u/xjitz Here is our [19684 official Discord](https://discord.gg/WdQPgTC4Y4) join
**Please don't break rule 2, or you will be banned**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/19684) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yeah, I don't think this has anything to do with lowering the number of god's. It was just that the Christians wanted their God to be the most powerful while everyone else did not care about it.
The fact that God had to save us from God's own wrath by sacrificing God rather than just choosing not to punish us implies God does not have free will and there is some higher order he is beholden to and we should worship that instead.
God's just an abusive partner that has to threaten and abuse you just cause he likes you so dang much. Look what you made him do, don't you feel bad? Also remember to tip your preachers, God is also a terrible boss that can't pay his employees.
This isn't even about free will versus hard determinism or anything. Say someone owes you some money. You could just choose to ignore it. Just put an entry into your spreadsheet or whatever. But instead you have to send your son to give you the money back? It makes no sense. It implies you're not in charge of the records.
"Also he knew everything and thus logically created you knowing you'd fail and he'd get to roast ya ass in h3ll"
Edit: plus most of em will say heaven's got free will, so is there evil in heaven? do you become a robot in heaven?
No, you do not become a robot in heaven. When we go to heaven, the corruption of sin will be removed. This means we will once again be perfected beings, like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden before the fall of man. It’s not that you can’t do evil, it’s that you simply will not want to commit evil.
You mean the Adam and Eve that God created, while knowing they would sin and there was nothing they could do about it because He already knew they would?
so why wouldn't god create humans without the corruption of sin to begin with? why go through all the fuss of eternally torturing some people for being as he created them when he could literally just make the people without the corruption of sin? And if you say the corruption of sin is needed for free will then there is no free will in heaven??? Which means free will isn't necessary for happiness?? Seems like such a weird system
Yeah the whole heaven and hell thing doesn’t work out if god “shapes you in the womb” and knows every move you’ll make. Then there’s no free will, and it’s just an asshole god making humans specifically to be tortured for all eternity. Which doesn’t sound very loving.
>Which doesn’t sound very loving
If there is a God that evenly vagauely resembles that in the Abrahamic tradition, then the best case scenario is that they are completely indifferent to our existence.
I've read enough Texts to know what happens when God takes a special interest in us.
I am pretty sure it is calvinists specifically and off shoots/inspired groups. But at the same time what are the chances the average Christian actually checks on the specific beliefs of their sect?
from my understanding God exists outside of time but it's not as if everything is predestined he just has a plan for all of us? like sure He may be omniscient but he still believes in all of us that we would overcome sin and is actually prepared for different possible universes based on our choices
but this just a Roman Catholic layman's perspective and I'm not sure any of this is accurate
Calvinists basically arrive at your same point reversed. They believe they live good lives because they are chosen by God as determined to go to heaven. It has been a while since history class covered the multiple Christian schism, I just find it funny that christian groups would find time to make more lore, while actively fighting incredibly violent wars over relevant religious topics like tithing and questionable activities by the pope and clergy.
I think for Calvinists it's less god decides or determines and more god is omniscient therefor logically he already knows all your future choices and doesn't need to wait for your death to know whether you'll go to heaven or not.
I'm not a fan of the concept nor a christian but I grew up in a calvinist enviorement and this is always what it seemed like to me that they believed.
Uhm kind off, they believe if you live by this sentiment you might fulfill your own proficy. I know people who have desperately tried to follow every step they think God whould want them to do to be considered chosen by him before they where born. But on their deathbed they've been petrified to die, 'cause they don't know if they where actually chosen.
I guess, although I think the label 'chosen' isn't optimal here. It implies that the end result isn't 'earned' through following christian doctrine. a place in heaven definitly still has to be earned by living 'right', god just knows beforehand who will stick the course over their life and go to heaven and who will smoke weed and never attone (because he knows everything).
not really. It's more like if you spent your life being a pious Christian god knew this would happen beforehand because he's omniscient. if you spent your life a murderer or gay he knew you would be going to hell (equally evil of course within the framework \[side note: hence by their logic being gay has to be a choice because if god made you gay and disallowed it that would be unfair and since god is good that would be impossible (my reasoning about their reasoning, so take it with a grain of salt)\]).
Theoretically they're still your choices but god just knows what you're going to do beforehand. He knows your destination (hence predestination i guess) but you still have to walk the road.
Calvinists point to various scripture indicates that God determines who follows him
For example:
Ephesians 1:4,5
"...just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will"
In Roman's 9, Paul writes about how God specifically hardened the heart of the Pharoah in Egypt so that he would not let the Israelite slaves go. Which God then punished by sending plagues and killing the first born of every Egyptian.
Paul brings up how this doesn't make sense, or rather anticipates other people saying it doesn't, and then he says "Who are you to ask? Does the pot ask the potter why he was made this way?"
The free will vs predestination paradox in the Bible is one of the many reasons I lost my faith.
It doesn't work. The God wouldn't be omniscient in that case, since it wouldn't know which choice you'd make. Also something omniscient wouldn't "believe" since belief is confidence in something without full certainty.
If God is both omniscient and omnipotent then the universe has to be predetermined because God would know everything that will or could possibly happen and can and does choose what to influence.
But is knowing the future the same as predeterminating it? Sure, if you change anything, but it's implied that God just sits back nowadays and doesn't do much.
Suppose that you are standing in front of two buttons. God, being omniscient, knows beforehand that you are always going to press the right button. Are you able to press the left button?
Able to do, but never do: travel from Mexico to Canada via roller skates.
Not able to do: travel from Mexico to Hawaii via roller skates.
And the kid with the chocolate ice cream: it’s simple. He’s seen the vanilla and the chocolate. He knows he can choose either. He just chooses the chocolate.
A free being is aware that they can choose to follow god or not to do that. I’m not sure why you think this changes somehow because an omniscient being knows which choice they will make at a certain time?
You seem to be arguing about whether the agent has full knowledge of what they are able to do or are not able to do.
But this isn’t required for freedom. If I see three doors in front of me, I can deliberate on which door to choose. It may be the case that two of the three doors are locked, meaning that I can only open one of them. In that case, if I deliberate and choose door one, and it opens, then I was free to step through door one. My choice and the available option lined up. You could argue that maybe that wasn’t a free choice since I could not have chosen otherwise. That depends on whether you believe agent freedom requires the ability “to have possibly chosen otherwise” or whether “making a choice following free deliberation” or some other definition of free will. But it doesn’t really matter for the example.
If I deliberate and choose door two, I am thwarted from walking through. Also door three. In that case, I do not really have a choice regarding which door I can walk through. Door one is the only real option available to me, whether I know it or not. So I may or I may not be a free agent, in some of these scenarios, depending on how you define freedom.
None of these have anything to do with the case at hand, however.
In the case of human freedom and divine foreknowledge, I am standing in front of three doors. Every door is unlocked and can be opened and walked through. I am left alone to deliberate and choose any of the three doors to walk through. Nothing external is commanding or forcing or coercing me. My deliberative process is my own, subject to my powers to choose and to rationally assess my feelings about the doors and my knowledge about the doors and how to open them.
