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One day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you’ll agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half submerged log.
As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen. Mother and children dining upon mother and children.
And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.
-Sir Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals
Seem confusing?
That’s right - because anything that’s made up and subject to interpretation IS!
More like our very existence as sentient, conscious creatures on a rock orbiting a star in the vast emptiness of space contained in a umiverse doesn’t make sense in the first place, so any attempt to explain it would barely make sense anyway.
And even if it does not make sense, here we are. We ourself are the proof that things are not true or false just on the basis of our understanding of those same things.
What if an almighty God created the universe without evil but with free-will, and then one angel decided to challange the way God rule, so that God has to let him rule to show everyone whose way of rule is the best?
Simply killing that angel would not answer the challenge, on the contrary, killing that angel would demonstrate that God is a dictator.
As if the christian God had a problem with killing, considering they are a mass murderer compared to their angel.
Furthermore, why did they create an angel which became “evil” in the first place? This brings us right back to the Epicurean paradox.
What’s the definition of “all powerful”? Would an all-powerful being need to be able to draw a square without it being a rectangle? Or to build a house without walls?
If the answer is “no”, then I’d argue that the left most arrow/conclusion is logically wrong/misplaced/invalid. Assuming that “free will” is not possible without “evil”.
That’s the thing, it seems too simplistic, though probably is a good start towards something, better understanding I suppose.
Like all planar squares must be rectangles, but curved square nonplanar washers exist… and those neither disprove nor prove the existence of a God (or Gods, or any spiritual beings at all)?:-P
The devil as they say is in the details, like what exactly is evil, in order to go from mere wordplay to true philosophical understanding. imho at least.
Agreed.
Evil is also a subjective concept, the same action can be perceived as good or evil depending on the understood context.
When you allow action on the subjective experience of life aka free will, you also allow evil to emerge from those actions as those interaction collide with the subjective experience of others.
Well sure. You could argue that evil is subjective. But even so we could just go with gods definition of “evil” things and use the 10 commandments as what he deems good or bad. In which case he created a world in which people will do the things he told them not to (same with the Apple) which makes him either not good or not all powerful.
Personally God becomes a lot more palettable when he is a non all powerful and non all knowing higher dimensional being that just created us and can’t be fucked dealing with this problem he created. Like avoiding cleaning the dishes in the sink.
I wouldn’t put too much credibility towards the commandments or any established religions for that matter.
The personification of god has always bothered me. The meme is a very effective argument against the all knowing super human god dogma with its cryptic masterplan but it falls flat when you personally relate god more to an intelligent-conscious force of nature.
I once heard omnipotent doesn’t mean they can overturn logic itself, which seems a little unintuitve to me, but hey why not.
Being unbound by logic / information theory would make it impossible to reason about anything at all
Thereby implying that everything becomes meaningless and there is no point in believing anything.
Are you 16 and this is deep?
It’s actually a really important subject and very deep if you actually think about it. The problem of evil has challenged philosophers for centuries, and apologists have not been able to square the circle of evil, all knowing, all powerful and all loving.
evil exists -> no
Honestly that’s probably the only way out of the problem of evil.
That said you are on a path of ethical relativism, and from a practical standpoint it’s fucked up beyond belief.
Also so much of religion is founded on the good/ evil dynamic that if this was removed, everything else would crumble.
there is a non terminating loop in this diagram and that is where god is mic drop
Good and Evil are ultimately relative and subjective terms. They also don’t really explore the mechanisms by which Good/Evil occur or are evaluated.
The argument from Evil really just boils down to “God isn’t real because I’m not happy”. And that doesn’t logically follow.
A ghost hidden within the finite state automata, you say, dare we call it a Deus ex machina even? :-P
That’s where christians are stuck, at least
Kind of falls apart if rejecting the idea of objective good and evil and interpreting the parable of the fruit of knowledge in Eden as the inheritance of a relative knowledge of good and evil for oneself which inherently makes any shared consensus utopia an impossibility.
In general, we have very bizarre constraints on what we imagine for the divine, such as it always being a dominant personality.
Is God allowed to be a sub? Where’s the world religion built around that idea?
