Dio,
Trust, if I may (since you referenced me in your question):
The premises in question are 1) God is omnipotent 2) God is omnibenevolent.
Of course Dio (and I) reject these premises since we don’t believe God exists, let alone has those characteristics. But the Problem of Evil is one of combination, not truth (ie. validity, not soundness). What Dio is telling you is that those premises cannot logically be combined using an AND without yielding an absurdity.
Either:
An omnipotent God allows evil to exist when he could simply get rid of it (or, better still, not allow the possibility of it arising in the first place). “Allowing evil” and “omnibenevolent” are logically mutually exclusive.
or:
God simply cannot get rid of evil (or had no say in the possibility of it arising in the first place). “Can’t stop evil” and “omnipotent” are logically mutually exclusive.
So God could be omnipotent OR omnibenevolent, but not omnipotent AND omnibenevolent. That is the Problem of Evil, and it is a problem regardless of whether you hold or reject the premises.
I get this. I even agree with it, and yet there is plenty wrong with your logic including a misunderstanding of what logic actually is.
There are several Christian doctrines which contradict each other. Nonsense rationalizations or the “we just don’t understand God’s ways” arguement doesn’t change them into non contradictions. If the foundational belief is that in God there is perfect love, mercy and justice, then having doctrines which contradict those qualities is a false and illogical doctrine. Claiming that faith makes the doctrine justifiable is feeble. The fact that many people accept it is also no kind of logical support.
To quote something I said in another thread:
As for me, it’s not the idea of “God”, the creator of the universe, that I don’t believe, but the story of Christianity is pretty hard to swallow: God sent his son down here so we can feel guilty about killing him and therefore have eternal life by accepting your share of the guilt in what happened 2,000 years ago. You then have to concede that, yes, Western Civilization was rewarded for killing its God so it, eventually, gets the scientific method that allows it to conquer the globe for 500 years. I mean, last time I looked, the guy who made the decision to off God was Italian… and they get the Renaissance.
Wtf? How the hell does that work? I can see it as in those commercials…
“I’ve got an idea!”
“What?”
“If I send Jesus down to Earth… they’ll kill him. And then I’ll let them know that, ta-da!, you actually killed my boy! And if they admit that they killed Jesus, and feel guilty about it, and then believe that he’s actually my son, I’ll grant them modern civilization so they can conquer and pollute all those people who didn’t kill my only son!”
“Brilliant!”
“And get this… I’ll be very vague about it. It’s not like I want to do anything to settle the issue once and for all, like appear out of thin air to every man, woman, and child in the Universe… no, that wouldn’t work. The indirect approach is all they need to know the One True God! It will convince everybody!”
“Brilliant!”
clink
:rolleyes:
Yes, but you mistated my reasons. I didn’t say that Christianity couldn’t be true because there isn’t any evidence for it, but because it’s premises are logically incompatible.
It doesn’t matter if the premises can be proven true or false. They are logically incompatible. It is logically impossible for all of your premises to be true simultaneously. You keep trying to counter this as though it’s an evidentiary argument and it isn’t.
I’ve argued absolutely nothing of the sort. Maybe you need to re-read my posts.
I disagree that the premises of Christian doctrine can logically coexist.
Please show where he said Christianity is impossible. He did say that omnibenevolence, omnipotence and omniscience (which I left out of my argument, but which should be there) cannot all be true. He said that there is no reason that an omnipotent god must require a human sacrifice. He might have said there is no evidence that Christianity is true.
BTW, his postings over the years are ample evidence he knows a lot more about Christian doctrine than you seem to. You should look some of them up.
This thread is about reasons for belief, which I would assume involves the quality of the reasons. If the reasons are that someone said one should believe, of crap reasons people make up (like those of the 6.000 year old earth believers in your example) they are not as good as carefully thought out logical arguments for either side. There are bad arguments for atheism also. Some are - I had a bad experience in church, or religious people are evil, or the Inquisition. I’d hope we’d be discussing good reasons, few of which you seem to be able to offer.
Only that version of Christianity that requires a tri-omni god, right? I for one don’t see how the concept of salvation only through Christ is compatible with omnibenevolence at all.
Trust claims that omnibenevolence is not a requirement of Christianity (though he implied it when he said God was good.) Could you point me to a statement of this as a requirement? Is it the Gospels, or in a later discussion?
Omnibenevolence did not come up much in my religious education, but that might be expected 20 years after the Holocaust.
I for one have never heard of a version of Christianity in which God is a little bit evil. In my understanding “perfectly good” is supposed to mean exactly what it says on the tin (Matt. 5:48 - “heavenly Father is perfect”, I Jn. 4:18 - “perfect love”, Deut. 32:4 - “His work is perfect…” etc. etc.)
If we as spiritual beings, chose to experience percieved duality, which exists as a temporay perception only, how does that affect your premise?
Is your premise dependent on accepting that free will is an illusion?
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I’m not sure I understand your questions. I have not stated a premise so I don’t know how respond to queries about how “my premise is effected.”
