Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

What Atheism doesn't have is an account of "evil" that has any objective basis.

No, because only religion has an account of evil.

If that's the case, then no non-religious person can coherently advance the theodicy problem. For the non-religious, it must simply remain irrational even to state it.

[Dubious]

Also, your redundant personal judgements of me which has nothing to do with what I think and which you couldn't possibly know about, only show what a loathsome disgusting little smut speculator you turned out to be.

Why I … now hold on a sec … wtf?!? … I … THIS MAKES ME REALLY ANGRY!!

I … I … I am planning TERRIBLE RETRIBUTIONS. What they are … what they’ll be I know not yet! Ooooooh I am so mad!!!!

(Wait, smut speculator?!? Seriously!?! Schmutzspekulant??? Now this is really getting serious! Du kriegst gleich was auf's Maul! This … this … IS AN OUTRAGE!]

When can I expect your seconds to contact my seconds to finalize a solution?

[iambiguous]

It's been a while so I thought that, once again, I'd tap those here who do believe in the Christian God on the shoulder and ask them if they might be willing to explore their beliefs given the following contexts:

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of the Christian God
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why the Christian God
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in the Christian God
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and the Christian God

And, further in regard to #4, how they manage to reconcile their belief in the Christian God with this...

...an endless procession of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and hurricanes and great floods and great droughts and great fires and deadly viral and bacterial plagues and miscarriages and hundreds and hundreds of medical and mental afflictions and extinction events...making life on Earth a living hell for countless millions of men, women and children down through the ages...

I should note that I was once a devout Christian myself as a young man.


Note to Immanuel Can:

I'd still appreciate it if you would link me to the YouTube video that most convinced you that, in fact [beyond a leap of faith], the Christian God resides in Heaven.

[Harbal]

But we can still have a strong, subjective, emotional response to events and situations. Our emotions are real, even if what triggers them isn't.

Yes. But so can a toddler, when it doesn't get its way. Anybody who's had a two-year-old knows that, of course.

So we need something that separates the irrational, demanding, solipsistic squalling of an infant from our more reasoned, mature and grounded antipathy to evil. The former isn't the latter. But we need to be able to prove our antipathy to evil has something behind it, other than temper or selfishness.

I don't understand why you brought toddlers into the conversation, I don't get your point.

I don't accept there is any such thing as evil, so I don't have any antipathy towards it.

As you know, I don't believe there is a God, so none of the above is my concern.

Maybe. But then, you have to be willing to give up any appeal to the idea that anything is "evil." And that's not necessarily a reasonable step, especially if there might be something objective behind our identification of some things as "evil."

But I don't make any appeal to the idea that anything is evil, because I don't accept there is such a thing as evil. I don't want to be unreasonable, though, so when someone explains to me what this objective thing called evil is, I will give it my consideration.

I'm sorry, but I can't follow your reasoning here; I don't understand your point.

Well, you said "malicious intent" is what evil might be. I was just saying that that doesn't help us much. We don't know from that description what constitutes "maliciousness," and we don't know that "maliciousness" (whatever it is) is "evil."

Okay, if it doesn't help, let's just say that I don't know what evil is supposed to be.

That's a second-level question. Again, the important question at the first level is, how do we know we are owed "justice," whatever that might be?

I suppose I know I am owed justice because my country's legal system says so. I am not involved in any other agreement that promises me justice.

The problem is that, unlike eating, our sense of justice or our feeling we have rights, or perhaps our intuition that there's something called "evil" cannot be met without our convincing others to agree with us. So we would need reasons why these things require not just subjective approval (which we could be denied, for any reason at all) but objective and universal recognition.

We can get food by ourselves, often: we cannot get rights, or justice or a definition of evil without providing reasons to others to agree with us that these are real and deserved things. But what would such reasons be?

I don't know what such reasons would be, do you?

It is true that you only have rights for as long as the authority behind them grants them to you.

Then in truth, I have no "rights." What I have is temporary advantages given by my society.

Yes, I suppose so.

I have nothing I can claim, though.

Only your rights under the law, when they exist.

[Gary Childress]

Do you "like" evil?

An odd question. I have no idea what relevance it would have to anything. It must be clear to you that this isn't a question about "liking," no?

None of us "like" evil. It's not just "Christians" who abhor "evil" when it's done. We all do. God is as much a creator of "evil" as s/he is a creator of "good". You seem to be of the belief that if you worship God, it means something to God. Why do you think God cares if you worship him or not? God kills and causes suffering to Christians as readily as s/he does to anyone else. God rewards Buddhists, atheists, and heretics as readily as s/he rewards Christians. If God is, then God is not "good" nor "evil". If God is, then God just is and there's no reason to even address him or her. All we can do is reap whatever it is that God throws our way. If you want to worship God, then fine. I don't. And that should be fine too. As far as I'm concerned God hasn't done anything for anyone other than place us in this insane clusterfuck of life. All these BS arguments you invent to justify worshiping God are probably as valid as my arguments against him are. If you want to call me "petulant" because I don't worship God, then my words "fuck off" to you are perfectly appropriate also.