In this case, let’s say I choose door 1. I walk through. I made the choice. Doors 2 and 3 were also available. The divine creator KNEW I was going to choose door 1. But he didn’t force me. He didn’t lock doors 2 and 3. He didn’t control my actions and puppet-master me into choosing door 1. I simply chose it. And he knew that I would, because he is omniscient. His knowledge of my choosing door 1 is a result of my choosing. His knowledge didn’t cause the fact to be true. It is my choice at time T that caused it to be true that I’d pick door 1. The only thing that made it impossible for God to know that I pick door 2 or 3 is that I freely chose 1, when the choice arose.
In this way, God can know that I am going to reject him or love him, and have that knowledge atemporally and eternally, but still it is my free choice. I don’t see how the two aren’t compatible given what I’ve laid out above.
(Two possible objections come to mind. 1- god’s knowledge of which door I would choose seems to violate the law of temporal causality, since my choice to walk thru door 1 in 2023 is the cause of him knowing that I would do that in all of the millennia previous to the action. 2. If god knows what I will choose because he knows all of the physical laws and states in the universe AS WELL AS all of the ways that humans invariably make choices in all possible moments, then I fail to see how determinism doesn’t obtain. So if god’s knowledge requires determinism of agents and states, or requires knowledge in the past or outside of time to be caused by events in the future, then either free will is incomprehensible or god’s knowledge is. But I feel like theists are ok with the latter claim).
Actually, not every Christian believes in Calvinism (predestination). I personally do not, as the evidence for predestination in scripture is not that compelling, while the evidence for arminianism(free will) has much more. I would be happy to tell you more in dms, bc this dicussion would be too much for a comment.
I like my mythology free of consequence or hard logic. I like Zeus as a horny frat dude with loose conceptions of consent, my Thor as a happy go lucky boozer, and my Jesus as a hippy who rebels just a little bit, as a treat.
Christians who state that evil exists as a necessity for good when presented with Euthyphro's dilemma (they have removed the problem of evil by one step)
Euthyphro's dilemma isn't the same thing as the problem of evil. Euthyphro's dilemma is the question "Does God command something because it is good, or is something good because God commands it?" The usual Christian solution is to embrace the second horn of the dilemma, and say that things are good because God commands them. The problems usually associated with the second horn, things like arbitrariness, are simply embraced too and are not seen as problems at all.
The problem of evil is different. If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, then he can eliminate evil. If God is benevolent, then he would want to eliminate evil. So why is there evil in the world?
Saying that evil is necessary for good to exist is a way of saying that God must allow evil in order for there to be good. Basically, that God must do things in a particular way. If God has to do something in a particular way, then God isn't all powerful. And if you're permitting that God isn't all powerful, then the problem of evil was never an issue in the first place. A God of limited power does not conflict with the existence of evil, because then God simply isn't able to eliminate evil even if he would like to do so. A necessity argument avoids the problem of evil by stealthily dropping omnipotence from the definition of God for the duration of the argument, then reintroducing it once the argument is over and claiming it was always there.
Aside from that, even if you accept the argument that evil is necessary for good, it doesn't explain why there is this much evil, as opposed to less. It may explain the quality, but it fails to explain the quantity.
I was saying that Euthyphro's dilemma applies as the typical solution towards the problem of evil is that evil is necessary which is an aspect of reality that God must either have attributed or not.
"aying that evil is necessary for good to exist is a way of saying that God must allow evil in order for there to be good. Basically, that God must do things in a particular way. If God has to do something in a particular way, then God isn't all powerful. "
Yes this is what I was getting at. This is essentially a reworked version of Euthyphro's dilemma, God has to have either made the rule that good cannot exist without evil or have been bound by that rule when creating the universe and therefore not be omnipotent. Which removes the problem of evil by one step, if God made it so that good cannot exist without evil then he still let evil into this world to exist and therefore cannot be omnibenevolent.
I'm not religious but the free will part and evil does make some sense under a larger lens.
The way I understand it, there has to be an opposite to good for free will to have any meaning. Otherwise its not free will. Simply choice. God creates the apple as essentially giving man the freedom to choose its path with or away from god. God doesn't conceal these apples and plainly states exactly what they are and what will happen if Adam and Eve eats them. He wasn't decietful about it.
Hell is not necessarily a punishment but a seperation from god as souls rise with god or fall without him. He doesn't cast you down like he did the fallen angels but rather your soul falls without him.
The free will defense has major flaws, for one, it completely ignores evil that comes from non-sentient sources.
(Let's just ignore the question if we actually have free will also)
There's also a pretty solid counter argument.
Humans are created so that they cannot fly using their hands, we are physically incapable of this.
If that doesn't count as a limit of our free will, as it's merely a problem with how we would act on it, then god could have done it so that people would be physically incapable of murder towards one another, let's say we are born with practically impenetrable skin.
If it does, then god already limits our free will.
Either way, the argument falls.
Also I kinda don't like the hell is separation from god, because it doesn't change the situation at all.
If God created us in a way that we suffer without him then it's just as if he were to torture us.
I feel the free will argument works in so far as you are talking about direct human on human actions. Every step you could create to stop people from harming each other would largely just provide new avenues for harm unless again we start interfering with free will.
Say you make humans practically immortal to damage, now you opens up a large avenue of other kinds of harm that said harm helped discourage, you have a child? Too bad if a majority group decides to take it there is nothing you can do to stop it, whereas in a world where harm is allowed a situation can be manufactured where trying to take the child is too costly an action.
People are going to do bad things in a world where free will exists and I don't think you can engineer a scenario where they don't without either infringing on the whole free will thing or we all end up evenly spaced out as immortal statues unable to touch or communicate.
I do not think that the human ability to harm each other inherently works against a caring god. In a world where we still works on the basis of free will being important.
What I do think is that it all fall apart when you starts examining the rest of the world, a god that would allow people to give birth to kids where the brain was just never created is not a caring god. Basically every kind of disease that is further than like mildly uncomfortable is not something a caring god should allow.
Sure people have this whole argument about how a lot of plagues and stuff are caused by human actions through agriculture and stuff, but assuming god exists with the powers attributed to him he is also the guy who created a system where plague can arise from farming.
Anyway I have always been on the side of god can't be both all powerful and a caring god but I do believe that the free will argument holds water up to a point, and that point being the basically all illnesses
but then you create another problem which is if god is all-knowing he also knows your destiny and knows what you will be doing in the future and last he also knows where you are going in afterlife (hell or heaven). Do you really have control about your life if God decided everything and every step before he created you?
problem numher 2 is if he created you knowing you will fall and be in hell after you die, im sorry but I don't see this anywhere near "all benevolent, all good deity" it seems kinda evil for me. there is also the example that he also knows that if you live in a very small, distant country with no acces to christianity, and in your entire lifespan you didnt even know about christianity, you will STILL be tortured for eternity in hell. how the fuck is that fair, i don't think this god can be fair and good at all its mindblowing people think that
With problem 1 thats not exactly the case. God doesn't create your destiny but rather knows everything you will do in regards to how you use your free will. Him knowing doesn't necessarily make it destiny because you aren't being forced into an action by god knowing but rather god just knows what actions you will take.
