"The Problem of Evil"
 

A theory I came up with myself happens to have been an existing line of thought. Check it out:

This goes from the Christian perspective that
A) God is all-powerful (omnipotent)
B) God is all-knowing (omniscient)
C) God is all-loving (omnibenevolent)

With those assumptions:

1) If A is true, God has the power to make the world exactly as he would want it.
2) If B is true, God has the knowlege of all that happens within the world, and of all possible worlds.
3) If A and B are true, then the world is exactly as God would want it to be.

4) If C is true, God loves all people equally. As such, he would not cause unnecessary suffering to any person.
5) If A is true, God has the power to end all unnecessary suffering.
6) If A and B are true, whatever possible benefits can come from suffering, God can bring about without suffering.
7) If 6 is true, no suffering is ever necessary.

8) If 1, 3, and 7 are true, no suffering ever occurs in the world.

9) Sufferring clearly occurs in the world.

10) If 9 is true, 8 cannot be true. If 8 isn't true, at least one of (1, 3, 7) is false. Therefore, at least one of (A, B, C) is false.

Therefore, God may be Omnipotent, Omniscient, or Omnibenevolent, but not all 3.

Intresting topic, you forget however that God gives us free will therefore we bring suffering upon ourselves, God doesn't make us suffer. We make decisions ourselves which can lead to many places in life suffering being one of them.

Very well put, Luigi.

I was reading down your list, thinking "will he address the big 'catch' that always comes from this line of reasoning...", which you did well with #6.

I'm not judging this as a testmonial for or against a belief in God, or the nature of such a belief, but rather as a well thought out treatise in its own right.

Bravo. :up:


edit:
I was writing this at the same time Jedi posted just above, and she makes a good point too. I still think #6 is an issue on that point, though.

Is all suffering brought on by free will? I'm willing to bet you could think of some examples to disprove that fairly easily. While there are many instances when sufferring is one's own fault, it's certainly not always true.

well from a Christian perspective, humans are under a curse (the fall) so while some suffering might not necessarily be brought on by free will, it could possibly be attributed to the curse (which was brought on by free will).

If god truly wanted man to not suffer, he would have squished Paris Hilton with a giant hockey puck.

I am sure you have leered over her in many a previous post.

Leered over her?
I'd rather hump her dead grandma's left eye socket.

Another thing to consider are any additional aspects of God. ie: is God infinitely just and how does this affect the equation?

Re: "The Problem of Evil"
 

I think you misunderstand. You imply that God does not have a separate moral/rational system controlling His actions, that being omniscient and prescient are mutually inclusive, that you know what "necessary suffering" is, and that God is indeed all-loving without Christ.

I don't see why you would hope to come to the same conclusions about a situation as God would, either.

I was working from those assumptions, but that's not to imply whether or not I personally believe them. If you disagree with one or all of the assumptions, then you essentially agree with my point-- that the three assumptions can't all be true at once.

Well, now there's a vivid image!:D:up:

[quote]Mattress:
well from a Christian perspective, humans are under a curse (the fall) so while some suffering might not necessarily be brought on by free will, it could possibly be attributed to the curse (which was brought on by free will).[/unquote]
Uh, I went to Catholic School and I never heard this..ever.
We heard about original sin, and "The One, Holy , Catholic and Apostolic..." blah blah but not cursed...:confused:

I think he is pointing towards what happened in The Garden Of Eden. Betraying God, and being cursed to live in sin etc..

I swear to God, it is a hell of a lot easier just being an atheist. ;)

Ain't that the truth?

Why yes it is!

I concur.

Being agnostic is even easier than being an athiest. I think we're more apathetic. :p

Theist: "Do you believe in God?"
Athiest: "No!"

Theist: "Do you believe in God?"
Agnostic: "I really don't care."

Actually, I believe I'm agnostic because I do believe there is a higher intelligence.

GD faithful should feel the same way when they read my posts;)

I believe that given the age and sheer size of the universe that it is inevitable that there are many life forms that are millions of years more advanced than us, being on the realm of level 3 civilizations, with a few level 4 civilizations spread around. This, however, doesn’t make me agnostic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardash...etical_futures

For every thing man can imagine, there are thousands of other things beyond his imagination.

:D:up:

suffering is needed to teach. if you don't suffer, you won't learn anything. when you learn, you learn how to not suffer.

But that's like saying the only way to learn how to use a hammer is by hitting your hand a few times first. I say you can take a hammer class and learn to use one without ever hitting your hand. Same would apply with learning anything.

