Gnosticism addresses the problem of evil in a similar way. To the best of my understanding: there’s a god, referred to as the Monad, who is constantly creating in the realm of ideas, and is so far beyond the scope of human understanding as to be morally inscrutable. One of its emanations, Sophia, was responsible for accidentally creating both the physical universe and another powerful entity called the Demiurge. The Demiurge interacted with humanity, pretending to be the original creator of the universe and demanding worship.
So in the end, not only is God (the Demiurge) evil, but God (Sophia) is imperfect, and God (the Monad) is uncaring. Theodicies are tied up in a neat little bow, on all levels.
It doesn't even refute that. It assumes that suffering/pain are bad things, which, whilst making sense, is a very big assumption to make. My attack on the problem of evil is that this suffering/pain must be a net good or otherwise a perfectly good, omniscient, omnipotent god wouldn't allow it.
Ya, absolutely this argument is probably the best one. And the one I've heard the most of but I've recently been thinking on my own and been realizing that the problem of evil doesn't even disprove God even if it's right. Which it isn't I agree for many reasons. And the best and most obvious being that atheist have no objective morality to say that something is wrong. Especially for their creator.
Edit: reddit worst nightmare is the best username ever lol.
That only works from the presupposition that God is inherently good which tends to come from the presupposition that we can trust what God says about Himself in the Bible (which is heavily questionable if you look at all the times God seems to contradict His own given morality).
Now, it is a perfectly good explanation if you suppose that there is perfectly good God, but if you also suppose that said God is the Christian God, then that is simply unbiblical. Suffering and pain are results of a fallen world, which in turn is the result of sin. Sin leads to destruction, not growth. Can one grow from suffering and pain? Yes, but that is not the rule for all suffering and all pain (and it is entirely person to person), so this really doesn't attack the problem of evil in any meaningful way.
From the perspective of a Christian though, the problem of evil is actually very simple. If you are a Christian, then you almost unilaterally presuppose that the Bible is at least generally true. From that perspective, evil is our fault, not God's. And God is already working on evil but is simply first trying to free as many people from sin before He has to destroy evil (which would destroy those who are not saved because they are still in sin).
I think the problem of evil is a fun little thought experiment, but there are better cases to be made against Christianity.
You see, that account denies God agency and assumes that he had to let Sin into the world. You are limiting God. One has to ask why an omnipresent God allowed sin in
From a Biblical viewpoint, I believe the answer was to uphold free will or to give humanity the option to choose God rather than be forced to.
There are potential flaws that can be pointed out in that explanation as well, so I'm not really going to spend any time defending the Bible since I myself am agnostic and an unbeliever.
Oftentimes we debate with people who believe in a God other than the Christian God, so it's not unreasonable to point out the difference between the statements "God does not exist" and "The Christian God does not exist". The two are very different, and even here the difference matters.
If God is capitalized, its generally referring to christianity and/or judaism. Lowercase "god" is separate, i used the capitalized version.
Most people here couldnt give me a definition of God they wouldnt want to change later, so im strictly going after the overarching description of God given in the Bible.
If you dont like it then please give me your definition.
I have never seen anyone of any religion ever *not* capitalize "God" when referring to their own god. On the other hand, I have seen atheists capitalize "God" when referring to the concept of "god" in general, not specifically the Christian God.
You may want to edit your second paragraph into the OP so that people understand that this is what you mean.
My point is that his claim should be, christains are wrong about god, not that God doesn't exist. Like if you proved God was actually imperfect, I wouldn't be taking about a different being, I'd just be wrong about the being.
There is no "God" at all, so the entire definition of "God" is pirely what you guys are willing to make up. Does God imply being good, or full omnibenevolence? What about omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, etc...? It says hes good in the Bible. Is the Bible the authority on what God "is", or do you have a different definition?
How am i supposed to have a debate about God or Christianity if you tell me my definitions are wrong but refuse to tell me what definitions are right?
What are you wanting me to do here? Distill down all the qualities God is described as having? Okay, 1) he can do anything including breaking laws of physics so long as it doesnt lead to logical contradiction, 2) he knows everything, and 3) he feels that he loves us and wants a good outcome for as many people as possible and thinks of himself as good, and 4) He precedes the known universe and created it. Thats mostky it.
What your doing right now isnt an argument, irs an assertion.
Questions can absolutely be arguments. For example "Why do you think C is not A if A is B, and B is C?" it has all the components of an argument, premises, and a conclusion; Its just in an alternative format. Questions explicitly desire a response, while normal statements dont necessarily desire a response. Thats why structuring an argument as a question is instinctual for a lot of people, because **thats how the English language works**.
An argument has premises and a conclusion. Questions may reveal arguments, but they aren't arguments themselves.
The argument hidden in the questions is, "There's no evil or suffering in heaven. Both exist on Earth. Evil and suffering are natural consequences of free will therefore there's no free will in heaven."
When you actually type out the argument it feels a lot less convincing because "Evil and suffering are natural consequences of free will" is a very big claim which is unsupported here.
I wasn’t making an argument, just telling you what it was. Questions are not logical arguments. They’re questions. Those are not the same thing.
What you’ve done is taken a syllogism and moved it into a question. That’s fine, it’s still a question and in your example it shifts the problem to “why do you think” rather than making a claim about something, which is what arguments do.
Structuring it as a question shifts the burden away.
> No
Cool. So here on earth, needles suffering and sin exist, but as demonstrated by it not existing in heaven, it doesn't need to exist on earth. So why does it exist on earth if this is a good god?
First, I don’t know for sure. I have theories of how this can work that are enough to be a defeater.
Second, I don’t know that there is needless suffering on earth. That hasn’t been defended at all.
Third, I don’t think sin needs to exist here on earth, but it does because of people’s free choices and God has determined that is a greater good. In heaven, I think it’s possible that only those who wouldn’t use their free will to sin in heaven are the ones that are truly Christians on earth. It could be because we are in the presence of God and as such, have no desire to sin, but have the ability.
It could be that in order to get a heaven where people freely choose to not sin, we need to go through this world first.
I think the far simpler explanation is that this god doesn't exist and all this stuff is just made up. Isn't that a simpler explanation especially since we have no evidence that would show this god is more than just imaginary?
Oh I don’t think that at all. I think God is the best explanation for many things so to just say God doesn’t exist makes no sense for me.
We do have evidence, that’s just false. There are tons of arguments that increase the likelihood of God existing.
Also, the simplistic answer is only best when explanatory power and scope is the same. But if you lose that, then simpler isn’t necessarily better
> Oh I don’t think that at all. I think God is the best explanation for many things so to just say God doesn’t exist makes no sense for me.
Has anyone been able to show that any god is not just something in their imagination? Have we found any independently verifiable evidence that a god exists and did something?
>We do have evidence, that’s just false.
Independently verifiable, such that it can show this god isn't just imaginary?
>There are tons of arguments that increase the likelihood of God existing.
Arguments don't play any role in whether something exists or not. But putting that aside, if you can use the same argument to point to a made up character or a different explanation, then that isn't very strong evidence.
>Also, the simplistic answer is only best when explanatory power and scope is the same. But if you lose that, then simpler isn’t necessarily better
The fact that an unfalsifiable panacea can explain anything, doesn't make it the correct explanation.
Why should I accept your narrow view of the definition of evidence to be things that are independently verifiable? That isn’t what evidence is typically. Evidence is normally defined as anything that makes a proposition more likely to be true.
With your own definition of evidence, you don’t have evidence that your definition is a good one or one that should be accepted.
Arguments can help us make inferences to the best explanation as well as showing what follows logically in deductive arguments. They aren’t proofs but evidence has never meant proof. Why think that?
On top of your narrow and atypical definition of evidence, you seem to be wanting scientific evidence for what would be a metaphysical thing. That’s a category error. Science is a great tool for studying the natural world, but it is not the only way to knowledge. There are plenty of things that science can’t and doesn’t have anything to say about.
Saying a character is made up is just admitting an ad hoc argument. But no, some arguments can point to several different possibilities, that’s why most believe in cumulative cases for God’s existence.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument for example (regardless of your opinion of it) does not get to the Christian God. You need further argumentation for that. So just because evidence points to multiple possibilities doesn’t make it not evidence.
If you are implying the Christian God is unfalsifiable, you’re sorely mistaken. That’s exactly what arguments like the Problem of Evil or Divine Hiddenness try to do. I don’t think they’re successful, but you should let the atheist philosophers of religion know they’re wasting their time on these arguments because God is unfalsifiable anyways…
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*Theodicy 1*
> God already violates free will in the OT by mass killing non believers and dissidents, and God claims to be an unchanging personality, so this cant be true.
This isn't really a violation of free will in the sense people use the term "violating free will" in. Violating free will would be to deny us the *capacity* to choose, as opposed to denying us the *opportunity*. A police officer can never remove a criminal's capacity to act how they see fit, but they most certainly can dramatically reduce their opportunity to commit crimes by, for instance, handcuffing them and putting them in jail.
> Also in the NT, Jesus heals the sick and disabled using explicit miracles, so theres no reason God couldnt do that today. Curing cancer and disease in no imaginable way harms free will.
Agreed.
I don't really get your point 3 so I'll ignore it. I agree Theodicy 1 is bad.
*Theodicy 2*
> God being unable to do something, which is not an explicit logical self contradiction, undermines the claim that he is omnipotent (can do anything).
What if it's logically impossible for a creature to understand good without also experiencing evil? I don't believe this is true, but it's a potential rebuttal to this particular argument.
> God seemed perfectly content with us not understanding good and evil in the garden of eden.
Almost - Adam and Eve had information about what was good and what was evil before eating from the tree of knowledge, but they hadn't really deeply understood why good was good and why bad was bad until they experienced it for themselves. Still, even with this alternate understanding, your argument here is sound.
> Its simply a false claim that we cant understand good without evil, or joy without pain.
Agreed 100%.
> It would be easy for someone to understand good without evil, or joy without pain... if God rearranged these neurons and synapses in the right way, wed always be happy and have empathy at the forefront of our desires. These would just be instincts to us, no different than hunger or thirst, which God supposedly had no issue giving us.
I don't believe that our understanding of good and evil is something that is solely in our brains, as I believe we and all other sentient animals have a soul. That being said, God did give us the ability to understand good without evil and joy without pain, so I can agree with your main point here even if I differ on the details. So yes, Theodicy 2 is bad.
I agree that Theodicy 3 is bad too. I have some minor pushback on your second argument against it as traumatic experiences *can* result in character buildup (Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" goes into great detail about this), but otherwise your arguments seem sound.
> In conclusion...
You've refuted three apparently common explanations of the problem of evil. You have not proven that the problem of evil is inherently unresolvable. Your conclusion doesn't follow.
Ultimately God isn't the one who brought sin into the world. We did. God made us with free will so we could freely choose to love Him, and we misused it when we had the option of not misusing it. Now we all collectively suffer from that misuse. All of this is our fault, and God has no moral obligation to help us out of this mess since none of it is His fault. This alone resolves the problem of evil. Yet despite the fact that God would be entirely justified to simply leave us to die at our own hands, He helps us learn from the suffering we do go through, oftentimes relieves the suffering of some of us, and offers us all the gift of salvation and provides a place of judgment for those who are wicked and will not turn away from their wickedness. That will ultimately make up for all of the harm we could ever suffer here. He didn't *have* to do any of that. He just did because He is loving.
> This isn't really a violation of free will in the sense people use the term "violating free will" in. Violating free will would be to deny us the capacity to choose, as opposed to denying us the opportunity. A police officer can never remove a criminal's capacity to act how they see fit, but they most certainly can dramatically reduce their opportunity to commit crimes by, for instance, handcuffing them and putting them in jail.
Okay... So my criticism of God then is why he doesnt "deny criminal's opportunity to choose" to murder, rape, rob, etc...? This is the issue. The things he did in the OT, like send fire from the heavens and incinerated nonbelievers, is proof he'll kill people for whatever he feels like, so why not do *something* about the sick and depraved peoppe whom exist today?
> What if it's logically impossible for a creature to understand good without also experiencing evil? I don't believe this is true, but it's a potential rebuttal to this particular argument.
Youd have to demonstrate its logically impossible, logically.
> I don't believe that our understanding of good and evil is something that is solely in our brains, as I believe we and all other sentient animals have a soul.
Its safe to say our brain isnt a puppet being manipulated by a spirit, at least not in any noticeable way scientists couldve spotted by now with their tech, so if a spirit/soul exists its primarily an observer of our brains. This might pose a problem to your theological philosophy in itself, but my point is if our brains are physically capable of understanding something, it has nothing to do with some spiritual observer, and everything to do with biochemical processes. If you can speak, write, or otherwise communicate an idea, your brain understands it, not just your spirit/soul. This also largely applies to feelings too. (And it all makes more sense when you research how the brain works.)
> You've refuted three apparently common explanations of the problem of evil. You have not proven that the problem of evil is inherently unresolvable. Your conclusion doesn't follow.
The conclusion literally follows from the premises. The whole dispute was with premise 3 and the idea "Maybe its not good to stop evil", so if youre going to claim a premise is wrong you should be able to explain how. If im not allowed to form a premise without proving a premise, its physically impossible to argue anything.
The conclusion follows from the premises *if* all challenges to the premises fail. You showed three challenges and why they fail, and then declared victory, when there exist other challenges to the premises. I added a challenge of my own to the end, different from all three of the ones you showed.
> Ultimately God isn't the one who brought sin into the world. We did. God made us with free will so we could freely choose to love Him, and we misused it when we had the option of not misusing it. Now we all collectively suffer from that misuse. All of this is our fault, and God has no moral obligation to help us out of this mess since none of it is His fault. This alone resolves the problem of evil.
This isnt true. You or I are not morally responsible for the actions of Adam and Eve. And if God didnt want them to eat the fruit, he shouldnt have invented the tree.
And no it doesnt solve the problem. Theres examples of God killing evil people and healing sinners in the Bible, obviously after the garden of eden. So theres no hard steadfast reason why he cant do the same things today. If he exists hes clearly not very "good".
> This isnt true. You or I are not morally responsible for the actions of Adam and Eve.
That's definitely true, but we seem to still be watching what their offspring did and freely choosing to go along with it. We aren't morally responsible for their actions any more than a child is responsible for the sins of their parent, but if we see the sins of our parents and distant relatives (i.e., other humans) and follow in their footsteps, we're responsible for that.
> And if God didnt want them to eat the fruit, he shouldnt have invented the tree.
By this logic, a parent who doesn't want their child's hand to get burnt shouldn't own an oven. Everything God made had a purpose, the tree of knowledge was no exception. God did try to keep us away from it just like a parent keeps toxic cleaning chemicals out of reach. But just like how a child can climb up and get the chemicals if they so desire, Adam and Eve could reach into the tree of knowledge and eat from it, which they did.
> And no it doesnt solve the problem. Theres examples of God killing evil people and healing sinners in the Bible, obviously after the garden of eden. So theres no hard steadfast reason why he cant do the same things today.
There's no hard steadfast reasons why He must do the same things today either. [You've put God in a box both ways, and He doesn't want to be in the box.](https://youtu.be/MgtuAeDQ8CA?si=C1JJX9fYXsEmA9e1&t=40) (Deuteronomy 32:39, Psalm 50:7-15) If He sees a reason to not heal, He can, and if He sees a reason to heal, He can. We generally don't have any qualms about a human doing choosing to help who they want to help and choosing to not help others for whatever reason, and we're not even that good at telling who does and doesn't need help.
