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Forums → WEPR → The God Problem (Philosophical)
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NOTE: This is not an anti religion post, simply a philosophical and age old debate.
Ok, so very very basically, here is an issue with the typical Christian view of God, a view shared by other religions, aside, however.
God is all good
God is all powerful (omnipotent)
God is all knowing
If God is all good, then why does he make evil things happen? Why does he create murderers and tsunamis?
Some say God creates us with the choice to do good and bad that we may have free will.
So, in this case God creates us without knowing if we'll choose to be good or bad people, or even if we will believe in him/her.
So God doesn't know if we're going to be good or bad, so God is not all knowing.
BUT - Imagine we still want to hold that he his all knowing, i.e he knows everything about everything. This means God creates us knowing that we're going to be good or bad people, this means that he condemns those he creates bad to a life of sin and ultimately hell, so he can't be all Good.
BUT - if we want to still hold that he is all good, then there must be another reason murderers and tsunamis exist, but what? Maybe God created the world, and is not powerful enough to intervene. Then God is no longer all-powerful. Either that or he is powerful enough to intervene, and simply doesn't want to, in which case he is not all good.
What do you think about all this?
- 326 Replies
sorry for double post, my PC suddenly lagged
besides i have my own answer for the chiken/egg question even though i cant answer my question XD
I got another one, which cant be answered
I got another one, which cant be anwered.
there is 2 persons. Person A and person B
Person A saying that person B is lying, and person B is saying that person A telling the truth
whos telling the truth? ^^
This has nothing to do with god. The answer is Person C, who told me earlier they are both liars. XD
Exactly, but some people still choice to do it. That why there exist heaven and hell.
As a perfect being they would make the correct choice. If they did not then they are not perfect and we are back to our original problem of God either not being all good to make us intentionally imperfect. Not all powerful, being unable to make us perfect.
If we are to throw Heaven and Hell into this this also puts God all good status into question. By handing out an eternal punishment for a finite transgression. Not to mention the above issue of our nature either being intentionally flawed or a mistake of God's.
As a perfect being they would make the correct choice.
but then it would be like a robot who is pragramed to do something specific, but in the other hand if it can do what it want, then its what I will call perfect.
In the end its all depends on what you consider as perfect.
For me it is when you have the choice to do what you want, because I wouldnt consider it as a free will, if you automaticly choice good things.
but then it would be like a robot who is pragramed to do something specific, but in the other hand if it can do what it want, then its what I will call perfect.
No it it wouldn't be like a robot anymore then when we do make the right choices. Again your mistaking being unable to make the choice with simply making the right choice.
If you got a dream about your dad killing you, would you run away?
I would not run away, but I would be carful around him for a week, same thing happened where I had a dream that a cat pretending to be my cat kills me and I was always figuring out how many cats where in my house for a week after that.
unless they are metally ill
If god was so nice and all, then why WOULD he allow mentaly ill peple to be born?
Does anybody think that there are other Earths out there with humans and god is looking at which Earth preforms the best? I wondered about that earlier when i was reading an article that dealt with the billions of different galaxies. This is assuming of course that you believe in god.
Haha when I was still Christian, I used to consider the world to be a sandbox, like he's working out the kinks in creation, first the dinos and then evolution to make the dinos fit better and not be so big and taking up so much energy.
1. Keep everything under control. If a king had people killing others or vandalizing his territory,all he had to do is make up a story about God,and how we will all go straight to hell if we don't do as he says,aka don't kill,don't steal etc. So no more problems for the king. Most trouble-makers will follow these rules,as an eternal life in pain is too much of a risk.
No offence to anyone, but I find Hinduism to be just that, Hinduism was started by the Aryans who also made the caste system, the Aryans put themselves on the top of the caste system and no one liked that, so what did they do? They told everyone that if they were good and didn't relize that this was completly unfair, then they would be reincarnated to be in the higher caste just like them, but if they disobeyed, they would become an Untouchable. I really don't understand how Hinduism is still considered a legitamate religion after that kind of upbringing.
But what if the person want to kill. Remember it up to him to decide, if he got the free will.
It seems like it is more of a "taking the idea out-of-his-mind" type thing since if the option is there to kill someone, why would it be that no one ever takesthe option? You can't bann something if that something never happened because no one has thought of it yet.
