If bad things happen, god is either not all powerful, doesn't love us, or doesn't exist
however
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This implies suffering and hardship are flawed or without purpose. Perhaps a story of redemption and triumph over evil was preferred, a world where good things like honor, courage, altruism, discipline, and wisdom could exist.
While I agree that evil can bring out the good, some things are so extreme that I can't imagine it would possibly have a purpose. For example- genocide, the suffering of the poor and starving, horrific random murders. Where is the triumph over evil in those cases?
I would say the kids that die everyday. The women that get raped and trafficked. and the Christians in Syria that are being crucified are examples of bad things
We must start by defining what is good and what is bad in a universal way. Either God's definition of "bad" is different than humanity's, or not. But if it is different, why has God not corrected it for us? Perhaps God's morality is not mappable to ours; if so, God can still be "bad" by our terms.
As society changes, so do our morals and ethics. It's quite possible that our morals and ethics have moved on from being like god's "morals" (in the case that he is not amoral).
Naturally god's "morals" would never change since he would exist outside of time
God must be outside of space and time or else he would not be all powerful. He would be constrained by time.
If being outside of time means something couldn't/didn't exist, then how do you explain the Big Bang Theory? Before the Big Bang, was there time? Did time exist?
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The Big Bang created our universe, but does that not also mean that at the creation of our universe, time 'started'?
People who believe in god don't say god existed outside of time just to avoid some problematic questions, they say that because if it were not true, then god, or what we would think of as a god, would not actually exist.
To be outside of time is in the nature/concept of god. For god to come into existence, that would mean 1) he did not always exist and 2) something else must have created him.
But since this is god we are talking about, he has to have always existed, thus meaning he exists outside of space and time. He exists in such a place that it's practically impossible for us to describe it, since we have to follow by time's rules and the limitation of our language and understanding.
God hasn't just always existed. It's more than that, he just is. Kinda like why when you throw a ball in the air it comes down. It comes down because of gravity. Does gravity have an existence? No, not really, it just is. It's just a law. It is what it is, and that's what I liken the concept of god to. He's like a law. He is what he is and he doesn't change, because time doesn't affect him.
And this is where things get tricky and there's just too much to talk about. The implications of time existing before the big bang would take some time to think about. Your comment about there being no "before" the big bang, you would be correct, because "before" is a time descriptor word. Since we
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Since we are talking about before time, it's really just not possible for people to explain a concept like that. Because anything that existed before time, has always existed (but of course always implies time was involved, which it wasn't). and that's why it's hard to explain. We can only really use time descriptors to describe things like this. Before time, anything that existed had to have always existed. Be it god or w/e else could possibly be out there. Since time doesn't affect this being, they just "are". They simply be. There is no "god exists", because existence implies time. No, god would have to be just like a law of the universe. Always "existed", always constant, never changing.
If god is eternal, then time is eternal and the universe is eternal.
It seem to me you are imagining a beginning of time, and a before of the beginning where god would still be. But it is incoherent, if there is a beginning there is no before.
This, too, is where I kinda get stuck and trying to logically think it through. But I think the reason I get stuck is simply because of language restraints. It's not really possible to talk about things in such a way that doesn't involve time. Time is essential to our nature, how we live. To
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To think about a "time" before time really just kinda makes our head wanna explode. God just is, in the neverending cosmos. God caused Big Bang, and the Universe happened and time came into existence. For god to have created the universe, he must be outside the universe or the logic wouldn't make sense. You can't created something you are supposed to be inside of, right?
You can imagine gravity to be a ontological fact, and then it is, and have a existence. Or you can imagine gravity to only be a element of our model to explain the world, a way to understand, and then it is not, and have no existence outside of ourself.
I think I was going more for your last definition. Yes, gravity is a real thing, so in a sense it does have an "existence". The definition of existence I was attempting to work with though, was, I guess, have a life. Being a live or a tangible thing. Gravity isn't tangible, it's more of a thing that
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It's more of a thing that happens, it's a law our universe follows by. Is it, perhaps, possible that god is similar to a universal law, except a law that defines the entirety of how the universe should work? Like math or something, for example.
If our current understanding of what a god would be is correct, then nothing came before god and no one created god. This is because god exists in a place without time, and if you don't have time you can't have change. Without change you can't have a before.
Thus, god does not want us to not suffer. Love implies care. Care implies protection or interest. Either god does not want to protect us, or has no interest in our suffering, thus he does not love us.
Love is a thought. Thus, if god can't think, god can't love. Also, if god is outside time, he also cannot act, as action means change over time. Thus he is **both** unloving and unpowerful in our universe.
