-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
Evil means a Christian God cannot exist?
- Thread starter jc104
- Start date
Haha I'm sorry isn't this all Adam and Eve's fault? Seriously, isn't the answer to this argument in Genesis (i.e. first chapter of the Bible)?
I know the real answer. There is no God, he's a figment of your imagination. Evil exists because people are greedy. Most of the time they don't want bad things to happen but they cause it anyway due to bad judgement. Some just don't understand. Take World War II for example. The common German soldier did not think what he was doing was wrong, he thought he was fighting for his country and to rid the world of evil people (the Jews). He was brainwashed by a truly evil and greedy man.
Well, that's your opinion now isn't it buddy?
I do not think it is as simple as that. I think that, if a god exists and life is some sort of test, then he would be able to see every potential that could happen, but by not interfering the events that actually happen are one out of the many infinite possible iterations. Maybe this could explain Parallel Dimensions too, if a god is playing out all those possible iterations at the same time.
Haha so by disagreeing with my opinion and supporting his opinion you therefore stated your own opinion!!!
Congratz man, you sure showed me!
Well if you want to put the blame on Adam and Eve then fine, but please note that one could make a very good case for why God is the one at fault in the story.
This video does a pretty good job.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQBDGMj2h-c
you missed the point by a fantastic fucken margin
come back when you learn to read
some things aren't opinions, they're facts
you can't call them an opinion just because it grants you immunity to them being facts
But god will know the result in every possibility so why would he create people who he knows are going to fail and suffer, why not only create the people he knows will choose right and lead happy lives.
Also, why would god create beings who desire evil if he does not want them to commit evils. Even if you believe in free will, desires are not a matter of free will as they are things that you just feel and do not choose. There are things that I know of, am capable of doing and yet would never do because my innate nature is such that I do not desire them, why could god not have made evil like this for all people?
I think Brain raised it earlier in this thread: If God can know the outcome of the test, it's not a test by definition, and Adam & Eve had no choice and no free-will. They were predestined to eat the fruit and fail the test, and so God removed them from Eden for something not their fault.
From this, we determine that at least one of the following two premises is false:
1) God is omniscient (and by implication there is no free-will).
2) God is benevolent.
Sure, that works, if God is as resourceless as a pet owner. Unfortunately, according to common wisdom, he is not. God could have made pets that never make stupid decisions and never even want to.
Removing evil from the world does not entail full control over people either. There are very many choices that are neither good nor evil and people can be free to pick from these.
And that's notwithstanding the fact free will is ill-defined nonsense. I've never seen a definition of free will that didn't collapse under scrutiny. Ever.
Ignoring the omniscient/omnibenevolent contradiction: If your mother steals something when she's a teenager, does the government give the same 100$ fine to all of her descendants? Of course not. There's no logic in that. And that same non-logic applies to the "first sin" story.
An opinion is something you believe that does not have to be true, is an assumption, or that is completely subjective. Any argument for a god or gods is always subjective. Observing the universe and not seeing anything that indicates a god, then concluding their is no god, is an observation.
I prefer to put my faith in observations then assumptions based on assumptions.
ITT Lack of understanding of the importance of Free Will. Not that I claim to know how important it is but I do know this - Not being able to live the life you want to live it is a bad thing overall. Forcing people to do things (outside of responsibilities and duties) against their will is not a good thing.
So I guess that's what you guys want? To be enslaved to an all-powerful being?
Anyway, I'm not going to participate in the argument of whether God is real or not. I think we're all convinced that what we believe is true. Only time will tell who is right.
Just remember guys, If we're comparing Risk/Reward, our Risk is INFINITELY lower than yours and same holds true for Reward (assuming we're correct). I mean if you guys are right about God not being real and stuff then cool story bro, you don't even get bragging rights lol
So I guess that's what you guys want? To be enslaved to an all-powerful being?
Anyway, I'm not going to participate in the argument of whether God is real or not. I think we're all convinced that what we believe is true. Only time will tell who is right.
Just remember guys, If we're comparing Risk/Reward, our Risk is INFINITELY lower than yours and same holds true for Reward (assuming we're correct). I mean if you guys are right about God not being real and stuff then cool story bro, you don't even get bragging rights lol
The argument has been brought up many times. We're dismissing it (repeatedly, it seems) because it doesn't hold water. As of right now, many people are not willing to do many things. You don't need to force me not to kill anyone, I just don't have the will to do it and in all likelihood I never will.