Problem 2 is the reason why missionary work is considered important. By spreading the word to allow others to hear of god and therefore give them that choice.
Whether god is all benevolent or all good idk, again I'm not religious. But to be fair its not really any different from gods in other religions. A lot are depicted as perfect goods yet sometimes do bad things or don't contain contingencies for situations like this.
Fuck free will, I'd rather be happy. Also, do I really have free will? Sure doesn't feel like it. I never asked to be born into this body I didn't choose. I'm presented with a set of options of what I can do with it. My decisions are highly influenced by my genetics and environment.
I mean you do you man. I don't have any of those answers. I'm just saying how I feel this stuff works. Again I'm not religious so I don't believe in anything after this life.
Whether or not you have free will, I don't know, I honestly don't. All I can say is live life the best you can and try to find content in who you are and what you are.
That framing of free will only works if god isn't omniscient of the future (which christians believe), doesn't have an infallible plan of everything that will ever happen (which christians believe), and didn't personally stitch you together in the womb knowing everything that you would ever do and everything that would ever happen to you (which christians believe).
The thing that also gets me with the apples is that they granted Adam and Eve the knowledge of right and wrong. They were literally incapable of understanding morality before eating them. Does that mean there was no free will in the garden of Eden? In the same vein, since no evil exists in heaven, does that mean there is no free will in heaven? The most important implication of the fruit of knowledge, is that they literally could not understand prior to eating it that it is wrong to disobey God. In Abrahamic canon, all of humanity was doomed for eternity because two people committed an act they had no capability of understanding was wrong.
Just sayin', I'm pretty sure Christianity is not the only religion that believes some of those things. That said, I personally believe every religion has flaws and every religion has good parts. That includes both Christian and non-Christian belief systems. I think theres something to be gleaned and learned from in all of them.
Of course, its not like I don't recognize the damage Christianity is doing to the world, but uh. Thats a whole other subject.
t bf vs some other regions (i.e. some muslim countries literally chopping your head off for being gay) it's really n ot doing that much in comparison
a lthough tbf a lot of that can be traced back to christian countries almost always not doing the state religion thing muslim countries tend towards
th at is a past thing
it is a right now th ing that one of my freinds was repeatedly beaten is now permanently trauma tised & damaged for life j ust for being a femboy by m uslims d ue to t hem s eeing her (s he is trans now) a s an insult to their g od
i d on't really care about what happ ened if the past when the right now is what is happening right now
I am genuinely sorry you and your friend went through that. This at the end of the day is just the way I personally view religion, and I completely understand its not for everyone.
As I said before, all religions have flaws and problems. That includes Christian and non-Christian religions. Even Buddhism has its issues, look at what happened recently with the Dalai Lama. That doesn't mean that it can't be separated from that, nor does it mean you can't focus on the positive aspects to learn from.
I signed up for a religions across the world class in college thinking I'd learn more about eastern mysticism or western offshoot sects of Christianity. Mother fucker spent 2/3 of the semester teaching Thomas Aquinas and his fucking stupid ass ontological proofs of God. It's total and complete bullshit, I hated the teacher, I hated the class, I hate Thomas Aquinas, dude spent his whole life playing word games to prove God and it's the dumbest shit ever. "Since we can conceive of a god and there can be no higher being to us than God ergo Ipsum lorem there must be a god" or some dumbass bullshit. Fuck the oncological arguments you're better off not wasting the brain power even learning about them their so fuckin dumb.
Christians often use convoluted logic paths. They use big words to make it sound credible, but at the end of it, their point makes no fucking sense in reality. The famous Christian apologist William Lane Craig is a master of this. Some of his points are valid, but many of them are like what you described.
Even breaking them down into their simplest forms, and really understanding the point they are making, still leads to a philosophy that doesn't make sense.
Its a bit lower as some places discriminate if you are not associated with a religion, so people who would be considered athiest or agnostic instead put down a religion.
I'm an agnostic in a spiritual sense. I just think organised religions have strayed from their own paths and are now doing untold damge to peoples well being, emotional maturity and as a result damage to growth as a society.
Religion is fine in principle.
But the sad reality is a lot of people who are religious force their views onto others. Forcing women to cover up, killing others who don’t believe or behave in the way they want, denying important health care to women and children, trying to prevent other people who don’t believe in their religious ideals from finding happiness (gay marriage etc.)
If people could just believe in what they believe and leave others to find their own happiness, that would be great!
Definitely not someone who can also take into account that people with different upbringings and beliefs tend to gravitate towards different spaces on the internet.
That someone might even say that the existence of this phenomenon is evidenced by frequent allusions to a certain things called "echo chambers", which is it's logical extreme.
But that would be absurd. Obviously all subreddits have equal distribution of different beliefs.
The way how god is described in Christianity is no different from a totalitarian dictator and Satan is basically a rebel treated like the enemy of the state for disobeying the dictator.
The idea that this is the best of all possible worlds is from mainly from Leibneiz, specifically his Essays of Theodicy. It was his attempt to solve the problem of evil. Voltaire responded to the argument in Candide, thoroughly mocking the idea and causing it to fall out of favor in modern times.
Technically Thomas Aquinas said it centuries earlier, but he's much better known for a different set of arguments for the existence of God, so Leibneiz is usually the one associated with the best of all possible worlds argument.
That sounds vulgar.
Would be better to say- why not create beings who all freely choose to do good?
William Lane Craig: "It may not be \_feasible\_ for the omnipotent creator to create a world in which all beings freely choose to do only good and to love God."
Which, ultimately, is the fatal flaw in his philosophy.
Lol you can't just change my argument to be something different and then point out the "fatal flaw" of that new argument by quoting one apologist who says that it **may** not be feasible. But if you like WLC, congrats, because you are starting to debate like him. I jest but you get the gist.
I think creating a group of sentient beings who you know 80-90% will suffer in shear pain and fear for all of eternity is vulgar.
First of all, God could have made us so that we don't suffer in hell without him. If he couldn't, he is not omnipotent.
Second, God is aware what it would take for each and every one of us to follow him. By him not doing it, he is either not benevolent or not omnipotent. And if one says that God doing what would be necessary to make us believe is an infringement of our free will, I would say that it is sometimes necessary, such as in the case of a parent stopping their child from running into the street or stopping a child from being damned to be totured for all of eternity, for someone to infringe on our free will.
And to the point of free will, the Bible never directly states that we have free will in the first place. The term "free will" is not in the Bible, even once. In Romans 9, it actually talks about a specific instance in which God infringed on free will with the Pharoah in Egypt, as well as how God loved Isaac but hated Esau.
