The Idiot's Tale

[MarkCorrigan]

You've pretty much got it. No, avoidance of harm is not God's no.1 priority. The story of Job shows that God is just fine for harm to happen to people if it's done for a good reason. And yes, God allows evil because people have to be free to choose to be good people.

Quite straightforward, really.

Except that the typical depiction of God uses omni-benevolence as a major characteristic. The thought tat God loves us and wants us to go to heaven is a serious issue for the whole Problem of Evil thing, because it indicates that while God doesn't want us to come to harm and would reportedly do anything he could to save us from Hell and so on, he's still a complete douche who lets children burn alive or be crushed by rubble in earthquakes and so on.

Hell, if you're a biblical literalist then it becomes even worse because we're only tuck in the situation of being exposed to Evil because God created a tree that would screw over humans (why?) then planted it within easy reach of Adam and Eve (WHY?). This means that even if god really does have to let us choose to be good people in the modern world, he could STILL have prevented the modern world from occurring in the first place by not making that bloody tree.

Furthermore, if god is omniscient then he ALREADY know that certain people, myself, you, Carl Sagan, whoever you want to pick, will go against his code and not even believe in him. Despite the fact that this will apparently condemn us to eternal suffering, he creates us anyway. Think about that for a moment. God creates us, beings he claim to love with the foreknowledge that we will burn and be tortured for eternity after we die and he gets a free pass on being evil/incompetent because of a fundamentally flawed concept of free will (despite asking multiple times,I've never seen a good explanation of how free will and omniscience are possible together, only handwaving). It really does seem to come down to god either not being an all powerful superbeing (in which case, why worship it?) or god being a colossal douche. I'd say it's a major issue for most sects I know of.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Late coming back to this... but weren't even the "original texts" transcriptions in the first place?

What makes you think the original texts were actually transcriptions? Transcriptions of what?

 

[gnome]

What makes you think the original texts were actually transcriptions? Transcriptions of what?

I guess it depends on which texts you consider to be "original". Care to identify?

 

[arthwollipot]

Except that the typical depiction of God uses omni-benevolence as a major characteristic. The thought tat God loves us and wants us to go to heaven is a serious issue for the whole Problem of Evil thing, because it indicates that while God doesn't want us to come to harm and would reportedly do anything he could to save us from Hell and so on, he's still a complete douche who lets children burn alive or be crushed by rubble in earthquakes and so on.

Hell, if you're a biblical literalist then it becomes even worse because we're only tuck in the situation of being exposed to Evil because God created a tree that would screw over humans (why?) then planted it within easy reach of Adam and Eve (WHY?). This means that even if god really does have to let us choose to be good people in the modern world, he could STILL have prevented the modern world from occurring in the first place by not making that bloody tree.

Furthermore, if god is omniscient then he ALREADY know that certain people, myself, you, Carl Sagan, whoever you want to pick, will go against his code and not even believe in him. Despite the fact that this will apparently condemn us to eternal suffering, he creates us anyway. Think about that for a moment. God creates us, beings he claim to love with the foreknowledge that we will burn and be tortured for eternity after we die and he gets a free pass on being evil/incompetent because of a fundamentally flawed concept of free will (despite asking multiple times,I've never seen a good explanation of how free will and omniscience are possible together, only handwaving). It really does seem to come down to god either not being an all powerful superbeing (in which case, why worship it?) or god being a colossal douche. I'd say it's a major issue for most sects I know of.

I'm hardly an apologist. I happen to agree with what you say. But try this argument on a Jesuit someday...

 

[MarkCorrigan]

I'm hardly an apologist. I happen to agree with what you say. But try this argument on a Jesuit someday...

Never said you were one. In fact, aside from what I thought was disagreeing with you on this I can't think of a single time I've actually thought you were substantially wrong.