ABILITY and NEED are not the same thing. It's a misdirection. God can't change himself but he doesn't need to so therefore he is still all powerful? That's internally inconsistent.
romulusnr
Either way, the most powerful being can't become more powerful if they are already the most powerful. The most powerful is the most powerful, their ability to change how powerful they are is irrelevant if they are always the most powerful.
Moving the goalposts. The argument at the top of the page is:
"If bad things happen, god is either not all powerful, doesn't love us, or doesn't exist"
The argument here admits, then, that got is NOT all powerful.
romulusnr
The opening argument does say "all powerful." "All powerful" *does* mean "absolutely powerful." ALL and MOST are not the same. ALL is totality; *every* power. MOST is not totality. If God is ONLY *most* powerful, he is not *all* powerful, thus the argument is settled: God is *not* all powerful.
Gravity can be detected. God cannot. He is not a property of the universe. All properties of the universe can be physically detected, from solar wind to heat expansion to background radiation to gravity to magnetism to electrical charge to nuclear decay.
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If god is outside of time and space, then he does not exist in our universe, which is inside of time and space.
If god does exist despite being outside of time and space, there is no way to deny that other entities and objects also exist outside time and space. If other entities and objects exist outside time and space, then there is no way to deny that there may be other gods in that same non-space, perhaps other universes. If there are other gods, than God is not all powerful because he would not have power over the other gods.
It's quite possible god has no views at all on "good" or "bad" as he would be an amoral being.
Concepts like "good" or "bad" may not apply to a supreme being like a god. Remember, a being like god exists outside of time itself, what can we really know about such a being.
So let's say god is all powerful, but amoral, so he doesn't see the things that happen to us as bad or good. Can that amorality be compatible with "love?" Even if god doesn't see them as bad or good, can't he see that WE see them that way, and suffer as a result? Can inaction in that light be love?
We could also go on to say that the concepts of "worship" and "sacrifice" were created by the religious leaders, not god. Organized religion has been known to be rather controlling of it's members.
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Scientology's "church";
Catholicism in the middle ages, etc.;
Certain sects of Islam;
Cults (though I wouldn't really consider them an organized 'religion')
If our understanding of those "plans" is too superficial, it follows that thinking and talking about "his" "plans" and "having" "reasons" are also superficial. Probably god dont have any plan.
That's the thing- he may, or he may not. You're basically saying that we can't comprehend why he lets evil happen. Therefore, by our human definition of "goodness," his actions in that cannot hold merit. We can't just say "God works in mysterious ways" and avoid the argument altogether.
That isn't necessarily true. In the Christian perspective, God is all-powerful but gives us our freedom so we can love Him back, without freedom to choose there is no real love. The bad things in this world happen because we chose not to follow God and they are why God sent His Son to die for us
- Being free from being harmed - Being free from aging - Being free from malaria, cancer, and a lot of other disease - Being free from hunger - Being free from not being a slave - ...
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And he even threatens people to send them to hell if we don’t do what he want, or at least to miss heaven.
He doesn't seem to give a fuck about freedom.
Having true freedom means being vulnerable to all of those things. If god was out there moving "pieces" around to push you into having a good life, that isn't freedom. That is being a slave to someone else's decisions.
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Another example: Take freedom of speech. Freedom of speech means you can practically say anything you want without repercussion from the government (except in cases of slander and the like of course).
What you are basically arguing is that, in order to have true freedom of speech we should restrict others from saying mean or offensive things. Only then would we have true freedom...... which is complete nonsense of course. To have true freedom of speech means that you have to also allow other people with bad mouths to speak as well, even if you don't like what the have to say.
Not at all, you are implying that protecting someone from the harm they want to avoid is to give up freedom, it is quite the opposite. If god was protecting me from being a slave, because i want it, he would not diminish my freedom, he would greatly increase it.
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It is scary how people can rationalize to a point where they almost twist concepts to a point where they became antonymous to the basic meaning, just to protect and keep their first opinions.
"There are slavery because god care of freedom…"
And even if god care more about the freedom of supporters of slavery than about the slaves, he could at least protect people from hunger and cancer, that would not decrease the freedom of anyone.
I can see you think I am a theist. I'm not. I did my research and have basically stopped at agnosticism. Anyways, I understand what you are saying, but it's a bit of a strawman argument. That or we are working on different definitions of freedom/free will. For god to commit some divine intervention
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would mean he is unnaturally changing the way things would have naturally turned out. Of course we all want to survive, it's our instincts. But does dying mean our free will has been taken away? Or does it mean the amount of choices we had left dropped to 1? Is death even a choice at all? It seems more like something that just happens. It's inevitable. God believes we should have free will, the freedom of choice, and so he does not intervene. However, that doesn't mean that a human, someone who isn't god, can't take away our free will. Everyone has free will, and unfortunately that means some people will use their free will to take away the will of others. That basically means this entire argument has nothing to do with god. Take this for example: Let's say I become the Dictator of America. I believe that everyone has the right to free speech. The right to say whatever you want. Some people say some really nasty and mean things, but I'm not going to stop them, even though I know it hurts other. Because no matter what, I will fight for your right to say what you want, even if I don't agree with what you have to say. Now let's say Business A is firing people who say things against Business A's beliefs. Is that denying you your right to free speech? No, it isn't because I'm not the one doing it. It's one of your fellow citizens.