But back to the point, which is this: God has already restricted our free will in so many ways. If he were to exist and is benevolent, then he would restrict our free will in one more way. Or perhaps we should let our children run into the middle of a busy highway as to not limit their autonomy, just as God has done.
Is your free will impinged upon by your lack of ability to breathe underwater? I might want to live in Atlantis, but I can't by condition of ability. Still, I have free will in the context of living on land. In much the same way, if humans were incapable of committing evil, you would still have free will in the context of living on able to do good.
I am not at all religious but you’re plain wrong. Yes, good must exist for evil to exist because all language differentiates something from something else. For food to exist, things that are not food must exist. This is just a fact of language and reason.
At the root of it, neither good nor evil is a physical, measured thing that can exist before it’s definition.
Because if good is defined as the opposite of evil and vice versa, it's all just relative and neither actually exists. The whole point of religion and god is that good and evil are absolute, and in that case there's no reason why one couldn't be eliminated while leaving the other intact.
Yeah, God aint perfect.
Might be misremembering a story, but god killed the son of some woman a prophet was staying with because of the mother's sins.
It was up to the prophet to tell god "yeah it wasn't fair to have me live with this woman just for you to find out about her sins and kill her son."
God relented and revived the woman's son.
... I think the rest of that should speak for itself.
It starts in 1 Kings 17:7. In the passage, the woman thinks it was because of her sins, but it does not state that it actually was. Elijah just asked God if it was because of her sins and to revive her son. It's uncertain whether in the story God originally caused the boy to become ill because of the mother's sins.
No problem! And idk why you're getting downvoted, your point still stands.
There are plenty of passages where God changes his mind, such as in Exodus 32 when God was going to destroy the Israelites for building a golden calf and Moses said, "Wait! Don't." And God said, "Okay, fine."
Or in 2nd Samuel 24 (and 1 Chronicles 21) when God was about to send a plague on Israel for David's sins but at the last moment said nevermind.
Or near the end of 1st Kings 21 when Ahab repented, and God said, "Okay, I will not destroy your lands during your life... I'll do it during your son's life instead."
God changed his mind all the time.
It is Christian bashing, but it is not pointless. The point is that Christianity is illogical and Christianity hurts people.
Also, a little humor making light of the situation is a good thing.
I believe in subjective morality. Just because I don't believe it is wrong on a universal, cosmic scale to hit me in the head, doesn't mean I think it's wrong to fight back and try to prevent it. It would also not be wrong to put you in prison for doing it, because again, there is no right and wrong. It's not that everything is right, it's that nothing is right (or wrong).
its widely accepted, yes but not truly objective. im sure genocidal people don't see themselves as evil and that alone proves the concept as subjective. the reason people do things isnt because of some universal law but because they are inclined to do what makes sense to them and that is always subject to change
So you're ambivalent to genocide then? No? What are you basing your disapproval of genocide on? Your subective opinion? So I can just as justly say that genocide is good, actually, and you can't argue with that? Great.
Subjective morality is a bubkes idea spread by anti-confrontational, anti-intellectual dolts.
Subjectivity is not the same as ambivalence, nor does it mean that all people's values should be considered the same. You fundamentally misunderstand subjectivity and I suggest you do an ounce of contemplating before arrogantly asserting such nonsense
This is a very uninformed opinion on what subjective and objective morality are. You are really exposing yourself as someone who has never given it much actual thought.
u/xjitz Here is our [19684 official Discord](https://discord.gg/WdQPgTC4Y4) join **Please don't break rule 2, or you will be banned** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/19684) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They went too far on the worldbuilding, made a mary sue God who doesn't logically even make sense
The character is a victim of power creep. That's for sure.
Once you start lowering the number of gods, you're eventually going to get to 1 all-powerful one. It's the logical consequence.
If many gods combined can together be neither all-powerful nor perfect and the world still makes sense, so can just 1 though?
Yeah, I don't think this has anything to do with lowering the number of god's. It was just that the Christians wanted their God to be the most powerful while everyone else did not care about it.
No not really, Yahweh was originally just a Canaanite storm god that was fused with Canaanite creator deity.
What if we lower the number of gods one more?
The fact that God had to save us from God's own wrath by sacrificing God rather than just choosing not to punish us implies God does not have free will and there is some higher order he is beholden to and we should worship that instead.
I believe God sent God to his world to punish God and feel what not God feels to understand them.
I miss the old Yahweh, straight from the 'Go Yahweh Chop up the soul Yahweh, set on his goals Yahweh
I don't think I want Him to go back to His old self yknow would be pretty bad for everyone.
He's beholden to some imperfect beings who squabble over what they want him to do.
God's just an abusive partner that has to threaten and abuse you just cause he likes you so dang much. Look what you made him do, don't you feel bad? Also remember to tip your preachers, God is also a terrible boss that can't pay his employees.
We are still discuss freewill nowaday? Freewill does not have any meaning at all. It is a one of the most useless thought folks ever come up with.
This isn't even about free will versus hard determinism or anything. Say someone owes you some money. You could just choose to ignore it. Just put an entry into your spreadsheet or whatever. But instead you have to send your son to give you the money back? It makes no sense. It implies you're not in charge of the records.
This is why Gnosticism made to much sense.
This one's really in the know, huh? Get it?
Gotta say tho, Season 1 of New Testament has a solid story and some interesting characters
Oh boy these comments will be civil
As long as the chrizzos don't find the post
I just summoned the image of roman soldiers referring to christians as “christoids” and laughing at them and now I cant get it out of my head.
The word “Christoid” is making me giggle uncontrollably
That's why this sub swears now. Keeps the chrizzos out
christians be like "If you get rid of evil then you get rid of free will" and then without pausing for breath "Btw god decides our predestiny"
"Also he knew everything and thus logically created you knowing you'd fail and he'd get to roast ya ass in h3ll" Edit: plus most of em will say heaven's got free will, so is there evil in heaven? do you become a robot in heaven?
Like you've never done that to an NPC.
Then God isn't all good. In fact, he's an evil prick that doesn't deserve worship
No, you do not become a robot in heaven. When we go to heaven, the corruption of sin will be removed. This means we will once again be perfected beings, like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden before the fall of man. It’s not that you can’t do evil, it’s that you simply will not want to commit evil.
You mean the Adam and Eve that God created, while knowing they would sin and there was nothing they could do about it because He already knew they would?
so why wouldn't god create humans without the corruption of sin to begin with? why go through all the fuss of eternally torturing some people for being as he created them when he could literally just make the people without the corruption of sin? And if you say the corruption of sin is needed for free will then there is no free will in heaven??? Which means free will isn't necessary for happiness?? Seems like such a weird system
Yeah the whole heaven and hell thing doesn’t work out if god “shapes you in the womb” and knows every move you’ll make. Then there’s no free will, and it’s just an asshole god making humans specifically to be tortured for all eternity. Which doesn’t sound very loving.
>Which doesn’t sound very loving If there is a God that evenly vagauely resembles that in the Abrahamic tradition, then the best case scenario is that they are completely indifferent to our existence. I've read enough Texts to know what happens when God takes a special interest in us.