Suffering can certainly teach you, but it's not required in order for you to learn.

I concur.

But for every argument there will always be a counter argument. However suffering is not a part of life that people usually yearn for. So if I was to try and learn something, I would not endevour to include suffering as a part of that learning process... Sometimes that's not under your control but you can vary that way it affects you.

People who need religion to justify their existence need to suffer to learn anything.
We who have a higher learning curve don't need to suffer as we already know what consequences occur due to our actions.
I know the hammer is going to hurt if I miss my target. Some people need to have it happen to learn that.

And in that analogy, I know that killing a person is wrong and won't do it because it would be a stupid and immoral thing to do but a religious person has to refer to a guideline like the "ten commandments" to tell them what is right or wrong.

Aetheist=knows instinctly what is right and wrong.
Christian=refers to an old ass book.

Which to me is just rediculous. I think everyone should understand what is right and wrong... commonsense one would call it.

Exactly, so the authors of the bible wrote it for people with no common sense.

Gee that's a lot of people without commonsense...

Common sense told me it was a fairy tale to load a boat, a BIG ASS boat with two of every animal, obviously caged to prevent the carnage of tigers eating bunnys. Okay, then you have to have a bunch of shovels to shovel the shit of all these animals over the side which brings up another question. How many human shit shovelers were onboard?
Or were the two chimpanzees in charge of shit shoveling?
Next up, not only do you have a shitload of shit to worry about but need something to make a shitload of shit.....food.
Now do we bring a massive buffet of every kind of food for the cruise or do the meat eaters get to be the only survivors of the trip while the vegans are consumed?
Then we have the geographical question of how many species got left behind on other continents? Or while we were building the Super Titannic, did we send other lesser Titannics to all other continents to gather those species?
Fish! Oh shit, we forgot the fish!
Ah screw them, they can swim for it.
Let's get back to the human shit shovelers. While they were shoveling shit, who was bailing all the rain that was falling on the ship or did they have bilge pumping technology available to them?
Of course, this boat had to have some kind of propulsion.
If not, it would have been tossed against the rocks where it left port by the rising water.
Again, all our human resources went to shoveling shit leaving no one to bail water or propel the ship through the water.
Keep in mind, this was not a voyage of 40 days and 40 nights. We've all seen what happens when it rains for an extended period of time. It takes a long time for water to recede. After flooding the entire world, it made for a long voyage, alot of food consumption, alot of shit shoveling and alot of offspring as I'm sure all those animals got bored and fucked to high heaven, ....so to speak.
Yea, I can believe that and not the possibility of life amongst the infinite expanse of the universe:rolleyes:

Big bullshit about a big ship.
Chapter 3 of Chev.txt

Exactly... For many of the predators, other animals on board were their primary food source. So to sustain the two African lions for the month-and-a-half voyage, did you bring 12 gazelle instead of the normal two called for on the manifest?

This falls into line with the story I took apart at age 7 or so... "So this overweight man moves at over the speed of light to bring gifts to a billion children in every country of the world in one night. Mmmmm.... What you been smokin' pops, to tell me all this?"

if you think about it somebody somewhere along the line suffered to learn and pass it on so others don't have to suffer. to me suffering can be something like trying to invent the lightbulb and not succeeding 1000 times just to find the right filament.

since most of you think that i think i'm better than you or w/e, i'm going to leave this thread to the so-called "smart" people. Christianity is blinding some of you this time.

I'm pretty sure the story of Noah specifies that God enabled the those living on the Arc to live without eating.

And the only point I was really trying to make with my original post is not that those assumptions are necessarily wrong, but that we are in no position to make assumptions about God.

Ah, that's a specific interpretation of "suffering". I respect what you're saying even more now.

But as a scientist I'd never consider it "suffering" to fail 1000 times and then finally get it right. Every attempt brings a thrill that is its own reason for continuing. From this perspective no suffering is required, nor any previous failure, in order to learn.

True for a Christian. But for a non-Christian God is a character in a book, assumption is all that exists, and us humans are the only entities who can make assumptions about Him.

Being one of the most crass statements on the subject I've seen here in a long time, your viewpoint comes off here as undesirable. Many people complain about religious people because they think they're better than everyone else...why have you decided to do the same thing?

You've made some pretty unprovable statements as well; that atheists have a higher learning curve, and that religious people have to suffer to learn things (and apparently atheists know it all from birth). Which makes me wonder, because apparently you subscribe to the idea of a universal morality; that there's some set of standards that all atheists believe in (because that's specifically what you said, if you'll look back.)