What about the notion that the variety of life is not a test for us to pass/fail, but more like a Rorsarch test where it allows us to determine for ourselves what is good or not?
Yes, antiquated inflexible ideas don’t hold up well to scrutiny. But adopting those as the only idea to contrast with equally inflexible consideration just seems like a waste of time for everyone involved, no?
I’ve always thought the better argument was to replace ‘good and evil’ with ‘happiness and sadness’. Everything you said makes sense because good and evil are subjective, but at least everyone agrees that happiness is a goal in itself that we all strive for, regardless of what it takes to get you there personally.
If you go through this chart and use the word ‘happiness’ instead, it becomes pretty clear that god is not omnipotent and omniscient and benevolent, or we would only ever feel happiness.
Wdyat about the answer that unsong gives to this? Which is roughly “God creates all unique universes that are on net good. This world has evil but is still on net good.”.
Just being the devil advocate here: I disagree with the “destroy Satan” part, Satan isn’t the definition of evil, he is only the HR department that deal with the evil people, and the part of God not stopping evil, maybe he don’t because it go against free will? About the not loving, he promises a perfect infinity world after all of this, after a few centuries of perfection you don’t care/remember I guess
Good advocate. Anyway, “God not stopping evil, maybe he don’t because it go against free will” - That enters the loop at the bottom. Could God create a universe where free will exists, but evil does not exist? If yes, then why didn’t He? If He could not create such a universe, then he’s not all powerful and/or not all loving and good.
“About the not loving, he promises a perfect infinity world after all of this” - Then why do we have to go through this initial, temporary and imperfect part?
Maybe free will requires the infinite complexity of this world and hence must also contain “evil” in some way.
Then god is not all powerful
That’s trying to sidestep the answer, but it just loops back: could God create an “infinitely complex” world with free will where evil does not need to exist? I’m effectively asking the same question, “could God create a universe with free will and without evil”?
Assuming that your assertion is true, that the infinite complexity of this world must contain evil, then God is not all powerful nor all loving.
I dunno. To be all powerful does God need to be able to create paradoxes? Things that are and aren’t? I think that by limiting choices, free will is no longer fully free.
The all loving part I think gets resolved by the free will idea, too — he’s not going to step in and be a nanny.
I’m not really advocating for some biblical God, btw. Though, admittedly, I am spiritual in different senses which might overlap with the biblical God in some ways.
Choices are already limited… by our brains. Some people choose to stick objects up their urethra. Based on statistical probability, I would guess you do not. Does the fact that your brain limits you from making that choice mean your will is not free? You didn’t choose which brain you would get. Or are you going to go stick something up there to prove how free you are?
Literally advocating for the devil.
What if an almighty God created the universe without evil, but with free-will, and then one angel decided to challange the way God rules, so that God has to let him rules to show everyone whose way of rule is the best?
Simply killing that angel would not answer the challenge, on the contrary, killing that angel would demonstrate that God is a dictator.
Pasted from a reply to another user.
Still wouldn’t answer why god doesn’t interfer with evil. Why doesn’t he help us against this angel? Heals sicknesses? Stops wars? Saves victims of murder and rape?
God is already a dictator by choosing the state of everything. Designing a chaotic system and letting it run also supports being a dictator. He designed the system. An omnipotent God is unable to escape His own designs. The rebellious angel was by design. His planning thereby is guile.
If the rebellious angel was evil by design, then there is no free-will.
God created angels. If God created an angel which challenges them and is “evil” (saying that about some angel dude who isn’t a mass murderer like their creator according to bible records https://www.wired.com/2007/04/old-testament-m/ https://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html ) then we arrive again at the Epicurean paradox.
Fun fact, if you arrive at this conclusion as an 8 year old in Sunday school at your ultra fundamentalist Baptist Church and proceed to tell the teacher, you get yelled at and spanked by the teacher and your parents! Ask me how I know.
It was a test
It’s me, the Sunday school teacher
Yeah, and the Sunday school teacher failed.
How do you know?
This presupposes that “evil” exists as a universal concept that a god is bound, versus a god that exists outside of concepts of morality.