If the chicken did come first,and there were 2 chickens in the whole world(in order for te species to survive),how in the world did they meet? They would have to search the whole world... :P jk ofcourse.
Like all species, they were born in a certain climate and the whole world dosen't have that same climate so that statement won't work.
No it it wouldn't be like a robot anymore then when we do make the right choices. Again your mistaking being unable to make the choice with simply making the right choice.
What is you took out god being "good" since he can't really have good applyed to him since he also made evil, so back to what I was saying, if you took out the good quality and then considered this, the world with perfect beings making perfect choices doing always the right thing, how would that be in the least bit interesting? Everyone would then become perfectly predictable and I think that would quite honestly rule out their option of "free choice" since you know that they were created to make certain choices since they were created "erfect".
So what if god didn't want a perfectly predictable world (for the humans, not him since he is all knowing) and instead wanted to make it interesting by not making everyone imedietly choose the "right" choice (reason why I said "right" is how would everyone immedietly know that choice is right, if no one one took the wrong choice? Also if they did know what was the right choice, then wouldn't they have to also be all knowing and no longer have the aspect that I think makes us human, the ability to come into a world with almost no knowledge and absorb what is going on around us to form what should and shouldn't be done) and instead having them figure out what is right and wrong on their own?
Sorry, the second to last paragraph is almost indecipherable, if no one minds I will edit it to make some better sence to people who don't want to spend all day figuring out what I wrote.
What if you took out the quality of god being "good" since he can't really have good applyed to him since he also made evil, and then considered this, the world with perfect beings making perfect choices doing always the right thing, how would that be in the least bit interesting? Everyone would then become perfectly predictable. I think that would quite honestly rule out their option of "free choice" since you know that they were created to make certain choices since they were created "erfect".
If you got a dream about your dad killing you, would you run away?
No. But if for years or even a few weeks people have been having dreams that are coming true (And have been documented by people before the event happened) on at semi-frequent basis, such an event would at least put you on guard.
Anyways, the first post of this topic fairly well outlines the problem.
Three parts.
1) All powerful
2) All Loving
3) All Knowing
Each of these invalidates another. An all powerful and all knowing and all loving god would not create things with inborn problems, disease, and deficiencies.
Remove one of these claims and you end up with a plausable god.
All Knowing + All Loving = Not perfect creations
All Knowing + All Powerful = Not perfect due to sadistic intent
All Loving + All Powerful = This one doesn't fit as well, but you could get away with unforseen changes in humans over time due to freewill.
By saying that God is creating people, arn't you kindof ignoring an entire scientific process?
By saying that God is creating people, arn't you kindof ignoring an entire scientific process?
If you want to argue for God's existence, you can do it two ways.
1) God works through physical means and cannot do what is impossible (Fallacy with this is he would not be all powerful)
2) God is beyond logic and physical things (Fallacy with this is we have no proof that such a thing exists and there can be no proof for it because it is by nature beyond our reach)
By saying that God is creating people, arn't you kindof ignoring an entire scientific process?
1) God works through physical means and cannot do what is impossible (Fallacy with this is he would not be all powerful)
Can't you also say that evolution WAS how he created people? Maybe he wanted to work his way up to create something worth while.
That's a good point but evolution would lead to many ideas disproving god. Even if this is what happened there are too many people that jump to evolution to disprove God.
Even if this is what happened there are too many people that jump to evolution to disprove God.
No, that's not the problem.
Can't you also say that evolution WAS how he created people?
You cannot, unless you undermine the holy texts of religion. According to all major religions holy texts, creation was a fairly instant event. There were, at the start, all the things in the world.
You cannot, unless you undermine the holy texts of religion. According to all major religions holy texts, creation was a fairly instant event. There were, at the start, all the things in the world.
How bout the fact that humans were not created perfect, that we have flaws, then can't our interpretations of god be incorrect?
How bout the fact that humans were not created perfect, that we have flaws, then can't our interpretations of god be incorrect?
Then this violates the All Knowing + All Powerful + All Loving claim. Such a God would not intentionally create creatures with inborn problems and allow such evils to exist.
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