Does this example kind of help?
I think it is probable we are working with different definition of freedom. (i don’t even consider free-will because i think it is a ill-defined concept most of the time). It seem it will be very hard to agree without clearing this point.
Moving the goalposts again. Every single word is being redefined in order to fit the desired outcome. First it was "love" and now it is "freedom." Eventually no word will have meaning, all in order to contort meaning itself to fit the desired conclusion. But logical arguments are not tied to words, but to meanings of the words as argued. Fluid semantics is not an argument but a desperate fallacy.
romulusnr
To the red herring fallacy. I don’t try to redefine the word to meet a particular conclusion, i would like we define it in the first place to know if we are all speaking about the same thing, and avoid misunderstanding and useless disagreement. + with a clear definition, errors are easier to spot.
If you not prevent people from restricting the free speech of others, then you aren’t defending free speech, you are basically a dictator doing nothing. And if you don’t do anything in politics, you aren’t a dictator.
The United States does this exact thing, and I surprised you didn't see the connection I was trying to make. The United States defends free speech, it's in the First Amendment. However there are plenty of companies that will fire people or not hire people because of their beliefs or what they say.
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The US does not do anything against those companies because they aren't taking away your rights. Only the government can do that.
Just like how, in the case of god I guess, he's the only one who can take away your free will, not the actions of others. If bad things happen, it's simply because people do bad things.
The resulting presumption is that companies are loving towards their employees. You must first establish that before using companies firing employees as an analogy to god's love.
romulusnr
To the false analogy fallacy, the analogy was between god giving us free will and the government giving us the right to free speech. This has nothing to do with god loving us or not, this argument is specifically talking about free will.
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Since this is true there is no need to establish that business do or do not love their employees, as that is irrelevant to the analogy.
I was not thinking you was a theist (even if i know it was possible) I was thinking you was a agnostic, your opinion is that we can’t know, which mean you will try to find a way to avoid incoherence in most concepts of god (with strange stories). This is the opinion you are believing and defending
I will make a analogy of what you are currently doing. Someone say "1+1+1=3 because 2+1=3". Which go against your opinion. Then you do strange calculus and you end up doing a error in it, and then you believe you have find the error in the first reasoning.
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If you was trying to find the error in your own reasoning as hard as in the reasoning you disagree with, you would surely see it.
I see a lot of intelligent people fall in this kind of thing, because intelligence don’t prevent this, you will just end up with more complex justifications (enough complex to make a error).
More rationality is needed.
He gives us freedom of choice. If we never had a choice to fly like a bird, then he isn't preventing anything. What are you even trying to say with this premise anyways? We aren't birds, we are humans. We were never made to fly.
tokani
assuming god is the creator of physical laws he could have made the laws in a way we could freely choose how we transport ourself (fly walk teleport) but he made them different => no free choise in the kind of transportation (god is preventing our choise to fly by the physical laws)
If he creates a world & does it with all the foreknowledge of what will transpire, then we don't have free will. He made us knowing what our choices were going to be. If you extrapolate further, this means god creates some people solely for the purpose of inflicting pain on them in life & in hell.
Is it not possible for god to know what will happen, but also for people to have free will? Let's assume that fortune tellers actually have supernatural powers.Through them telling you what will happen, they have influenced your decision and no longer are you working off of your own will.
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However, if they didn't tell you your future, they would still know it, but you would still have the ability to freely choose for yourself what you want to do. Is the fortune teller all of a sudden taking away your free will by not telling you your future? Or is the fortune teller giving you free will by letting you make decisions on your own?
Thus we would only have free will up to the extent that God does not act within our spacetime. All the things that are considered acts of God are thus violations of our free will. Either god cares about maintaining our free will, or he acts within our universe. It can't be both.
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If god arbitrarily violates our free will at his whim, then it is not really free will at all, but conditional will.
creating the univese would already be an act in our spacetime => if god gives us 100%free will he didn't create the univese and does not interact with us at all
Does god decide not to do anything because he values our free will? If so, then wouldn't it follow that prayer and worship is pointless? Since god will not be involved because he doesn't want to interfere with our free will. Prayer and worship shouldn't change that.
If God is an omnipotent, all-powerful being, why does he have the narcissistic need to be worshipped? If he has created everything, why are humans chosen as the one species that need to subject themselves to him? Aren't all creatures created equal?