It doesn’t. What it simply presupposes that if God participates or allows it, that puts god in the “not all good” category
If God exists withtout morality, god cannot be all good to us
If a god exists, then it could reasonably be believed (without evidence, since there is no evidence for any god at all) that god is defining morality for us, rather than defining morality in regards to themselves. You could likewise argue that if it’s the will of god, then it must be good, and if it’s not the will of god, then it’s not good. So children getting cancer? That’s clearly god’s will, and is therefore good.
So children getting cancer? That’s clearly god’s will, and is therefore good.
This answer to the Epicurean paradox is nothing but semantics. Let’s just rephrase the question:
- Can god be all powerful, all knowing, and all loving by human standards?
–> No. It creates a paradox. So, using human words and human concepts, god cannot possibly be all three things. Therefore, by human standards, we cannot expect love, omniscience, and omnipotence from him. That’s all the paradox proves.
It’s not a “gotcha” to claim that there might be other standards, which are meaningless to us, but somehow mean something equivalent than the concepts we already have words for. Those foreign concepts have obviously nothing to do with what we humans call power, knowledge, and love. They don’t mean anything and there’s literally no way to fill them with meaning either, since they are by definition independent of human concepts.
Claiming that god is something, but this something cannot be understood, is in all consequence an empty claim without any meaning. Easy to make, but at the end of the day says and proves nothing.
If a god exists, then it could reasonably be believed (without evidence, since there is no evidence for any god at all) that god is defining morality for us, rather than defining morality in regards to themselves.
Absolutely, and this is the frame of reference for the paradox. When, in the paradox parameters, we say “god cannot be all-good” what we are saying is “god cannot be all good as we understand it and as the Church is pitching him”
You could likewise argue that if it’s the will of god, then it must be good, and if it’s not the will of god, then it’s not good. So children getting cancer? That’s clearly god’s will, and is therefore good.
That is not a valid argument IMO, you are now redefining what is good or bad, not on the merits of the act or the consequences it carries, but by who executes it. You are deriving a quality from a source not intended to convey it. Like saying “if Ford made this car, it must be fast”
you are now redefining what is good or bad, not on the merits of the act or the consequences it carries, but by who executes it.
That’s a core Christian ideology though. They define god as being the source of everything that is good. Therefore, if god wills it, then regardless of how awful a thing seems, it must definitionally be good. Everything is contextual to the will of god. It’s a very simplistic view of morality (as is the idea that morality is universal and unchanging).
That’s a core Christian ideology though
Well considering this is not based on evidence or logic, I think it’s safe to dismiss from this argument.
To clarify, not attacking the validity of your point, I am attacking the “solution” presented here by the Church. Basically, “if we say it’s good you must take my word for it”… nope
The god that gave His faithful the ten commandments and has His church promise heaven or hell depending on behavior exists outside of morality ? He literally defines it.
He/it creates and defines concepts of morality, but may not be a part of that system, or bound by those definitions. If we’re imagining a being of some kind that is (nominally) omnipotent and omnipresent, the I don’t see how we could realistically apply morality based on a mortal existence to it. How could you apply, for instance, a rule that says “don’t murder” to a thing that is incapable of death in any way that we would understand it?
I’m absolutely not a theist, but I think that exercises like this are ultimately futile. When I was a believer, this kind of mental exercise wouldn’t have made much of a dent in my belief. The nature of evil has been a study point for religious scholars for >2000 years, and mostly people ahve shrugged and said that they don’t understand, but they have faith, and that’s good enough. OTOH, I’m a sample size of one, so maybe there are people that would see this argument and question how rational their belief was.
How could you apply, for instance, a rule that says “don’t murder” to a thing that is incapable of death in any way that we would understand it?
What??!? Murdering is about ending other’s lives. If I were immortal, how does that prevent me from killing someone else who is mortal???
It’s ok to have faith which literally means you believe in something without a shred of evidence (or worse, evidence to the contrary). But again the epicurean paradox is not about the existence of god, is about defining his character
The actual “answer”, which is no answer at all, for this paradox is “god acts in mysterious ways”. That has been the cop out all religions have come up with
Murdering is about ending other’s lives.