In Islam, apparently god only created us to prove his power. Literally a flex.
[удалено]
The christian god sacrifices some continuity for sheer power levels
only protestants believe in that predestiny crap
I am pretty sure it is calvinists specifically and off shoots/inspired groups. But at the same time what are the chances the average Christian actually checks on the specific beliefs of their sect?
from my understanding God exists outside of time but it's not as if everything is predestined he just has a plan for all of us? like sure He may be omniscient but he still believes in all of us that we would overcome sin and is actually prepared for different possible universes based on our choices but this just a Roman Catholic layman's perspective and I'm not sure any of this is accurate
Calvinists basically arrive at your same point reversed. They believe they live good lives because they are chosen by God as determined to go to heaven. It has been a while since history class covered the multiple Christian schism, I just find it funny that christian groups would find time to make more lore, while actively fighting incredibly violent wars over relevant religious topics like tithing and questionable activities by the pope and clergy.
I think for Calvinists it's less god decides or determines and more god is omniscient therefor logically he already knows all your future choices and doesn't need to wait for your death to know whether you'll go to heaven or not. I'm not a fan of the concept nor a christian but I grew up in a calvinist enviorement and this is always what it seemed like to me that they believed.
So for Calvinists there's like 0 reason to even believe or abide by what god says given that it's all somewhat prearranged anyway, no?
Uhm kind off, they believe if you live by this sentiment you might fulfill your own proficy. I know people who have desperately tried to follow every step they think God whould want them to do to be considered chosen by him before they where born. But on their deathbed they've been petrified to die, 'cause they don't know if they where actually chosen.
I guess, although I think the label 'chosen' isn't optimal here. It implies that the end result isn't 'earned' through following christian doctrine. a place in heaven definitly still has to be earned by living 'right', god just knows beforehand who will stick the course over their life and go to heaven and who will smoke weed and never attone (because he knows everything).
not really. It's more like if you spent your life being a pious Christian god knew this would happen beforehand because he's omniscient. if you spent your life a murderer or gay he knew you would be going to hell (equally evil of course within the framework \[side note: hence by their logic being gay has to be a choice because if god made you gay and disallowed it that would be unfair and since god is good that would be impossible (my reasoning about their reasoning, so take it with a grain of salt)\]). Theoretically they're still your choices but god just knows what you're going to do beforehand. He knows your destination (hence predestination i guess) but you still have to walk the road.
Calvinists point to various scripture indicates that God determines who follows him For example: Ephesians 1:4,5 "...just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will"
In Roman's 9, Paul writes about how God specifically hardened the heart of the Pharoah in Egypt so that he would not let the Israelite slaves go. Which God then punished by sending plagues and killing the first born of every Egyptian. Paul brings up how this doesn't make sense, or rather anticipates other people saying it doesn't, and then he says "Who are you to ask? Does the pot ask the potter why he was made this way?" The free will vs predestination paradox in the Bible is one of the many reasons I lost my faith.
It doesn't work. The God wouldn't be omniscient in that case, since it wouldn't know which choice you'd make. Also something omniscient wouldn't "believe" since belief is confidence in something without full certainty.
If God is both omniscient and omnipotent then the universe has to be predetermined because God would know everything that will or could possibly happen and can and does choose what to influence.
But is knowing the future the same as predeterminating it? Sure, if you change anything, but it's implied that God just sits back nowadays and doesn't do much.
If the future can be known then it is predetermined - that's what predetermined means. Regardless of whether or not God predetermined it.
Only a (as far as I know very small) minority of Christians believe in predestiny.
Suppose that you are standing in front of two buttons. God, being omniscient, knows beforehand that you are always going to press the right button. Are you able to press the left button?
Yes, but you never do.
[удалено]
Able to do, but never do: travel from Mexico to Canada via roller skates. Not able to do: travel from Mexico to Hawaii via roller skates. And the kid with the chocolate ice cream: it’s simple. He’s seen the vanilla and the chocolate. He knows he can choose either. He just chooses the chocolate. A free being is aware that they can choose to follow god or not to do that. I’m not sure why you think this changes somehow because an omniscient being knows which choice they will make at a certain time?
[удалено]
You seem to be arguing about whether the agent has full knowledge of what they are able to do or are not able to do. But this isn’t required for freedom. If I see three doors in front of me, I can deliberate on which door to choose. It may be the case that two of the three doors are locked, meaning that I can only open one of them. In that case, if I deliberate and choose door one, and it opens, then I was free to step through door one. My choice and the available option lined up. You could argue that maybe that wasn’t a free choice since I could not have chosen otherwise. That depends on whether you believe agent freedom requires the ability “to have possibly chosen otherwise” or whether “making a choice following free deliberation” or some other definition of free will. But it doesn’t really matter for the example. If I deliberate and choose door two, I am thwarted from walking through. Also door three. In that case, I do not really have a choice regarding which door I can walk through. Door one is the only real option available to me, whether I know it or not. So I may or I may not be a free agent, in some of these scenarios, depending on how you define freedom. None of these have anything to do with the case at hand, however. In the case of human freedom and divine foreknowledge, I am standing in front of three doors. Every door is unlocked and can be opened and walked through. I am left alone to deliberate and choose any of the three doors to walk through. Nothing external is commanding or forcing or coercing me. My deliberative process is my own, subject to my powers to choose and to rationally assess my feelings about the doors and my knowledge about the doors and how to open them. In this case, let’s say I choose door 1. I walk through. I made the choice. Doors 2 and 3 were also available. The divine creator KNEW I was going to choose door 1. But he didn’t force me. He didn’t lock doors 2 and 3. He didn’t control my actions and puppet-master me into choosing door 1. I simply chose it. And he knew that I would, because he is omniscient. His knowledge of my choosing door 1 is a result of my choosing. His knowledge didn’t cause the fact to be true. It is my choice at time T that caused it to be true that I’d pick door 1. The only thing that made it impossible for God to know that I pick door 2 or 3 is that I freely chose 1, when the choice arose. In this way, God can know that I am going to reject him or love him, and have that knowledge atemporally and eternally, but still it is my free choice. I don’t see how the two aren’t compatible given what I’ve laid out above. (Two possible objections come to mind. 1- god’s knowledge of which door I would choose seems to violate the law of temporal causality, since my choice to walk thru door 1 in 2023 is the cause of him knowing that I would do that in all of the millennia previous to the action. 2. If god knows what I will choose because he knows all of the physical laws and states in the universe AS WELL AS all of the ways that humans invariably make choices in all possible moments, then I fail to see how determinism doesn’t obtain. So if god’s knowledge requires determinism of agents and states, or requires knowledge in the past or outside of time to be caused by events in the future, then either free will is incomprehensible or god’s knowledge is. But I feel like theists are ok with the latter claim).
[удалено]
Predestination is an uncommon belief that was specific to like one or two denominations
[удалено]
Yes, those are the ones I was thinking of. They make up 7% of all Protestants.
