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Answer to the Problem of Evil

psionl0 said:
You can argue that there are no gods therefore there is no evil if you wish but then it wouldn't make sense to ask for an answer to the problem of evil.
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Are you done with smoke screens and gaslighting yet?

What Darat was saying is that the only two believers in the Abrahamic goddevilthingy in this thread, Enre and yourself, have opposite positions on this matter.
 
psionl0 said:
Your translator is clearly on the fritz. This pile of rule 12 violation didn't address a single word that you quoted.

Of course, in order to address the post, you would have to understand it and clearly you don't because you are not the legend in your own mind that you think you are.
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Are you done with hand-waving yet?
 
GDon said:
When discussing free-will, people tend to ignore the "will" part. "Will" is a biological function that can only exist in a deterministic universe. If the universe was random, how can we talk about "will" or "choice"? But in a deterministic universe, will becomes one of the factors that determines outcomes. After all, how can one choose other than what they do in fact choose?

Daniel Dennett is an atheist philosopher who is a compatiblist. That is, he believes that free-will and determinism are compatible. He discusses it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joCOWaaTj4A
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I'm not convinced, but that was a short presentation. Someone recommended me a book from his called something like From Bacteria to Bach -the History of the Mind-. I had started reading Darwin's Dangerous Idea but left it, surely because some other thing at the moment caught my attention.

There are other people there talking about free will, would you recommend watching all videos of the series?
 
psionl0 said:
Yes. Either all choices are made by God or there is free will.


Free will doesn't mean freedom from the consequences of your choices.
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True enough that the consequences are not a freedom issue, and I should not have brought up law here, while meaning just that freedom is not visible if one chooses to comply.

But we're not talking here about heaven and hell and what happens after you make a choice, but miracle and intervention. If the possibility of miracle and intervention is there, what appears to be freedom is just what is allowed, always conditional on an unknown and unpredictable decision by a god who can overrule it.

If God is nice, and doesn't get his panties in a twist very often, and just does most of his miracles at the altar, it's not a bad deal, and maybe it's free enough to pass most of the time, but if God acts on our world, the rest of the argument is about the finer points of administration and price.
 
bruto said:
But we're not talking here about heaven and hell and what happens after you make a choice, but miracle and intervention. If the possibility of miracle and intervention is there, what appears to be freedom is just what is allowed, always conditional on an unknown and unpredictable decision by a god who can overrule it.
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You are conflating freedom of choice with free will.

One could make the consequences of a choice so unpleasant that most people would not dare to make that choice. That would imply that you don't have freedom of choice.

However, if somebody is determined to make a certain choice no matter what the consequences, then nobody can stop them because they supposedly have free will.
 
psionl0 said:
You are conflating freedom of choice with free will.

One could make the consequences of a choice so unpleasant that most people would not dare to make that choice. That would imply that you don't have freedom of choice.

However, if somebody is determined to make a certain choice no matter what the consequences, then nobody can stop them because they supposedly have free will.
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I'm with you almost all the way. True enough nobody can stop them except when, according to some, a god that can actually step in and alter reality performs a miracle which changes the very circumstances under which the will is exercised.
 
bruto said:
I'm with you almost all the way. True enough nobody can stop them except when, according to some, a god that can actually step in and alter reality performs a miracle which changes the very circumstances under which the will is exercised.
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Sure, a god could do all sorts of things (including taking away somebody's free will) if he wanted to nullify somebody's choices.

Whether he does or not is a matter of speculation but according to the parable of weeds I referred to earlier, it seems that God's policy is to allow people to make whatever choices they are going to make then deal with it in the next life. That would suggest that intervention in this life is considerably rarer.
 
aleCcowaN said:
I'm not convinced, but that was a short presentation.
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It was, but it summarizes Dennett approach to focusing on the "will" part rather than the "free" part to resolve determinism and free-will, which I find personally convincing.

aleCcowaN said:
There are other people there talking about free will, would you recommend watching all videos of the series?
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Just the ones that agree with me! :) I haven't seen the others so can't recommend, I'm sorry.
 
psionl0 said:
Are you seriously suggesting that if somebody is not a would be evil doer then they are a robot?
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No, that's what you are suggesting.

psionl0 said:
If God made it impossible to make evil choices then he would just have created bots.
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So which is it? Are people in heaven robots, or is the ability to make evil choices not necessary for free will?
 
Irony said:
No, that's what you are suggesting.



So which is it? Are people in heaven robots, or is the ability to make evil choices not necessary for free will?
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I don't believe that you are genuinely interpreting my statement that way.

Obviously would be evil doers would be weeded out before they could get to Heaven.
 
Irony said:
Most Christians I've asked seem to think sin doesn't exist in heaven, so is everyone up there a robot?
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No, example; Allah/God is never do evil, He is always good and just (justice is also goodness). This does not make Allah a robot. It shows that he is a very good being. People in Paradise will always choose goodness with their free will.

Peace
 
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psionl0 said:
I don't believe that you are genuinely interpreting my statement that way.

Obviously would be evil doers would be weeded out before they could get to Heaven.
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Then why go through the whole silly rigamarole? If God is all-seeing just why does He not just get on with it?
 
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