# Is the moral objection to the existence of God valid? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 2, 2011, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842 "2011-02-02T00:25:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/61 "2011-02-02T14:19:37Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > But the moral objection-- the idea that if God existed, evils such as the Holocaust, the civil war in Rwanda, the earthquake in Haiti, et cetera – strikes me as flawed. All those things certainly weigh against a benovelent, New-Testatment-type creator existing, but not against ANY creator. > > Cann anyway argue that the contrary? If so, I’d be pleased to hear it. Here is my belief which answers your question. We are just not creations of God but God’s children. Yes every one of us will become Jesus, who will inherent everything in the universe as kings and children of the King. But till then… We are gods, we have been given great (spiritual) powers, most don’t know our own power, some of us have ceded power to others. We, running the world as a bunch of gods, and we are still not perfected in our ways (we are not yet Jesus), put anger, hate and other things in the world. Those things cause all pain and suffering in the world. God (big G), allows us to rule as we do. Eventually, maybe through many lives, we will see the suffering we have caused because we are not yet Jesus, some very far apart from Jesus. We see the karmic cycle that if you put anything into the world (love, hate, whatever) it grows throughout humanity, and if not Love comes back to bite you in the ass when it is fully grown. Through this we learn that we want to put Love out in the world, that we realize that Jesus’ way was the only way. Though you may not know Jesus by name, all you need is Love, and realize that Love can be born in your heart, they you become a child (son or daughter) of Love - then you are who we call Jesus. Scriptures state God is one. So Jesus is the Father, is the Spirit is whoever accepts the way of Love. They are all the same, yes people following the path of Love are Jesus, they are as much Jesus as Jesus Himself (this fully includes females and the feminine but don’t want to go into gender issues). The Holy Spirit can be thought of as the whole(y) Spirit, the one ‘whole’ spirit, the same one that lives in the Father, and Jesus, and the saints, and all with Love in their hearts. A good way of understanding this wholeness or ‘oneness’ is to see how the mother/infant relationship is to the infant. To the infant the mother is part of the infant. To go further back, and this is my personal revelation but may help with understanding the term ‘oneness’ and ‘God is one’, a child in the womb is one with the mother to a much greater extent. The child senses through the mother, the cravings that a pregnant woman has are the desires of the child. The in the womb child is a very nascent consciousness at this state, but a real living one. This is our relationship to big G God (the Father) we are one with Him, having one spirit with Him. So to answer your question, there is suffering because we are god (little g, or a fractional disconnected part of God (big G), and that is needed because we will become God (big G). But we must decide that is what we want because we agree with big G God - this is the free will issue. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/62 "2011-02-02T16:19:45Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Ah, but disclaimers to the contrary, very few people are actually arguing for some sort of _generic_ creator. They want _God_. Omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient. Generic versions of “God” that aren’t benevolent (or lack other popular divine qualities) almost never show up except as an argument against skeptics; and are rare even then, usually the “mere mortals can’t understand God’s morality” argument is preferred. > > Plenty of arguments against “God” work this way; they aren’t arguments against all conceivable versions of God, but against the ones people actually believe in because those are the only versions that actually matter. Why are you answering a question no one asked? ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/63 "2011-02-02T16:23:50Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > Labels often become meaningless because people like to give their own connotations to terms, which are seldom shared with anyone else. > > What does “practical” agnostic or atheist mean? Are there “theoretical” agnostics too? I’ve defined it before, but I see I mistyped in the OP. I meant to write “technical agnostic, practical atheist.” Technically I’m an agnostic, because I don’t believe it possible to categorically discount the existence of a supernatural creator. Practically I’m an atheist, because I believe the existence of every postulated god to be contradicted by the evidence. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/64 "2011-02-02T16:33:54Z")
The qualifiers “technical” and “practical” still have no function in that description. You are both an agnostic and an atheist by both of their normal definitions. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/65 "2011-02-02T16:34:03Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > The “mysterious ways” defense. It fails because God is omnipotent and does not require means to ends. Anything he can accomplish with evil, he can accomplish without evil. It is impossible for evil to ever be necessary for an omnimax entity. An entity could be sovereign and the creator without being infinite in power. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/66 "2011-02-02T16:35:59Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > An entity could be sovereign and the creator without being infinite in power. Then it wouldn’t be omnimax. Like I keep saying, the POE is only intended as a proof against an omnimax God, not against any other possible definition of God. