this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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The Christian explanation for this is that god doesn't do evil, people do.
And god created people with free will to do evil. If he made people stop doing evil deeds, they would be his puppets, not free-willed humans. So he has the power to end all evil but chooses not to.
Now as for why god allows natural disasters, diseases and other tragedies to befall his creation – again, that's just the consequence of our actions, cause a woman gave an apple to her man in the past.
Frankly, I don't buy this as an explanation even for human-created evil. It is still evidence that god cannot be tri-omni. Because it is still a situation in which god is able to remove evil and is aware of the evil, and yet he chooses to permit evil. Even evil done by one human against another, when the other is entirely innocent. And that cannot be omnibenevolent.
From how you phrased it I suspect you agree with me here, but the natural disasters argument is even more ludicrous. It doesn't even come close to working as a refutation of the Epicurian Trilemma.
If your options are "do as I say" or "suffer for all eternity" you aren't really capable of exercising free will.
It's worse than that. It's "believe that you must do as I say, despite my complete refusal to create worthwhile evidence of my existence, and then do what I say" or "suffer for all eternity".
I never understood this argument. If he's all-powerful, he would have the ability to eliminate all evil without affecting free will.
The Christian god created every aspect of the universe and how it works. He therefore could have created a universe in which there was no such thing as evil or suffering, and given people in that universe free will. So even that doesn’t hold up.
I think that's their point; they're saying that's what God did. He "created a universe in which there was no such thing as evil or suffering and [gave] people in that universe free will."
And humans screwed it up.
I'm not saying that, mind you. I'm saying I think you just agreed with the person you're debating as a proof that they were wrong.
It doesn’t matter what you tack on, it doesn’t change my point — the only way humans could “screw it up” is if God made all the negative and horrible shit part of the universe. All you are saying is that God made a universe where there was no evil or suffering actively happening, but the concepts existed and were possible — because they ultimately happened and only possible things happen. And God chose to make them possible things as omnipotent creator of everything that exists.
Wait, so this God gives me true free will, and then places me in a world where I can't change anything? Everything is fixed, immovable? Or where I only have "good" choices available? Is that what you think God should have done? Like, how does your version even work?
Or does God give us fake free will, and keep our minds from thinking "bad" thoughts?
If I'm free, I can screw up. Otherwise, I'm not free.
No. You aren’t getting it. The Christian god created every aspect of the universe. Light and dark. Up and down. You are still thinking about our universe, in which these negative things are possible, and how you would have to be restricted in what you do in our universe in order to prevent you from doing certain things. But god could have set all the parameters of the universe differently such that they just didn’t exist at all. You wouldn’t miss them or be prevented from doing them. It would be like if there were a fifth cardinal direction in an alternate universe, and someone in that universe thought “if god prevented me from going in that direction, I wouldn’t have free will anymore”. But here we are, with only four cardinal directions, and free will. We aren’t being stopped from doing anything, it just isn’t part of our universe and doesn’t even make sense in it.
I think I get what you're saying but it is a little bit beyond me.
I still wonder if the problem doesn't come down to Free Will itself. Regardless of what universe one is living in, if you have only two people in it and they each have free will at some point the free will of one is going to intrude on the free will of the other, and they're going to require some kind of negotiation or polite accommodation. Some kind of social interaction.
And if one doesn't take this action but instead proceeds with one's free will regardless of the other's free will there is a problem that is inevitably going to exist no matter what universe exists.
But we don't have free will. The bible makes that perfectly clear in Romans 9.
Christian here, don't agree with your "biblical" interpretation
If Christians could agree with each other about what's in the bible, history would be a lot more boring.