"Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?" -Epicurus I'd like to hear a religious response fighting this wonderful quote which, in my opinion, defeats the idea of god through the use of logic.
This is similar to what philosophy calls "The problem of Evil". Its laid out something like this: 1: God exists and is all powerful, all loving, and seeing. 2. There is evil. 3. Therefor God doesn't exist. The most common response to this is Free Will. God could create a "perfect" world for us without evil, But instead he chose to give us freewill, which I would argue is the true "perfect" world. This is assuming of course that all evil stems from humans doing or causing evil. I think this applies to your question. He wants to prevent evil and can, but would rather give us free will. I can provide other responses if you want. Also I don't consider myself very "religious", but am familiar with this question.
Ohhh, I got another one! Why do we think there is even a god when it's only other humans that tell us so?
Well the religious answer is of course that God has spoken himself and revealed himself to us(through Jesus, prophets etc.). My answer is that we can infer that there is a god though our surroundings, and should come to the conclusion ourself.
"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have clearly been seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." Romans 1:20
God that is only good is only a part of God to me. It opens the door to quotes like this disproving his existance to people which is sad. That part of God is only a part of All-Power, which is the very reason evil hasn't been done away with. It allows for good to exist. The controlling, evil side of God is equal to the giving, good side of God. This is why God can exist yet evil does still. God isn't all good, and for good reason- if God was all good then there would be no evil to compare him to. Then He's not good- he just is. Just a necessary boundary in order to exist outside everything being the same in my opinion.
If that's true that God is a total jerk and I wouldn't want to worship him. I'd rather crack him in the head with a stick.
The evil side can't help but be the way He is, don't worship Him then. Worship what you want to and what you feel is worthy of worship. I just feel God is all things, I see where you are coming from not liking the evil side. It's just both sides are becoming the other and the cycle never stops- it's the only way to have any distinction at all beyond our normal senses. To have emotion, He had to contradict Himself in order to see separation. It wasn't just a boundary of mass and volume- it was a boundary of morality and a boundary of personality. A necessary evil I believe is how the saying goes. At least there are things in life that are worthy of worship or at least admiration. Regardless of the big picture I can still see the good in life, and that much is beautiful to me. Somehow I feel like God knows people don't like the way things are going, yet there is nothing He can do about it because they agreed for it to be this way because we are Him. Like we signed our names to this somehow and we can't escape now that we are here. This is what we asked for, it just wasn't what we expected- and somehow I think that's the answer. We always get what we ask for as God of this universe- the only thing we could ask for that would be more, would be that we didn't expect what the gift was!
Oh, okay, right, so we're not talking about a literal theistic being. I keep getting confused I agree with you for the most part then. The way you just take reality and personify it is always confusing to me, but I get what your saying I think.
2 words Free Will next question? God is not all loving, that is evident in the scriptures in the Bible. And why? Simply because God is everything and you can't acknowledge or appreciate the positive with out the negative aspects as well. This thread is about as rediculous as the god challenge one...
You are assuming that the Bible is correct and literally "The word of God". What if the Bible got it wrong? Not necessarily, If I make a birdhouse am I that birdhouse? Just because he created this world does not mean God is this world.
It is mentioned in the Bible, so therefore I consider it to be... Yes, I have my beliefs and you have yours. Regardless the Bible isn't necessarily the 'word of God' because only 'his' own words are the words of God and God did not write the Bible. you made the birdhouse out of resources provided by God. God is perceived as being an opitent figure, you all can agree with that right? so therefore free will is a factor.
But is 'God' not also being percieved as omniscient? Working with this premise then; we can assume that God already knows what has happened in the past, what is happening in the present and more importantly; what will happen in the future. If got has knowledge of future events, how can we claim to have free will?
Yes but most definitions describe God as being an omniscient being, and when discussing God you're using conjecture a lot of times. Suppose God knows our future but chooses not to interfere with us alltogether... peace
They are not relevant. That is an argumentum ad verecundiam, please try again, and preferably not with fallacious logic. sure, but then the proposition that he created us must be ignored. If he supposedly created us and is aware of the future, then he is responsible for our actions - no? He can't possibly not know what will not come of his creations.
Assuming we are created with free will, which you already questioned(and rightly so), then we are responsible for our own actions. Sure you could argue that he is responsible for allowing evil actions, but not for those actions. You can then argue that it would be worse not to allow those actions. Good only exists relative to evil, or at least we are only able to perceive it relative to evil. Maybe he can't see into the future. Maybe our understanding of time is so fucked up that the future is irrelevant to him. Maybe everything I said in this thread is completely wrong, but it got me thinking and thats always a good thing