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It was a test

I don't know if I misunderstood you, but "making millions of people suffer horribly and needlessly for no fault of their own might just be the most ethical thing there is, you never know, so let's not draw any conclusions about God allowing that to happen." just seems like a rather unconvincing line of thought to me. It's essentially just saying "God is always right, accept that"

I guess god just gave us the moral understanding that his (in)actions are insanely immoral to test our unquestioned loyalty to him, or he just likes a little trolling. Or maybe he just doesn't exist...

An all-knowing, all-encomposing God may have an understanding that we as mortals are incapable of understanding or perceiving.

That being could make us understand.

If you skip the "evil" part and just start talking about "things that are bad for us humans" it's still true though. Sure, maybe child cancer is somehow moral or good from the perspective of an immortal entity, but in this case this entity is obviously operating on a basis that is completely detached from what's meaningful to us. Our lives, our suffering, our hardship - obviously none of all this is relevant enough to a potential god to do anything about it. Or he would, but can't. Hence the Epicurean paradox.

One answer I've heard from religious people is that life after death will make up for it all. But that doesn't make sense either. If heaven/paradise/whatever puts life into such small perspective that our suffering doesn't matter, then our lives truly don't mean anything. It's just a feelgood way of saying god couldn't care less about child cancer - because in the grand scheme of things it's irrelevant anyway.

To us humans, our lives aren't meaningless. Child cancer isn't irrelevant. We care about what's happening in this life and to the people we care about. How could a god be of any relevance to us if our understanding of importance, of value, of good and bad, is so meaningless to them? Why would we ever construct and celebrate organized religion around something so detached from ourselves? The answer is: We wouldn't.

Either god is relevant to our lives or he isn't. Reality tells us: He isn't. Prayers don't work, hardship isn't helped, suffering isn't stopped. Thought through to it's inevitable conclusion the Epicurean paradox is logical proof that god as humans used to think about him doesn't exist, and if something of the sorts exists, it's entirely irrelevant to us.

"Uhhh mysterious ways is why children get cancer"

This is a copout and you're a silly little guy

It doesn't. What it simply presupposes that if God participates or allows it, that puts god in the "not all good" category

If God exists withtout morality, god cannot be all good to us

Why would a super entity be bound by "love" which only humans understand ? Why would "it" have the concept of "evil", something that humans invented out of fear.

It doesn't. That's the point. The Epicurean paradox doesn't say god doesn't exist in some way or form, but the idea of god as someone with a relationship to humanity based on love, omnipotence and omniscience (in any way that's meaningful to us) is apparently false.

Or from your perspective: God loves us in his way; he doesn't love us in our way, which means we can't expect the same mercy, the same support, the same commitment from him as we humans are capable of.

Epicurus refuted one very specific idea of god, which was prevalent at one point in time, but is today only believed by very devout evangelicals. What we today conclude from the fact that apparently no god will alleviate the suffering in this life is up to each individual.

And that is why religion is effectively meaningless. We have invented a being full of contradictions, much like ourselves, but declared [it|whatever] perfect besides that. The answer to the paradox is that there is no God.

People should learn to strive for good without the threat of eternal punishment from a being of their invention, otherwise those individuals were never good to begin with, and their imaginary all powerful, all knowing and judgemental god would punish them regardless.

heh, it's the ante christ

The existence of those paradoxes could also mean that omnipotence in itself is simply impossible.

I agree, this is not a good argument against the existence of god, but it seems to be a fine argument against certain models of god. To get out of the paradox, one must be willing to give up certain notions about god. Either:

1. God isn't all knowing, so it's unaware of all the evil in the universe.
2. God doesn't have infinite power, making god unable to create a universe without evil (perhaps due to limitations of what god can and cannot do.
3. God is not entirely good or god's definition of good does not align with what us humans have been taught. God doesn't see evil where we see evil so it does not use its infinite power and knowledge to change it.

I think there are a lot of theists who would have trouble accepting one of these notions, which would keep them stuck within this paradox.

There are many good arguments against God. This is not one of them.

It’s a slightly more complicated version of whether God can create a rock so big he cannot lift it.

It's a very good argument against god, and your second statement is a great addition to it. Omnipotence in itself is impossible, as proven by the rock paradox. An omnipotent being can therefore not exist.

Your free will idea however has a very easy counter argument: If free will is the problem, then god has nothing to offer us - since in the afterlife the same rules would apply. Either a world without suffering is possible, or it isn't. Since the afterlife isn't known to work by taking away our free will, suffering would therefore continue to prevail there as well. If the idea of an afterlife must be possible (as seen in most organized religions) than the idea of a world without suffering must be possible, without taking away something so valuable as our freedom.

In what way is this an argument against God? This is an argument against a god that is all-knowing all-powerful and all-benevolent.

Also your idea of free will is coming loaded with some major baggage.

There are many good arguments against God. This is not one of them.

That is because this isn't an argument against god. It is simply a question that resulted in a Paradox about the character of god as described by the Church

Can 0 equal 1? The answer to that question isn’t yes/no, it’s that the question is invalid.

What? the question is not invalid. it is a yes/no, the *implications" of that yes or no however can carry significant correlations

Freewill does not equal non-freewill.

yeah, nobody is making this crazy claim...

What's your logic with 0 = 1?
Can you restate without math?

Alright so your argument about free will only really adds up if you are an absolutist about free will. Imagine a perfect utopian paradise of a world. All are free to do whatever they want so long as it is not "evil." Your definition of evil can vary but presumably an omniscient god would have a pretty good idea of what that means. Rhe mwans of prevention xouls be literally anything, because y'know omnipotent and omniscient, including just creating people that simply do not have the capacity for evil. Would the people in that world not have free will? Just because there are some things they cannot do does not mean that in my eye. I can't fly or bite my own finger off or perceive and manipulate the fabric of the universe, does that mean I don't have free will? IMO the only way your position here is logically consistant is if you do take the absolutist position that in order to have free will you must be omnipotent yourself, otherwise there will always be things you cannot do.