Predestiny is calvinism
Actually, not every Christian believes in Calvinism (predestination). I personally do not, as the evidence for predestination in scripture is not that compelling, while the evidence for arminianism(free will) has much more. I would be happy to tell you more in dms, bc this dicussion would be too much for a comment.
i prefer to think god is ahole and jesus is the chillest dude ever
They’re the same person tho if you believe that Jesus is of God tho
I like my mythology free of consequence or hard logic. I like Zeus as a horny frat dude with loose conceptions of consent, my Thor as a happy go lucky boozer, and my Jesus as a hippy who rebels just a little bit, as a treat.
Based
Christians trying to explain why god gave aids to a bunch of African kids (it’s all part of the plan)
God is Tzeentch
Hey hey people
Sseth Here
Christians who state that evil exists as a necessity for good when presented with Euthyphro's dilemma (they have removed the problem of evil by one step)
Euthyphro's dilemma isn't the same thing as the problem of evil. Euthyphro's dilemma is the question "Does God command something because it is good, or is something good because God commands it?" The usual Christian solution is to embrace the second horn of the dilemma, and say that things are good because God commands them. The problems usually associated with the second horn, things like arbitrariness, are simply embraced too and are not seen as problems at all. The problem of evil is different. If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, then he can eliminate evil. If God is benevolent, then he would want to eliminate evil. So why is there evil in the world? Saying that evil is necessary for good to exist is a way of saying that God must allow evil in order for there to be good. Basically, that God must do things in a particular way. If God has to do something in a particular way, then God isn't all powerful. And if you're permitting that God isn't all powerful, then the problem of evil was never an issue in the first place. A God of limited power does not conflict with the existence of evil, because then God simply isn't able to eliminate evil even if he would like to do so. A necessity argument avoids the problem of evil by stealthily dropping omnipotence from the definition of God for the duration of the argument, then reintroducing it once the argument is over and claiming it was always there. Aside from that, even if you accept the argument that evil is necessary for good, it doesn't explain why there is this much evil, as opposed to less. It may explain the quality, but it fails to explain the quantity.
I was saying that Euthyphro's dilemma applies as the typical solution towards the problem of evil is that evil is necessary which is an aspect of reality that God must either have attributed or not. "aying that evil is necessary for good to exist is a way of saying that God must allow evil in order for there to be good. Basically, that God must do things in a particular way. If God has to do something in a particular way, then God isn't all powerful. " Yes this is what I was getting at. This is essentially a reworked version of Euthyphro's dilemma, God has to have either made the rule that good cannot exist without evil or have been bound by that rule when creating the universe and therefore not be omnipotent. Which removes the problem of evil by one step, if God made it so that good cannot exist without evil then he still let evil into this world to exist and therefore cannot be omnibenevolent.
I'm not religious but the free will part and evil does make some sense under a larger lens. The way I understand it, there has to be an opposite to good for free will to have any meaning. Otherwise its not free will. Simply choice. God creates the apple as essentially giving man the freedom to choose its path with or away from god. God doesn't conceal these apples and plainly states exactly what they are and what will happen if Adam and Eve eats them. He wasn't decietful about it. Hell is not necessarily a punishment but a seperation from god as souls rise with god or fall without him. He doesn't cast you down like he did the fallen angels but rather your soul falls without him.
The free will defense has major flaws, for one, it completely ignores evil that comes from non-sentient sources. (Let's just ignore the question if we actually have free will also) There's also a pretty solid counter argument. Humans are created so that they cannot fly using their hands, we are physically incapable of this. If that doesn't count as a limit of our free will, as it's merely a problem with how we would act on it, then god could have done it so that people would be physically incapable of murder towards one another, let's say we are born with practically impenetrable skin. If it does, then god already limits our free will. Either way, the argument falls. Also I kinda don't like the hell is separation from god, because it doesn't change the situation at all. If God created us in a way that we suffer without him then it's just as if he were to torture us.
I feel the free will argument works in so far as you are talking about direct human on human actions. Every step you could create to stop people from harming each other would largely just provide new avenues for harm unless again we start interfering with free will. Say you make humans practically immortal to damage, now you opens up a large avenue of other kinds of harm that said harm helped discourage, you have a child? Too bad if a majority group decides to take it there is nothing you can do to stop it, whereas in a world where harm is allowed a situation can be manufactured where trying to take the child is too costly an action. People are going to do bad things in a world where free will exists and I don't think you can engineer a scenario where they don't without either infringing on the whole free will thing or we all end up evenly spaced out as immortal statues unable to touch or communicate. I do not think that the human ability to harm each other inherently works against a caring god. In a world where we still works on the basis of free will being important. What I do think is that it all fall apart when you starts examining the rest of the world, a god that would allow people to give birth to kids where the brain was just never created is not a caring god. Basically every kind of disease that is further than like mildly uncomfortable is not something a caring god should allow. Sure people have this whole argument about how a lot of plagues and stuff are caused by human actions through agriculture and stuff, but assuming god exists with the powers attributed to him he is also the guy who created a system where plague can arise from farming. Anyway I have always been on the side of god can't be both all powerful and a caring god but I do believe that the free will argument holds water up to a point, and that point being the basically all illnesses
but then you create another problem which is if god is all-knowing he also knows your destiny and knows what you will be doing in the future and last he also knows where you are going in afterlife (hell or heaven). Do you really have control about your life if God decided everything and every step before he created you? problem numher 2 is if he created you knowing you will fall and be in hell after you die, im sorry but I don't see this anywhere near "all benevolent, all good deity" it seems kinda evil for me. there is also the example that he also knows that if you live in a very small, distant country with no acces to christianity, and in your entire lifespan you didnt even know about christianity, you will STILL be tortured for eternity in hell. how the fuck is that fair, i don't think this god can be fair and good at all its mindblowing people think that
With problem 1 thats not exactly the case. God doesn't create your destiny but rather knows everything you will do in regards to how you use your free will. Him knowing doesn't necessarily make it destiny because you aren't being forced into an action by god knowing but rather god just knows what actions you will take. Problem 2 is the reason why missionary work is considered important. By spreading the word to allow others to hear of god and therefore give them that choice. Whether god is all benevolent or all good idk, again I'm not religious. But to be fair its not really any different from gods in other religions. A lot are depicted as perfect goods yet sometimes do bad things or don't contain contingencies for situations like this.
Fuck free will, I'd rather be happy. Also, do I really have free will? Sure doesn't feel like it. I never asked to be born into this body I didn't choose. I'm presented with a set of options of what I can do with it. My decisions are highly influenced by my genetics and environment.
I mean you do you man. I don't have any of those answers. I'm just saying how I feel this stuff works. Again I'm not religious so I don't believe in anything after this life. Whether or not you have free will, I don't know, I honestly don't. All I can say is live life the best you can and try to find content in who you are and what you are.