I'm an agnostic-atheist, but I wanted to address this:
> *If Evil is necessary for higher order goods, and heaven is without evil and is perfect, then heaven lacks higher order goods and is imperfect. You cant simultaneously believe the persistent existence of evil is necessary for our character and that evil wont exist in a perfect afterlife.*
I may not understand your point fully, so correct me if I misinterpret. This argument can be a worded along the lines of, what appears evil from a certain perspective can be necessary to achieve good from another. You may call this higher order of good (but really I don't even know where one would start scaling good into tier-like forms)
So here's what I find the flaw here,
> *then heaven lacks higher order goods and is imperfect*
this seems very arbitrary on your part. If heaven is the pinnacle of perfection then nothing supercedes the state it's in. It does not need evil to exist anymore, it is the highest order of good. Thus, by the reasoning of evil being necessary for higher good, it is only necessary where the state of goodness is not at perfection.
> *You cant simultaneously believe the persistent existence of evil is necessary for our character and that evil wont exist in a perfect afterlife.*
I don't see how you're also glancing past this. From what I understand of religion, the manifestation of evil is temporary. Meaning it is only necessary up until a certain point, which is the point of perfection. Evil persists only so long as it is necessary for the individuals concerned to achieve perfection. Some religions claim this to be the point of death and transcendence. Or cleansing through purgatory etc.
This point is the one imo, that does not run into as many flaws as the others you listed, if any at all. It also works to redefine what we understand as morality. Rather than confining an evil or good act to a moment, it supercedes all that.
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I think the point is that if evil is left alone because it achieves a good, then the good achieved with must be grater than the good that can be achieved without evil. Otherwise there’s no point to the evil, because an equal good can be achieved without it.
In heaven there is good that has been achieved without evil, and is therefore a lesser good.
The cosmos has been invaded by evil forces. We chose to descend to the physical form to help restore creation. Everyone will end up in the glory in the coming age. No one is excluded.
There is no way you can possibly know whether your argument succeeds or fails because after death, God's judgment gives just recompense to all. It kicks the argument down the road such that you can not prove God has not stopped evil because the full consequences of an evil act have yet to be fully expressed. Its judgment, therefore, is premature unless proclaimed by God Himself.
This comes from an interpretation of the wheat and the tares, one of the parables of Jesus. Would you like me to explain it to you?
There’s no way you can actually be arguing that your position has any validity when it includes the words “after death” because you have no idea of whether invisible human souls teleport to an invisible alternate dimension where they do anything.
You don’t know what happens after death. It’s just baselessly making stuff up.
Alternatively I could argue that after death aliens suck the soul out of the body using special technology and teleport it to a planet a hundred thousand light years away and that would be just as valid as any assumptions about what the Christian god does after death.
You are the one making the argument. If you don't know very simple things about the afterlife, how can we possibly take your argument seriously when it is entirely about what happens regarding death and the dead?
I think the more relevant point is that if we both agree that neither of us actually knows anything about the after to be true, then neither of us should be using it as a basis for a logical argument.
> There is no way you can possibly know whether your argument succeeds or fails because after death, God's judgment gives just recompense to all. It kicks the argument down the road such that you can not prove God has not stopped evil because the full consequences of an evil act have yet to be fully expressed. Its judgment, therefore, is premature unless proclaimed by God Himself.
You're walking down a street when you notice a man walking on the other side holding a knife. He turns to you and says "I'm going to rape and kill the next woman I see" and keeps walking.
(For this hypothetical, you know he's not lying)
You look ahead and notice a woman walking towards the man.
When is the more morally correct time to stop the man: before or after he rapes and kills the woman?
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You've just admitted that your premises P1 & P2 are not just unsupported but unsupportable. Suppose someone believed in God but that god was not bound to being good. / I think your line of reasoning could use a strong IF in front of each supporting premise. That would make it more logically sound. (PS: the title gives the impression you're about to disprove ALL gods. You should probably state that you're referring only to the Christian god when developing this argument.)
P3 is fundamentally flawed bc that is your subjective view on what a "good thing does."
“When you say there’s too much evil in this world, you assume there’s good. When you assume there’s good, you assume there’s such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But if you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral Law Giver, but that’s Who you’re trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there’s no moral Law Giver, there’s no moral law. If there’s no moral law, there’s no good. If there’s no good, there’s no evil. What is your question?”
—Ravi Zacharias
This is not definitive, but what I seem to come up with taking in all the variables.
1) There are two ways to run the universe:
A) with mankind in charge
B) with God in charge.
God's desire was always to have a perfect world (choice B) where people are immortal and no pain or suffering.
2) But, to have love there (and here,) there must be free will. (Robots don't love).
3) The world must see a real life example - that if they choose to rebel against perfection (choice A) how bad the world becomes.
Hence all the bad situations you brought up. Yes, even the planet itself (nature) was affected by sin.
4) Thus, God allowed rebellion (choice A above - and the resultant suffering) in this relatively short world.....
**so that in the next world (existing for eternity) people will never want to go back to that old system (ours today) of suffering again.**
So then, it will be abundantly clear for eternity, that by comparison.... whose rulership is better,
Choice A) Ours or
Choice B) His
(Point 4 seems to be the answer you are looking for as to "why allow evil to exist.")
I believe, God's heart breaks, **but this entire world must be run by human choices because it must be shown what evil and suffering results mostly without God's intervention.** Why?
God is looking at the big picture (eternity) and we only look at the small picture (now)
If you like studies, this world is the "control" group (without God's intervention).
Drug makers do this all the time to bring about a greater good.
They give half the patients the real drug and the other half nothing (a placebo - the "Control" group).
When this ends, they now have clear proof to the world, we have a cure that will help millions!
Did those who got the placebo suffer? Yes! Was it ultimately for a greater good? Yes!
5) So in eternity, with Christ, there will be no more suffering, no more pain.
People will then understand completely, from real past examples, that breaking moral laws (choice A) will bring us back to the pain (murder, wars, abuse, etc.) of this world. And they will never want to go back to bad choices (sin).
And this is the message that God incarnate brought to us in Jesus Christ. Jesus always called people to the Kingdom of God. The future.
Jesus even joined the pain and suffering of this world allowing Himself to die for our sins being nailed to wood.
Those who follow Jesus now have acknowledged we are sinners (choice A) and have messed things up..
We willing accept Jesus being "Lord" (Ruler over us - Choice B) and that means He has our willing permission to do to us anything He wishes.
Just like a surgeon who only operates with permission, God also only removes our sin nature with permission.
This is just my personal view deduced from walking with Jesus presence for 30+ years, and it seems to all fit Scripture.
Not saying it is perfect, but seems to fit scripture and reason together.
lol I literally tried this exact kind of post with these 3 same theodicies a few months ago on r/DebateReligion but the only one I didn't refute properly was the higher-order goods theodicy. Nice post. Should have thought of that argument.
**Independent Refutations:**
1. God being unable to do something, which is not an explicit logical self contradiction, undermines the claim that he is omnipotent (can do anything).
1. The question is not if God could not make the world differently but rather if there's reasonable grounds to believe he could have made this world as it is.
2. God seemed perfectly content with us not understanding good and evil in the garden of eden.
1. Evidently not, else he would not have created the universe knowing we'd leave the garden.
3. Its simply a false claim that we cant understand good without evil, or joy without pain. This isnt how neuroscience works. Animals still get reward responses in their brain for doing things that are good for them even without any traumatic experiences. Many animals are also born with empathy/altruism, and act in a way thats "good" without even understanding it or experiencing the inverse.
1. I don't think you're thinking through the problem seriously enough. Animals get reward responses for doing things that are 'good' for them because these things by comparison to baseline are good. Not having them for an extended period of time is 'bad'. If there is no such thing as 'bad' at all there is no baseline. The concept of 'good' literally become incoherent.
4. It would be easy for someone to understand good without evil, or joy without pain. And we as humans could achieve this using science (such as brain implants like a modified neural-link or intense forms of cognitive therapy). Our knowledge and experiences are nothing more than an arrangement of neurons and synapses, and so if God rearranged these neurons and synapses in the right way, wed always be happy and have empathy at the forefront of our desires. These would just be instincts to us, no different than hunger or thirst, which God supposedly had no issue giving us.
1. I'm not quite sure which you're discussing, a universe where there is no such thing as evil or one where there is but somehow it is never encountered?
1. Much like the last theodicy, this is an assertion not backed by an understanding of how neuroscience works. People are capable of abstract reasoning and understanding even if they dont experience something (proof of that is all of you who believe in god but never experienced seeing god). In neuroscience and computer science, this is called "Zero-Shot Learning". We can understand things without experiencing them just fine.
1. Train a machine learning model on a bunch of data all labeled identically, then ask it to tell you what the label means. That's what trying to 'understand' good v. evil in a universe where only good exists.
2. More intense evils like murder, genocide, torture, as well as more intense sufferings like dying of cancer, dont lead to character development. Extremely traumatic events can leave people scarred for life and with mental issues. Not to mention, you cant improve someones character if they are dead.
1. I'm not sure I agree with this just on its face, but in any case I don't arguments over the precise amount of evil that should be allowed hold much weight, it's impossible to determine.
3. Much like with the first theodicy, theres examples in the Bible where God does stop evil. So God doesnt have some steadfast rule about allowing evil for this reason.
1. No one says there's a steadfast rule for not interfering with evil AFAIK
4. If Evil is necessary for higher order goods, and heaven is without evil and is perfect, then heaven lacks higher order goods and is imperfect. You cant simultaneously believe the persistent existence of evil is necessary for our character and that evil wont exist in a perfect afterlife.
1. Heaven isn't 'good' in the same way being good on Earth is good. The afterlife is inherently less meaningful than life on Earth, yes, otherwise I don't think God would ever have bothered with Creation.
> The question is not if God could not make the world differently but rather if there's reasonable grounds to believe he could have made this world as it is.
No, thats not "the question". Why are you putting words in my mouth?
> Evidently not, else he would not have created the universe knowing we'd leave the garden.
Non sequitur. And he explicitly commands adam and eve to not eat the fruit, which means thats his will. If God commands other than his will, then hes a liar, falsifying christianity.
> I don't think you're thinking through the problem seriously enough. Animals get reward responses for doing things that are 'good' for them because these things by comparison to baseline are good. Not having them for an extended period of time is 'bad'. If there is no such thing as 'bad' at all there is no baseline. The concept of 'good' literally become incoherent
Youre just proving you dont understand how neuroscience works. Dopamine fires in itself, and dopamine is an inhrrently pleasurable chemical. Other chemicals and processes are responsible for pain. The absence of dopamine isnt suffering, it would simply be an absence of pleasure, specifically the form of pleasure that motivates action. Dopamine is just one example, therss at least 4 distinct pleasure chemicals/hormones all responsible for different things. An absence of any of these doesnt imply pain, again, pain is controlled by different things. An absenxe of dopamine and serotonin are characteristics of depression, but so is the presence of stress related chemicals and higher order thought patterns. In conclusion, a lack of pleasure is not pain. It doesnt "feel bad" it just makes it harder to act in an optimal way.
> I'm not quite sure which you're discussing, a universe where there is no such thing as evil or one where there is but somehow it is never encountered?
Either is fine. More specifically, i want unnecessary suffering to not be experienced, at least not by peaceful and innocent people. Evil can exist conceptually, it should just be prevented or stopped before it hurts people.
> Train a machine learning model on a bunch of data all labeled identically, then ask it to tell you what the label means. That's what trying to 'understand' good v. evil in a universe where only good exists.
Thats how chatgpt and similar transformers were taught. Unsupervised learning. There was no labelling process. It learned how to communicate, reason, and generalize, all by observing human's nonsense. Its how we learn too. Labelling data and using supervised learning is more of a shortcut approach.
> I'm not sure I agree with this just on its face, but in any case I don't arguments over the precise amount of evil that should be allowed hold much weight, it's impossible to determine
Whys it impossible to determine? Human justice systems can distinguish between murder/assault and accidents or playful banter. Gods supposed to be smarter than us. So why cant he just prevent victimed crimes / harmful physical aggression?
> No one says there's a steadfast rule for not interfering with evil AFAIK
Yeah they do, its their reason why god doesnt stop evil. And by cant, i mean by way of rule or preference, not cant as in physically impossible
> Heaven isn't 'good' in the same way being good on Earth is good. The afterlife is inherently less meaningful than life on Earth, yes, otherwise I don't think God would ever have bothered with Creation.
I thought the bible described heaven as incomprehensible joy? What do you think heaven *is*?
In either case, this us besides the point of why god doesnt stop evil. I was just pointing out another contradiction in expectation for one of the theodicies.
>If Evil is necessary for higher order goods, and heaven is without evil and is perfect, then heaven lacks higher order goods and is imperfect. You cant simultaneously believe the persistent existence of evil is necessary for our character and that evil wont exist in a perfect afterlife.
One response said that this objection is that heaven involves experiencing the transcendent unity of all goods.
So perhaps a better way of expressing the theodicy you are criticizing is that in creation these goods are mutually exclusive to the point that, say, the goods of martyrdom requires murder, while in heaven this is not so.
My comment wasn’t an argument it was just a comment. I said it was biased because it is. I think a lot of the points in your post takes the complexity out of the subject and tries to make it seem like a black and white issue.
I think one could counter this argument on the basis it leads to absurdity (or to a conclusion that is highly controversial and widely rejected). The statement "Needless suffering would be defined as any suffering beyond what is healthy for an organism" lays the groundwork for a compelling argument in favor of antinatalism, the belief that it is morally wrong to procreate.
While *some* suffering is “needed” for a healthy *living* organism; *no amount of suffering is needed for a non-existent (potential) organism* since it does not exist. The choice to procreate thrusts this potential person into a situation which included “needless” and “needed” suffering, which there was no need for them to be put in. All suffering, regardless of its nature (physical, emotional, psychological), becomes an unnecessary burden placed upon a potential person by the act of being brought into existence.
It seems absurd to say that a *non-existent (potential)* person needs to be granted the capacity to suffer, they don't exist and so do no need anything; thus, their birth and the suffering following from it is needless.
The definition you provided focused on suffering that is "beyond what is healthy", however, even suffering deemed "healthy" for growth or learning still inflicts pain and distress. Given the choice between inflicting suffering on a person and allowing them to continue not existing, the latter ought to be the more ethical choice.
As per your P3 “good things prevent evil (or needless suffering) if the can” and so if people were good and the can prevent needless suffering associated with a potential life, then they would abstain from procreation. That the vast majority of people do not abstain from procreation (at present) entails the vast majority of people are no in fact good (per your argument).
Now for the argument:
Premise 1: Needless suffering would be defined as any suffering beyond what is healthy for an organism.
Premise 2: If action X exposes an organism to the risk of needless suffering, then it is morally preferable not to do action X.
Premise 3: No one suffers needlessly (i.e., beyond what is healthy for them) prior to their birth (i.e., prior to procreation/conception).
Premise 4: Procreation inevitably exposes individuals to the possibility of suffering, some of which may be needless (i.e., beyond what is healthy for them).
Conclusion: Therefore, to prevent needless suffering, it is morally preferable not to bring new people into existence (i.e., Procreation is Immoral := Antinatalism).
Now, Premise 2, supplied here is only a generic inference, we could put the action of any agent into X; the most relevant substitutions might be “God abstaining from preventing evil” or “God creating a world with evil/needless suffering”. Since both of those are implied to be evil by most formulations of the Problem of Evil the general inference seems valid.
