One of my favourite discussions of the problem of evil is the chapter below. It’s a discussion between two brothers regarding God and suffering in the world if the end result is eternal paradise. TW: child abuse, suffering and death. Children are used in the argument specifically because they don’t deserve suffering, they are innocent according to Dostoyevsky (I easily agree).
It’s heavy but worth the read imo, and not unnecessarily graphic.
Dostoyevsky lived before the baby hitler question. If you knew without a shadow of a doubt a child would become the a very evil person, is it more ethical to kill the child now and spare the suffering of those later, or not kill the currently innocent child but condemn the others. A child does not deserve to suffer for the same reasons an adult does not deserve to suffer. No one inherently deserves to suffer and have evil happen. However, free will can lead to suffering and oppression.
Dostoyevski would argue that having the child suffer so that everyone could go to heaven is wrong. Even if the child, the child’s mother and the “free will” person that caused the suffering all hug and apologize and forgive in heaven, it’s still not worth it.
What god and satan was Epicurus talking about here? Just curious what idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, loving god existed about 300 BC. My little Roman mythology knowledge has their gods closer to Greek gods: limited in power, easily fooled, and extremely flawed.
AFAIK there is no proof that this paradox was actually coined by Epicurus, despite later being attributed to him. Epicurean philosophy holds that the gods exist, but don’t interfere with anything, so it’s pointless to fear or appease them.
Hence, it would be a later invention attributed to him.
I have a few points to this.
The first being) he already has, it’s called heaven, a world without harship, strife, and evil.
The second being) the prevention of evil and the complete elimination of evil are different goals. If we are truly made in the image of god as the bible says, then god geels similar emotions to us as well. So the ultimate answer to the question of why hasn’t he is: he doesn’t want to.
The third being) who is to say he has not already, and the goal post of what is evil has moved? How could we possible know god did not create a world before this, with “true evil” only to restart it into this world.
The fourth being) in a world with free will and no evil, the definition if free will completely changes, so therefore he could, but it would not be the same to him or to us.
The first being) he already has, it’s called heaven, a world without harship, strife, and evil.
What does heaven look like for babies and embryos that die before reaching maturity? Are they just out there floating around by the hundreds of billions?
Ignoring the insurmountable pile of contradictions in the bible, hell is actually the default afterlife destination due to humans being born with “original sin” (don’t know if that applies to embryos, but apparently god wasn’t aware of embryos when the bible was written).
Each sect has their own beliefs on the matter, with the majority believing all babies and children go to heaven, even though the bible does not explicitly say that this is the case.
Assuming your stance is embryos are alive: the default stance of most christians is the physical act of baptism and church rites are less important than the belief, a child incapable of understanding God would go to Heaven or Purgatory. In some sects it is not the physical birth that matters but the spiritual, your spirit is what goes to Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory when the body dies, and it can be argued embryos and newborns do not have a soul per se, just the capability to harbor one.
Here’s your answer.
You know what they say, the best way to make someone an atheist is to make them actually read the Bible from front to back.
I have a friend who was a serious muslim so she started reading the quran and then relized at the age of 8 that the whole thing is bs so she stopped believing. Its funny because there are a bunch of people who tell her how shes disrespecting her ancestors and she should at least read a bit into it. She probably knows more about it than 90% of the people telling her about it.
I was also ashamed to find out, there is no tradition! Religion shifts focus and meaning constantly and usually as a reaction. The religion I was born in now says it’s ALWAYS been against trans people, and point to the written beliefs that came out of being anti feminism the last few decades and recontextalize it to fit their priorities now. I’m old enough that this lie is obvious and stupid. But this has always been the process. It’s been new age reframing old age material into current beliefs that not only have no logical connection to any doctorine or belief, but often defy the very principals they claim to extole. It’s always been people poorly copy and pasting popular opinions and priorities over actual historical beliefs.
Just understanding the historical facts and what the very religion that produced it holds as fact and fiction, because it’s not even intended to be factual vs. A bed time story, will make most people realize either their religion is made by fools and liars, or they need to adapt a very symbolic kind of faith.
Wow people from thousands of years ago were people from thousands of years ago. Checkmate, everyone. I am so smart.
