I tend to feel the opposite. I feel that a God that let such evils happen probably wouldn’t send evil people to Hell, or punish them them in any way. Assuming he exists, he either doesn’t care, or is evil himself. Given the state of the world and of humanity, the best we can hope for from some hypothetical God is indifference. If everything is going according to some divine plan like many like to claim, then we are utterly screwed. We can hope to overcome or work around evil that come from human nature or Nature itself, but we can’t overcome an evil omnipotent being; and an afterlife would mean that we couldn’t even escape him by dying.
Well, I am kind of posting contradictory things. But my considered opinion is in my last post, where I say that if there were an all-good and omnipotent God, then there would be radically less evil in the world than there actually is. But that’s just a restatement of the argument from evil.
In essence I was coming at the “problem of evil” from the opposite direction. One of the things that has amused and disgusted me for years is the assumption that if there’s a God that it’s a good thing. If anything, there’s even less reason to believe that God is good than there is to believe that he exists. And I fail to see why an evil God is an improvement over no God.
If you say that something exists it is incumbent upon you to provide proof. To say god exists and you can not prove it is bs. Your claim ,you do the proof.
There is no evidence at all that god exists. If it wanted us to believe ,somehow religious people think it does, then all it has to do is provide an unmistakable show. It would be easy for such a creature. Then all arguments end. Without that ,it requires belief. I do not believe.
The idea that god is good is lacking. There is one world. you say he made it. It can not be good or bad. There is nothing to compare it too. Is it better than this world but not as good as that one. Nope ,no frame of reference. The world simply exists.
I can’t believe I’m actually entertaining this.
We know WE created God. How can you believe a fictional, mysogynistic, hemophobe, child terrorizer created morality?
The morality mentioned in the bible is from a VERY small area
with like minded people. Those societies no longer exist.
We CAN be sure, Voy. I think that if anyone actually entertains the thought that your friends, family, dog, murderers and rapists
are sitting with god enjoying themselves, and all it took was reciting
some words in the air, or even just in your mind?
That would be the definition of concetied.
To all those who claim to be theists, grow up,
travel, and see what your God has never done… cared.
I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t make any sense. Why would an all-good being not allow freedom of moral choice? It is by that same kind of choice that the being is Itself good. Why should Mobutu Sese Seko, or anyone else for that matter, be forced to worship or emulate the being? Wouldn’t you be complaining about conscription if it were so?
Like what? What could It do that you would deem unmistakable? Surely not some alleged miracle, which you would not attribute to God. You would attribute it to natural trickery. You would have to, because you have already concluded that “[t]here is no evidence at all that [God] exists”. So what show are you looking for exactly?
Ah, you’re too new here to realize that I’m an atheist. Far more amusing than just stating that there is no particularly good reason to believe in god is to say “let’s assume that god exists. What problems and contradictions do we see?” Theists say that morality comes from God but they don’t really believe it. If you ask them what they would do if God (assuming he has convinced them it is god) tells them to do something they would consider evil. Most say that God would never do that, with the implicit assumption that God won’t ask them to do evil on their terms, though whatever god wants is good by definition. Many people reject the nastier parts of the Bible for the same reason. As Russell noted, either God makes up morality, in which case it is effectively random from our point of view, or he gets morality from someplace else, in which case he is not supreme and is not god.
So, the Christian popular assumption that good people go up and bad people go down is not supportable, and you’re quite right that heaven might well be filled with murderers and rapists, and hell might be filled with charitable heathens.
Being formerly Jewish I never got inoculated with the heaven and hell crap myself.
I think the problem of natural evil is more telling myself, but we’re limited in many ways. A sociopath is not able to distinguish between good and evil - is he covered under free will? Might God possibly have prevented us from committing mass murder without limiting our moral choice and free will in any significant way?
God made us without perfect free will in any case. I suspect most people would be incapable of gunning down hundreds. (I’m an optimist.) If so, why not make everyone like that?
I’m with you Voyager. You’re lucky without having the heaven and hell crap, but you had all the bad-ass god stories to deal with. Ooof!
I was astounded with Dawkins’ “God Delusion” when he mentioned the same
gospel connundrum I got in SO much trouble at school for.
I pointed out to my seventh grade nun that Luke names 28 people
in the lineage of David to Jesus. Matthew has 41. None of the names
overlap! I accused her of being unqualified to teach religion,
because it is clear this story is not accurate. How can a gospel be holy
if it’s incorrect?
What happened? I got sent to our principal. I refused to listen to anything until he told me which one was incorrect. He ended up
calling my parents and making me say a whole rosary.
If that’s education, hell sounds fun.
The real question is this: When are all us atheists going to stand up
and say it’s okay to not believe? If you’re running for congress
and you’re homosexual, you probably have a slim chance. If you announce that you just came out of the religious closet and are atheist,
you have a better chance of being shot.
There are a lot of well-off atheists who would support a candidate
for public office.
Yes, he is so long as you think of goodness as an aesthetic. For all we know, he may be yearning to be good, but like my wife who doesn’t know Mars from Venus in the sky at night and doesn’t know where to look for them or what they would look like if she saw them, his whole life may be a moral struggle to find the goodness he values. For any new thing that I see and find beautiful, I didn’t think it was beautiful before only because I had not seen it yet.
I don’t think so, because I think it would be a contradiction. It would impose unnatural restrictions — at least, unnatural as we know nature right now — requiring that the very nature of nature change. For true moral freedom, there must be a truly amoral universe in which to act it out. Mass murder is no different in its effect than, say, a surprise tsunami. But surely no one would wish that the laws of nature were different, if for no other reason than uncertainty about any unintended consequences. But in either case, the shooting rampage or the flood, the essental personhood of those who are victims is not lost at all. Just meat and blood and stuff that was decaying or dying already. A murderer can kill only biological life, the sort of life that makes man no more special than an elephant.
