How do theists respond to this?

How do theists respond to this?

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>mankind's limited views of what are good and evil are the same as gods

>an objective truth exists but humans aren't smart enough to perceive it
At least your heterosexuality is falsifiable

>God gave humans everything
>Humans made the decision to go against God
>Humans now suffering for the actions of Adam and Eve
>God is merciful enough to pardon humans who live a good wholesome life

Man cannot hope to know the Kekaiku of God.

But at least to have the free will to ask this sort of question. It would be a shame if you used it to be... evil.

How does God expect infants dying from genetic cancer lead a good wholesome life?

If that's the case then mentally handicapped people are screwed from the start. Those born into african tribes are also screwed because they have no knowledge of God or christianity.

God is good. What we identify as evil is a separation from Him and His nature. Further, it isn't arbitrary, but a product of being emergent His very nature.

We know a crooked stick because we know a straight stick. The stick is no appealing to an abritrary standard of straightness. It IS straight.

We know evil because know goodness. God does not need appeal to anything but Himself. He IS the very essence of good.

Want to argue otherwise? That maybe God is evil.

Privatio Boni. Good can exist without evil the same way heat can exist without "cold". There is no such thing as cold, it is merely a term to describe the absence of heat, rather than the presence of anything else besides. Evil therefore can not exist without good, but good can exist just fine without evil.

In a "maximally great being" it would be all good, for to be "all evil" or even "partly evil" would be to describe an entity that is somehow not complete.

first, define good
second, he is not omnipotent.He cannot make a circle to be a square.

>God did a shit job designing humans so they by default are broken
>God did a shit job designing a universe where 99% of human life ends with an eternity of horrific torture
>God is such a pompous prick he wants credit for being 'merciful' that a small handful of the billions condemned by ancestors' minor sin are spared torment if they both a) agree to be His unquestioning slaves and b) do so through a specific brand of willing slavery that is approved by the One True God™
>Also build Earth on tectonic plates to guarantee earthquakes for the lulz
I think if you gave a gang of highschoolers omnipotence and omniscience they could design a better universe for a high school project.

Fedora pictures and Crusade LARPing.

"Then he is malevolent"

Uh, no it's called free will that's how he shows us he loves us and one day when he's been pained enough by our hateful actions he will stop them forever. He's giving us the chance to try and in the same vein, showing us he was right and we need him.

Bait, saged.

death it's the escape from this shitty miserable layer of reality which we call "life".

Wrong youtube.com/watch?v=3BE95qqkTc0
Mentally handicapped people are blessed
You go to hell if you commit a sin willingly, e.g. kill a child on purpose knowing it is a bad thing to do

It leads to a wholesome life for the gene pool and other humans
And these people are blessed

This guy has a point sort of .

Humans cannot "know" God in a direct sense of perception and comprehension, but in that same vain, humans also are wrong when they dismiss God because they can't comprehend or perceive.

I know Sup Forums doesn't like fence sitters, but I see no other way to look at it other than the way I do. Believing in God makes people happier, it provides a foundation for society and so forth. Religious people may disagree and say that there is proof for God's existence, but I am always skeptical of those claims.

This statement is actually wrongly attributed to Epicurus who himself believed that the gods lived in a state of blissful perfection and weren't bothered by evil the way humans were.

>God did a shit job designing humans so they by default are broken
Free will is broken?
>God did a shit job designing a universe where 99% of human life ends with an eternity of horrific torture
Wrong
>God is such a pompous prick he wants credit for being 'merciful' that a small handful of the billions condemned by ancestors' minor sin are spared torment if they both a) agree to be His unquestioning slaves and b) do so through a specific brand of willing slavery that is approved by the One True God™
Wrong. God wants people to have free will and use it to do good things
If you use your free will to hurt other people, you will go to hell.
If you were unable to do evil things, you would not have had free will
>Also build Earth on tectonic plates to guarantee earthquakes for the lulz
Why not

DUDE
FREE WILL
LMAO

God is a summary of ideals.
Ideals are not conscious.

The end.

In Islam, if you've never heard of Islam and Allah, then you go to Heaven (if you were good I assume).

Then why do they try to convert people?