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/67 "2011-02-02T16:37:07Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Then it wouldn’t be omnimax. Like I keep saying, the POE is only intended as a proof against an omnimax God, not against any other possible definition of God. I’m quite aware of that. I avoided the term Problem of Evil for a reason. > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > The qualifiers “technical” and “practical” still have no function in that description. You are both an agnostic and an atheist by both of their normal definitions. Of course they have function. By the most narrow & literal meanings of the terms, I am an agnostic rather than an atheist; I believe the question of the existence of God to be ultimately unanswerable because of human limitations. _Technically_ I am an agnostic. But I do not believe it to be beyond human limitations to answer the question of whether Yahweh, Odin, Zeus, Mithra, Inanna, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Superman exist; I believe in all those cases that the answer is no, they do not exist, and further I cannot think of any mythological god that does. Thus I in _practical_ terms I am an atheist, since I am willing to deny the existence of every god I can think of. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/68 "2011-02-02T16:37:23Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > GG, Haiti cholera victims! > GG, abused children! > GG, foloks who died in a house fire! > GG, Alzheimers patients! > GG! > > I almost find this idea more repellent than the idea of a single omnipotent god. Why? 😕 At the level at which being God is relevant, you and I and everyone else _is_ (also) a Haitian cholera victim, an abused child, a person who died in a house fire, an Alzheimer’s patient. And each of them _is also_ a person living out lives such as ours, as well as being a child abuser, an arsonist, a serial killer, and worse things. The opportunity exists, within the unfolding of things and our participation in it, for the species human to change our structures and ways and make life kinder. If for some reason we don’t succeed, that’s OK, some other individually sentient social species will do so and the desired result will still occur. Homo sap will perish, the more advantageous cooperative social species will flourish, and all will be well. You can’t simultaneously comprehend God and also cling to an investment in local individual identity as your primary identity. In my opinion you’re better off in every way believing that no God exists than believing that God exists but that individual people exist separate from God. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/69 "2011-02-02T16:45:33Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > This is wrong. Evil is a universally agreed upon descriptor for observed physical phenomena. That is simple bullshit. I can think of many things I think of as evil which other persons do not. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/70 "2011-02-02T16:53:30Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I’m quite aware of that. I avoided the term Problem of Evil for a reason. > > Of course they have function. By the most narrow & literal meanings of the terms, I am an agnostic rather than an atheist; I believe the question of the existence of God to be ultimately unanswerable because of human limitations. _Technically_ I am an agnostic. But I do not believe it to be beyond human limitations to answer the question of whether Yahweh, Odin, Zeus, Mithra, Inanna, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Superman exist; I believe in all those cases that the answer is no, they do not exist, and further I cannot think of any mythological god that does. Thus I in _practical_ terms I am an atheist, since I am willing to deny the existence of every god I can think of. “Agnostic” and “atheistic” are not contradictory positions. There is no “rather than.” You can be both. Agnosticism is not a position on the existence of God, but a position on the _evidence_ for God. Agnosticism is the position that we have insufficient data to know one way or the other. It is not technically a _per se_ stance on God’s existence. You can be an agnostic and a theist or an agnostic and an atheist. Agnosticism is not a middle position betwen atheism and theism, it’s a position on what’s _provable_, not what you personally conclude. I think maybe what you’re saying is that you are an agnostic, but functionally a _strong_ atheist, which would imply some slight contradiction. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/71 "2011-02-02T16:58:17Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > That is simple bullshit. I can think of many things I think of as evil which other persons do not. So what? Then those things would not meet the definition of evil as it pertains to God. If you want to deny that “good” and 'evil" mean anything, then it doesn’t mean anything to say that “God is good” in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/72 "2011-02-02T17:08:10Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > I don’t think you quite grasp the definitions. If you could try to be less insulting, Dio, I’d be grateful. > [@](#): > > “Agnostic” and “atheistic” are not contradictory positions. There is no “rather than.” You can be both. Agnosticism is not a position on the existence of God, but a position on the _evdience_ for God. Agnosticism is the position that we have insufficint data to know one way or the other. It is not technically a _per se_ stance on God’s existence. You basically restated what I wrote in my last post. I’ll quote myself: > [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > By the most narrow & literal meanings of the terms, I am an agnostic rather than an atheist; \*\*I believe the question of the existence of God to be ultimately unanswerable because of human limitations. \*\* How is that any different than what you just said? As to the practical atheist bit, I am using the third defintion of practical found [here](http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=practical). I’ll quote the relevant line: [QUOTE=wordnet] # S: (adj) virtual, practical (being actually such in almost every respect) “a practical failure”; “the once elegant temple lay in virtual ruin” [/QUOTE] Since my position is that every god-concept to which I have been exposed is as fictional as Aslan, I am _practically_, or _virtually_, atheist. This is true even though I do not deny that there may be a logically coherent and believable god-concept that I personally have never been exposed to and which I cannot at this juncture conceive of. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/73 "2011-02-02T17:14:34Z")
Look at my edited post (where I removed the insult). As I said, I think you’re really saying that you function as a _strong_ atheist, which does create slightly more tension with agnosticism than justplain “atheism” does. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/74 "2011-02-02T17:32:34Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > No rational being would ask for proof of a negative. There are plenty of cases where proving a negative is useful and in fact done. We often prove negatives as corollaries of proving positives. The four-color theorem, for example, also implicitly states that no graphs exist which require five colors. There are certain existential negatives which we can’t prove, it is true. > [@](#): > > Evil is an imaginary concept of the human mind, therefore non-existent as a provable entity, by definition. Every kind of tag on things is an imaginary concept of the human mind. Good, sexy, ugly also. However, we have reasonably good working definitions. We also have definitions in the context of a particular God and god-belief. > [@](#): > > The argument of an omni-whatever being doing things that are logically inconsistent with the being’s own existence may not be objectionable, but still, an assumption of the existence of something that does not exist can result in any claim imaginable. I don’t think you are seeing how this thing works. Given an assumption, like an omnimax God, and using standard logic, you wind up with multiple contradictions. This means that the assumption cannot be true. (You also wind up with lots of logical but incorrect conclusions.) It is perfectly legitimate to create systems with contradictory premises, for instance Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry. Only one might match the real world, but they are both logically consistent systems. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/75 "2011-02-02T17:34:33Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > An entity could be sovereign and the creator without being infinite in power. Then we have Greek and Norse gods. Just not the standard modern version of the Western God - but in the old days, when he couldn’t do anything against iron chariots, he was more restrained. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/76 "2011-02-02T23:33:16Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Why? 😕 At the level at which being God is relevant, you and I and everyone else _is_ (also) a Haitian cholera victim, an abused child, a person who died in a house fire, an Alzheimer’s patient. And each of them _is also_ a person living out lives such as ours, as well as being a child abuser, an arsonist, a serial killer, and worse things. Why do I find it repellent when you suggest that I’m a serial killer? Seriously? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2011, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/77 "2011-02-02T23:43:35Z")
You (in the aggregate shared commonality sense of “you”, not you as **Left Hand of Dorkness** , the individual person) are a serial killer, you are a rock and a hippopotamus and many other things. You are god being all of these things as a creative and entertaining activity. I will reiterate: > [@](#): > > You can’t simultaneously comprehend God and also cling to an investment in local individual identity as your primary identity. In my opinion you’re better off in every way believing that no God exists than believing that God exists but that individual people exist separate from God. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2011, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/78 "2011-02-03T01:02:15Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > You (in the aggregate shared commonality sense of “you”, not you as **Left Hand of Dorkness** , the individual person) are a serial killer, you are a rock and a hippopotamus and many other things. You are god being all of these things as a creative and entertaining activity. Thing is, I’m really not in any sense a serial killer. This kind of philosophy has more than a dab of blaming-the-victim involved in it, IMO, and I really don’t like it. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2011, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/79 "2011-02-03T01:03:53Z")
I’m not a rock or a hippopotamus. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2011, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842/80 "2011-02-03T01:10:34Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > I’m not a rock or a hippopotamus. No, but it suggests a great Simon & Garfunkel / Flanders & Swann mashup. "I am a rock, I am a hippo. And a rock feels no pain, and a hippo rolls in mud, mud glorious mud. " [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-moral-objection-to-the-existence-of-god-valid/569842.md?page=5)