[attofishpi]

Do you "like" evil?

An odd question. I have no idea what relevance it would have to anything. It must be clear to you that this isn't a question about "liking," no?

None of us "like" evil. It's not just "Christians" who abhor "evil" when it's done. We all do. God is as much a creator of "evil" as s/he is a creator of "good". You seem to be of the belief that if you worship God, it means something to God. Why do you think God cares if you worship him or not? God kills and causes suffering to Christians as readily as s/he does to anyone else. God rewards Buddhists, atheists, and heretics as readily as s/he rewards Christians. If God is, then God is not "good" nor "evil". If God is, then God just is and there's no reason to even address him or her. All we can do is reap whatever it is that God throws our way. If you want to worship God, then fine. I don't. And that should be fine too. As far as I'm concerned God hasn't done anything for anyone other than place us in this insane clusterfuck of life. All these BS arguments you invent to justify worshiping God are probably as valid as my arguments against him are. If you want to call me "petulant" because I don't worship God, then my words "fuck off" to you are perfectly appropriate also.

There really is not much at all about God literally stating that 'He' wants to be WORSHIPPED. - Seems more about love and respecting the dude.

Personally, my 'worship' extends as far as occasionally, usually when things are going really well in my life, I just say "Thanks for my life God"

Apart from your own personal issues, why do you consider life on Earth a 'clusterfuck', and also, why do you blame God for people being killed, by 'Him'?

[Will Bouwman]

Believe me, a chainsaw wielding maniac is as much "evil" to someone he's standing in front of as his name may be "Jeffrey" according to his mother and father. Just because you don't call it "evil", doesn't mean you don't or can't know why others do. And just because someone uses a harsh word like "evil" to describe someone like that under those circumstances, doesn't mean you wouldn't have similar sentiments toward their assailant to the ones they are having prior to being ground up.

As I said:

It's not for me to tell you how to use words...

The point is not whether I would call the chainsaw wielding maniac in front of me evil or Jeffrey; rather it is whether Jeffrey, the chainsaw wielding maniac in front of me, is evil.

[Immanuel Can]

But we can still have a strong, subjective, emotional response to events and situations. Our emotions are real, even if what triggers them isn't.

Yes. But so can a toddler, when it doesn't get its way. Anybody who's had a two-year-old knows that, of course.

So we need something that separates the irrational, demanding, solipsistic squalling of an infant from our more reasoned, mature and grounded antipathy to evil. The former isn't the latter. But we need to be able to prove our antipathy to evil has something behind it, other than temper or selfishness.

I don't understand why you brought toddlers into the conversation, I don't get your point.

Because toddlers have strong emotions...but having "strong, subjective, emotions" (as you phrased it) doesn't signal anything about the rightness or wrongness, truth or falsehood, of what sends them into a tizzy.

The same is true of us: the fact that we have emotions about a thing doesn't tell us whether it's good or evil. It only tells us about what we personally do or do not like. But to establish something like the theodicy problem, we need to elicit agreement among rational others; and on what basis will we do so, given that we have no objective basis for our conception of evil?

One thing for sure: "emotion" isn't going to give us warrant for such a conception.

I don't want to be unreasonable, though, so when someone explains to me what this objective thing called evil is, I will give it my consideration.

I'm in the same position with regard to the theodicy problem: I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge it, so long as the speaker can justify his appeal to "evil" in presenting it. But it's not obvious that a secular person or Atheist can make his own argument cogent. He's talking out of both sides of his mouth when he asks, "How can God allow evil," then insists that neither God nor evil is objectively real.

I suppose I know I am owed justice because my country's legal system says so.

And when it stops saying it owes you "justice'?

There are some people that believe their society "owes" them free speech. Others say it owes them freedom from hearing other people's free speech. Others say, "free health care." Others say, "free purchase of the health care I need, when I want it." Some say, "gun ownership." Some say "open borders." Others say, "a living wage." Others say, "freedom of movement" or "freedom of commerce," or "abortion," or "welfare payments," or "a fair trial and a presumption of innocence," or "universal public education." There are lots of claims about what society "owes." But how many of them can we rationally justify by showing that society actually "owes" them to anybody?

So if only society tells us we have a right to "justice," then we have it only so long as we live in that society, or only so long as that society doesn't change...that is, if "justice" means only "what society promises."