How do atheists respond to the possibility of a malevolent God?

Standard explanation is that you are just not capable of grasping the whole picture.

Because if they didn't, they'd go to hell

But can mankind know the shinigami edo tensei sharingan bakugan rinnengangbangarangbukake?

so ted bundy went to heaven because he was a psychopath and it was not his fault?

It was his fault

"Free will"

So god is such a big faggot that he can't even create a place where we have free will while at the same time not being able to do evil.
If you take away our ability to murder, you still have the choice to put on whatever colour socks you want in the morning

>But free will needs to include the possibility to do evil.
Nah man.
Can you do a one-legged jump across the English channel?
Do you feel restricted in your free will by your inability to do so?

Apply the same to doing evil.
If we never knew what evil was, we'd be fine with it and don't give a single fuck about the lack of freedom associated with that.

God is just a dick.

cant tell if youre retarded or just acting like it

i often think of this when in church
cancer in babies..raped babies..what is that about..?

Plantinga's free will theodicy.

crisis averted.

>implying God owes us so much as an explanation for anything

We haven't even explored the oceans completely. I don't think we are in any position to question Gods motives.

If God wanted to he could have destroyed mankind as soon as we sinned against him, but in his great mercy he allowed us to live for a while and gave us the opportunity to be saved.

Ultimately evil will be destroyed in a way that brings great glory to God.

Extend the trolley problem to an infinite number of lines. You can only see how many people are on the current track, and someone else is in control of the lever. This someone else is omniscient, and can see all train lines and knows exactly how many people are on them.

You will never know if that someone else is manipulating the lever benevolently, malevolently, or, if they even exist. All you will see is some people dying-- you would have no basis to conclude that God is malevolent.

Additionally, I like to think of Earth as an animal reserve, and humans as the animals. Just because no one intervenes in humans killing each other for retarded reasons, doesn't mean that they're malevolent. They can't intervene in every single act of malice every human takes.

Great clarification. SOLD! I'm a Christian now.

>then he is malevolent
That in no way makes him any less of a god. It just makes him a frightening god.

>So god is such a big faggot that he can't even create a place where we have free will while at the same time not being able to do evil.
That's not free will

>Can you do a one-legged jump across the English channel?
>Do you feel restricted in your free will by your inability to do so?
We can try to do it, and we can try to figure out ways to do it

>If we never knew what evil was, we'd be fine with it and don't give a single fuck about the lack of freedom associated with that.
Humans used to not know what evil was until they ate the fruit of knowledge

t. retard

>guy goes out of his way to murder kids
>not his fault

>mankind's limited views of what are good and evil are the same as gods

You agree that evil does exist, right?

Regardless of what you consider that word to mean ("evil"), you do believe it is a real thing of some kind--the opposite of good. Or no?

Define good

Good can mean anything to anyone

>eating fruit gives you super powers

yea you sure arent retarded!

Psychopaths can still choose whether they will commit horrific acts or not.

There's this one book that i absolutely love.
>"Well," he said, "here's what I would do. I would tell the Lord: 'Creator, I do not know your plans, perhaps you have no intention of making people good and happy. Choose to wish this! It is so easily achieved! Give people enough bread, meat and wine, give them shelter and clothing. Let hunger and need disappear, and with them everything that separates people.'"
"And that's it?" asked Rumata.
"You think that is not enough?"
Rumata shook his head. "God would answer:
'This would not benefit people. For the strong of the world will take from the weak what I have given them, and the weak still will be destitute.'"
"I would ask God to protect the weak. 'Admonish the cruel rulers,' I would say."
"Cruelty is power. Without cruelty, the rulers will lose their power, and other cruel ones will take over."
Budah stopped smiling.

>eating fruit gives you super powers

>looking at colors on dead trees gives you the power to control nature and build complex devices
wow really makes me think

anyone can make any idea sound crazy

"Punish the cruel ones," he said firmly, "so the strong ones would not dare to be cruel to the weak."
"Man is born weak. He becomes strong when there is nobody around stronger than him. When the cruel among the strong are punished, their place will be taken by the stronger among the weak. Also cruel. In this way one would have to punish everybody, and I do not want that."
"You know best, o Lord. Then simply make it so that people have everything and do not take from each other what you have given them."
"This will not benefit people either," sighed Rumata, "for when they get everything for free, without effort, from my hands, they will forget work, will lose the taste of life and will become my domestic animals, whom I will then have to feed and clothe forever."
"Do not give them everything at once!" said Budah hotly. "Give them a little at a time, gradually!"
"Gradually people themselves will take all that they will need."
Budah laughed awkwardly.