If God only allowed people like me to exist, murder rates would be significantly lower, without any need to force anything upon anyone. If God cherry picks people who will never willfully harm anyone, people still have just as much free will as they ever had, yet evil is vanquished. See? That was simple.
There's a virtually infinite number of possible humans that don't exist, never existed and never will. Why would someone who would use his "free will" to kill someone exist, but some other potential, morally upright human wouldn't exist? Unless God can't tell what people will do in advance and everything we do is a surprise to him, there's no reason for him to allow people to exist that would make the wrong choices.
As far as I can tell, I haven't really done anything evil in my life (unless you're one of these imbeciles who put white lies on the same level as theft or murder). Are you telling me I have no free will? I guess not. So imagine someone who wants to kill someone. I wouldn't force that person not to kill. I would simply make sure that this person doesn't ever exist. This is not rocket science, is it?
It's as if you are saying that if I want to build a pyramid I have to force people to carry large rocks. Well, no. I can just hire people who want to carry large rocks. In this context, existing in this world is the same thing as being hired. If you want a world where there is no evil, you "hire" (bring into existence) good people exclusively. If you're evil, then I say you shouldn't exist. Can't force you to do anything if you don't exist, right?
You seem to be one of these people who value choosing to be good, as if it was an accomplishment that you were proud of and that if you had to be good, there's no other choice worth making. Well, you know what? I value my career choices, I value my own intellectual property, I value the cool stuff I create and the hard problems I solve. Go ahead, force me to be nicer and to never hurt anyone, and see if I give a shit. I don't get off being a good person, this is a lame accomplishment if I've ever seen any. If the only thrilling choice in my life was "do I bully this man or not", maybe I'd get your point. Except it's not.
Let me acquaint you with the God of Irony. The God of Irony created the universe and all that, he is all powerful and omniscient. The only peculiar trait of that God is that he just loves irony. Instead of being omnibenevolent, one could say that this deity is omnihumorous. Therefore, all believers of all religions are sent straight to hell, whereas non-believers are sent to heaven.
If this God exists (and I believe he does not), then you'd go to hell and I'd go to heaven. So if we consider the Christian God, the non-existence of God and the God of Irony, we can see that hell, heaven and nothing are all equiprobable for both of us and hence it does not matter at all what we believe.
Obviously, any religion centered around that character would be inherently counter-productive, so we don't expect any. There is also good reason for the God of Irony to not manifest itself: the whole irony rests on the surprise effect. Thus, from a rational point of view, it really seems to me that the God of Irony makes more sense in this world than the Christian God. Hence the spectacular failure of your argumentative.
It's ironic that this would be my first post in a Pokemon forum, but I had to jump at this opportunity. I am on the receiving end of a ton of jokes and hurtful remarks at school because of my Christianity, or what some of my friends like to call "blind faith." I believe that since God gave us free will, he cannot know exactly what we will do at any given time. It is definitely a test, to see which of us will receive eternal glory or eternal damnation depending on the true nature of our souls. In other words, everyone will eventually get exactly what they deserve. Evil exists to test us. If we give in to evil, we have shown that our soul is not worth saving. If we rise above it, however, and choose to do the right thing, we will be rewarded for eternity. Evil exists because of human choices, and because of those choices, other humans are able to show the worth of their own souls. God may know everything happening in the now, but I definitely think he has no idea what anyone may do in the future.
This is a logically consistent viewpoint; you're saying that God is not ominpotent, ergo he can't see the outcome of the test before it happened and he cannot create people only people that will not be evil, but he is benevolent (or at the very least, neutral).
So, that's all fine. This, however, is a departure from the Biblical definitions and ascribations, so the inevitable question is then why you believe God exists at all and why he has the powers he does.
@Regenschein your stated belief contradicts the assumption that god is omnipotent or omniscient, a proposition that is repeated multiple times throughout the bible. Also the bible says that heaven is for the believers in god and hell is for nonbelievers, whereas your beliefs seem to state that heaven is for people that live righteous lives and hell is for people that live immoral live. Please do not insult me by claiming they are the same thing.