Is that love? What is love? Is it to punish with death for disobedience? Again, if we redefine love to have more than one meaning, dependent on who is doing the loving, we are just moving the goalposts. We must agree on a universal definition of "love" to decide whether an act is an act of love.
When a parent puts soap in their child's mouth for saying a bad word, or when parents ground their children because they did something they shouldn't have, is that because the parents hate their kids or is it because they love them?
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I'd make the argument that the parents love their kids enough to punish them because they know that, through punishment, their kids will learn how to behave in society (or whatever lesson the parent was trying to teach).
First if parents tortures or kill their children, then they don’t love them, it is complete abuse. Second if parents sometime need to chide their children, it is because they didn’t find another way to avoid a greater harm. I think that god have more capacity than a lost parent.
Sorry i was not implying that. I wanted to say that if parents were able to educate their children without it, they would avoid it. Parents chide their children because they aren’t all powerful omnipotent entities, they have to deal with reality.
You have to put this in perspective. (I've been assuming we are talking about the Christian god so I will continue to do so.) To god, disobeying his commands are punishable by death. Or rather, they are only punishable by death. I made the parent-child metaphor for simplicity's sake, but
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since you have decided to go to the extreme with it, let me explain myself. The Jewish people (the chosen people of god) made a covenant with god (a really really important promise/contract). The agreed upon details of the contract boil down to basically this: Follow me (and only me) and my rules, and I will make your people fruitful and to bring them to "the promised land". Of course this land was a literal place, but it could have a double meaning and also be talking about heaven, or some afterlife. The chosen people obviously agreed to this deal, but here's the catch. If they disobeyed god or worshiped idols, they would be killed (and also sent of to the desert. They were "grounded" if you will). And so that's why things are on a much more serious level between mankind and god. Because we agreed to a deal saying that if we screwed up, we are dead. (of course there is the whole Jesus story but that's irrelevant to this debate).
What makes you say that? Do you all of a sudden get to decide what a "real loving god" would be like? Do you get to decide what love is to a god? By you saying what love is means you are making definitions that restrict god, thus putting you above god's level. You are not god, god is god.
So now you get to choose the definitions by which god has to work by? God is supposed to be "the supreme being". You don't get to choose what god is or isn't, and just because he doesn't do what you think he should do doesn't give you the ability to say he doesn't exist.
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If you think the president should act in a certain way, and he/she doesn't, does that all of a sudden mean he isn't the president? Just because you say so?
By saying god is "the supreme being", you choose partially what god is. The mere fact of giving a meaning to a word imply we can give properties to what this word refers.
ie : if we can’t say anything about god, it mean the word "god", doesn’t mean anything.
Yes, the mere fact of giving god some properties : "omnipotent", "loving", etc, narrow the potential things he can do. Otherwise those properties wouldn’t mean anything. It is not because "i say so", "i say so" because it is.
as i talk about a loving god it is the kind of "loving" i define not god (like i'd say a "boring person" than is this person boring from my perspective)
God is the "supreme being". It doesn't matter what you think god should be like. God is god. If to us, god is evil, then that's just how it is. You don't get to choose what god is or isn't, only god does.
if he chooses to not allow person x in heaven he doesn't love person x => is not a loving god. by a human definition of loving (since we are humans we take the human definition not the divine definition)
Perhaps person x did not get into heaven because they didn't follow all of god's rules. Similar to how a parent punishes their children if they do something bad. It doesn't mean they don't love them, they are just teaching them a lesson.
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Perhaps we consider an eternity in hell as a bit of an overkill in punishment, but then again we don't even know what the afterlife is like (if it even exists) so this becomes somewhat irrelevant.
1. This branch implies the existence of heaven and afterlife so we stay with this (in this branch). 2. After punishing a child the child gets a new chance of doing it right person X is dead so he has no new chance to use his lesson in any way. God could teach the lesson without punishing him.
Just because bad things happen in the world doesn't mean it's because you didn't follow god. Even people who are devote followers of god have terrible things happen to them.
tokani
Bad things happen to everyone, no matter who you are. Many people say that goodness comes from god, but that really isn't true. God is an amoral being. He is above morals (or at least that's sort of one part of the concept of a god).
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Basically whatever people think is good or bad does not necessarily correlate with what god thinks is good or bad, if good or bad are even concepts to god.
People complain about this explanation because they want to think that god is like a good person. God is supposed to be an ultimate being, perhaps humans are the only ones with morals and god just does what he wants?
If God is amoral, doesn't that mean that by our definition of "goodness," he is not "good," just neutral? That's possible, of course, but I can't see then how some say He loves us unconditionally and wants all the best for us...
religionisdumb
