But wouldn’t that same evil be in God’s heart, since he didn’t save that someone either?
Please explain birth defects in the context of this analogy.
But He did. He offered them eternal life. That’s what I was saying in the whole “The body is mortal, but the spirit is not” post to you and Mapache. Goodness does not die. A man can destroy flesh, and flesh is dying anyway from the moment it is born; but a man cannot destroy that which is eternal and truly alive — the spirit.
Gee, Fellowpians, I thought my comments were at least good enough to deserve rebutting. Your nonresponsiveness REALLY sets back the date of my MacArthur Prize. And I need the dough.
LIBERTARIAN:
“I can’t look at your butt and read your mind.” Love it–major burn. I’d respectfully suggest tweaking it to “up your butt” for absolute perfection. [Isn’t it great that when you highlight a smiley face, it becomes really sad!?!]
—The only “issue” you raised was that I was prejudiced in my discussion with Robert and that I had engaged in ad hominem with him.—
I did not say that you had. I picked ad hominem as an example because it was something I hoped we would both agree (you having spoken about it previously in another thread) was wrong, to parallel the experience of having a strong conviction about something (which you have). I then pointed out that if there was a person that though it wasn’t, them saying that we don’t understand their argument is not grounds for them to tell us to shut our mouths. My point was that misunderstanding cuts both ways: it’s possible people misunderstand you. It’s also possible they disagree with you, and you misunderstand them.
I don’t know what you mean about you and robert making peace. On what? (he even now seems to still be attacking you, and, for some reason, dropping weights on your head) And what does that have to do with what I was saying? It isn’t my place to tell you what your opinion of robert is, or his of you: just to express my own opinion.
In the thread I refferenced, I asked you to further explain if and what sort of problem you have with me, and I would still appreciate it.
Well, I put up a thread in MPISMS thanking Lib for having the patience to explain things clearly and repeatedly. And just because I was (and still am) arguing with Libertarian, does not mean that I bear him any ill will about the whole matter. Quite the contrary, in fact.
And whaddya mean? I’m not dropping those weights. I’m just letting God choose whether or not to move Lib out of the way. 
On where and how the association of the riddle with Epicurus came to be, I’ve found several claimed citations.
The first is a fourth century Church Father named Lactantius:
“When God made man as His image, the creation which was the summation of the divine workmanship, he breathed wisdom into him alone, so that he might subjugate all things to his power and sway and make use of all the advantages of the world. He put before him, however, both good things and evil, because He gave him wisdom, the whole reason of which rests in discerning good and evil. For no one can choose the better and know what is good unless he knows, at the same time, how to reject and avoid what things are evil. Both are mutually connected with each other, so that if one is removed, the other has to be taken away…You see, then, that we need wisdom much more on account of evils. Unless these had been set before us, we would not be rational animals. And if this reasoning is true, which the Stoics could see in no way, that argument of Epicurus is dissolved also where he says: “God either wishes to take away evils and he cannot, or he can and does not wish to, or he neither wishes to nor is able, or he both wishes to and is able. If he wishes to and is not able, he is feeble, which does not fall in with the notion of god. If he is able to and does not wish to, he is envious, which is equally foreign to god. If he neither wishes to nor is able, he is both envious and feeble and therefore not god. If he both wishes to and is able to, which alone is fitting to god, whence, therefore, are there evils, and why does he not remove them?” I know that quite a number of philosophers who defend the notion of providence are accustomed to be disturbed by this argument and, unwilling, they are almost forced to declare that God cares for nothing, which Epicurus is especially aiming at…This is the reason that He does not take them away, since He granted wisdom at the same time, as I have explained, and there is more good and pleasure in wisdom than there is annoyance in evils. For wisdom brings it about that we know even God, and, through that knowledge, we seek immortality, which is the greatest good. And so, unless we first recognize the evil, we shall not be able to recognize the good” (De Ira Dei, trans. Sr. M. F. McDonald O. P., The Catholic University of America Press, 1965, pp 91-93).
I’ve also found what seem to be references to the riddle in Philo, and in David Hume’s, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Part V) in which he claims that “Epicurus’ old questions are yet unanswered” and then repeats the riddle. Unfortunately I don’t have either of these handy, and as far as I know, neither Hume, Philo, nor Lactantius provide a citation, so for all we know it could have been wrongly ascribed to Epicurus at some point.
I know that Alvin Plantinga wrote extensively on these sorts of questions, and if the riddle really is from Epicurus, I’d very much expect that he’d have a citation in the relevant book (or at least an explanation of where the riddle comes from).
—Well, I put up a thread in MPISMS thanking Lib for having the patience to explain things clearly and repeatedly. And just because I was (and still am) arguing with Libertarian, does not mean that I bear him any ill will about the whole matter.—
Hey, that’s great. I wasn’t trying to assume that you had or hadn’t any sort of opinion about each other, and indeed wasn’t and still am not sure what personal your peace has to do with the substance of what you still disagree about or what I was saying.
I posted too soon: the Catholic Encyclopedia says that Lactantius puts the dilemna “into the mouth of Epicurus” in De Ira Dei, xiii, which I might imply that they think Lactantius is the first one to reference it, without an existing source in the modern day.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05649a.htm
I’m still looking for the Philo connection, who would be an earlier reference.
And I now see that I was whoosed by the dance remark. In that case, yes I would like to dance, but and I apologize in advance and retrospect for stepping on any toes.
Good work on finding the real source of the riddle, Apos! The “positive atheism” site has misattributed it.