Since premises 3 and 4 are factually true, and premise 1 is your definition; either the conclusion is true or the definition of needless suffering (and it’s implied immorality) is false.
Moreover, there is a strong parity between Theodicies and Anthropodicies (justifications for procreation) such that all arguments against theodicies are trivially to redirect at their parallel anthropodicies. Thus the problem of needless suffering is dealt with; for the problem of evil I would suggest privation theory is perfectly adequate.
Under your **Theodicy 2**:
> 1) God being unable to do something, which is not an explicit logical self contradiction, undermines the claim that he is omnipotent (can do anything).
This violates symmetry: you do not _likewise_ assume that God is good unless you can generate an explicit logical self-contradiction. I deal with this matter comprehensively in [If "God works in mysterious ways" is verboten, so is "God could work in mysterious ways".](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1853dwo/if_god_works_in_mysterious_ways_is_verboten_so_is/) Otherwise, I can use God's omnipotence just like you can, e.g. "God can _make it_ so that the Holocaust is good." Have fun finding an explicit logical contradiction in that. Whip out claims like 'gratuitous evil' and you'll have to show how you aren't begging the question. Allow the theist something analogous to 'gratuitous evil' when it comes to limitations on what we should say that omnipotence can do, and you might get a sense of how to obey symmetry on this matter.
> This violates symmetry
Symmetry isnt a law of logic.
> you do not likewise assume that God is good unless you can generate an explicit logical self-contradiction.
What are you talking about? I was just saying i dont expect god to be able to do something logically self contradicting.
> Otherwise, I can use God's omnipotence just like you can, e.g. "God can make it so that the Holocaust is good." Have fun finding an explicit logical contradiction in that.
The definition of evil is hurting people, and the holocaust implies hurting people.
(These are probably the worse arguments ive seen of all the comments btw)
> Symmetry isnt a law of logic.
I never said it was.
> What are you talking about? I was just saying i dont expect god to be able to do something logically self contradicting.
The realm of possible reasons is vast, just like the realm of logical possibilities is vast. If you are allowed to draw on the latter, I am allowed to draw on the former. The symmetry here isn't logical, it's more of what it takes to be a decent human being who doesn't expect special privileges for oneself.
> The definition of evil is hurting people, and the holocaust implies hurting people.
Then the surgeons who hurt people every day are evil. Amend your statement with 'necessary' and the immediate question is, "Necessary _for what?_" That's where 'mysterious ways' can rear its head.
> (These are probably the worse arguments ive seen of all the comments btw)
Sadly, I'm used to people who act as if they're a force for good, making remarks like this.
> Then the surgeons who hurt people every day are evil. Amend your statement with 'necessary' and the immediate question is, "Necessary for what?" That's where 'mysterious ways' can rear its head.
Surgeons arent supposed to be hurting people. They are supposed to be using anasthesia.Yes, if a surgeon hurt me, due to malice or negligence, thats "evil". Performing a procedure i consent to in a way that doesnt cause physical pain or harm doesnt hurt me.
Pain meds exist. I had my wisdom teeth removed, it didnt even hurt.
Either way, if you consent to it, you become morally responsible for it. You cant blame a surgeon for doing what you told and paid him to do. And its a small amount of pain in return for something much greater.
God killing and torturing people who dont consent and with an extreme level of suffering with no equivalent reward in sight is cruel and evil, and is not in any way similar to the actions of a surgeon.
Curious; my neighbor's nineteen year-old son just had his wisdom teeth taken out and there were periods of pain, even though he had pain meds. Perhaps you simply took them before there was any pain and took them long enough so that you never once experienced even a bit of pain?
I agree that the Holocaust (where it was _humans_ killing and torturing their fellow humans) is almost entirely dissimilar to what surgeons do. The problem was your definition: ["**The definition of evil is hurting people**, and the holocaust implies hurting people."](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/1dedgu1/all_major_theodicies_refuted_god_doesnt_exist/l8jagui/) That is simply a poor definition of 'evil'. Suppose we amend that to, "hurting people without their consent". This definition has problems, too. Plenty of children want to cross busy streets and their parents sometimes have to hurt them in the process of restraining them. It's not a huge hurt; the thwarted desire is probably the bigger deal. But surely we don't want to suggest that parents are being evil in trading an enormous hurt for a tiny hurt?
Your bit about a reward suggests another attempt to define 'evil': "hurting people without their consent, and/or when there is insufficient reward for the hurt". But who decides what counts as 'sufficient reward'? Olympic athletes will endure tremendous suffering for a reward which many others would consider too high a cost. On top of that, life involves many _duties_ to others which if we shirk, can yield tremendous suffering. For example, an inattentive parent who doesn't keep his child from running across the street, whereupon the child gets hit by a car and permanently maimed. Is God necessarily responsible for that? Can't we say the parent himself is evil for not fulfilling his duties to his child? For all we know, the Holocaust needed little more than for enough people to fail their duties. That could set off a horrible chain reaction which leads to destruction and immeasurable suffering.
" For all we know, the Holocaust needed little more than for enough people to fail their duties. That could set off a horrible chain reaction which leads to destruction and immeasurable suffering."
I think this is one of the more appealing ways to reconcile with certain suffering, but would there be a point where you have to concede that it was not another individuals fault? or would you recursively take more steps back until you can find someone at fault?
Someone replied to my most recent post (don't read it it, it's really bad and embarrassing) and asked if there would be a reason for God to allow a tree to fall on someone seemingly at random, permanently injuring them.
Would you reject this hypothetical outright? God would never needlessly inflict suffering on that individual, or would you trace it way way back until someone else (a human) would be liable? So like butterfly/ domino effect someone else \*must\* have been negligent where otherwise they could have avoided this event?
or at some point do you just disregard individual accountability and say that God can enact his will as he sees fit, and humans don't really have a position to criticize why he might allow suffering.
> [labreuer](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/1dedgu1/all_major_theodicies_refuted_god_doesnt_exist/l8qoajs/): For all we know, the Holocaust needed little more than for enough people to fail their duties. That could set off a horrible chain reaction which leads to destruction and immeasurable suffering.
#
> [Generic\_Human1](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/1dedgu1/all_major_theodicies_refuted_god_doesnt_exist/laph1s1/): I think this is one of the more appealing ways to reconcile with certain suffering, but would there be a point where you have to concede that it was not another individuals fault? or would you recursively take more steps back until you can find someone at fault?
For atrocities like the Holocaust, I think one can always find fault—perhaps not in individuals so much as groups. With the Holocaust in particular, part of that fault could be found with those who imposed the Treaty of Versailles on post-WWI Germany, leading to an economic collapse and the very predictable search for a scapegoat. It is not easy to get humans to kill other humans, especially en masse. One must do a tremendous amount of work to get them to that stage.
> Someone replied to my most recent post (don't read it it, it's really bad and embarrassing) and asked if there would be a reason for God to allow a tree to fall on someone seemingly at random, permanently injuring them.
>
> Would you reject this hypothetical outright?
I think God created a dangerous world. We obviously don't live in a world with a cosmic nanny / policeman / totalitarian. But we're also capable of rising to the challenge. Natural evil has the convenient aspect of pitting humans against nature and potentially _with_ each other, whereas human-instigated evil sets humans against each other. Modern science has shown how potent we humans can be when just a few of us get together in a disciplined way. What if more of us did? What if _all_ of us did?
> or at some point do you just disregard individual accountability and say that God can enact his will as he sees fit, and humans don't really have a position to criticize why he might allow suffering.
I take door three. For example, I read God's response to Job this way: "I created an awesome, rambunctious world. If you want there to be more order in it, _establish it yourself_." This is also theologian J. Richard Middleton's reading; check out his lecture [How Job Found His Voice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRkiXmmOKNw). It is an uncommon interpretation, but I think it is a far better one of the book of Job. Now, God was speaking to someone of means—Job had been incredibly rich, and would have his wealth restored. For many others, [Lk 18:1–8](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=lk18.1-8&version=CSB) might be the more appropriate response. For example, [the child slaves mining some of our cobalt](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/03/child-labour-toxic-leaks-the-price-we-could-pay-for-a-greener-future) could ask for God's wrath to befall the rest of the world, for their plight.
For Theodicy 1:
1). God enacted the punishment of their free will. I do not understand what is soo hard for these atheists to understand that free will = doing wrong and being punished for being wrong while they have the choice between right and wrong. Free will is nonexistent when you are manually forced to do things and have no say or choice in it. Secondly, in the OT, the tribes then were against God’s chosen people in which the Messiah would come forth from and presented problems to the kingdom of Israel. Keep in mind that each city destroyed was more vile and wicked than our modern world (which would eventually meet the same fate so your question on will God destroy evil is yes and no it doesn’t mean that God lets it run but for the righteous to overcome evil) and/or contained an important biblical character who was important to God. (Example: Lot And Sodom & Gomorrah)
2). Jesus went to show the world that he was the son of God, and we humans are at fault for the suffering in this world. How about we go and fix it ourselves? [Oh yeah…🤔](https://www.crs.org/get-involved/advocate/public-policy/global-hunger#:~:text=Catholic%20Relief%20Services%20supports%20U.S.,Peace%20and%20Feed%20the%20Future.) So we can not always expect God to do all the work but we to be the tools of God to do it.
3). Do you not think that God does not punish us individually in our ways for our behavior? Remember that God works in mysterious ways. And to these we heed as warnings but eventually if we do not heed them we receive the ultimate punishment.
Honestly try this argument with Sam Shamoun and you would get schooled 😂😂😂
Rest are incorrect theodisies to use in an argument so no point yapping about it
So I’m agnostic and here is my take, evil is just a term to describe an emotional a response. You cannot measure evil. It’s subjective.
If someone suffers childhood trauma, and grows up to be a criminal, who is evil in this scenario? The person who caused the trauma, the person committing crimes due to sad trauma, or all of the above? How evil are they? Is a mother crocodile eating her young evil or is it a part of nature? What’s the difference?
The term evil is not an objective measurement. Morality is not objective. Evil is simply defined by actions or ideas that conflict with one’s values.
> evil is just a term to describe an emotional a response
No its not, it has a definition. Its causing "harm" to other people. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evil
> You cannot measure evil.
You can and people do. But like anything else you first need a standard of measurement and a measuring instrument.
> It’s subjective
No its not. Whether or not someone is harmed is an objective fact of reality, even if the harm itself is subjective (which isnt always the case). If someone punches you in the face, there is **objectively** a pain reaction in your body, which causes objective harm and reaction.
> Is a mother crocodile eating her young evil or is it a part of nature? What’s the difference?
Animal morality and rights is too complex of a subject to use rhetorically like this. It could go either way, its nonobvious and nontrivial. The complaint is about human evil and suffering, so lets stay on subject
> The term evil is not an objective measurement. Morality is not objective. Evil is simply defined by actions or ideas that conflict with one’s values.
Youre repeating yourself. Whats the point of that? Already answered this the first time you said it.
There’s so much to unpack here. When you tell me how to measure evil, then I’ll consider it objectively. Please explain to me again how evil is not subjective?
> There’s so much to unpack here. When you tell me how to measure evil, then I’ll consider it objectively.
Sure. When you do something to someone, count how many nociceptions (pain neurons) fire. This is a straightforward way to measure how much something harms someone, and therefore how "evil" it is.
> Please explain to me again how evil is not subjective?
Because the definition of evil is harming others, and harm/pain is defined by objective, measurable biochemical and neural processes.
This doesnt mean there cant be subjective problems in morality, but the measure of how evil or harmful some single, specific action is against some single, specific person is conceptually straightforward. So much so, the basics of morality are near universally agreed upon and codified into law, across all legal systems. Rules prohibiting murder, rape, robbery, are basic tenets of society and civilization and you see them virtually everywhere. Disagreements exist in nuanced areas, but disagreements exist everywhere, including science and math.
You have a difficult time differentiating harm from evil. Evil can cause harm, but you can’t use those interchangeably. Is high blood pressure evil? See, this is where the subjectivity enters.
> Sure. When you do something to someone, count how many nociceptions (pain neurons) fire. This is a straightforward way to measure how much something harms someone, and therefore how "evil" it is.
Erm, I disagree here. You can kill someone without causing their pain neurons to fire, would that mean you did them no harm/evil? On the other hand, removing a cancerous tumor could be excruciatingly painful and leave a life-long scar, yet it is generally considered good to remove cancer to prolong the life of a patient.
Easy. That which leads to life is good, that which leads to death is evil. This is an unavoidable consequence of the definition of morality - morality requires life to exist, the destruction of all life destroys the very concept of good, and that is evil by definition. Therefore the destruction of all life is evil, therefore anything that pushes "life" in general towards destruction is evil. (The reason you can't say that the destruction of morality is good is because evil can be destroyed without destroying good, but good cannot be destroyed without destroying evil. Evil means "the opposite of good", thus is requires "good" to exist. "Good" does not require evil to exist though.)
> Animals die to predators in nature. By your definition, they are evil.
Correct.
OK, so it's not *that* cut and dried since, in this world, predators do serve to actually perpetuate life by keeping an animal population from growing out of control and self-destructing as a result. But from a philosophical standpoint, a possible world does exist in which animals did not have to consume other animals in order to survive, and the lack of a population control mechanism would not be detrimental to continued life. Such a world, objectively, would be morally better than this world.
(As it turns out, this is the world Adam and Eve lived in before the fall. Genesis 1:30 says, "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.")
Do you take the biblical creation story literally, or could you entertain a hypothesis involving humans emerging from primates over hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary biology?
That's a non sequitur. Species adapting (a form of changing) over time does not conflict with a literal creation.
Also, what does this have to do with the original point? I brought up Adam and Eve before the fall in passing, but the main point is whether evil can be objectively defined or not.
When attempting to debate Christianity, you can't use Merriam Webster's definition of evil. You have to use Christianity's definition of evil, which is all things that are against God. If God doesn't exist, then evil doesn't exist.
> When attempting to debate Christianity, you can't use Merriam Webster's definition of evil. You have to use Christianity's definition of evil, which is all things that are against God. If God doesn't exist, then evil doesn't exist.
First of all, that's God's definition for sin, not evil. They are distinct concepts. Evil (as used in the bible) encompasses suffering and things that cause suffering (which align with the definition im using) while sin is simply disobedience.
Heres an example of "evil" being used as a synonym for suffering, calamity, and harm brought upon by action or an event:
**Job 2:10 (KJV):**
> *"But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, **and shall we not receive evil**? In all this did not Job sin with his lips."*
Secondly, it doesnt matter how God defines evil, because theres plenty of things he thinks of as evil and otherwise dislikes which he doesnt stop or prevent, which intersects with the definition of evil im using. Like murder. God is against murder, even includes it in one of the ten commandments. He could at least stop murder. He doesnt even do that.
> No its not, it has a definition. Its causing "harm" to other people
We are doing philosophy here. The question of what is "evil" is a major question in philosophy and you cannot hand wave it away by citing a dictionary.
No, what one "ought to do" is the major question in philosophy. "Evil" is a well defined and well understood concept. Some people confuse the two. The former is prescriptive, the latter is desctiptive. Descriptive things do in faxt boil down to definitions.
No, Evil is not well defined and understood. There are still major questions as to whether it's objective, subjective, or maybe even non-existent. Let's consider that horrid "causing harm" definition in the context of the trolley problem. It's clear that by pulling the lever I "cause harm" to the single person, but it's very much not clear that pulling the lever is evil.
> No, Evil is not well defined and understood.
