Because that’s all that’s needed. No amount of handwaving and throwing out text walls and pseudomathematical bafflegab will change that. The “problem of evil” exists in the first place because anyone just needs to casually observe the world so see how much evil and suffering fills it.
Yeah. Who needs logic and reason and coherent thinking when they’ve got convictions?
Seriously, I don’t get this. What I’m trying to explain to you is a way to make your argument better, to shore it up against potential counterarguments (which at this point only need to amount to ‘nuh-uh’ to be perfectly sound), to actually push back against a point of view you claim to oppose, but handed an actual weapon rather than a squirt gun, you decide to shoot yourself in the foot instead.
I would q
The irony of this statement.
What you’re calling irrational is taking the observation of X as evidence to support X. Seeing God do evil (as for example all natural suffering is, since God has ultimate control) gives us reason to suspect that God is a being that does evil i.e. not omnibenevolent.
The more examples, the more reason.
Now, virtually all proofs of God, or apologetics, feature some kind of special pleading IME.
But this argument has been “extra special” in requiring us to turn off empiricism, inductive reasoning etc, to handwave even a hypothetical reality where 100% of our observations imply God is evil.
My only regret with this thread is that we wasted so much time on ratcheting up the hypotheticals. We should have gone straight to “gruesome sadist god” from the get-go.
That is not what I wrote, because I made a distinction between having no reason to doubt and having no reason to doubt without further assumptions.
I remind you that an argumentum ad absurdum still requires a contradiction, which you have not shown. You appeal to common sense, but formally, your argument is incomplete. And that is the only charge I have ever laid against your argument, on its own terms…
- “God” has said He is evil.
- [missing premise!!!]
- Therefore, “God” is evil.
I never said the conclusion was unreasonable, only that it is irrational without adding another premise.
~Max
The missing premise could be “god never lies” which is Biblically supported and Biblically not supported. Like pretty much everything else about God in the Bible.
But a better way is prediction. It is fairly easy to predict what a world would look like with a truly tri-omni god. We’d not be able to point to areas of unnecessary suffering.
It is easy to explain children dying of cancer with the circular argument that since god is omnibenevolent those deaths are by definition contributing to the best of all possible worlds, but a bit harder to say that a natural outcome of an omnibenevolent god is children dying of cancer.
Sure you can excuse away the evidence. I’ve seen flat earthers do it all the time.
Exactly, and I’m pushing Mijin to state the assumptions that underly his argument that the suffering we observe is evidence of unnecessary suffering. Right now I understand he makes an inductive premise, (‘the more suffering we see, the more evidence we have of unnecessary suffering’), but he has not committed to a basis for that argument.
~Max
While not a complete rebuttal, I recall my observation that the passion of Christ is a core doctrine of Christianity. If you accept the necessity of God allowing his one and only son to be literally tortured… and making a world where that would become necessary…
~Max
So I am not misrepresenting you, right?
I’m putting a hypothetical to you, and confirming your response to that hypothetical.
Your “correction” is to say that that is indeed your response without further assumptions.
So, what I said is accurate. With the hypothetical as given, your position is what I said.
However, I will give you credit for experiencing discomfort at acknowledging the idea that witnessing a god apparently torturing humans for fun wouldn’t give us grounds for doubting he is perfectly loving. Because frankly it’s one of the most batshit propositions imaginable.
It’s saying in a hypothetical world of infinite evidence of X, we have no reason to think X.
No. As I explained upthread, one kind of argumentum ad absurdum is to show a contradiction. There are other kinds, like showing it leads to something agreed to be false or absurd.
Not that it matters anyway. Call my argument a “blargumentum” if you like. My blargumentum remains to point out the absurdity and irrationality of suspending empirical / inductive logic (as well as throwing in “mysterious ways” as a bonus extra).
…which is not my position.
I have been very clear that I am not talking about conclusions or certainty. From the very beginning in this thread I have simply said that each example of apparently unnecessary suffering gives us more reason for doubting that a perfectly-loving all-powerful being exists.
Formally speaking, there is no absurdity until you state a contradiction. Why would each example of apparently unnecessary suffering give us more reason for doubting that a perfectly-loving all-powerful being exists?
Should we expect to perceive the necessity of observed suffering?
~Max
If I accept that necessity for the sake of argument, we still have a lot of people tortured a lot worse for a lot longer, including no doubt some of my ancestors with the torture being done by Christians.
And, being Jewish, I find it patently absurd that anything approaching an omnipotent god requires torture to forgive our since. When I believed I’d ask for forgiveness every year on Yom Kippur. It seemed to work since I was indeed written in the Book of Life.
This is not an argument against omnipotence. The Christian God could have the power to forgive everyone without torture, but is a bit twisted and so needs it, no longer getting people to burn up things for him.