But murder is also something that really only applies to rough equals; you wouldn’t call it murder to squish a mosquito. ‘Don’t murder’ is fundamentally a golden rule issue; you don’t want it done to you, so you shouldn’t do it to other people. If you can’t die, then that principle breaks down. (Unless there are other gods, and ‘death’ means something different to them? I think that’s getting into fantasy even more than religion usually does.)
But murder is also something that really only applies to rough equals;
Why?
you wouldn’t call it murder to squish a mosquito
I wouldn’t because killing animals is not in the definition of murder, but certainly PETA people would call me a murdered for simply eating a cow. I get there is nuance in the language but ending a life doesn’t really have much to do with me having a life as well.
‘Don’t murder’ is fundamentally a golden rule issue; you don’t want it done to you, so you shouldn’t do it to other people
You are conflating these 2; I see no relationship with these 2 concepts. I have never made a movie yet I have pirated some, do you imply I couldn’t possibly have pirated a movie since I do not have my own movie or similar intellectual property to be pirated from me?. The 10 commandments includes: “You shall not commit adultery.” If I am single, does that mean I am exempt?
I wouldn’t because killing animals is not in the definition of murder,
The definition of murder also doesn’t include a god killing another god.
You are conflating these 2; I see no relationship with these 2 concepts.
You shouldn’t pirate because, if you had intellectual property, you would not want it to be stolen. You should not commit adultery because if you were in a relationship, you would not want your partner to cheat on you. If a god can not die at all, then telling a god that killing is bad because they wouldn’t want to be killed simply isn’t going to be meaningful.
The definition of murder also doesn’t include a god killing another god.
which, nobody mentioned this far?.. you can’t make a claim and then attack it to justify your point. That is the definition of a strawman argument
If a god can not die at all, then telling a god that killing is bad because they wouldn’t want to be killed simply isn’t going to be meaningful.
So, according to you, this means an immortal god would not even understand why killing is bad? Sorry but I do not see the correlation here. Assuming your point for a moment, then none of the commandments hold any meaning to god since I cannot steal, harm or cheat an all-powerful entity.
The question whether god may understand or be bound by moral standards is irrelevant though. Apparently he doesn’t act on it. Either he doesn’t care enough to do or he can’t.
Of course one can imagine god in a way that’s compatible with our world - for example an evil god, a god that doesn’t care about humans, a god that has no relationship with the world, or a god that’s incapable of interference with it. Epicurus doesn’t say god doesn’t exist, merely the (formerly prevalent) idea of an all loving, all knowing, omnipotent creator god. That one is apparently impossible and therefore most likely doesn’t exist.
And going one step further we can say: Well okay, maybe god doesn’t exist, but apparently not in a way that’s relevant to this world. At least not beyond the idea itself. There is no tangible influence of god in this life - he doesn’t interfer (for whatever reason). And since the formerly prevalent idea of god is obviously wrong it’s hard to say if humans were ever justified in thinking we know something about god at all. (Would be a feat anyway, giving the fact that god apparently doesn’t interfer with our reality.) This however leaves very little room to justify or explain the need for religion.
When I was a believer this was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. I understood that we know nothing of god, cannot know anything of god, and cannot claim to say he does exist - and that religion therefore made no sense. Back then I called myself an agnostic, taking into account the possibility that, as unlikely as it might me, god could yet exist in some form. Today I don’t even believe that. The term “god” stems from a tradition of groundless and increasingly refuted attributions, and there’s just as much reason to assume the existence of such a concept as every other work of fiction out there. If you’d experience the world without the predenomination of religion you wouldn’t arrive at anything close to their idea of a god in the first place. This was my conclusion from the Epicurean paradox.
So, n=2, now we have a tie.
(Exercise like this might feel futile to you - I find them immensely interesting.)
In Christianity there are several explicit or implicit definitions of good and evil and how their God judges them based on that. Therefore, concepts of morality exist in that context.