It’s also possible that, although Epicurus didn’t make that argument, some of his followers did. So, Lactantius, in trying to rebut an Epicurean argument, put it in Epicurus’ mouth.
The Fred Phelps of ancient philosophy, eh? 
[sub]Phelps puts words in Christ’s mouth that He did not say.[/sub]
Eh, maybe. It happened, though, fairly often in the past. Arguments made by members of a school would be attributed to the founder of the school.
There’s also the second possibility that Epicurus did write something like what Lactantius claimed but we just don’t have it. Diogenes Laertius in his “Lives” claims that Epicurus wrote over three hundred works, including a work called “Of the Gods”, but it’s lost. From what we have of his works, he does say that there are gods, but there’s a real question as to what they do. They didn’t create the universe, which always existed:
They don’t keep the universe going:
They don’t judge the human soul, which doesn’t continue after death:
[quote]
[S]o long as the soul is in the body, it never loses sentience through the removal of some other part. The containing sheaths may be dislocated in whole or in part, and portions of the soul may thereby be lost; yet in spite of this the soul, if it manage to survive, will have sentience. But the rest of the frame, whether the whole of it survives or only a part, no longer has sensation, when once those atoms have departed, which, however few in number, are required to constitute the nature of soul. Moreover, when the whole frame is broken up, the soul is scattered and has no longer the same powers as before, nor the same notions; hence it does not possess sentience either.{/quote]
Apparently, they don’t act at all, because, he calls them beings who enjoy “perfect bliss along with immortality” and says, speaking in a related note about astrology:
So, Epicurus on the one hand says that there are gods that we should emulate, but on the other that they just sit there being perfect. This has led some people studying him to say that he was an atheist in everything but name (It was dangerous to actually claim atheism at the time. Remember, Socrates had been executed not too long before for, among other things, impiety). At most, Epicurus’s beliefs were sort of a refined proto-Deism. There were later Epicureans who were atheists, though.
Thank you. Captain Amazing. That’s precisely the point I am trying to get Lib to understand.
-No afterlife or inmortal soul
-The Problem of Evil renders gods/creators imperfect by definition
-God/s, if they exist, are perfect and completely disconnected from humanity and the creative process.
What would someone holding those beliefs be called today?
Well, be careful, because Epicurus didn’t deal with the Problem of Evil. In fact, the problem of evil doesn’t come up unless you believe that a perfect being should be concerned about others, and concern for others isn’t really a major part of Epicurus’s philosopy. I don’t think you can say that benevolence in itself is really a virtue to Epicurus. In fact, concern for strangers could really only be justified in Epicurean thought, if at all, as a transactional thing. The justification for doing it is so you would be helped if you need it, which is something the gods wouldn’t be concerned about.
I would personally call someone holding the beliefs of Epicurus a deist, but that’s just me.
That’s exactly what I’d call it, too. What else could it be called?
Without doubt, a deist. I’m not even sure why there would be a question. It’s certainly true that calling himself an atheist would be potentially deadly, but realize that we could say that about ANYONE living in those times when asserting that they moderated or hid their atheism.
—The “positive atheism” site has misattributed it.—
To be fair, I’d call it a useless and incomplete citation. I mean, he cites its source as basically him hearing about it from some guy. This is sort of like citing my 5th grade History teacher for “We the people…” It’s utterly silly as a citation, and the same would go for the riddle even if it really was demonstrably from Epicurus.
If the original isn’t from Epicurus, then Lactantius, Hume, and countless other philosophers and theologians who have addressed the argument are misattributing it too. I’m going to guess that this is going to turn out to be one of those things where the historical consensus is that most people surmise circumstantially that it either came from Epicurus or one of his students, but that we have no copy of a text to ultimately confirm it. We have quotes from thinkers who presumably had access to texts that are now missing, and for some reason ascribe the riddle to Epicurus. That seems to be the burden of proof for most other ancient figures where we have at best only second hand accounts of what they said (quotes from their written texts). I really wish I could track down the supposed Philo reference, but I don’t have access to a library.
I don’t necessarily have any problem in theory believing that it did come from Epicurus, because as I’ve noted before, it isn’t anything like a disproof of all gods: and indeed it doesn’t seem to rule out the specific god/s Epicurus believed in.
Pardon me, but I take the question presented in the OP and attributed to Epicurus to be precisely that – an argument designed to demonstrate that the traditional theistic definition of god is logically incompatible with the existance of evil.
And a simple Google search shows that there are many scholars who credit Epicurus with being the first to present the argument as such.
As for calling him a deist, to me, it’s really a distinction without difference vis-a-vis atheists. Neither worldview requires belief in the supernatural – which is what distinguishes them from traditional theism.
And there’s no question that it was attributed to him, first probably by Lactantius. The question is whether or not he actually said it, and the answer is, he didn’t say it in any of his survivng works, but he might have in something lost. Basically, what Apos said.
Except Deists do believe in the supernatural…but for them, the supernatural world doesn’t interact with the natural.
—And there’s no question that it was attributed to him, first probably by Lactantius.—
As I said, Philo seems to be an earlier source (unless I’m completely mistaken about when Philo lived), but I just can’t substantiate it at present.
—As for calling him a deist, to me, it’s really a distinction without difference vis-a-vis atheists. Neither worldview requires belief in the supernatural – which is what distinguishes them from traditional theism.—
I don’t agree, but then it’s a matter of semantics. Regardless of what you define things to mean, the fact remains that “desists” believe something that “atheists” do not believe.