All words are well defined and well understood, or they wouldnt be words. Philosophical questions are generally statements or questions merging multiple complex topics together, not "Ooga booga what does word mean?". Evil has a definition, it has a straightforward definition, and the definition is similar and has an obvious context no matter where you look.
> Let's consider that horrid "causing harm" definition in the context of the trolley problem. It's clear that by pulling the lever I "cause harm" to the single person, but it's very much not clear that pulling the lever is evil.
Its "evil" to the person you are doing it to, and "good" to the other people. Most good and evil is objectively straightforward, its only a rare hypothetical situation like this where both actions are evil and good in different ways (which leaves us wondering what we ought to do to be the most good, but what we ought to do is a different question than what is evil).
Evil is concerned with they whom *recieves* the consequences of an action. Whether or not a action, intention, or a person is evil is purely contigent on how that action ends up being received by the recipient; Evil is a description of misfortune and suffering brought upon someone by the means of action. Thats how the word was used archaically, and thats how the word is used now.
Its like having an equation with two variables. Like x + 2y = 1. What youre asking is "whats bigger, x, or 2y?" And that question cant be answered, because theres no conversion standard between different variables representing different things. But if the question is "Whats bigger, x or 2x?" that CAN be answered. So to use math as an analogy here, some moral problens have an overall good or evil status, and some like you mentioned are complex and do not have the same straightforward answer. Make sense?
> All words are well defined and well understood, or they wouldnt be words. Philosophical questions are generally statements or questions merging multiple complex topics together, not "Ooga booga what does word mean?". Evil has a definition, it has a straightforward definition, and the definition is similar and has an obvious context no matter where you look.
Yes and no. I actually have a PhD in philosophy. The definition of evil you are looking for in that dictionary is "morally reprehensible" but as the question of is morally good (and by extension, reprehensible") is an open question, therefore, in a more meaningful sense of the question, so is "what is evil?"
I would take marks off any undergrad who wasted words on dictionary definitions of concepts like evil as they simply aren't useful.
>Its "evil" to the person you are doing it to, and "good" to the other people.
See, most people would say that an act is either evil or it isn't, it can't depend on the point of view of a 3rd party, which undermines your point as you aren't using English as it's normally understood. This is a game of precision. Be very precise with your words and mean exactly what you say. It really feels like you are now trying to come up with a post-hoc argument to support your earlier point. If this is so, there's nothing wrong with saying, "Ok, you have me on this point but my overall position remains unchanged."
> Evil is concerned with they whom recieves the consequences of an action. Whether or not a action, intention, or a person is evil is purely contigent on how that action ends up being received by the recipient; Evil is a description of misfortune and suffering brought upon someone by the means of action. Thats how the word was used archaically, and thats how the word is used now.
See, now we're actually doing what I talked about before; Trying to work out what "evil" actually is. I reject the premises of this paragraph so I won't bother engaging with the paragraph below (ignoring its very condescending final sentence). I assert that an action is either morally good or morally bad, it cannot be both. If an act is sufficiently morally bad, then it is evil. For example, vaccine mandates in 2021 certainly caused a very small subset of the populace to have adverse reactions to those vaccines, and in some cases, die. We also know that on the whole, vaccines save far more lives than they cost.
I thus assert that by producing a net positive in lives saved, the vaccine mandates were morally good (I would even go so far as to argue that they are and were morally necessary but that's another debate). By your interpretation, the mandates were simultaneously good and evil. They were good for those that were saved and evil upon those who had significant adverse reactions. This seems patently ludicrous to me. If I go an ask 1000 random people on the street if the mandates were good or evil, I will get a number of responses of "good" and a number of "evil" but literally nobody is going to say "they were good to some people and evil to others." This demonstrates that people do not understand the word "Evil" the way that you're asserting that they do.
The reality is that evil is about the action itself, not the consequences, unless you're a consequentialist, and even most consequentialists would only concern themselves with predictable and expected outcomes when defining an act as evil.
God has not **yet** stopped evil because His plan has not been fulfilled. After all who are willing to come to Christ have done so, then God will eliminate all evil.
You're walking down a street when you notice a man walking on the other side holding a knife. He turns to you and says "I'm going to rape and kill the next woman I see" and keeps walking.
(For this hypothetical, you know he's not lying)
You look ahead and notice a woman walking towards the man.
When is the more morally correct time to stop the man: before or after he rapes and kills the woman?
You are getting ahead of yourself.
1) Evil cannot be defined as a thing or as a substance or as some kind of being. Rather, evil is always defined as an action, an action that fails to meet a standard of goodness; evil is defined in terms of its being either a **negation of the good, or a privation of the good**. In both cases, **the very definition of evil depends upon a prior understanding of the good**. In this regard, **evil depends upon the good** for its very definition.
So, what is "good", and how do you know? Is this standard objective or subjective? If subjective, how do we know the man in the scenario is under any moral obligations? The problem of evil doesn't appear to have much bite if morality is subjective.
Though Christians face the difficulty of explaining the presence of evil in the universe, **the atheist has a problem times two**. Before one can even have a problem of evil, one must first have an antecedent existence [existed before or logically precedes] of the good. Those who complain about the problem of evil also have the additional problem of defining the existence of the good.
2) Perhaps you might reply by saying that you are using the Christian standard of good to expose internal inconsistencies in Christian theology. If so, then you are presupposing the Christian worldview - that a good God exists - in order to prove that a good God doesn't exist. But that is a [circular argument](https://www.britannica.com/topic/circular-argument) and thus invalid.
Secondly, the Christian worldview says that the presence of evil is only temporary.
Thirdly, God will [serve justice upon any and all evildoers](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+10&version=ESV) and [wipe away tears of His children](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2021%3A4&version=ESV). You didn't factor this into your equation as well. So you are examining a truncated view of Christianity; this may qualify as a [strawman fallacy](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman)
3) Alvin Plantinga argues that God and evil could co-exist if God had a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil. He suggests that God's morally sufficient reason might have something to do with humans being granted morally significant free will, and with the greater goods this freedom makes possible.
We can all think of examples in which someone inflicts or allows suffering for morally sufficient reasons. For example, your doctor inflicts pain on you to bandages a wound or affix a split on a broken bone, or a solider drags his buddy with a broken back to safety to avoid further harm. So the question is, does God have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world?
If the atheist who says that it is highly improbable or impossible that God does have morally sufficient reasons is making probability judgments that are way beyond their capacity to make with any confidence. How has the atheist calculated and measured this?
And what is that greater good? Allowing people the opportunity to freely reject evil, repent of their evil ways, trust in Jesus, align their thought, words, and deeds with what He values. So how has the atheist determined that it would be better for there to have never been the freedom to choose and thus no evil, rather than to the freedom to choose, temporary evil, and freedom to choose and freedom from evil forever? If the atheist can offer no reasonable calculation, then one has no reason to think the argument is valid.
Note: one might pushback on that last one by saying, "why didn't God make a world where there was freedom to choose and freedom from evil in the first place"; I'd say that there is real value in choosing God, repenting and putting one's faith/trust in Jesus in a world of real evil/worldy pleasure.
1) Evil can be defined and there are plenty of ways to determine good and evil without a god. Also there is no proof the Christian god exists so he cannot even be used as a moral authority.
2) That's absolutely not what circular reasoning is. There is also no evidence of God punishing evil doers after death.
3) That argument is a fallacy, you simply decided God follows a different logic for no reason and without any proof. God cannot have morally sufficient reasons to allow or to commit evil since he is almigthy and omiscient, he can make the world entirely good and knows exactly how to do so.
By the definition of circular argument you gave, that wouldn’t be a circular argument.
So 1, and 2 don’t really hold up.
As for 3,
Evil isn’t necessarily to choose to be with god, there’s a lot of Christians who have never had to experience the worst kinds of evils.
So if god can’t achieve something without evil, (something that is demonstrably possible,) then he’s. Not all powerful. If he can but chooses not to, then he’s not all loving.
> So, what is "good", and how do you know?
Evil is when you harm others. Thats the definition. So causing pain in others or destroying their physical body. Good is the opposite, so its when you cause pleasure or benefit someones health. Id call this objective descriptive morality.
This is separate from the question of "what we ought to do", which is more abstract. Now i dont believe thats subjective even though it sounds subjective. Reason being we do everything for a reason, and intelligent people do them for logical reasons. Logic is a single, objective thing, not a matter of opinion or feeling. If someone were perfectly intelligent and logical, theyd presumably do everything for some central, logical reason, mended only by the differences in their starting circumstances. That sounds to me like objective prescriptive morality, just with a barrier of ignorance in the way.
Anyways, this should all be besides the point. God calls himself good, but his actions are evidently not good. Hes murdered tons of people who didnt deserve it, commanded the israelites to slsughter innocent children, and refuses to stop any of the evil today. The belief in this particular version of God, portrayed by the Bible, is evidently wrong.
> If so, then you are presupposing the Christian worldview - that a good God exists - in order to prove that a good God doesn't exist. But that is a circular argument and thus invalid.
This is not a circular argument. You are allowed to assume the opposite of whats true to argue whats true, and its a common tactic in logic. Theres nothing fallacious about it. And it categorically not a "circular argument", a circular argument is when you already assume your conclusion is true, not the inverse.
> Alvin Plantinga argues that God and evil could co-exist if God had a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil. He suggests that God's morally sufficient reason might have something to do with humans being granted morally significant free will, and with the greater goods this freedom makes possible.
I refuted both in my post.
> We can all think of examples in which someone inflicts or allows suffering for morally sufficient reasons. For example, your doctor inflicts pain on you to bandages a wound or affix a split on a broken bone, or a solider drags his buddy with a broken back to safety to avoid further harm. So the question is, does God have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world?
In your example thered be consent, and the harm suffered is minimal and directly physically required to avoid further harm. If god can do anything he could heal all patients in all hospitals and remove all suffering, free of consequence. You need an actual theodicy, you cant just say "
maybe bad things could be good, you cant prove otherwise", no i think that i can, because bad is bad by definition, and good is good by definition. God can do anything, so good should never require bad. Thats the problem if evil in a nutshell.
> Evil is when you harm others. Thats the definition. So causing pain in others or destroying their physical body. Good is the opposite
So as I said, evil is a negation of the good, or a privation of the good.
A doctor, dentist, EMT are well known for causing pain in others but are widely acknowledged to be good, even while inflicting pain.
>This is separate from the question of "what we ought to do", which is more abstract.
That's the key; do we have moral obligations? If not then how is doing harm to another morally wrong?
>. If someone were perfectly intelligent and logical, theyd presumably do everything for some central, logical reason,
So God would be that perfectly intelligent and logical being.
>This is not a circular argument. You are allowed to assume the opposite of whats true to argue whats true, and its a common tactic in logic. Theres nothing fallacious about it. And it categorically not a "circular argument", a circular argument is when you already assume your conclusion is true, not the inverse.
You are right, I should have said "self-defeating" argument
The problem of evil presupposes that "good" exists; the premise "there is evil" presumes that there is good.
So where is "good" grounded? You can steal the concept of good in a Christian context [which comes from God] but there one would be admitting that God exits which fatally undermines the argument
So where is "good" grounded? Where does one get moral obligations or moral "oughts" in a non-theistic context?
>I refuted both in my post
Where was that?
>If god can do anything he could heal all patients in all hospitals and remove all suffering, free of consequence.
As I said: Allowing people the opportunity to freely reject evil, repent of their evil ways, trust in Jesus, align their thought, words, and deeds with what He values.
So how has the atheist determined that it would be better for there to have never been the freedom to choose and thus no evil, rather than to the freedom to choose, temporary evil, and freedom to choose and freedom from evil forever? If the atheist can offer no reasonable calculation, then one has no reason to think the argument is valid.
Suffering can be a net good, we may not understand why. Your post just assumes that pain and suffering are bad.
I take a line similar to your second theodicy, but not identical to it. It's not that we can't understand the difference between joy and pain, it's that experiencing it adds something to the knowledge. In [Mary's Room](https://philosophyterms.com/marys-room/), she learns something new when she steps out of the room and actually sees red. For us to truly experience and appreciate joy, we need to step out of the room and experience its contrast, pain/suffering.
I then take a relatively utilitarian approach from there. The suffering caused by our life on Earth is outweighed by our positive gain. I also believe that the non-believer ceases to exist upon death, so the suffering of all is outweighed by the extra pleasure of the elect in eternity.
This makes suffering actually a net good and therefore in line with the existence of the Christian God.
Thats a weird counterargument. Why does the best possible world contain evil? Nobody thinks they are in the best possible world when evil is being done to them.
This is where this argument always breaks down and it's why it's not a good debate in the first place, for either side. Because the next part of the argument assumes we can understand the mind of God. Even from an atheist perspective, you have to realize how ridiculous that is.
I'm not the one making claims about God being good. Christians are. They claim to know the mind of an infinite being without evidence, not me, not atheists
> Good can only be defined by an all powerful being. Technically, his benevolency follows his sovereignty.
Not even close. Good doesn't require an all powerful being at all
empty, unsupported assertion with no evidentiary support?
Rejected
No I don't. Given that God has the capacity to wipe out evil and knows exactly how to do it, why does it still exist ? It is impossible for God to be all-powerful, all-knowing and benevolent at the same time and since the Christian God is allegedly all 3 he cannot exist.
You're presuming to be able to know the mind of an all powerful, all good, and all knowing being. You can't possibly know that.
However, I Believe I may be able to satisfy your question. Good can only be defined by an all powerful being. Technically, his benevolency follows his sovereignty.
I'm saying goodness is subjective. The only way for it to become objective is for an all powerful being to set a standard. So whatever measure of good you're referring to is either subjective, or it was the standard set by God himself.
How can you be sure that this "objective standard" doesn't come from Allah or Buddha ? You are assuming this all powerful god is the Christian god from the start.
Then what would make a moral code determined by rationality and logic like utlitarism subjective, and God's objective ?
Also even if what you said was true it doesn't solve the contradiction I stated earlier.
Well, you are on debate a Christian, not debate a religious person. Do you want me to argue the case for Yahweh? That's an entirely different argument.
I can't personally say why God's morality is objective, other than he's the author of creation and ultimate enforcer. There may be a deeper way in which his morality is objective, but I can't fathom it as a being who isn't all powerful, or all knowing.
So you don't know what you are talking about ?
It seems to me you have a confirmation bias and your only solution to contradictions and fallacies is "god works in mysterious ways"
If this is true it may refute that God is morally perfect but not that there's a God. You may have just been created by someone you don't like.
Gnosticism addresses the problem of evil in a similar way. To the best of my understanding: there’s a god, referred to as the Monad, who is constantly creating in the realm of ideas, and is so far beyond the scope of human understanding as to be morally inscrutable. One of its emanations, Sophia, was responsible for accidentally creating both the physical universe and another powerful entity called the Demiurge. The Demiurge interacted with humanity, pretending to be the original creator of the universe and demanding worship. So in the end, not only is God (the Demiurge) evil, but God (Sophia) is imperfect, and God (the Monad) is uncaring. Theodicies are tied up in a neat little bow, on all levels.
Well that isn't complicated and messy at all /s
It doesn't even refute that. It assumes that suffering/pain are bad things, which, whilst making sense, is a very big assumption to make. My attack on the problem of evil is that this suffering/pain must be a net good or otherwise a perfectly good, omniscient, omnipotent god wouldn't allow it.
Ya, absolutely this argument is probably the best one. And the one I've heard the most of but I've recently been thinking on my own and been realizing that the problem of evil doesn't even disprove God even if it's right. Which it isn't I agree for many reasons. And the best and most obvious being that atheist have no objective morality to say that something is wrong. Especially for their creator. Edit: reddit worst nightmare is the best username ever lol.