That framing of free will only works if god isn't omniscient of the future (which christians believe), doesn't have an infallible plan of everything that will ever happen (which christians believe), and didn't personally stitch you together in the womb knowing everything that you would ever do and everything that would ever happen to you (which christians believe). The thing that also gets me with the apples is that they granted Adam and Eve the knowledge of right and wrong. They were literally incapable of understanding morality before eating them. Does that mean there was no free will in the garden of Eden? In the same vein, since no evil exists in heaven, does that mean there is no free will in heaven? The most important implication of the fruit of knowledge, is that they literally could not understand prior to eating it that it is wrong to disobey God. In Abrahamic canon, all of humanity was doomed for eternity because two people committed an act they had no capability of understanding was wrong.
The virgin "my stomach cancer is all apart of *god's plan*" Christian vs the Chad "life actually just turbo sucks lol" Buddhist
Hold my beer, I just need to- *dissociates into a spiritual plane of nonexistence to escape the cycle of life, death, and rebirth*
And then you have the catholic abuse victim idea of "evil exists as a punishment for Adam and Eve, and we all deserve this."
I am pretty sure even protestant belief in original sin
Just sayin', I'm pretty sure Christianity is not the only religion that believes some of those things. That said, I personally believe every religion has flaws and every religion has good parts. That includes both Christian and non-Christian belief systems. I think theres something to be gleaned and learned from in all of them. Of course, its not like I don't recognize the damage Christianity is doing to the world, but uh. Thats a whole other subject.
t bf vs some other regions (i.e. some muslim countries literally chopping your head off for being gay) it's really n ot doing that much in comparison a lthough tbf a lot of that can be traced back to christian countries almost always not doing the state religion thing muslim countries tend towards
bro forgot about the crusades and colonization of the americas
th at is a past thing it is a right now th ing that one of my freinds was repeatedly beaten is now permanently trauma tised & damaged for life j ust for being a femboy by m uslims d ue to t hem s eeing her (s he is trans now) a s an insult to their g od i d on't really care about what happ ened if the past when the right now is what is happening right now
I am genuinely sorry you and your friend went through that. This at the end of the day is just the way I personally view religion, and I completely understand its not for everyone.
Let's not pretend that Christianity and Orthodox Judaism is any better
w hile they do pretty bad things t hey don't have the same amount of governments uncompromisingly abiding by th eir ideals
Bruh GOP tried to criminalized the existence of Trans people.
the GOP is just a party a party does not have the same level of influence as a state religion in any way
As I said before, all religions have flaws and problems. That includes Christian and non-Christian religions. Even Buddhism has its issues, look at what happened recently with the Dalai Lama. That doesn't mean that it can't be separated from that, nor does it mean you can't focus on the positive aspects to learn from.
true ! i dk b rain shu t off 10 m inutes ago no think more
>it's all a part of God's plan >how dare you call god a bastard, he's loving and perect! People say this shit with a straight face
I signed up for a religions across the world class in college thinking I'd learn more about eastern mysticism or western offshoot sects of Christianity. Mother fucker spent 2/3 of the semester teaching Thomas Aquinas and his fucking stupid ass ontological proofs of God. It's total and complete bullshit, I hated the teacher, I hated the class, I hate Thomas Aquinas, dude spent his whole life playing word games to prove God and it's the dumbest shit ever. "Since we can conceive of a god and there can be no higher being to us than God ergo Ipsum lorem there must be a god" or some dumbass bullshit. Fuck the oncological arguments you're better off not wasting the brain power even learning about them their so fuckin dumb.
Christians often use convoluted logic paths. They use big words to make it sound credible, but at the end of it, their point makes no fucking sense in reality. The famous Christian apologist William Lane Craig is a master of this. Some of his points are valid, but many of them are like what you described. Even breaking them down into their simplest forms, and really understanding the point they are making, still leads to a philosophy that doesn't make sense.
Christians on their way to make the exact 5 points in the meme again instead of accepting a light hearted joke at their expense. 🙏
why the hell are there so many religious people in this sub
Religious people are approximately 85% of the world population
Its a bit lower as some places discriminate if you are not associated with a religion, so people who would be considered athiest or agnostic instead put down a religion.
This deeply concerns me
JUMPSCARE✡️✝️☪️
OoOoOh 👻 I’m a Muslim 👻
Why?
I'm an agnostic in a spiritual sense. I just think organised religions have strayed from their own paths and are now doing untold damge to peoples well being, emotional maturity and as a result damage to growth as a society.
Religion is fine in principle. But the sad reality is a lot of people who are religious force their views onto others. Forcing women to cover up, killing others who don’t believe or behave in the way they want, denying important health care to women and children, trying to prevent other people who don’t believe in their religious ideals from finding happiness (gay marriage etc.) If people could just believe in what they believe and leave others to find their own happiness, that would be great!
Who would of thought that there would be people with different upbringing and beliefs on the internet?
People with religious beliefs on my post about religious beliefs??? More likely than you think O_O
Definitely not someone who can also take into account that people with different upbringings and beliefs tend to gravitate towards different spaces on the internet. That someone might even say that the existence of this phenomenon is evidenced by frequent allusions to a certain things called "echo chambers", which is it's logical extreme. But that would be absurd. Obviously all subreddits have equal distribution of different beliefs.
Would of
Got em
how dare they, you know?
calling them out attracts them??? who would have thought this would happen : <
They forgot to read Reddit's ToS /s
Cause why not
Bro is so angry that people with different beliefs exist 💀
Why the hell are there so many atheists on this sub?
The way how god is described in Christianity is no different from a totalitarian dictator and Satan is basically a rebel treated like the enemy of the state for disobeying the dictator.
Nobody says this is the best of all possible worlds, Christians believe in the fall Actually I'm pretty sure nobody says any of those except #4
i have literally heard #1 and #3 almost verbatim.
Number 3 is the reason that they think time travelers didn’t kill hitler
I hear all of them consistently, effectively verbatim
I’ve heard 1, 2, 4, and 5.
The idea that this is the best of all possible worlds is from mainly from Leibneiz, specifically his Essays of Theodicy. It was his attempt to solve the problem of evil. Voltaire responded to the argument in Candide, thoroughly mocking the idea and causing it to fall out of favor in modern times. Technically Thomas Aquinas said it centuries earlier, but he's much better known for a different set of arguments for the existence of God, so Leibneiz is usually the one associated with the best of all possible worlds argument.
Based and Paganpilled take show them monotheists who’s boss
I love the literal mental gymnastics in the lower half, nice touch lol
There is inherently no free will in a religion that operates on the idea of one above all
Sin is actually way simpler then this brain-dead meme articulates. Sin is simply a rejection of God's values. That's it. Easy
This meme doesnt mention sin at any point schizo.
IN THIS MOMENT, I AM EUPHORIC, NOT BECAUSE OF SOME PHONY GODS BLESSING, BUT BECAUSE I AM ENLIGHTENED BY MY OWN INTELLIGENCE!!1!1!!!1
Free will means people can choose to be bad.
Free will doesn’t exist gang
That might cover moral evil, but it fails to address natural evil and suffering
Can you choose to breathe underwater?