That God doesn't know what we will do at least makes your position more consistent. But there are still several glaring flaws:
1) Based on genetics and social setting, we puny humans could predict with reasonable accuracy whether certain individuals will pass the test or not. Are you saying we're already a step ahead of God?
2) Certain lobotomies have been shown to significantly change the personality of certain people. Essentially, if I stab you in the forehead hard enough, you might become a psychopath. This indicates it is possible to tamper with the test.
3) Normally, when you test a lot of people, you try to make sure that the test's settings are as fair as possible: you give everybody the same amount of time, everybody starts at the same point, and so on. It should be obvious that this isn't the case here. Some people die much earlier than some others and not by their own fault. How do you grade two students, one who had 15 minutes to complete the exam, and the other had four hours? Also, being born in a family of law abiding citizens is a better start than being born in a family of gangsters. And so on. Good people won't be good under all circumstances, and evil people won't be evil under all circumstances.
In other words, if this life is a test, it can be tampered with and it's really poorly designed, unless everybody is evaluated through the course of a hundred lives so that their reactions to various circumstances can be properly evaluated.
If it ensured I would have eternal bliss in the afterlife? Hell yes!
I cannot stress enough that it does not make any difference what we want in explaining whether or not this God exists. However, I will elaborate:
Pascal's wager has a number of arguments against it. First of all, it tends to omit the drawbacks of being religious: putting loads of time and effort into religion, the negative effects on reasoning, the holding back of science etc.
Secondly, the God that many people believe in might not accept you on the basis of this reasoning, since it does not display the real "belief" you apparently need to have to go to heaven. It is also quite difficult to force yourself to believe something such as this. However, anyone who claims that this is sinful because it is gambling has been put off by the name - after all, do you call going to the shops gambling? There is a small risk that you will be mugged/run over etc, but you take this risk for the reward of whatever you were shopping for.
Similarly, it assumes that the chances of that God existing or not existing are approximately equal, which of course they are not. There are any number of religions that cannot be proved wrong, including those that could carry worse punishment for those involved in the "wrong" religion. There is no reason to suppose that Christianity or any other religion is more likely to be correct than these (some religions even have fewer logical inconsistencies.) Brain's God of Irony is a truly excellent example of this (where did that idea come from Brain?) This raises another question - why does God not conclusively present himself?
Regenschein's viewpoint is entirely consistant, and is one of the two possible conclusions I came to in the OP. It is, however, not an othodox christian viewpoint.
Pascal's wager has a number of arguments against it. First of all, it tends to omit the drawbacks of being religious: putting loads of time and effort into religion, the negative effects on reasoning, the holding back of science etc.
Secondly, the God that many people believe in might not accept you on the basis of this reasoning, since it does not display the real "belief" you apparently need to have to go to heaven. It is also quite difficult to force yourself to believe something such as this. However, anyone who claims that this is sinful because it is gambling has been put off by the name - after all, do you call going to the shops gambling? There is a small risk that you will be mugged/run over etc, but you take this risk for the reward of whatever you were shopping for.
Similarly, it assumes that the chances of that God existing or not existing are approximately equal, which of course they are not. There are any number of religions that cannot be proved wrong, including those that could carry worse punishment for those involved in the "wrong" religion. There is no reason to suppose that Christianity or any other religion is more likely to be correct than these (some religions even have fewer logical inconsistencies.) Brain's God of Irony is a truly excellent example of this (where did that idea come from Brain?) This raises another question - why does God not conclusively present himself?
Regenschein's viewpoint is entirely consistant, and is one of the two possible conclusions I came to in the OP. It is, however, not an othodox christian viewpoint.
We have no free will when it comes to spiritual matters. We can not obtain our salvation. Our only free will is in earthly matters (within the physical bounds of reason, which God set up.) God constantly upholds his creation as well as providing for our needs according to his will. We lost our free will in spiritual matters when man decided to screw God's rule. Now all we desire to do is evil and God rightfully and justifiably threw down a curse on the earth. Since God is all powerful, he can make man responsible for his actions in the form of making creation "Very Good" (Without Sin) and giving man the option to a full on useful relationship as well as putting man in control of his creation.
Wow. Speak for yourself, you terrible human being.
Of course, with Christianity defining evil as practically anything humans desire, it's hard not to be "evil". You may not be killing anyone but hey, you're masturbating, I guess that makes you evil.