God is infinitely good in the sense that is nature is existence itself and he is a necessary being. You cannot judge God using an outside ruling system for good because he's pure goodness.
You're using "good" in a completely different sense and that's not what theologians means when they say "good". All these discussions are then meaningless.

"Yes, I see this in not so simple," he said. "Somehow I have never considered these matters. It seems we have run out of ideas. However," he leaned forward, "here is one more possibility. Make it so that all people love work and knowledge the most, so that work and knowledge became the only purpose in their lives!"
Yes, we were planning to do this, too, thought Rumata. Mass hypnoinduction, positive remoralization. Hypnoradiators on the three equatorial satellites...
"I could do that," he said. "But is it worth it to deprive the human race of its history? Is it worth it to substitute this humanity by another one? Would it not be the same thing as erasing this humanity from the face of the Earth and creating a new one in its place?"
Budah considered this silently. Rumata waited. Outside the window, the carriages were squeaking gloomily. Budah said quietly:
"Then, o Lord, erase us from the face of this Earth and create again, more perfect. Or better still, let us be and choose our own way."
"My heart is full of pity," said Rumata slowly. "I cannot do that."

>Humans made the decision to go against God

Did God know humans would make that decision before they made it?

If so, then they could not have done otherwise, ontologically speaking. They would have HAD to go against God, and not going against God was merely an epistemic possibility, not a real one.

And God, having created the humans, would have been the one to make them in such a way that they would have betrayed Him. If he could not have made them otherwise, then he is not omnipotent. If he could have made them otherwise, why didn't he? Note that "free will" is not a good defense here, because if God knows everything that will ever transpire, with absolute certainty, then there is no libertarian free will. You could make an argument that compatibilist free will exists, but that argument fails because God could have made people of such nature that they would not have WANTED to betray him and would have ontologically been unable to do so, and under compatibilist conceptions of free will, they would still have been just as free.

If not, then God is not omniscient.

The entire story falls apart into an incoherent mess when you examine it logically.

>Humans cannot "know" God in a direct sense of perception and comprehension

this limits God's ability to communicate with his own creation. which seems a strange position to take, if there exists an all powerful, all knowledgeable creator, who not only created the stars and galaxies, but also created human emotions and humans' ability to speak and communicate with each other

Does evil exist, or does evil not exist?

This is correct IMO
But this could also be correct, but we wouldn't know because of our limited view of good and evil

>Derp?
"Look, this thread again.

>because if God knows everything that will ever transpire, with absolute certainty, then there is no libertarian free will
Wrong

Free will means God doesn't decide what you will do
God lives outside of time, so he knows everything that will happen, but he didn't decide what people with free will were going to do

1. Define Good as existing.
2. Thus define Evil as not existing.
3. Re-evaluate all arguments against God's existence.

It was still his fault there are enough psychopaths who do not kill

>evil

thats a stretch, even for a retard like you!

>looking at colors on dead trees gives you the power to control nature and build complex devices
>wow really makes me think

im not sure what point youre trying to make, i dont speak retard. obviously, eating something and learning a moral lesson from that isnt a natural process, you fucking retard!

It doesn't matter for the purpose of the argument what "good" and "evil" are, as long as they A: Exist and B: Are fundamentally opposed.

false trichotomy

...

Are you comming here to get converted?

>tfw your genes get cancer

Evil is something God wouldn't want you to do.

The answer to this is love. Epicurus went full on Vulcan and tried to fit the universe is a single quotable quote. Existence simply doesn't work this way.

Love is the answer to the question. When we see suffering, it instills compassion. Compassion leads to caring for others. This is spawned from the innate capacity to love others.

Epicurus was a pretentious cunt. It's good to be logical and somewhat stoic at times, but if you have no love in your heart, you are nto a well rounded man.