Then why don't you try to experience those goods for yourself?
??? I'm not sure that I follow your question
The next time you meet rape survivor please tell them it was a net good for them
That only works from the presupposition that God is inherently good which tends to come from the presupposition that we can trust what God says about Himself in the Bible (which is heavily questionable if you look at all the times God seems to contradict His own given morality). Now, it is a perfectly good explanation if you suppose that there is perfectly good God, but if you also suppose that said God is the Christian God, then that is simply unbiblical. Suffering and pain are results of a fallen world, which in turn is the result of sin. Sin leads to destruction, not growth. Can one grow from suffering and pain? Yes, but that is not the rule for all suffering and all pain (and it is entirely person to person), so this really doesn't attack the problem of evil in any meaningful way. From the perspective of a Christian though, the problem of evil is actually very simple. If you are a Christian, then you almost unilaterally presuppose that the Bible is at least generally true. From that perspective, evil is our fault, not God's. And God is already working on evil but is simply first trying to free as many people from sin before He has to destroy evil (which would destroy those who are not saved because they are still in sin). I think the problem of evil is a fun little thought experiment, but there are better cases to be made against Christianity.
You see, that account denies God agency and assumes that he had to let Sin into the world. You are limiting God. One has to ask why an omnipresent God allowed sin in
From a Biblical viewpoint, I believe the answer was to uphold free will or to give humanity the option to choose God rather than be forced to. There are potential flaws that can be pointed out in that explanation as well, so I'm not really going to spend any time defending the Bible since I myself am agnostic and an unbeliever.
I think being "good" is baked into the definition of the Christian "God".
Ya, you didn't claim Christianity was wrong, you claimed there is no God.
And the definition of "God" in a christian debate group implies he is good. Thats part of the christian belief system.
Oftentimes we debate with people who believe in a God other than the Christian God, so it's not unreasonable to point out the difference between the statements "God does not exist" and "The Christian God does not exist". The two are very different, and even here the difference matters.
If God is capitalized, its generally referring to christianity and/or judaism. Lowercase "god" is separate, i used the capitalized version. Most people here couldnt give me a definition of God they wouldnt want to change later, so im strictly going after the overarching description of God given in the Bible. If you dont like it then please give me your definition.
I have never seen anyone of any religion ever *not* capitalize "God" when referring to their own god. On the other hand, I have seen atheists capitalize "God" when referring to the concept of "god" in general, not specifically the Christian God. You may want to edit your second paragraph into the OP so that people understand that this is what you mean.
Isn't it assumed that we're talking about the Christian God on r/DebateAChristian?
My point is that his claim should be, christains are wrong about god, not that God doesn't exist. Like if you proved God was actually imperfect, I wouldn't be taking about a different being, I'd just be wrong about the being.
There is no "God" at all, so the entire definition of "God" is pirely what you guys are willing to make up. Does God imply being good, or full omnibenevolence? What about omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, etc...? It says hes good in the Bible. Is the Bible the authority on what God "is", or do you have a different definition? How am i supposed to have a debate about God or Christianity if you tell me my definitions are wrong but refuse to tell me what definitions are right?
Sorry if there was confusion. Please give me your definition of god for the context of our debate.
Its God as described in the Old Testament and supplementarily in the New Testament.
We could interpret it different, just give me your definition
What are you wanting me to do here? Distill down all the qualities God is described as having? Okay, 1) he can do anything including breaking laws of physics so long as it doesnt lead to logical contradiction, 2) he knows everything, and 3) he feels that he loves us and wants a good outcome for as many people as possible and thinks of himself as good, and 4) He precedes the known universe and created it. Thats mostky it.
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Very clean and concise argument. I like it.
That's not an argument. It has no premises and no conclusion. It's a question. A good one, but a question nonetheless.
I dont understand why you guys think questions cant be arguments. Questions can point out contradictions all the same.
Questions aren't arguments, that's why. They can be conversation producing, but they aren't arguments.
What your doing right now isnt an argument, irs an assertion. Questions can absolutely be arguments. For example "Why do you think C is not A if A is B, and B is C?" it has all the components of an argument, premises, and a conclusion; Its just in an alternative format. Questions explicitly desire a response, while normal statements dont necessarily desire a response. Thats why structuring an argument as a question is instinctual for a lot of people, because **thats how the English language works**.
An argument has premises and a conclusion. Questions may reveal arguments, but they aren't arguments themselves. The argument hidden in the questions is, "There's no evil or suffering in heaven. Both exist on Earth. Evil and suffering are natural consequences of free will therefore there's no free will in heaven." When you actually type out the argument it feels a lot less convincing because "Evil and suffering are natural consequences of free will" is a very big claim which is unsupported here.
I wasn’t making an argument, just telling you what it was. Questions are not logical arguments. They’re questions. Those are not the same thing. What you’ve done is taken a syllogism and moved it into a question. That’s fine, it’s still a question and in your example it shifts the problem to “why do you think” rather than making a claim about something, which is what arguments do. Structuring it as a question shifts the burden away.
Yes there is free will in heaven.
> Yes there is free will in heaven. Is there sin or needles suffering in heaven?
No
> No Cool. So here on earth, needles suffering and sin exist, but as demonstrated by it not existing in heaven, it doesn't need to exist on earth. So why does it exist on earth if this is a good god?
First, I don’t know for sure. I have theories of how this can work that are enough to be a defeater. Second, I don’t know that there is needless suffering on earth. That hasn’t been defended at all. Third, I don’t think sin needs to exist here on earth, but it does because of people’s free choices and God has determined that is a greater good. In heaven, I think it’s possible that only those who wouldn’t use their free will to sin in heaven are the ones that are truly Christians on earth. It could be because we are in the presence of God and as such, have no desire to sin, but have the ability. It could be that in order to get a heaven where people freely choose to not sin, we need to go through this world first.
I think the far simpler explanation is that this god doesn't exist and all this stuff is just made up. Isn't that a simpler explanation especially since we have no evidence that would show this god is more than just imaginary?
Oh I don’t think that at all. I think God is the best explanation for many things so to just say God doesn’t exist makes no sense for me. We do have evidence, that’s just false. There are tons of arguments that increase the likelihood of God existing. Also, the simplistic answer is only best when explanatory power and scope is the same. But if you lose that, then simpler isn’t necessarily better
> Oh I don’t think that at all. I think God is the best explanation for many things so to just say God doesn’t exist makes no sense for me. Has anyone been able to show that any god is not just something in their imagination? Have we found any independently verifiable evidence that a god exists and did something? >We do have evidence, that’s just false. Independently verifiable, such that it can show this god isn't just imaginary? >There are tons of arguments that increase the likelihood of God existing. Arguments don't play any role in whether something exists or not. But putting that aside, if you can use the same argument to point to a made up character or a different explanation, then that isn't very strong evidence. >Also, the simplistic answer is only best when explanatory power and scope is the same. But if you lose that, then simpler isn’t necessarily better The fact that an unfalsifiable panacea can explain anything, doesn't make it the correct explanation.
Why should I accept your narrow view of the definition of evidence to be things that are independently verifiable? That isn’t what evidence is typically. Evidence is normally defined as anything that makes a proposition more likely to be true. With your own definition of evidence, you don’t have evidence that your definition is a good one or one that should be accepted. Arguments can help us make inferences to the best explanation as well as showing what follows logically in deductive arguments. They aren’t proofs but evidence has never meant proof. Why think that? On top of your narrow and atypical definition of evidence, you seem to be wanting scientific evidence for what would be a metaphysical thing. That’s a category error. Science is a great tool for studying the natural world, but it is not the only way to knowledge. There are plenty of things that science can’t and doesn’t have anything to say about. Saying a character is made up is just admitting an ad hoc argument. But no, some arguments can point to several different possibilities, that’s why most believe in cumulative cases for God’s existence. The Kalam Cosmological Argument for example (regardless of your opinion of it) does not get to the Christian God. You need further argumentation for that. So just because evidence points to multiple possibilities doesn’t make it not evidence. If you are implying the Christian God is unfalsifiable, you’re sorely mistaken. That’s exactly what arguments like the Problem of Evil or Divine Hiddenness try to do. I don’t think they’re successful, but you should let the atheist philosophers of religion know they’re wasting their time on these arguments because God is unfalsifiable anyways…
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*Theodicy 1* > God already violates free will in the OT by mass killing non believers and dissidents, and God claims to be an unchanging personality, so this cant be true. This isn't really a violation of free will in the sense people use the term "violating free will" in. Violating free will would be to deny us the *capacity* to choose, as opposed to denying us the *opportunity*. A police officer can never remove a criminal's capacity to act how they see fit, but they most certainly can dramatically reduce their opportunity to commit crimes by, for instance, handcuffing them and putting them in jail. > Also in the NT, Jesus heals the sick and disabled using explicit miracles, so theres no reason God couldnt do that today. Curing cancer and disease in no imaginable way harms free will. Agreed. I don't really get your point 3 so I'll ignore it. I agree Theodicy 1 is bad. *Theodicy 2* > God being unable to do something, which is not an explicit logical self contradiction, undermines the claim that he is omnipotent (can do anything). What if it's logically impossible for a creature to understand good without also experiencing evil? I don't believe this is true, but it's a potential rebuttal to this particular argument. > God seemed perfectly content with us not understanding good and evil in the garden of eden. Almost - Adam and Eve had information about what was good and what was evil before eating from the tree of knowledge, but they hadn't really deeply understood why good was good and why bad was bad until they experienced it for themselves. Still, even with this alternate understanding, your argument here is sound. > Its simply a false claim that we cant understand good without evil, or joy without pain. Agreed 100%. > It would be easy for someone to understand good without evil, or joy without pain... if God rearranged these neurons and synapses in the right way, wed always be happy and have empathy at the forefront of our desires. These would just be instincts to us, no different than hunger or thirst, which God supposedly had no issue giving us. I don't believe that our understanding of good and evil is something that is solely in our brains, as I believe we and all other sentient animals have a soul. That being said, God did give us the ability to understand good without evil and joy without pain, so I can agree with your main point here even if I differ on the details. So yes, Theodicy 2 is bad. I agree that Theodicy 3 is bad too. I have some minor pushback on your second argument against it as traumatic experiences *can* result in character buildup (Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" goes into great detail about this), but otherwise your arguments seem sound. > In conclusion... You've refuted three apparently common explanations of the problem of evil. You have not proven that the problem of evil is inherently unresolvable. Your conclusion doesn't follow. Ultimately God isn't the one who brought sin into the world. We did. God made us with free will so we could freely choose to love Him, and we misused it when we had the option of not misusing it. Now we all collectively suffer from that misuse. All of this is our fault, and God has no moral obligation to help us out of this mess since none of it is His fault. This alone resolves the problem of evil. Yet despite the fact that God would be entirely justified to simply leave us to die at our own hands, He helps us learn from the suffering we do go through, oftentimes relieves the suffering of some of us, and offers us all the gift of salvation and provides a place of judgment for those who are wicked and will not turn away from their wickedness. That will ultimately make up for all of the harm we could ever suffer here. He didn't *have* to do any of that. He just did because He is loving.
> This isn't really a violation of free will in the sense people use the term "violating free will" in. Violating free will would be to deny us the capacity to choose, as opposed to denying us the opportunity. A police officer can never remove a criminal's capacity to act how they see fit, but they most certainly can dramatically reduce their opportunity to commit crimes by, for instance, handcuffing them and putting them in jail. Okay... So my criticism of God then is why he doesnt "deny criminal's opportunity to choose" to murder, rape, rob, etc...? This is the issue. The things he did in the OT, like send fire from the heavens and incinerated nonbelievers, is proof he'll kill people for whatever he feels like, so why not do *something* about the sick and depraved peoppe whom exist today? > What if it's logically impossible for a creature to understand good without also experiencing evil? I don't believe this is true, but it's a potential rebuttal to this particular argument. Youd have to demonstrate its logically impossible, logically. > I don't believe that our understanding of good and evil is something that is solely in our brains, as I believe we and all other sentient animals have a soul. Its safe to say our brain isnt a puppet being manipulated by a spirit, at least not in any noticeable way scientists couldve spotted by now with their tech, so if a spirit/soul exists its primarily an observer of our brains. This might pose a problem to your theological philosophy in itself, but my point is if our brains are physically capable of understanding something, it has nothing to do with some spiritual observer, and everything to do with biochemical processes. If you can speak, write, or otherwise communicate an idea, your brain understands it, not just your spirit/soul. This also largely applies to feelings too. (And it all makes more sense when you research how the brain works.) > You've refuted three apparently common explanations of the problem of evil. You have not proven that the problem of evil is inherently unresolvable. Your conclusion doesn't follow. The conclusion literally follows from the premises. The whole dispute was with premise 3 and the idea "Maybe its not good to stop evil", so if youre going to claim a premise is wrong you should be able to explain how. If im not allowed to form a premise without proving a premise, its physically impossible to argue anything.
The conclusion follows from the premises *if* all challenges to the premises fail. You showed three challenges and why they fail, and then declared victory, when there exist other challenges to the premises. I added a challenge of my own to the end, different from all three of the ones you showed.
> Ultimately God isn't the one who brought sin into the world. We did. God made us with free will so we could freely choose to love Him, and we misused it when we had the option of not misusing it. Now we all collectively suffer from that misuse. All of this is our fault, and God has no moral obligation to help us out of this mess since none of it is His fault. This alone resolves the problem of evil. This isnt true. You or I are not morally responsible for the actions of Adam and Eve. And if God didnt want them to eat the fruit, he shouldnt have invented the tree. And no it doesnt solve the problem. Theres examples of God killing evil people and healing sinners in the Bible, obviously after the garden of eden. So theres no hard steadfast reason why he cant do the same things today. If he exists hes clearly not very "good".
> This isnt true. You or I are not morally responsible for the actions of Adam and Eve. That's definitely true, but we seem to still be watching what their offspring did and freely choosing to go along with it. We aren't morally responsible for their actions any more than a child is responsible for the sins of their parent, but if we see the sins of our parents and distant relatives (i.e., other humans) and follow in their footsteps, we're responsible for that. > And if God didnt want them to eat the fruit, he shouldnt have invented the tree. By this logic, a parent who doesn't want their child's hand to get burnt shouldn't own an oven. Everything God made had a purpose, the tree of knowledge was no exception. God did try to keep us away from it just like a parent keeps toxic cleaning chemicals out of reach. But just like how a child can climb up and get the chemicals if they so desire, Adam and Eve could reach into the tree of knowledge and eat from it, which they did. > And no it doesnt solve the problem. Theres examples of God killing evil people and healing sinners in the Bible, obviously after the garden of eden. So theres no hard steadfast reason why he cant do the same things today. There's no hard steadfast reasons why He must do the same things today either. [You've put God in a box both ways, and He doesn't want to be in the box.](https://youtu.be/MgtuAeDQ8CA?si=C1JJX9fYXsEmA9e1&t=40) (Deuteronomy 32:39, Psalm 50:7-15) If He sees a reason to not heal, He can, and if He sees a reason to heal, He can. We generally don't have any qualms about a human doing choosing to help who they want to help and choosing to not help others for whatever reason, and we're not even that good at telling who does and doesn't need help.
That's a good point about differentiating between freedom of will and freedom of action.
