have made humans to never suffer and still be free, in theory most Christians believe that Heaven is free of suffering, do you cease being yourself when you go to heaven then? Just because you or I can’t imagine a world where humans are free but can’t hurt one another doesn’t mean that’s beyond the realm of possibilities, and if your counter argument will be that then we wouldn’t really be free, I tell you that humans can’t explode someone by looking at them, so he already imposed some limitations on the amount of harm we could cause to each other, yet you don’t see this as less freedom because you just accepted that’s the natural state, I propose there could be a natural state where humans can’t cause harm to each other and are still free.
No, you’re picturing impossibilities because not every thought is rational, thinking they could become realities and being disappointed about it and finally blaming God for it. “If God were truly omnipotent he’d make 1=0 and A≠A!”. And perhaps only those who were tested and showed, at least by the end of their days, that they were people who refused and would never cross (again?) major moral lines are accepted in a place with no lackings and no stress, which means Heaven can actually be entirely utopic. And if humans had lasers coming from their eyes from birth then we wouldn’t have made it past our first cave and God would’ve just had to make humans like us so we could actually develop a little bit, lol. Thank God he didn’t make us with lazerssss! 😂 Or claws or fangs, for that matter. At least we developed/were given moral codes that we can easily understand and willingly follow early enough in our civilizational development, cause we were dangerous and impulsive enough without them and now we have nukes… But of course He didn’t, cause we might be stupid AF at times but He’s on the opposite end, in a category of His own.