ITS ABOUT YOUR SHITTY GOD NOT EXISTING YOU FUCKING KIKE ON A STICK WORSHIPPING SHEEPLE

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST HOW ARE WE STILL BELIEVING IN FAIRY TALES

Basically, you're a retard

I ejaculated on a picture of Jesus Christ this morning. How was your morning?

The term for "able but not willing" is "apathetic" not "malevolent".

>Wrong

Actually, right. You don't know what libertarian free will and compatibilist free will are, which is why you mix them up.

Libertarian free will means the ability to have different ontological possibilities in front of you, and to be able to select one or the other, but both are real possibilities. And whether you pick one or the other is in some fundamental (but ultimately incoherent) way "up to you", not randomness, fate, etc.

Compatibilist free will means the ability to act in accordance with your desires (even if you haven't chosen your desires) without "external coercion". But what constitutes external coercion is very debatable and hard to define objectively. I've never seen a broad consensus from compatibilists about it.

Omniscience is compatible with the second type of "Free will"--not the first. It directly contradicts it, because if an all-knowing being exists, then there are no ontological possibilities--only one real way in which things can turn out. For, if things were to turn out differently, then that omniscient being would not have KNOWN how they would turn out, at all.

>Free will means God doesn't decide what you will do

God, supposedly at least, created humans, including our brains, synapses, souls, which cause our behavior. They are like parts of a computer.

If you make a robot and program it to make pancakes, how is that not "deciding" what it will do? It's just deciding it a few steps ahead.

And how would a robot be different from God making humans? Remember, God makes the soul too. We don't self create our own souls.

Every religion essentially talks about how humans are inferior to the creator, and the creator is too powerful for humans to perceive with our limited abilities. I don't know why these properties exist as they are. Nobody does.

This.

OPs argument is shit and been BTFO several times in philosophy. Only edgy teenagers unironically use it.

So does it exist, or does it not exist?

For there to be good you need the possibility of evil, the same way the concept of "up" requires the one of "down".

>people defend Christianity and their God
>can't point to a single passage in the Bible to backup their shit
>the bible is literally the only thing that shows what God is like


>hurr durr free will
>if you do X, you'll go to heaven
>if you do Y, you'll go to hell
Same as putting a gun to somebody's head and telling them if they do Y you'll pull the trigger.

Christianity isn't about you leading a good wholesome life.

It's a religion that teaches everything on this "mundane plane" is ephemeral, you should focus on a new, eternal life.

Where do people even get this idea that the Christian God wants to lead nice, comfy lives?

If you as an infant, you actually won the lottery in Christianity, because you got an easy job, and you didn't have to suffer through this shitty life, before getting to reunite with your Maker.

It does exist, according to the Christian dogma.

fucking leftist, you know if this guy werre president, nsa would be spying on everyone x10 and there would be FDR camps...

no, being able and not preventing evil doesn't make you malevolent. it just means you value freedom (free will) over security.

Because a religion where the "creator" is just some hippie with the superpower of being able to turn ice into water slightly faster than a normal person isn't gonna make for a tale that attracts alot of people.

>genes produce cancer, literally

>HOW ARE WE STILL BELIEVING IN FAIRY TALES
I advise you to calm down and think about that very clearly.

There is no reason to believe in Christianity if it is not true. The gospel message is that we are a garbage. Literal filth. As you are, so am I.

So, what did Christianity actually offer? Why do people still believe? Look.

PS: current year (genetic) fallacy

>OPs argument is shit and been BTFO several times in philosophy.

Actually it hasn't and is a common cause of atheism among philosophers.

The free will defense does not work because libertarian free will is incompatible with omniscience, and compatibilist free will could be given to humans who had no evil impulse or temptations whatsoever. Under compatibilist conceptions of free will, you could have ZERO desire to betray God and tons of desire to worship him and glorify him, and you would still be free.

Which raises the question--if you're just as free (in a compatibilist sense--because the libertarian sense is, again, incompatible with omniscience) with no evil impulse as with one, why on earth would an omnipotent God give you such an impulse?

>It's a test

God is omniscient. He doesn't need to test anything because he already knows the result.