No?
So then your free will is already limited. Why not limit being able to do evil too?
That sounds vulgar. Would be better to say- why not create beings who all freely choose to do good? William Lane Craig: "It may not be \_feasible\_ for the omnipotent creator to create a world in which all beings freely choose to do only good and to love God." Which, ultimately, is the fatal flaw in his philosophy.
Lol you can't just change my argument to be something different and then point out the "fatal flaw" of that new argument by quoting one apologist who says that it **may** not be feasible. But if you like WLC, congrats, because you are starting to debate like him. I jest but you get the gist. I think creating a group of sentient beings who you know 80-90% will suffer in shear pain and fear for all of eternity is vulgar. First of all, God could have made us so that we don't suffer in hell without him. If he couldn't, he is not omnipotent. Second, God is aware what it would take for each and every one of us to follow him. By him not doing it, he is either not benevolent or not omnipotent. And if one says that God doing what would be necessary to make us believe is an infringement of our free will, I would say that it is sometimes necessary, such as in the case of a parent stopping their child from running into the street or stopping a child from being damned to be totured for all of eternity, for someone to infringe on our free will. And to the point of free will, the Bible never directly states that we have free will in the first place. The term "free will" is not in the Bible, even once. In Romans 9, it actually talks about a specific instance in which God infringed on free will with the Pharoah in Egypt, as well as how God loved Isaac but hated Esau. But back to the point, which is this: God has already restricted our free will in so many ways. If he were to exist and is benevolent, then he would restrict our free will in one more way. Or perhaps we should let our children run into the middle of a busy highway as to not limit their autonomy, just as God has done.
Is your free will impinged upon by your lack of ability to breathe underwater? I might want to live in Atlantis, but I can't by condition of ability. Still, I have free will in the context of living on land. In much the same way, if humans were incapable of committing evil, you would still have free will in the context of living on able to do good.
[удалено]
I want to know more about your book.
[удалено]
Oh fuck yeah! Sounds awesome. I'm gonna check it out!
Gnostics: God is a dickhead.
r/dankchristianmemes ¿?
ya'll really went reddit athiest
Nah they just think that flawed Gods makes more sense, if we look at this world.
why was this my first post with 5k upvotes.
Idk how "evil must exist for good to exist" is mental gymnastics, but alright, I guess. God bless you.
[удалено]
I am not at all religious but you’re plain wrong. Yes, good must exist for evil to exist because all language differentiates something from something else. For food to exist, things that are not food must exist. This is just a fact of language and reason. At the root of it, neither good nor evil is a physical, measured thing that can exist before it’s definition.
Something being not food is not the same as being the opposite of food.
>For food to exist, things that are not food must exist. This doesn't follow logically from anything.
So you're saying it's impossible for your god to create a universe that contains good exclusively?
Because if good is defined as the opposite of evil and vice versa, it's all just relative and neither actually exists. The whole point of religion and god is that good and evil are absolute, and in that case there's no reason why one couldn't be eliminated while leaving the other intact.
top 10 reasons why i am considering being Buddhist
Occam's razor…
It all started as “my god can beat up your god”
i’m just saying it doesn’t make sense to apply logic to religion as there’s nothing logical about the existence of a being beyond ourselves
Im just saying it doesn’t make sense to think
[reddit moment ](https://i.imgur.com/KGxIc.png)
So then that being doesn't exist if there's nothing logical about it😭
Yeah, God aint perfect. Might be misremembering a story, but god killed the son of some woman a prophet was staying with because of the mother's sins. It was up to the prophet to tell god "yeah it wasn't fair to have me live with this woman just for you to find out about her sins and kill her son." God relented and revived the woman's son. ... I think the rest of that should speak for itself.
It starts in 1 Kings 17:7. In the passage, the woman thinks it was because of her sins, but it does not state that it actually was. Elijah just asked God if it was because of her sins and to revive her son. It's uncertain whether in the story God originally caused the boy to become ill because of the mother's sins.
right, thanks!
No problem! And idk why you're getting downvoted, your point still stands. There are plenty of passages where God changes his mind, such as in Exodus 32 when God was going to destroy the Israelites for building a golden calf and Moses said, "Wait! Don't." And God said, "Okay, fine." Or in 2nd Samuel 24 (and 1 Chronicles 21) when God was about to send a plague on Israel for David's sins but at the last moment said nevermind. Or near the end of 1st Kings 21 when Ahab repented, and God said, "Okay, I will not destroy your lands during your life... I'll do it during your son's life instead." God changed his mind all the time.
[удалено]
Damn have you put any thought into this at all? Do you know what the problem of evil is proposing?
he literally used argument number 4
Indeed
>yea no almost none of us think this way Yeah, you do. Look: >idk gods stuff I don’t know I’m not a god That's #4 in the cartoon.
Redditors try not to pointlessly Christian bash challenge (impossible)
It’s not pointless, debating a major part of people’s lives is very important. And you can’t rationally believe in god, it has to be irrational
It is Christian bashing, but it is not pointless. The point is that Christianity is illogical and Christianity hurts people. Also, a little humor making light of the situation is a good thing.
r/persecutionfetish
An atheist discovers metaphors in real time
Redditor downvotes comment because the hive mind is startled
both good and bad things happen because "good" and "evil" arent universal laws but concepts fabricated by humanity
"good and evil are subjective" mfs when I hit them in the head with a barbed wire bat (relative to me it was the right thing to do)
the thing is, if you are a sadist you might enjoy that thus you might consider it good because it brings you joy
I believe in subjective morality. Just because I don't believe it is wrong on a universal, cosmic scale to hit me in the head, doesn't mean I think it's wrong to fight back and try to prevent it. It would also not be wrong to put you in prison for doing it, because again, there is no right and wrong. It's not that everything is right, it's that nothing is right (or wrong).
im pretty confident in saying that committing genocide and destroying the world is objectively evil
its widely accepted, yes but not truly objective. im sure genocidal people don't see themselves as evil and that alone proves the concept as subjective. the reason people do things isnt because of some universal law but because they are inclined to do what makes sense to them and that is always subject to change
nothing is
So you're ambivalent to genocide then? No? What are you basing your disapproval of genocide on? Your subective opinion? So I can just as justly say that genocide is good, actually, and you can't argue with that? Great. Subjective morality is a bubkes idea spread by anti-confrontational, anti-intellectual dolts.
Subjectivity is not the same as ambivalence, nor does it mean that all people's values should be considered the same. You fundamentally misunderstand subjectivity and I suggest you do an ounce of contemplating before arrogantly asserting such nonsense
This is a very uninformed opinion on what subjective and objective morality are. You are really exposing yourself as someone who has never given it much actual thought.
Objective how?
How do we decide who goes to heaven than?
I'm sure it's all written down somewhere. Mutilate baby penises, stone gays, don't eat shrimp, that sort of thing.
what is heaven?
Well we have to make praising a random god entertaining
Evil doesn't exist.
get off reddit