I also don’t know what you mean with terms like “fleeting,” “perceived evil,” “spiritual beings” and “perceived duality.” I think I sort of know what you’re asking but I’m not sure. It sounds like your asking if evil is really evil if it’s only temporary (“fleeting”)? My answer would be that of course it is. When we talk about evil, what we’re really talking about is suffering. Suffering is, by defintion, both “perceived” and temporal. Even if it’s some sort of illusion (and when it come sto suffering, that’s a distinction without a difference. An illusory experience of suffering is still authentic suffering), that doesn’t make the suffering and less horrible on a perceptual, temporal level and, more importantly from my perspective, it’s not an experience (illusory or otherwise) which an omnipotent God has any obligation to cause or allow. Forgive me if I fail to understand why suffering is made less unpleasant (or more necessary) because if it is not eternal.
I think all perception has to occur in linear time, doesn’t it?
I would say that however God gives the information, it has to be easily accessible and unambiguous. Humans have no obligation to expend a moment’s energy searching for it, thinking about it or working on it in any way. The responsibility for making the truth known to humans is 100% on God and 0% on humans.
It’s not something that’s formally or systematically stated in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament but it’s a part of both Christian and Jewish doctrine that od is perefctly good, perefctly “righteous,” all-loving, etc. There are a number of verses from both the Tanakh and the NT which refer to God’s “perfection” as well as to his “goodness,” his “righteousness,” etc. The NT also contains formulations of God as love and the Epistle of James says that “God cannot be tempted by evil.”
Well first we have to agree on the definition of perfect. Is it possible to allow people to do evil in order to not go against free will and still be perfect? The problem with this argument is that it comes down to a definition. If I ground my kids so that they learn a lesson, does that make me imperfect? If you consider that as your definition, then how do you know that that is the same definition that is intended in the bible?
Another possibility. Is it not possible for God to be perfect AFTER he chose to make us and allow us to learn with free will? That would still not contradict these verses of being perfect since it could be referring to God being perfect during our lifetime.
Yes this logic is correct. I do not see any logical contradiction because I have never heard of anyone saying that God is omnibenevolent. It was a necessary evil for God to create us without making us robots so that we could learn. Noone is denying this. Also, please look at my comments above that explain possible ways that God could still be considered perfect.
Dio,
The heart of your very argument is this: “It is possible to prove that the unprovable is impossible”. This is not only incredibly stupid, it is laughable at best. If you still do not understand what is wrong with your logic, try this incredibly simple problem out.
Find the mistake in the following “proof” that the sum of any two rational numbers is a rational number.
“Proof” : Let rational number r=1/4 and s=1/2 be given. Then r + s = 1/4 + 1/2 = 1/4, which is a rational number. This is what was to be shown.
When you find the mistake with this “proof”, you find the mistake with your argument.
No it isn’t. My argument is that your logical premises cannot coexist. These contradictions exist completely without regard to whether any of those premises are true.
somehow, I doubt the error with Dio’s arguement is that 1/4 + 1/2 does not equal 1/4 
How do you know all of my premises? You have not asked. The point is still that even when you come up with those “contradictions”, that person still has ways of believing other premises that make these “contradictions” untrue. Anyone can put together all sorts of premises based on faith in weird ways to make the conclusion logical. Therefore, you should spend your time actually arguing about the plausability of the argument. The implications of you making hasty comments that are untrue is incredible. The moment you tell someone what they believe (when it involves faith) is illogical, they are going to come up with 20 ways that it is not illogical. Not only were you just wrong, any respect you might have had is completely lost because you rely on proving the unprovable. Please though; have a try at my problem involving the “proof”. You will see where your mistake is.
:smack: I copied the problem wrong people. Yes it should be = 3/4.
Yes I have. I asked you what premises I was missing and You told me you’re “not a mind reader,” whatever that means. It doesn’t matter, there are no other possible premises which will make your already stated premses compatible.
Actually, no they don’t.
Perfectly good, that is (according to any Christian doctrine I know of - you might be sidestepping the Problem by allowing God to be a little bit evil, but that’s quite a bullet to bite!).
Creating the possibility of evil, knowing that a whole bunch of it is bound to come about, seriously clashes with the words “perfectly good”, however you look at it. After all, this is why gross negligence is a crime in everyday life: even without malicious intent, one’s actions are bound to cause genuine suffering sooner or later.
The analogy is a little flawed: If you had the choice of having kids who wouldn’t do anything groundable, but you chose to have kids who would sooner or later do something groundable, could you really say that you didn’t engineer that groundable event to take place?
Well, Dio knows far more than I about translating the original words of the bible, but I suggest that “perfectly good” is pretty unambiguous in any language.
Sure, but God therefore could not help allowing evil in that initial period, and was thus not omnipotent. Again, the AND is where the logical validity fails, irrespective of the soundness.
Was it? Why do you say that?
Anyway, again, this is just the other alternative: God had no say in whether evil could arise or not (it was necessary for it to be a possible outcome, for some reason), thus impugning God’s omnipotence.