>Mangling together compatibilism and libertarianism

No. They're two different things and you can't segue one into the other like bait & switch.

Imagine if this was a simulation to determine whether or not you can join the God energy.

great! i see youve run out of retarded shit to make up on the spot and just resorted to copying my insult! really original! was it divinely inspired, retard??

>For there to be good you need the possibility of evil

Are you talking about epistemic possibility or ontological possibility?

Because if God is omniscient, ontological possibilities don't exist.

What the fuck is with all of the Philosophy 101 threads in here lately?

christianity has a God that communicated directly with his creation, by becoming incarnate in Jesus. and the testimony of the holy spirit which indwells in all believers

Maybe it all is a charade. Maybe it isn't. I feel much better after I opened my mind again to the possibility of God and the possibility of magical realms and supernatural forces. I am not even a believer. The power of belief or even being open to belief is amazing.

If God is omniscient he already knows what the outcome will be, so why on earth would he have to run simulations? It makes no sense.

*die as an infant

Yeah, but what are going to do about it? You try to impose a morality on Christianity it doesn't accept. God made toys or tools for whatever reason and made the world for whatever reason.

It doesn't concern you, you wouldn't understand anyway as a finite being.

You're like a robot, you have a job. Do it and you were useful, God will keep you and keep using you in a better run of things, the World to Come.

Fuck up and you're done, you won't be needed anymore and you'll be scrapped.

That's the monotheistic core of Christianity.

Everything else about being nice to each other is secondary, God comes first.

...

I love you Jesus Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiist

>Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
>Is he able, but not willing?
God embodies everything and nothing so correctly classifying him/it/xe/xor/me etc, "evil" or "good" or "able" "not able" is not possible for a average human.
There is also no way to deduct what god "thinks" because albeit humans are part of God they are the equivalent of an atom or a smaller cog in the body of god, or a piece from a puzzle. So you would have to BE god to know what god's moral viewpoints and/or powers are.
Christianity/Judaism even portrays humans as an "image" of god so we are a meme/close idea but not really obligated or powerful enough to truly understand t.b.h.
>Then whence cometh evil?
For God nothing is "evil", for humanity evil is that which halts a plan or a function.
>Then why call him God
God is not just the absolute he/she/it/xer/xe/zorg/cock/hshe/fim/pony/me etc, he is also below it, above it and most importantly beyond it and also nothing and not part of it. God is just a simple word to use to try to invoke this idea/fact so it's more easier to talk about it. To compress it in other words.

Atleast this is what I think.

Who hurt you, OP? Who did you lose to become such an angry, embittered person and rage against god like this?

>God makes the soul too. We don't self create our own souls.
God creates the soul to have its own free will

>God, supposedly at least, created humans, including our brains, synapses, souls, which cause our behavior. They are like parts of a computer.
>If you make a robot and program it to make pancakes, how is that not "deciding" what it will do? It's just deciding it a few steps ahead.
But when you put in a true random number generator in that program, you end up getting a robot that has a variable of unpredictability


God created the reality the way it is, then gave us the ability to select what exactly we want to do within that reality. God didn't decide what we will do, but he does know what we will do because he lives outside of time

With salt and dropletss of spit sprayed across their screen.

If you really want to know how philosophers respond to this just look up a few theodicies

Hey, I wrote an essay on this for philosophy yesterday!

Evil is necessary for goodness my friend. Not every old Greek dude with a stone head is a genius you know (although Epicurus was kinda badass)

TL note: Keikaku means plan

There's so much pseudointellectualism here it hurts. Cold is the slowing down of kinetic energy. It absolutely can occur in the absence of heat. Even without warmth for recognition the shift between thermal sensation of cold and nociceptive sensation of cold would be sufficient to describe the sensation of decreasing temperature.

Hell, you absolutely could recognize a crooked stick without a straight stick. Crooked means this roundish, angled shape. boom. Defined it without needing a straight referenc.

OH MY GOD

I NEVER THOUGHT OF IT THIS WAY

HUMANS ARE A SHITTY MEME OF THE OG YAHWEH

Because it's about your experience and understanding in getting there.

Because you aren't adding anything to the discussion, aside from random insults and
>muh magic sky fairy xdddD!!!!