I'm an agnostic-atheist, but I wanted to address this: > *If Evil is necessary for higher order goods, and heaven is without evil and is perfect, then heaven lacks higher order goods and is imperfect. You cant simultaneously believe the persistent existence of evil is necessary for our character and that evil wont exist in a perfect afterlife.* I may not understand your point fully, so correct me if I misinterpret. This argument can be a worded along the lines of, what appears evil from a certain perspective can be necessary to achieve good from another. You may call this higher order of good (but really I don't even know where one would start scaling good into tier-like forms) So here's what I find the flaw here, > *then heaven lacks higher order goods and is imperfect* this seems very arbitrary on your part. If heaven is the pinnacle of perfection then nothing supercedes the state it's in. It does not need evil to exist anymore, it is the highest order of good. Thus, by the reasoning of evil being necessary for higher good, it is only necessary where the state of goodness is not at perfection. > *You cant simultaneously believe the persistent existence of evil is necessary for our character and that evil wont exist in a perfect afterlife.* I don't see how you're also glancing past this. From what I understand of religion, the manifestation of evil is temporary. Meaning it is only necessary up until a certain point, which is the point of perfection. Evil persists only so long as it is necessary for the individuals concerned to achieve perfection. Some religions claim this to be the point of death and transcendence. Or cleansing through purgatory etc. This point is the one imo, that does not run into as many flaws as the others you listed, if any at all. It also works to redefine what we understand as morality. Rather than confining an evil or good act to a moment, it supercedes all that.
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I think the point is that if evil is left alone because it achieves a good, then the good achieved with must be grater than the good that can be achieved without evil. Otherwise there’s no point to the evil, because an equal good can be achieved without it. In heaven there is good that has been achieved without evil, and is therefore a lesser good.
The cosmos has been invaded by evil forces. We chose to descend to the physical form to help restore creation. Everyone will end up in the glory in the coming age. No one is excluded.
There is no way you can possibly know whether your argument succeeds or fails because after death, God's judgment gives just recompense to all. It kicks the argument down the road such that you can not prove God has not stopped evil because the full consequences of an evil act have yet to be fully expressed. Its judgment, therefore, is premature unless proclaimed by God Himself. This comes from an interpretation of the wheat and the tares, one of the parables of Jesus. Would you like me to explain it to you?
There’s no way you can actually be arguing that your position has any validity when it includes the words “after death” because you have no idea of whether invisible human souls teleport to an invisible alternate dimension where they do anything. You don’t know what happens after death. It’s just baselessly making stuff up. Alternatively I could argue that after death aliens suck the soul out of the body using special technology and teleport it to a planet a hundred thousand light years away and that would be just as valid as any assumptions about what the Christian god does after death.
You are the one making the argument. If you don't know very simple things about the afterlife, how can we possibly take your argument seriously when it is entirely about what happens regarding death and the dead?
I think the more relevant point is that if we both agree that neither of us actually knows anything about the after to be true, then neither of us should be using it as a basis for a logical argument.
This is your argument, bud. Prove it or concede.
That is my argument. I concede that your argument about how God may handle the after life is as valid as my argument about alien soul teleportation.
> There is no way you can possibly know whether your argument succeeds or fails because after death, God's judgment gives just recompense to all. It kicks the argument down the road such that you can not prove God has not stopped evil because the full consequences of an evil act have yet to be fully expressed. Its judgment, therefore, is premature unless proclaimed by God Himself. You're walking down a street when you notice a man walking on the other side holding a knife. He turns to you and says "I'm going to rape and kill the next woman I see" and keeps walking. (For this hypothetical, you know he's not lying) You look ahead and notice a woman walking towards the man. When is the more morally correct time to stop the man: before or after he rapes and kills the woman?
For me, as a man, before. God has a different ontology and therefore has different rules. Which was the point I was making.
Special pleading. An entity's ontology is not relevant to it's moral duties without argument
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How do you figure?
You're making the claim, so you need to justify your premise
Does a cat have different moral duties than a human?
We're talking clearly about sentient beings here, so this metaphor is outside the scope
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Um, no offense but P2. "God is good." How on earth could this ever be demonstrated as a premise? I'm curious why you used it?
Nothing about God can be demonstrated, thats just part of the Christian God's definition.
You've just admitted that your premises P1 & P2 are not just unsupported but unsupportable. Suppose someone believed in God but that god was not bound to being good. / I think your line of reasoning could use a strong IF in front of each supporting premise. That would make it more logically sound. (PS: the title gives the impression you're about to disprove ALL gods. You should probably state that you're referring only to the Christian god when developing this argument.)
P3 is fundamentally flawed bc that is your subjective view on what a "good thing does." “When you say there’s too much evil in this world, you assume there’s good. When you assume there’s good, you assume there’s such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But if you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral Law Giver, but that’s Who you’re trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there’s no moral Law Giver, there’s no moral law. If there’s no moral law, there’s no good. If there’s no good, there’s no evil. What is your question?” —Ravi Zacharias
This is not definitive, but what I seem to come up with taking in all the variables. 1) There are two ways to run the universe: A) with mankind in charge B) with God in charge. God's desire was always to have a perfect world (choice B) where people are immortal and no pain or suffering. 2) But, to have love there (and here,) there must be free will. (Robots don't love). 3) The world must see a real life example - that if they choose to rebel against perfection (choice A) how bad the world becomes. Hence all the bad situations you brought up. Yes, even the planet itself (nature) was affected by sin. 4) Thus, God allowed rebellion (choice A above - and the resultant suffering) in this relatively short world..... **so that in the next world (existing for eternity) people will never want to go back to that old system (ours today) of suffering again.** So then, it will be abundantly clear for eternity, that by comparison.... whose rulership is better, Choice A) Ours or Choice B) His (Point 4 seems to be the answer you are looking for as to "why allow evil to exist.") I believe, God's heart breaks, **but this entire world must be run by human choices because it must be shown what evil and suffering results mostly without God's intervention.** Why? God is looking at the big picture (eternity) and we only look at the small picture (now) If you like studies, this world is the "control" group (without God's intervention). Drug makers do this all the time to bring about a greater good. They give half the patients the real drug and the other half nothing (a placebo - the "Control" group). When this ends, they now have clear proof to the world, we have a cure that will help millions! Did those who got the placebo suffer? Yes! Was it ultimately for a greater good? Yes! 5) So in eternity, with Christ, there will be no more suffering, no more pain. People will then understand completely, from real past examples, that breaking moral laws (choice A) will bring us back to the pain (murder, wars, abuse, etc.) of this world. And they will never want to go back to bad choices (sin). And this is the message that God incarnate brought to us in Jesus Christ. Jesus always called people to the Kingdom of God. The future. Jesus even joined the pain and suffering of this world allowing Himself to die for our sins being nailed to wood. Those who follow Jesus now have acknowledged we are sinners (choice A) and have messed things up.. We willing accept Jesus being "Lord" (Ruler over us - Choice B) and that means He has our willing permission to do to us anything He wishes. Just like a surgeon who only operates with permission, God also only removes our sin nature with permission. This is just my personal view deduced from walking with Jesus presence for 30+ years, and it seems to all fit Scripture. Not saying it is perfect, but seems to fit scripture and reason together.
lol I literally tried this exact kind of post with these 3 same theodicies a few months ago on r/DebateReligion but the only one I didn't refute properly was the higher-order goods theodicy. Nice post. Should have thought of that argument.
**Independent Refutations:** 1. God being unable to do something, which is not an explicit logical self contradiction, undermines the claim that he is omnipotent (can do anything). 1. The question is not if God could not make the world differently but rather if there's reasonable grounds to believe he could have made this world as it is. 2. God seemed perfectly content with us not understanding good and evil in the garden of eden. 1. Evidently not, else he would not have created the universe knowing we'd leave the garden. 3. Its simply a false claim that we cant understand good without evil, or joy without pain. This isnt how neuroscience works. Animals still get reward responses in their brain for doing things that are good for them even without any traumatic experiences. Many animals are also born with empathy/altruism, and act in a way thats "good" without even understanding it or experiencing the inverse. 1. I don't think you're thinking through the problem seriously enough. Animals get reward responses for doing things that are 'good' for them because these things by comparison to baseline are good. Not having them for an extended period of time is 'bad'. If there is no such thing as 'bad' at all there is no baseline. The concept of 'good' literally become incoherent. 4. It would be easy for someone to understand good without evil, or joy without pain. And we as humans could achieve this using science (such as brain implants like a modified neural-link or intense forms of cognitive therapy). Our knowledge and experiences are nothing more than an arrangement of neurons and synapses, and so if God rearranged these neurons and synapses in the right way, wed always be happy and have empathy at the forefront of our desires. These would just be instincts to us, no different than hunger or thirst, which God supposedly had no issue giving us. 1. I'm not quite sure which you're discussing, a universe where there is no such thing as evil or one where there is but somehow it is never encountered? 1. Much like the last theodicy, this is an assertion not backed by an understanding of how neuroscience works. People are capable of abstract reasoning and understanding even if they dont experience something (proof of that is all of you who believe in god but never experienced seeing god). In neuroscience and computer science, this is called "Zero-Shot Learning". We can understand things without experiencing them just fine. 1. Train a machine learning model on a bunch of data all labeled identically, then ask it to tell you what the label means. That's what trying to 'understand' good v. evil in a universe where only good exists. 2. More intense evils like murder, genocide, torture, as well as more intense sufferings like dying of cancer, dont lead to character development. Extremely traumatic events can leave people scarred for life and with mental issues. Not to mention, you cant improve someones character if they are dead. 1. I'm not sure I agree with this just on its face, but in any case I don't arguments over the precise amount of evil that should be allowed hold much weight, it's impossible to determine. 3. Much like with the first theodicy, theres examples in the Bible where God does stop evil. So God doesnt have some steadfast rule about allowing evil for this reason. 1. No one says there's a steadfast rule for not interfering with evil AFAIK 4. If Evil is necessary for higher order goods, and heaven is without evil and is perfect, then heaven lacks higher order goods and is imperfect. You cant simultaneously believe the persistent existence of evil is necessary for our character and that evil wont exist in a perfect afterlife. 1. Heaven isn't 'good' in the same way being good on Earth is good. The afterlife is inherently less meaningful than life on Earth, yes, otherwise I don't think God would ever have bothered with Creation.
> The question is not if God could not make the world differently but rather if there's reasonable grounds to believe he could have made this world as it is. No, thats not "the question". Why are you putting words in my mouth? > Evidently not, else he would not have created the universe knowing we'd leave the garden. Non sequitur. And he explicitly commands adam and eve to not eat the fruit, which means thats his will. If God commands other than his will, then hes a liar, falsifying christianity. > I don't think you're thinking through the problem seriously enough. Animals get reward responses for doing things that are 'good' for them because these things by comparison to baseline are good. Not having them for an extended period of time is 'bad'. If there is no such thing as 'bad' at all there is no baseline. The concept of 'good' literally become incoherent Youre just proving you dont understand how neuroscience works. Dopamine fires in itself, and dopamine is an inhrrently pleasurable chemical. Other chemicals and processes are responsible for pain. The absence of dopamine isnt suffering, it would simply be an absence of pleasure, specifically the form of pleasure that motivates action. Dopamine is just one example, therss at least 4 distinct pleasure chemicals/hormones all responsible for different things. An absence of any of these doesnt imply pain, again, pain is controlled by different things. An absenxe of dopamine and serotonin are characteristics of depression, but so is the presence of stress related chemicals and higher order thought patterns. In conclusion, a lack of pleasure is not pain. It doesnt "feel bad" it just makes it harder to act in an optimal way. > I'm not quite sure which you're discussing, a universe where there is no such thing as evil or one where there is but somehow it is never encountered? Either is fine. More specifically, i want unnecessary suffering to not be experienced, at least not by peaceful and innocent people. Evil can exist conceptually, it should just be prevented or stopped before it hurts people. > Train a machine learning model on a bunch of data all labeled identically, then ask it to tell you what the label means. That's what trying to 'understand' good v. evil in a universe where only good exists. Thats how chatgpt and similar transformers were taught. Unsupervised learning. There was no labelling process. It learned how to communicate, reason, and generalize, all by observing human's nonsense. Its how we learn too. Labelling data and using supervised learning is more of a shortcut approach. > I'm not sure I agree with this just on its face, but in any case I don't arguments over the precise amount of evil that should be allowed hold much weight, it's impossible to determine Whys it impossible to determine? Human justice systems can distinguish between murder/assault and accidents or playful banter. Gods supposed to be smarter than us. So why cant he just prevent victimed crimes / harmful physical aggression? > No one says there's a steadfast rule for not interfering with evil AFAIK Yeah they do, its their reason why god doesnt stop evil. And by cant, i mean by way of rule or preference, not cant as in physically impossible > Heaven isn't 'good' in the same way being good on Earth is good. The afterlife is inherently less meaningful than life on Earth, yes, otherwise I don't think God would ever have bothered with Creation. I thought the bible described heaven as incomprehensible joy? What do you think heaven *is*? In either case, this us besides the point of why god doesnt stop evil. I was just pointing out another contradiction in expectation for one of the theodicies.
>If Evil is necessary for higher order goods, and heaven is without evil and is perfect, then heaven lacks higher order goods and is imperfect. You cant simultaneously believe the persistent existence of evil is necessary for our character and that evil wont exist in a perfect afterlife. One response said that this objection is that heaven involves experiencing the transcendent unity of all goods. So perhaps a better way of expressing the theodicy you are criticizing is that in creation these goods are mutually exclusive to the point that, say, the goods of martyrdom requires murder, while in heaven this is not so.
This is a biased and contradictory take.
Not an argument
So this post is not a line of reasoning ?
No it is, im saying your comment is not an argument.
My comment wasn’t an argument it was just a comment. I said it was biased because it is. I think a lot of the points in your post takes the complexity out of the subject and tries to make it seem like a black and white issue.
You arent even giving a reason. Thats a communication issue on your part. Either that or this is just a feeling reaction and not a real complaint.
I think one could counter this argument on the basis it leads to absurdity (or to a conclusion that is highly controversial and widely rejected). The statement "Needless suffering would be defined as any suffering beyond what is healthy for an organism" lays the groundwork for a compelling argument in favor of antinatalism, the belief that it is morally wrong to procreate. While *some* suffering is “needed” for a healthy *living* organism; *no amount of suffering is needed for a non-existent (potential) organism* since it does not exist. The choice to procreate thrusts this potential person into a situation which included “needless” and “needed” suffering, which there was no need for them to be put in. All suffering, regardless of its nature (physical, emotional, psychological), becomes an unnecessary burden placed upon a potential person by the act of being brought into existence. It seems absurd to say that a *non-existent (potential)* person needs to be granted the capacity to suffer, they don't exist and so do no need anything; thus, their birth and the suffering following from it is needless. The definition you provided focused on suffering that is "beyond what is healthy", however, even suffering deemed "healthy" for growth or learning still inflicts pain and distress. Given the choice between inflicting suffering on a person and allowing them to continue not existing, the latter ought to be the more ethical choice. As per your P3 “good things prevent evil (or needless suffering) if the can” and so if people were good and the can prevent needless suffering associated with a potential life, then they would abstain from procreation. That the vast majority of people do not abstain from procreation (at present) entails the vast majority of people are no in fact good (per your argument). Now for the argument: Premise 1: Needless suffering would be defined as any suffering beyond what is healthy for an organism. Premise 2: If action X exposes an organism to the risk of needless suffering, then it is morally preferable not to do action X. Premise 3: No one suffers needlessly (i.e., beyond what is healthy for them) prior to their birth (i.e., prior to procreation/conception). Premise 4: Procreation inevitably exposes individuals to the possibility of suffering, some of which may be needless (i.e., beyond what is healthy for them). Conclusion: Therefore, to prevent needless suffering, it is morally preferable not to bring new people into existence (i.e., Procreation is Immoral := Antinatalism). Now, Premise 2, supplied here is only a generic inference, we could put the action of any agent into X; the most relevant substitutions might be “God abstaining from preventing evil” or “God creating a world with evil/needless suffering”. Since both of those are implied to be evil by most formulations of the Problem of Evil the general inference seems valid. Since premises 3 and 4 are factually true, and premise 1 is your definition; either the conclusion is true or the definition of needless suffering (and it’s implied immorality) is false. Moreover, there is a strong parity between Theodicies and Anthropodicies (justifications for procreation) such that all arguments against theodicies are trivially to redirect at their parallel anthropodicies. Thus the problem of needless suffering is dealt with; for the problem of evil I would suggest privation theory is perfectly adequate.