I think you’re conflating making us with making our choices for us. We are created in His image, meaning that we are essentially spirit and eternal and make moral choices of our own.
Soooo, does He like T & A too?
If it’s HIS image, why do pregnant women get fat?
Back to the mysoginist theorem.
Thank you. Your post proved to be a useful reference elsewhere. 
Yes, I clicked your elsewhere button.
Sorry, not ignorant of theism.
I’ve heard it all, I don’t think you have, Lib.
I traveled, studied privately and considered seminary as a teenager
during a youth of private catholic education.
I would suggest not setting yourself up. When you say
things like “His” image, it sounds like you have proof
he exists and he’s definitely male.
What about the trinity?
Sorry, everyone, had to sign off.
I might as well let my own experience loose.
After Catholic elementary, I started Private Catholic school.
In sophomore year, I traveled to New York, stayed with aunt and uncle
and took a prep course on entering seminary.
Originally, I planned to become a priest, possibly move to Italy,
stay with other relatives up north, and live a life with
respect from everyone who saw me. (This is Italy, remember.)
During this course, the bible was examined and I was taught
what NOT to talk about, what answers to give people who questioned
the wrath and ire of God in the OT and those who did not believe in the NT. I learned of all the holes in this story. There was the erroneous lineage of Jesus in Luke and Matthew (previously mentioned),
Moses tying his son to a rock, Gabriel saving him, the rape,
the pestilence, the acts of calling people to destroy others…
Even the commandments. The ones I’d be using in Italy were NOT
alike to the ones I learned to recite every day in America.
I could keep going, but it’s clear that this bible was NOT a truthful source, it was instead, the prelude to modern politics and controlling
your population. You think I’m kidding? When the day came that
over 5,000 people (5,000 people!!!) came to view a piece of bread
that had a stain that looked like Jesus. The priests I was studying with
called an emergency “seminary awareness” meeting, telling us how
to use this crazy occurance to help prove to people this was true,
to keep their faith, and to get the money from this outrageous occurance into the collection plates.
There were suggestions of telling stories of the poor countries
that have no real tanglible items of value, that faith is strong
and that by just mentioning a second collection for these countries
next mass made people give more IMMEDIATELY!
Again, these are not evangelists like Haggard or Roberts, these are
priests.
Since now it was proven to me that the bible should be avoided
when preaching, I decided to create my “program of worship”
(an assignment) that I would only use what’s around us as proof
of an existing god. I would point out a 500 year old Redwood,
a blue whale, music, any phenomenon.
When you get to Europe, places that have much LESS distance between
their different societies, you find people have heard so many versions
of creation, god, morality, that your brand new way of teaching
has been done.
Currently, you have 84% Switzerland Atheist, NOT AGNOSTIC.
49% England, Atheist, Germany, 38% atheist.
When I traveled to these places, I can guarantee those numbers are correct.
All that said, it is only clear to me that those who call this book “holy”
and “true” have never read it all. They skip words they don’t understand, they find verses that suit themselves or their supposed cause, they start wars… Starting wars over religion. This is the last thiing I learned in seminary prep: Men, boys schools, teaching religion.
We should mention the Crusades and Inquisitioins, how their faith
drove these men to profess god’s goodness, but NEVER, EVER
mention the start of Christianity and Constantine. Never mention
the 400 years after Jesus’ death how no one had heard this story
and how a victorious war speech, painting crosses on shields led to
a life in Heaven.
I asked one priest, “Why?”
He said, “You don’t want a job?”
Faithful Cecilites, If you actually believe one flipping word of this bible,
go to seminary, leave your white-bred American town and travel.
Just make sure Colorado suburbs aren’t on your list.
Which is why we shouldn’t, and don’t, have “true moral freedom”. We invented laws because such freedom is bad for just about everyone except the predators among us, and tends to eliminate most other kinds of freedom as well.
And once again, you demonstrate why religion is hostile to any worthwhile morality. It denies that the real consequences of actions matter, and that only the delusional, “spiritual” consequences matter. You can’t make sound moral decisions when operating on insane, baseless premises. A major prerequisite for any worthwhile moral code is ignoring or discarding religion.
And yet you manage. Somehow. Sometimes.
A rather pathetic attempt to avoid answering my points. But then, I doubt you really want to try defending your “mass murder doesn’t matter” assertion too much.
When they don’t have a relevant bible quote they think suits them, DT,
expect a lame comeback.
Perhaps Jack the Ripper’s definition of good was ridding London of women of easy virtue. The good of a Communist functionary in the '20s and '30s might be ridding the fatherland of those who would endanger the state. I’d like to see evidence that sociopaths are blocked from doing good by a universal measure, and not succeeding at doing good as defined by their own sick definition.
I wouldn’t want to change geology to avoid catastrophes, but I’d hope that God is a bit more clever than I am. As for the rest, do you claim that each of us is totally unconstrained in making moral decisions? I’m talking deciding to do either evil or good. I know there are certain bad things that I don’t do,. but which I don’t claim moral credit for eschewing, since I doubt I could. Things that polls seem to indicate a majority of Americans do. I think I lack free will in this area, happily.
Whether god made us or our genes and upbringing made us, none of us are totally free moral actors.
To be fair, maybe you do believe this, since it seems to be a prerequisite for libertarianism. From the mortgage and other discussions, it appears that there is a belief that every person, no matter his or her intelligence, education, culture, and environment, has the ability to make complex economic decisions correctly, and should be punished for failure to do so. Do you believe in the insanity defense? If you do, how does that relate to your concept of perfect free will?