If you posit that your viewpoint is any better--and we take YOUR criticisms as a scale--you appear to be logically mistaken.

Scientifically, you are taking a deficit of proof as proof of non-existence, which of course is not a scientific standard--science would not have gotten anywhere with that closed-minded type of thinking.

In the end, I'd rank you right with the people who stand on the streetcorner and scream at everyone that they're going to hell. Not out of personal preference, because I think you're a nice person, but you're making the same statement.

Man, some of what Chev said there was pretty offensive. It may be the most offensive thing in this thread. To remedy this, I'll say something even more offensive.
Don't read it if you don't wanna be offended.

Who's the best Jewish cook?



Hitler.


:eek:

I hear people of devout religion fashioning themselves as superior every day. Not specifying anyone here as such, though...the matter is general. But it doesn't happen so often the other way around. You gotta be able to take what you dish out. :):up:

Duuuuuuuude luigi

Holier than thou!
Should I believe everything I read in Dr. Seuss books to be true?
Why believe the bible?
It doesn't even have pop-up pictures in it:igor:
Undesirable to who? You?
I don't give a shit.
It's desirable to me.
I still say The Holy Bible only deserves to be recognized as #1 on the fiction list.
I don't see God's signature in it.
As a matter of fact, if he exists, he should sue every preacherman out there for copywrite enfringement.
Am I smarter than most bible thumpers? Hell yes!
I'm not stupid enough to not question the book's authenticity.
Ignorance breeds stupidity.
No.
What I'm saying is:
Give me one reason to except God as anything more than a fear tool. The book of God has so many improbable tales in it that couldn't have happened on this planet that to truly believe any of it is to be borderline mentally defficient.
My proof that those "stories" never occurred far outweigh your proof that they did.
Like I said above, Dr. Seuss tales are more credible than the bible.
You're a nice person too but to lump me in with some fool on a street corner preaching how I should live my life and threatening me with an afterlife in so-called hell is fucked up.
Because I choose to not believe in christianity/speak my mind in support of reality, suddenly I'm a fool?
That's not only lame but depriving me of my humanity.

Bottom line:
I'm not living my life in accordance with some book.
Unlike other people, I'm smarter than that.

BTW, If I'm wrong may he strike down with a bolt of lightning.

I'll let you know later what happened with that:p

ROFLMFAO :D :D Classic :up:

Quote:

Undesirable to who? You? I don't give a shit. It's desirable to me. I still say The Holy Bible only deserves to be recognized as #1 on the fiction list. I don't see God's signature in it. As a matter of fact, if he exists, he should sue every preacherman out there for copywrite enfringement. Am I smarter than most bible thumpers? Hell yes! I'm not stupid enough to not question the book's authenticity. Ignorance breeds stupidity. No. What I'm saying is: Give me one reason to except God as anything more than a fear tool. The book of God has so many improbable tales in it that couldn't have happened on this planet that to truly believe any of it is to be borderline mentally defficient. My proof that those "stories" never occurred far outweigh your proof that they did. Like I said above, Dr. Seuss tales are more credible than the bible. You're a nice person too but to lump me in with some fool on a street corner preaching how I should live my life and threatening me with an afterlife in so-called hell is fucked up. Because I choose to not believe in christianity/speak my mind in support of reality, suddenly I'm a fool? That's not only lame but depriving me of my humanity. Bottom line: I'm not living my life in accordance with some book. Unlike other people, I'm smarter than that. BTW, If I'm wrong may he strike down with a bolt of lightning. I'll let you know later what happened with that:p

[q]That's not only lame but depriving me of my humanity[/q] And also an infringement of your "FreeWill" - Your 'Freedom' to choose what "You" believe...

All to often thats what the 'Religious Nutjobs' forget. That we who choose to 'Believe' something else more 'Real' or at leased based upon some form of 'Physical Reality' do so by our 'Own Choice' - i.e. "Free Will".

Everytime I come across the RN's (as I've taken to callin them), they impose on my "Free Will" - that is about the most offensive thing that I feel can be done to me. It's 'MY' time not 'Yours'! Who do you think you are to invade my "Life" and waste my "Very Precious" allotment of time? Esprcially when I have politly said "No Thanks, I believe something else" and with a "Smile" (He says with gritted teath...

In those circumstances I reserve the right to "Ridicule, explain in the most cynical fashion possible what I think of Religion as a whole and to generally take the old preverbial..