this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (16 children)

assuming you're right, he either can't or doesn't want to create that world without human suffering. Remains either evil or not all powerful.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (14 children)

You're assuming that the creation of suffering is evil when God does it - however it could be that if heaven exists as a place in the future where everyone's all good with what happened...

...then it might not be evil when God does it, it might only be evil when humans do it (because we're not capable of doing it in a way that's consciously creating heaven (where everyones okay with what happened) as a result... We can't arrange souls like God can. We can't live or operate outside of, or beyond time like God can.

...also, not that anyone asked, but personally - I'm an atheist. I'm just seeing how far these arguments can go with provisos like heaven, God as a time lord, and souls/at-birth soul agreements.

Oh, also God can patch up or fix up, or factor in suffering humans create, because being able to predict that something is going to happen isn't the same as causing it. Eg. I know the sun is going to rise each day up until an expected sun-death... Even if humanity creates the ability to make the sun rise, it doesn't mean the sun is currently controlled by us. Yet it's still predictable.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (13 children)

Still, the (theoretical) fact remains that god knows about the suffering and lets it happen. Whatever the goal is, if he's omnipotent he should be able to reach it without having suffering. If he can't, he isn't omnipotent. If he doesn't want to, he's not good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

He mentioned before that maybe the process for making humans good and retaining free will necessarily requires evil to exist. It's possible that by definition, suffering must exist, not that God couldn't do it. Kinda like how, by definition, you can't make a four sided triangle; it's not that God wouldn't be powerful enough to do that, it's that a triangle requires three sides by definition. Maybe the incorporation of free will requires suffering, even suffering not caused by the choices people make?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

A four sided triangle is a verbal misconstruct, because we chose those names to represent different objects - nothing to do with what god can or can't do. They could make all of us believe that four-sided polygons are called triangles, which fulfills the requirement you propose. On the other hand, free will can't "require" suffering, because a requirement would mean there is a rule god can't break, which would mean they are not omnipotent.

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