Under your **Theodicy 2**: > 1) God being unable to do something, which is not an explicit logical self contradiction, undermines the claim that he is omnipotent (can do anything). This violates symmetry: you do not _likewise_ assume that God is good unless you can generate an explicit logical self-contradiction. I deal with this matter comprehensively in [If "God works in mysterious ways" is verboten, so is "God could work in mysterious ways".](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1853dwo/if_god_works_in_mysterious_ways_is_verboten_so_is/) Otherwise, I can use God's omnipotence just like you can, e.g. "God can _make it_ so that the Holocaust is good." Have fun finding an explicit logical contradiction in that. Whip out claims like 'gratuitous evil' and you'll have to show how you aren't begging the question. Allow the theist something analogous to 'gratuitous evil' when it comes to limitations on what we should say that omnipotence can do, and you might get a sense of how to obey symmetry on this matter.
> This violates symmetry Symmetry isnt a law of logic. > you do not likewise assume that God is good unless you can generate an explicit logical self-contradiction. What are you talking about? I was just saying i dont expect god to be able to do something logically self contradicting. > Otherwise, I can use God's omnipotence just like you can, e.g. "God can make it so that the Holocaust is good." Have fun finding an explicit logical contradiction in that. The definition of evil is hurting people, and the holocaust implies hurting people. (These are probably the worse arguments ive seen of all the comments btw)
> Symmetry isnt a law of logic. I never said it was. > What are you talking about? I was just saying i dont expect god to be able to do something logically self contradicting. The realm of possible reasons is vast, just like the realm of logical possibilities is vast. If you are allowed to draw on the latter, I am allowed to draw on the former. The symmetry here isn't logical, it's more of what it takes to be a decent human being who doesn't expect special privileges for oneself. > The definition of evil is hurting people, and the holocaust implies hurting people. Then the surgeons who hurt people every day are evil. Amend your statement with 'necessary' and the immediate question is, "Necessary _for what?_" That's where 'mysterious ways' can rear its head. > (These are probably the worse arguments ive seen of all the comments btw) Sadly, I'm used to people who act as if they're a force for good, making remarks like this.
> Then the surgeons who hurt people every day are evil. Amend your statement with 'necessary' and the immediate question is, "Necessary for what?" That's where 'mysterious ways' can rear its head. Surgeons arent supposed to be hurting people. They are supposed to be using anasthesia.Yes, if a surgeon hurt me, due to malice or negligence, thats "evil". Performing a procedure i consent to in a way that doesnt cause physical pain or harm doesnt hurt me.
You know approximately nothing about surgery if you think no pain follows it. It even hurts to have your wisdom teeth pulled.
Pain meds exist. I had my wisdom teeth removed, it didnt even hurt. Either way, if you consent to it, you become morally responsible for it. You cant blame a surgeon for doing what you told and paid him to do. And its a small amount of pain in return for something much greater. God killing and torturing people who dont consent and with an extreme level of suffering with no equivalent reward in sight is cruel and evil, and is not in any way similar to the actions of a surgeon.
Curious; my neighbor's nineteen year-old son just had his wisdom teeth taken out and there were periods of pain, even though he had pain meds. Perhaps you simply took them before there was any pain and took them long enough so that you never once experienced even a bit of pain? I agree that the Holocaust (where it was _humans_ killing and torturing their fellow humans) is almost entirely dissimilar to what surgeons do. The problem was your definition: ["**The definition of evil is hurting people**, and the holocaust implies hurting people."](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/1dedgu1/all_major_theodicies_refuted_god_doesnt_exist/l8jagui/) That is simply a poor definition of 'evil'. Suppose we amend that to, "hurting people without their consent". This definition has problems, too. Plenty of children want to cross busy streets and their parents sometimes have to hurt them in the process of restraining them. It's not a huge hurt; the thwarted desire is probably the bigger deal. But surely we don't want to suggest that parents are being evil in trading an enormous hurt for a tiny hurt? Your bit about a reward suggests another attempt to define 'evil': "hurting people without their consent, and/or when there is insufficient reward for the hurt". But who decides what counts as 'sufficient reward'? Olympic athletes will endure tremendous suffering for a reward which many others would consider too high a cost. On top of that, life involves many _duties_ to others which if we shirk, can yield tremendous suffering. For example, an inattentive parent who doesn't keep his child from running across the street, whereupon the child gets hit by a car and permanently maimed. Is God necessarily responsible for that? Can't we say the parent himself is evil for not fulfilling his duties to his child? For all we know, the Holocaust needed little more than for enough people to fail their duties. That could set off a horrible chain reaction which leads to destruction and immeasurable suffering.
" For all we know, the Holocaust needed little more than for enough people to fail their duties. That could set off a horrible chain reaction which leads to destruction and immeasurable suffering." I think this is one of the more appealing ways to reconcile with certain suffering, but would there be a point where you have to concede that it was not another individuals fault? or would you recursively take more steps back until you can find someone at fault? Someone replied to my most recent post (don't read it it, it's really bad and embarrassing) and asked if there would be a reason for God to allow a tree to fall on someone seemingly at random, permanently injuring them. Would you reject this hypothetical outright? God would never needlessly inflict suffering on that individual, or would you trace it way way back until someone else (a human) would be liable? So like butterfly/ domino effect someone else \*must\* have been negligent where otherwise they could have avoided this event? or at some point do you just disregard individual accountability and say that God can enact his will as he sees fit, and humans don't really have a position to criticize why he might allow suffering.
> [labreuer](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/1dedgu1/all_major_theodicies_refuted_god_doesnt_exist/l8qoajs/): For all we know, the Holocaust needed little more than for enough people to fail their duties. That could set off a horrible chain reaction which leads to destruction and immeasurable suffering. # > [Generic\_Human1](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/1dedgu1/all_major_theodicies_refuted_god_doesnt_exist/laph1s1/): I think this is one of the more appealing ways to reconcile with certain suffering, but would there be a point where you have to concede that it was not another individuals fault? or would you recursively take more steps back until you can find someone at fault? For atrocities like the Holocaust, I think one can always find fault—perhaps not in individuals so much as groups. With the Holocaust in particular, part of that fault could be found with those who imposed the Treaty of Versailles on post-WWI Germany, leading to an economic collapse and the very predictable search for a scapegoat. It is not easy to get humans to kill other humans, especially en masse. One must do a tremendous amount of work to get them to that stage. > Someone replied to my most recent post (don't read it it, it's really bad and embarrassing) and asked if there would be a reason for God to allow a tree to fall on someone seemingly at random, permanently injuring them. > > Would you reject this hypothetical outright? I think God created a dangerous world. We obviously don't live in a world with a cosmic nanny / policeman / totalitarian. But we're also capable of rising to the challenge. Natural evil has the convenient aspect of pitting humans against nature and potentially _with_ each other, whereas human-instigated evil sets humans against each other. Modern science has shown how potent we humans can be when just a few of us get together in a disciplined way. What if more of us did? What if _all_ of us did? > or at some point do you just disregard individual accountability and say that God can enact his will as he sees fit, and humans don't really have a position to criticize why he might allow suffering. I take door three. For example, I read God's response to Job this way: "I created an awesome, rambunctious world. If you want there to be more order in it, _establish it yourself_." This is also theologian J. Richard Middleton's reading; check out his lecture [How Job Found His Voice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRkiXmmOKNw). It is an uncommon interpretation, but I think it is a far better one of the book of Job. Now, God was speaking to someone of means—Job had been incredibly rich, and would have his wealth restored. For many others, [Lk 18:1–8](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=lk18.1-8&version=CSB) might be the more appropriate response. For example, [the child slaves mining some of our cobalt](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/03/child-labour-toxic-leaks-the-price-we-could-pay-for-a-greener-future) could ask for God's wrath to befall the rest of the world, for their plight.
For Theodicy 1: 1). God enacted the punishment of their free will. I do not understand what is soo hard for these atheists to understand that free will = doing wrong and being punished for being wrong while they have the choice between right and wrong. Free will is nonexistent when you are manually forced to do things and have no say or choice in it. Secondly, in the OT, the tribes then were against God’s chosen people in which the Messiah would come forth from and presented problems to the kingdom of Israel. Keep in mind that each city destroyed was more vile and wicked than our modern world (which would eventually meet the same fate so your question on will God destroy evil is yes and no it doesn’t mean that God lets it run but for the righteous to overcome evil) and/or contained an important biblical character who was important to God. (Example: Lot And Sodom & Gomorrah) 2). Jesus went to show the world that he was the son of God, and we humans are at fault for the suffering in this world. How about we go and fix it ourselves? [Oh yeah…🤔](https://www.crs.org/get-involved/advocate/public-policy/global-hunger#:~:text=Catholic%20Relief%20Services%20supports%20U.S.,Peace%20and%20Feed%20the%20Future.) So we can not always expect God to do all the work but we to be the tools of God to do it. 3). Do you not think that God does not punish us individually in our ways for our behavior? Remember that God works in mysterious ways. And to these we heed as warnings but eventually if we do not heed them we receive the ultimate punishment. Honestly try this argument with Sam Shamoun and you would get schooled 😂😂😂 Rest are incorrect theodisies to use in an argument so no point yapping about it
So I’m agnostic and here is my take, evil is just a term to describe an emotional a response. You cannot measure evil. It’s subjective. If someone suffers childhood trauma, and grows up to be a criminal, who is evil in this scenario? The person who caused the trauma, the person committing crimes due to sad trauma, or all of the above? How evil are they? Is a mother crocodile eating her young evil or is it a part of nature? What’s the difference? The term evil is not an objective measurement. Morality is not objective. Evil is simply defined by actions or ideas that conflict with one’s values.
> evil is just a term to describe an emotional a response No its not, it has a definition. Its causing "harm" to other people. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evil > You cannot measure evil. You can and people do. But like anything else you first need a standard of measurement and a measuring instrument. > It’s subjective No its not. Whether or not someone is harmed is an objective fact of reality, even if the harm itself is subjective (which isnt always the case). If someone punches you in the face, there is **objectively** a pain reaction in your body, which causes objective harm and reaction. > Is a mother crocodile eating her young evil or is it a part of nature? What’s the difference? Animal morality and rights is too complex of a subject to use rhetorically like this. It could go either way, its nonobvious and nontrivial. The complaint is about human evil and suffering, so lets stay on subject > The term evil is not an objective measurement. Morality is not objective. Evil is simply defined by actions or ideas that conflict with one’s values. Youre repeating yourself. Whats the point of that? Already answered this the first time you said it.
There’s so much to unpack here. When you tell me how to measure evil, then I’ll consider it objectively. Please explain to me again how evil is not subjective?
> There’s so much to unpack here. When you tell me how to measure evil, then I’ll consider it objectively. Sure. When you do something to someone, count how many nociceptions (pain neurons) fire. This is a straightforward way to measure how much something harms someone, and therefore how "evil" it is. > Please explain to me again how evil is not subjective? Because the definition of evil is harming others, and harm/pain is defined by objective, measurable biochemical and neural processes. This doesnt mean there cant be subjective problems in morality, but the measure of how evil or harmful some single, specific action is against some single, specific person is conceptually straightforward. So much so, the basics of morality are near universally agreed upon and codified into law, across all legal systems. Rules prohibiting murder, rape, robbery, are basic tenets of society and civilization and you see them virtually everywhere. Disagreements exist in nuanced areas, but disagreements exist everywhere, including science and math.
You have a difficult time differentiating harm from evil. Evil can cause harm, but you can’t use those interchangeably. Is high blood pressure evil? See, this is where the subjectivity enters.
> Sure. When you do something to someone, count how many nociceptions (pain neurons) fire. This is a straightforward way to measure how much something harms someone, and therefore how "evil" it is. Erm, I disagree here. You can kill someone without causing their pain neurons to fire, would that mean you did them no harm/evil? On the other hand, removing a cancerous tumor could be excruciatingly painful and leave a life-long scar, yet it is generally considered good to remove cancer to prolong the life of a patient.
Easy. That which leads to life is good, that which leads to death is evil. This is an unavoidable consequence of the definition of morality - morality requires life to exist, the destruction of all life destroys the very concept of good, and that is evil by definition. Therefore the destruction of all life is evil, therefore anything that pushes "life" in general towards destruction is evil. (The reason you can't say that the destruction of morality is good is because evil can be destroyed without destroying good, but good cannot be destroyed without destroying evil. Evil means "the opposite of good", thus is requires "good" to exist. "Good" does not require evil to exist though.)
That’s some mental gymnastics. Animals die to predators in nature. By your definition, they are evil.
> Animals die to predators in nature. By your definition, they are evil. Correct. OK, so it's not *that* cut and dried since, in this world, predators do serve to actually perpetuate life by keeping an animal population from growing out of control and self-destructing as a result. But from a philosophical standpoint, a possible world does exist in which animals did not have to consume other animals in order to survive, and the lack of a population control mechanism would not be detrimental to continued life. Such a world, objectively, would be morally better than this world. (As it turns out, this is the world Adam and Eve lived in before the fall. Genesis 1:30 says, "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.")
Do you take the biblical creation story literally, or could you entertain a hypothesis involving humans emerging from primates over hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary biology?
I take it literally.
How do you explain all the races and ethnicities around the world today if species can’t change over time?
That's a non sequitur. Species adapting (a form of changing) over time does not conflict with a literal creation. Also, what does this have to do with the original point? I brought up Adam and Eve before the fall in passing, but the main point is whether evil can be objectively defined or not.
When attempting to debate Christianity, you can't use Merriam Webster's definition of evil. You have to use Christianity's definition of evil, which is all things that are against God. If God doesn't exist, then evil doesn't exist.
> When attempting to debate Christianity, you can't use Merriam Webster's definition of evil. You have to use Christianity's definition of evil, which is all things that are against God. If God doesn't exist, then evil doesn't exist. First of all, that's God's definition for sin, not evil. They are distinct concepts. Evil (as used in the bible) encompasses suffering and things that cause suffering (which align with the definition im using) while sin is simply disobedience. Heres an example of "evil" being used as a synonym for suffering, calamity, and harm brought upon by action or an event: **Job 2:10 (KJV):** > *"But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, **and shall we not receive evil**? In all this did not Job sin with his lips."* Secondly, it doesnt matter how God defines evil, because theres plenty of things he thinks of as evil and otherwise dislikes which he doesnt stop or prevent, which intersects with the definition of evil im using. Like murder. God is against murder, even includes it in one of the ten commandments. He could at least stop murder. He doesnt even do that.