Ask your next zealous Christ/Jew/Islamist if he thinks his holy book is out of date.
Most Christians now accept female priests, gay marriages, fires on Saturday and clothes with mixed fibres. How would they do this without accepting that the book is outdated?
You might have heard of a group called Christians. They have a lot people there who think this is a devine rulebook and everybody must follow it.
The Bible wasn’t even written thousands of years ago. Bit if it were but lots of it was rewritten and indeed rerewritten by the church over its history, so their revised version. The one they think takes out some of the less acceptable bits.
Okay let’s say 500 years ago. Misogyny, slavery and rape were basically just everyday stuff.
The simple solution is that there is no “evil.”
I like the story The Egg by Andy Weir. It gives an example of that idea.
Alan Watts also talks a lot about that sort of thing.
You remind me of my wife.
When we met, she introduced me to lots of short stories that made me reconsider my perspective on things. This was one of them. She still makes me reconsider my convictions whether I want to or not. I sure do love her for that.
Sure, but I’m not sure I remember many offhand and some have become popular since then so you may have already read them.
Two that come to mind:
- They’re Made Out of Meat by Terry Bison
- When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow
edit: another one that came to mind, though my wife didn’t introduce me to this one, was ~~All You Zombies~~ by Robert Heinlein. I think that one has a movie adaptation called … Predestination maybe?
One my wife did recommend to me, though I found it less impactful than she did, was [https://ia801904.us.archive.org/35/items/the-jaunt-stephen-king/The Jaunt - Stephen King.pdf](The Jaunt) by Stephen King.
Also, though I don’t recall if I ever ended up reading it, she really liked All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury.
edit 2: Not sure why the Stephen King link isn’t working. The % maybe?
edit 3: Replaced all instances of %20 with a space. Link still didn’t work on my client. If it doesn’t work on yours, I’m afraid you’ll have to search for the story or manually copy the URL… Sorry.
Not that I necessarily agree with it, but having listened to a lot of Alan Watts, he gives the impression that he somewhat believes in a just universe.
To him every experience and every challenge is an opportunity for growth, especially the most difficult experiences.
He posits a belief in a karmic universe, where every lifetime of experiences and choices leads into the next lifetime of experiences and choices.
It rubs me wrong, because that type of thinking, to me, stems from the childish belief in a just universe, that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.
Therefore, if terrible things are happening to you, then you must deserve it because your karma created your lifetime of circumstances…
I can get the appeal from someone recovering from truama, I’ve been there and putting yourself back together is a long hard road out of hell. That being said, the truama is a disadvantage that prevents people from typical level of functionality, it doesn’t make you more able to deal with anything, it typically leaves you with disorders and disfunction. The people that overcome are outliers.
Nice premise but I can’t stop giggling that the universe created for the child to mature has to be hellscape for parent, for all those instances of the same talks they will be having util that day (finally) comes.
For an intellect that vast, and with such a different experience of time, would it really be so difficult?
I learned fairly early even as I was in Sunday school that I’m a better, more moral person than god. And I’m just a flawed person. So what use is such a god to me or anyone?
You don’t know that. You haven’t been exposed to the same power that God has. You think deleting the toilets of your Sims is funny at the human level because the Sims don’t experience life the way we do. Imagine that scaled 1000x up.
Ask yourself: would you delete the toilet of every man, woman, and child on Earth just for giggles? Based on my past actions in videogames, I know I would.
The continuing existence of my toilet is proof that I know that God is a better person than me.
Not that god is real, cause he isn’t. But I always found him to be an abusive, gaslighting piece of shit. Imagine telling your kids “I love you more than anything, I created you in my image. I want you to be happy and loved… But if you don’t accept my love, I’m going to murder you and torture you with fire for all eternity… But I love you!”
I mean DUH, obviously it is impossible to have any objective morality without appealling to my own personal, internally inconsistently defined God whose written word I am certainly interpreting correctly after being filtered through tens of thousands of writers and editors and translators through thousands of years, whose objectivity morality also ‘works in mysterious ways’ whenever it seems contradictory!
Its simple!
Who are you to challenge God’s word?
Who are you to challenge God’s word
* points to a book written and edited by humans
(Not arguing with you, just showing my amusement at standard Christian bullshit)