The problem is that, unlike eating, our sense of justice or our feeling we have rights, or perhaps our intuition that there's something called "evil" cannot be met without our convincing others to agree with us. So we would need reasons why these things require not just subjective approval (which we could be denied, for any reason at all) but objective and universal recognition.

We can get food by ourselves, often: we cannot get rights, or justice or a definition of evil without providing reasons to others to agree with us that these are real and deserved things. But what would such reasons be?

I don't know what such reasons would be, do you?

Not from a secular perspective. But I'm willing to hear the secular argument, if somebody has one.

[Gary Childress]

Believe me, a chainsaw wielding maniac is as much "evil" to someone he's standing in front of as his name may be "Jeffrey" according to his mother and father. Just because you don't call it "evil", doesn't mean you don't or can't know why others do. And just because someone uses a harsh word like "evil" to describe someone like that under those circumstances, doesn't mean you wouldn't have similar sentiments toward their assailant to the ones they are having prior to being ground up.

As I said:

It's not for me to tell you how to use words...

The point is not whether I would call the chainsaw wielding maniac in front of me evil or Jeffrey; rather it is whether Jeffrey, the chainsaw wielding maniac in front of me, is evil.

If he's standing in front of you about to chop you up, is he somehow not "evil"?

[Immanuel Can]

Do you "like" evil?

An odd question. I have no idea what relevance it would have to anything. It must be clear to you that this isn't a question about "liking," no?

None of us "like" evil.

Actually, a great many do. But it's irrelevant, either way.

I'll say again, Gary: this is not any kind of problem specific to Christianity. The theodicy problem is generated by Atheists and skeptics, not by Christians. All we're asking is that they should make their demand coherent and rational with their own worldview. Here, we're not expecting them to accept ours: only to explain the reasoning that justifies their own, on their own terms, if they can.

[Gary Childress]

Yes. But so can a toddler, when it doesn't get its way. Anybody who's had a two-year-old knows that, of course.

So we need something that separates the irrational, demanding, solipsistic squalling of an infant from our more reasoned, mature and grounded antipathy to evil. The former isn't the latter. But we need to be able to prove our antipathy to evil has something behind it, other than temper or selfishness.

I don't understand why you brought toddlers into the conversation, I don't get your point.

Because toddlers have strong emotions...but having "strong, subjective, emotions" (as you phrased it) doesn't signal anything about the rightness or wrongness, truth or falsehood, of what sends them into a tizzy.

Are you suggesting that only "toddlers" have strong emotions? You'd have a "tizzy" too if you experienced what I've experienced in my "episodes" of what is termed "psychosis"--FUCKING ASSHOLE!

[Immanuel Can]

If he's standing in front of you about to chop you up, is he somehow not "evil"?

On what basis? We don't call a lion "evil" for killing gazelles. We don't even call lions "evil" for killing each other (which they do, by the way).

If human beings are, as the secular accounts hold, nothing but a kind of animal or material being like any other, then there's no good or evil in anything they do. There's only whatever they do, according to their own natures.

What do we mean, then, when we call some of what they do "evil"?

[Gary Childress]

An odd question. I have no idea what relevance it would have to anything. It must be clear to you that this isn't a question about "liking," no?

None of us "like" evil.

Actually, a great many do. But it's irrelevant, either way.

I'll say again, Gary: this is not any kind of problem specific to Christianity. The theodicy problem is generated by Atheists and skeptics, not by Christians. All we're asking is that they should make their demand coherent and rational with their own worldview. Here, we're not expecting them to accept ours: only to explain the reasoning that justifies their own, on their own terms, if they can.

Why should they make their reasoning any more coherent than yours? Arrogant SOB!

[Immanuel Can]

I don't understand why you brought toddlers into the conversation, I don't get your point.

Because toddlers have strong emotions...but having "strong, subjective, emotions" (as you phrased it) doesn't signal anything about the rightness or wrongness, truth or falsehood, of what sends them into a tizzy.

Are you suggesting that only "toddlers" have strong emotions?

No, Gary. Don't be silly. Of course not.

I'm merely pointing out that the mere having of emotions doesn't raise a person beyond the level of a toddler in his thinking. Even toddlers have them, and strong, definite ones, too.

[Gary Childress]

If he's standing in front of you about to chop you up, is he somehow not "evil"?

On what basis? We don't call a lion "evil" for killing gazelles. We don't even call lions "evil" for killing each other (which they do, by the way).

If human beings are, as the secular accounts hold, nothing but a kind of animal or material being like any other, then there's no good or evil in anything they do. There's only whatever they do, according to their own natures.

What do we mean, then, when we call some of what they do "evil"?

Would you like some Grey Puopon while we chat, Sir! Or are you just prone to stupidity?