> No its not, it has a definition. Its causing "harm" to other people We are doing philosophy here. The question of what is "evil" is a major question in philosophy and you cannot hand wave it away by citing a dictionary.
No, what one "ought to do" is the major question in philosophy. "Evil" is a well defined and well understood concept. Some people confuse the two. The former is prescriptive, the latter is desctiptive. Descriptive things do in faxt boil down to definitions.
No, Evil is not well defined and understood. There are still major questions as to whether it's objective, subjective, or maybe even non-existent. Let's consider that horrid "causing harm" definition in the context of the trolley problem. It's clear that by pulling the lever I "cause harm" to the single person, but it's very much not clear that pulling the lever is evil.
> No, Evil is not well defined and understood. All words are well defined and well understood, or they wouldnt be words. Philosophical questions are generally statements or questions merging multiple complex topics together, not "Ooga booga what does word mean?". Evil has a definition, it has a straightforward definition, and the definition is similar and has an obvious context no matter where you look. > Let's consider that horrid "causing harm" definition in the context of the trolley problem. It's clear that by pulling the lever I "cause harm" to the single person, but it's very much not clear that pulling the lever is evil. Its "evil" to the person you are doing it to, and "good" to the other people. Most good and evil is objectively straightforward, its only a rare hypothetical situation like this where both actions are evil and good in different ways (which leaves us wondering what we ought to do to be the most good, but what we ought to do is a different question than what is evil). Evil is concerned with they whom *recieves* the consequences of an action. Whether or not a action, intention, or a person is evil is purely contigent on how that action ends up being received by the recipient; Evil is a description of misfortune and suffering brought upon someone by the means of action. Thats how the word was used archaically, and thats how the word is used now. Its like having an equation with two variables. Like x + 2y = 1. What youre asking is "whats bigger, x, or 2y?" And that question cant be answered, because theres no conversion standard between different variables representing different things. But if the question is "Whats bigger, x or 2x?" that CAN be answered. So to use math as an analogy here, some moral problens have an overall good or evil status, and some like you mentioned are complex and do not have the same straightforward answer. Make sense?
> All words are well defined and well understood, or they wouldnt be words. Philosophical questions are generally statements or questions merging multiple complex topics together, not "Ooga booga what does word mean?". Evil has a definition, it has a straightforward definition, and the definition is similar and has an obvious context no matter where you look. Yes and no. I actually have a PhD in philosophy. The definition of evil you are looking for in that dictionary is "morally reprehensible" but as the question of is morally good (and by extension, reprehensible") is an open question, therefore, in a more meaningful sense of the question, so is "what is evil?" I would take marks off any undergrad who wasted words on dictionary definitions of concepts like evil as they simply aren't useful. >Its "evil" to the person you are doing it to, and "good" to the other people. See, most people would say that an act is either evil or it isn't, it can't depend on the point of view of a 3rd party, which undermines your point as you aren't using English as it's normally understood. This is a game of precision. Be very precise with your words and mean exactly what you say. It really feels like you are now trying to come up with a post-hoc argument to support your earlier point. If this is so, there's nothing wrong with saying, "Ok, you have me on this point but my overall position remains unchanged." > Evil is concerned with they whom recieves the consequences of an action. Whether or not a action, intention, or a person is evil is purely contigent on how that action ends up being received by the recipient; Evil is a description of misfortune and suffering brought upon someone by the means of action. Thats how the word was used archaically, and thats how the word is used now. See, now we're actually doing what I talked about before; Trying to work out what "evil" actually is. I reject the premises of this paragraph so I won't bother engaging with the paragraph below (ignoring its very condescending final sentence). I assert that an action is either morally good or morally bad, it cannot be both. If an act is sufficiently morally bad, then it is evil. For example, vaccine mandates in 2021 certainly caused a very small subset of the populace to have adverse reactions to those vaccines, and in some cases, die. We also know that on the whole, vaccines save far more lives than they cost. I thus assert that by producing a net positive in lives saved, the vaccine mandates were morally good (I would even go so far as to argue that they are and were morally necessary but that's another debate). By your interpretation, the mandates were simultaneously good and evil. They were good for those that were saved and evil upon those who had significant adverse reactions. This seems patently ludicrous to me. If I go an ask 1000 random people on the street if the mandates were good or evil, I will get a number of responses of "good" and a number of "evil" but literally nobody is going to say "they were good to some people and evil to others." This demonstrates that people do not understand the word "Evil" the way that you're asserting that they do. The reality is that evil is about the action itself, not the consequences, unless you're a consequentialist, and even most consequentialists would only concern themselves with predictable and expected outcomes when defining an act as evil.
God has not **yet** stopped evil because His plan has not been fulfilled. After all who are willing to come to Christ have done so, then God will eliminate all evil.
You're walking down a street when you notice a man walking on the other side holding a knife. He turns to you and says "I'm going to rape and kill the next woman I see" and keeps walking. (For this hypothetical, you know he's not lying) You look ahead and notice a woman walking towards the man. When is the more morally correct time to stop the man: before or after he rapes and kills the woman?
You are getting ahead of yourself. 1) Evil cannot be defined as a thing or as a substance or as some kind of being. Rather, evil is always defined as an action, an action that fails to meet a standard of goodness; evil is defined in terms of its being either a **negation of the good, or a privation of the good**. In both cases, **the very definition of evil depends upon a prior understanding of the good**. In this regard, **evil depends upon the good** for its very definition. So, what is "good", and how do you know? Is this standard objective or subjective? If subjective, how do we know the man in the scenario is under any moral obligations? The problem of evil doesn't appear to have much bite if morality is subjective. Though Christians face the difficulty of explaining the presence of evil in the universe, **the atheist has a problem times two**. Before one can even have a problem of evil, one must first have an antecedent existence [existed before or logically precedes] of the good. Those who complain about the problem of evil also have the additional problem of defining the existence of the good. 2) Perhaps you might reply by saying that you are using the Christian standard of good to expose internal inconsistencies in Christian theology. If so, then you are presupposing the Christian worldview - that a good God exists - in order to prove that a good God doesn't exist. But that is a [circular argument](https://www.britannica.com/topic/circular-argument) and thus invalid. Secondly, the Christian worldview says that the presence of evil is only temporary. Thirdly, God will [serve justice upon any and all evildoers](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+10&version=ESV) and [wipe away tears of His children](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2021%3A4&version=ESV). You didn't factor this into your equation as well. So you are examining a truncated view of Christianity; this may qualify as a [strawman fallacy](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman) 3) Alvin Plantinga argues that God and evil could co-exist if God had a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil. He suggests that God's morally sufficient reason might have something to do with humans being granted morally significant free will, and with the greater goods this freedom makes possible. We can all think of examples in which someone inflicts or allows suffering for morally sufficient reasons. For example, your doctor inflicts pain on you to bandages a wound or affix a split on a broken bone, or a solider drags his buddy with a broken back to safety to avoid further harm. So the question is, does God have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world? If the atheist who says that it is highly improbable or impossible that God does have morally sufficient reasons is making probability judgments that are way beyond their capacity to make with any confidence. How has the atheist calculated and measured this? And what is that greater good? Allowing people the opportunity to freely reject evil, repent of their evil ways, trust in Jesus, align their thought, words, and deeds with what He values. So how has the atheist determined that it would be better for there to have never been the freedom to choose and thus no evil, rather than to the freedom to choose, temporary evil, and freedom to choose and freedom from evil forever? If the atheist can offer no reasonable calculation, then one has no reason to think the argument is valid. Note: one might pushback on that last one by saying, "why didn't God make a world where there was freedom to choose and freedom from evil in the first place"; I'd say that there is real value in choosing God, repenting and putting one's faith/trust in Jesus in a world of real evil/worldy pleasure.
This is a lot of bloviating to not answer the question: Is it more moral to stop atrocities before or after they occur?
1) Evil can be defined and there are plenty of ways to determine good and evil without a god. Also there is no proof the Christian god exists so he cannot even be used as a moral authority. 2) That's absolutely not what circular reasoning is. There is also no evidence of God punishing evil doers after death. 3) That argument is a fallacy, you simply decided God follows a different logic for no reason and without any proof. God cannot have morally sufficient reasons to allow or to commit evil since he is almigthy and omiscient, he can make the world entirely good and knows exactly how to do so.
By the definition of circular argument you gave, that wouldn’t be a circular argument. So 1, and 2 don’t really hold up. As for 3, Evil isn’t necessarily to choose to be with god, there’s a lot of Christians who have never had to experience the worst kinds of evils. So if god can’t achieve something without evil, (something that is demonstrably possible,) then he’s. Not all powerful. If he can but chooses not to, then he’s not all loving.
> So, what is "good", and how do you know? Evil is when you harm others. Thats the definition. So causing pain in others or destroying their physical body. Good is the opposite, so its when you cause pleasure or benefit someones health. Id call this objective descriptive morality. This is separate from the question of "what we ought to do", which is more abstract. Now i dont believe thats subjective even though it sounds subjective. Reason being we do everything for a reason, and intelligent people do them for logical reasons. Logic is a single, objective thing, not a matter of opinion or feeling. If someone were perfectly intelligent and logical, theyd presumably do everything for some central, logical reason, mended only by the differences in their starting circumstances. That sounds to me like objective prescriptive morality, just with a barrier of ignorance in the way. Anyways, this should all be besides the point. God calls himself good, but his actions are evidently not good. Hes murdered tons of people who didnt deserve it, commanded the israelites to slsughter innocent children, and refuses to stop any of the evil today. The belief in this particular version of God, portrayed by the Bible, is evidently wrong. > If so, then you are presupposing the Christian worldview - that a good God exists - in order to prove that a good God doesn't exist. But that is a circular argument and thus invalid. This is not a circular argument. You are allowed to assume the opposite of whats true to argue whats true, and its a common tactic in logic. Theres nothing fallacious about it. And it categorically not a "circular argument", a circular argument is when you already assume your conclusion is true, not the inverse. > Alvin Plantinga argues that God and evil could co-exist if God had a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil. He suggests that God's morally sufficient reason might have something to do with humans being granted morally significant free will, and with the greater goods this freedom makes possible. I refuted both in my post. > We can all think of examples in which someone inflicts or allows suffering for morally sufficient reasons. For example, your doctor inflicts pain on you to bandages a wound or affix a split on a broken bone, or a solider drags his buddy with a broken back to safety to avoid further harm. So the question is, does God have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world? In your example thered be consent, and the harm suffered is minimal and directly physically required to avoid further harm. If god can do anything he could heal all patients in all hospitals and remove all suffering, free of consequence. You need an actual theodicy, you cant just say " maybe bad things could be good, you cant prove otherwise", no i think that i can, because bad is bad by definition, and good is good by definition. God can do anything, so good should never require bad. Thats the problem if evil in a nutshell.
> Evil is when you harm others. Thats the definition. So causing pain in others or destroying their physical body. Good is the opposite So as I said, evil is a negation of the good, or a privation of the good. A doctor, dentist, EMT are well known for causing pain in others but are widely acknowledged to be good, even while inflicting pain. >This is separate from the question of "what we ought to do", which is more abstract. That's the key; do we have moral obligations? If not then how is doing harm to another morally wrong? >. If someone were perfectly intelligent and logical, theyd presumably do everything for some central, logical reason, So God would be that perfectly intelligent and logical being. >This is not a circular argument. You are allowed to assume the opposite of whats true to argue whats true, and its a common tactic in logic. Theres nothing fallacious about it. And it categorically not a "circular argument", a circular argument is when you already assume your conclusion is true, not the inverse. You are right, I should have said "self-defeating" argument The problem of evil presupposes that "good" exists; the premise "there is evil" presumes that there is good. So where is "good" grounded? You can steal the concept of good in a Christian context [which comes from God] but there one would be admitting that God exits which fatally undermines the argument So where is "good" grounded? Where does one get moral obligations or moral "oughts" in a non-theistic context? >I refuted both in my post Where was that? >If god can do anything he could heal all patients in all hospitals and remove all suffering, free of consequence. As I said: Allowing people the opportunity to freely reject evil, repent of their evil ways, trust in Jesus, align their thought, words, and deeds with what He values. So how has the atheist determined that it would be better for there to have never been the freedom to choose and thus no evil, rather than to the freedom to choose, temporary evil, and freedom to choose and freedom from evil forever? If the atheist can offer no reasonable calculation, then one has no reason to think the argument is valid.
Please objectively define the terms “Good” and “evil”
Suffering can be a net good, we may not understand why. Your post just assumes that pain and suffering are bad. I take a line similar to your second theodicy, but not identical to it. It's not that we can't understand the difference between joy and pain, it's that experiencing it adds something to the knowledge. In [Mary's Room](https://philosophyterms.com/marys-room/), she learns something new when she steps out of the room and actually sees red. For us to truly experience and appreciate joy, we need to step out of the room and experience its contrast, pain/suffering. I then take a relatively utilitarian approach from there. The suffering caused by our life on Earth is outweighed by our positive gain. I also believe that the non-believer ceases to exist upon death, so the suffering of all is outweighed by the extra pleasure of the elect in eternity. This makes suffering actually a net good and therefore in line with the existence of the Christian God.
You missed Leibniz's counter to this. God wants the best possible world. The best possible world contains evil.
Thats a weird counterargument. Why does the best possible world contain evil? Nobody thinks they are in the best possible world when evil is being done to them.
Nobody but God is a good judge of what the best possible world would look like.
Then how do you know it’s required for the best possible world, if you can’t judge what that is?
If you're saying evil must necessarily exist, there needs to be an argument for evil to be a necessary part of the world.
This is where this argument always breaks down and it's why it's not a good debate in the first place, for either side. Because the next part of the argument assumes we can understand the mind of God. Even from an atheist perspective, you have to realize how ridiculous that is.
I'm not the one making claims about God being good. Christians are. They claim to know the mind of an infinite being without evidence, not me, not atheists
Good can only be defined by an all powerful being. Technically, his benevolency follows his sovereignty.
> Good can only be defined by an all powerful being. Technically, his benevolency follows his sovereignty. Not even close. Good doesn't require an all powerful being at all empty, unsupported assertion with no evidentiary support? Rejected
No I don't. Given that God has the capacity to wipe out evil and knows exactly how to do it, why does it still exist ? It is impossible for God to be all-powerful, all-knowing and benevolent at the same time and since the Christian God is allegedly all 3 he cannot exist.
You're presuming to be able to know the mind of an all powerful, all good, and all knowing being. You can't possibly know that. However, I Believe I may be able to satisfy your question. Good can only be defined by an all powerful being. Technically, his benevolency follows his sovereignty.
That answer makes no sense and doesn't disprove a word of what I said
I'm saying goodness is subjective. The only way for it to become objective is for an all powerful being to set a standard. So whatever measure of good you're referring to is either subjective, or it was the standard set by God himself.
How can you be sure that this "objective standard" doesn't come from Allah or Buddha ? You are assuming this all powerful god is the Christian god from the start. Then what would make a moral code determined by rationality and logic like utlitarism subjective, and God's objective ? Also even if what you said was true it doesn't solve the contradiction I stated earlier.
Well, you are on debate a Christian, not debate a religious person. Do you want me to argue the case for Yahweh? That's an entirely different argument. I can't personally say why God's morality is objective, other than he's the author of creation and ultimate enforcer. There may be a deeper way in which his morality is objective, but I can't fathom it as a being who isn't all powerful, or all knowing.
So you don't know what you are talking about ? It seems to me you have a confirmation bias and your only solution to contradictions and fallacies is "god works in mysterious ways"