Yes, this. This supposes that either:
A. There is the existence good and evil that supersedes the authority of God ( which means God cannot be sovereign over morality )
B. I define good and evil and then judge “god” based on my definition ( which from a moral standpoint would actually make me god )
I suspect that this really isn’t a paradox for most people because they either:
A. Look at the world and see horrible things they don’t like and then want to judge God for them ( with what authority ? )
B. They don’t believe in God to begin with but like to use this chart to re-enforce their belief that they are logically correct.
A God that literally defines good and evil by his existence ( I AM ) breaks this chart.
A God that literally defines good and evil by his existence ( I AM ) breaks this chart.
Pretending the epicurean paradox is about the existence of god is a strawman
The entire thing is about the qualities in the character of god. Is god all knowing, all powerful and all god as he is sold to us by the Church?
Also, an even bigger strawman and circular logic to boot is your argument about being unable to “judge” god (or the expectation of his behaviour)
The concept of judging you are using seems to be that or passing sentencing. Anyone can evaluate with simple logic without being a figure of authority.
If I see a person kicking a freightened dog, I don’t need to be any authority over that person to reach the conclusion, aka “judge”, they are doing something wrong
see horrible things they don’t like and then want to judge God for them
I wonder if there are things you’d judge god for. Is there suffering so great that you would ask “how can he let that happen”? Or is your god compatible with even the worst realities imaginable?
If the former, all we’re debating is if the suffering prevalent in our world is great enough to justify the question. And I’d personally argue if you’re not entirely ignorant to the suffering of your fellow human beings it definitely is.
If the latter, the categories of “good” and “bad” become completely meaningless. The term “god” becomes meaningless. At this point there’s no connection between our reality and whatever idea we might have of a divine power, since the two do not interfere. He is just an idea with no tangible effect on this world, I am irrelevant to him, he is irrelevant to me. The question of his existence becomes pointless.
I wonder if there are things you’d judge god for.
I often catch myself trying to do just that, and I have to humble myself and remember that I don’t even have the authority to judge other humans let alone God. It is my observation that human beings are incredibly arrogant, myself included. We are tiny specks of dust on a tiny planet that we have barely explored outside of, and we want to declare ourselves masters of the universe and holders of truth. This is a characteristic that I have observed in myself and in others that I believe goes all the way back to the temptation in Genesis 3: “ye shall be as gods”. It is in my nature to want to call the shots and decide what is right and wrong and I see myself unconsciously try to slide into that mindset on a regular basis.
Is there suffering so great that you would ask “how can he let that happen”?
This is a separate question. There is a big difference between judging God in my heart and deciding that He is wrong for allowing the suffering I am experiencing or observing, and asking why he is allowing it; Asking: “how can you let things like this happen?” “This seems to be against what I understand your nature to be?” “How can you be who you say you are and allow this?” is very different from saying, “You are wrong and I hate you for it.”. The former are genuine questions spurred by a conflict between what I understand about his nature and what I perceive from my experience. The entire book of Job revolves around these very questions and offers some interesting insights.
Or is your god compatible with even the worst realities imaginable?
God isn’t my god. He isn’t whatever I want him to be, if that were the case, I would never find myself in conflict with him. He is what he is. He is I AM.
“why can’t god create a boulder so heavy that even the can’t carry it?” even as a child trying to trick god with basic paradoxes sounded funny to me.
The existence of those paradoxes could also mean that omnipotence in itself is simply impossible.
Or logic is a blasphemy against god.
Then why would god create our minds and logic in the first place? Seems like he’d be setting us up for failure if he gives us tools to determine the truth which in turn seem to disprove his existence. Also not something you’d expect from an all-loving deity.
If the story of the garden of Eden is anything to go by I’d say that the creator definitely both made those things and very clearly instructed us not to use them. Either way if logic itself is evil then any logical argument cannot possibly apply to a purely good being.
Of course I’m in camp snake, I’m just playing divinity’s advocate.
Logic presupposes God. If God operates outside of time he can certainly operate outside of other frameworks we use to perceive the world. The human brain can fit in a bucket. Naturally understanding God is an impossibility.
The epicurian paradox presupposes false premises.
