Plenty of other, more concrete evidence that (the abrahamic) god doesn’t exist. But hey, if that’s what convinces you then kudos.
“Only the good die young” -William Martin Joel
This is the bad timeline, evil is rewarded
Also known as Kalyug.
Other than god not existing? God is malignant
With the way Christians and similar preach? Yea, God’s a psychopath and so are they.
Though there are several theologically sound explanations, especially if you truly believe “God” is beyond or bigger than our universe.
Basic believer: “God works in mysterious ways”. Sure, that Harlequin baby only ever had a miserable existence, but that’s because their soul didn’t need to experience a full life! Sure, your school teacher only ever did good works and then got ran over by a truck, but God thought it was her time!
More logical theology: God is bigger than the universe. He sees the whole thing. If something bad happens, then it is merely a wrinkle, or if you believe in divine guidance, it’s a tragectory change to something better. Either way, God’s not helping you, because what you want makes for a worse over-all universe. Or, if you want to be more literal about it, maybe God doesn’t necessarily have the power to truly magic something. Maybe he cannot instantly change an exact, single detail about this universe, yet created it, could destroy it, and has enough control to drastically change things? Like a video game dev seeing how their Sims playthrough plays out.
Deeper theology: We’re here to be tested/checked/validated/etc. God said he gave us the answers, not that he’ll do the test for us. Besides, if we were instructed to take care of something (like Earth, or your personal life), why in the ever loving FUCK would you expect someone else to do the job you were told to do? Nobody is going to be happy to have to step in to fix something you fucked up, especially when they were the ones who put you on the job to take care of it in the first place.
Deeper science fiction: How would such a great being even begin to care about the individualities of creatures even lesser than ants to him as ants are to us? It’s not hard to imagine someone caring deeply about their creation, but not really caring about exactly how the tiny details come out for every single detail. Like a single piece of glitter falling off your child’s art piece, an individual life is meaningless so long as the whole picture remains.
Mix and match those views to your heart’s content, and I’ve heard all of them and more growing up in a church. Bunch of intellectually weak clowns unwilling to admit religion is just Baby’s First Philosophy…
Please keep going, that was great!
Not sure of too many other opinions I’ve directly heard, but what kind of belief do you want to hear more of? (I know I said I heard more dismissive/excusive beliefs, but I don’t remember them in any representative fashion; it was thankfully years and years ago!)
I’m just struggling with my own slow process of discarding faith and found the arguments useful… I don’t have a particular direction or anything
Ahh I see. Yea, it’s a whole whirlpool of ad-hoc and circular logic… It always boils down to, “It’s correct because I was told it’s correct!”.
I can understand community and wanting to be a good person, but there is SO much garbage piled on top…
Maybe one where god is plainly evil, and other similar to the last one: it was only a creator that put things in motion and it’s long gone now.
The old Cainites, Cathars, Marcionites, and other similar Gnostic sects quite directly believed God was the bad guy. (or at least the physical world and its creator; it gets weird in some of them…)
Lots of variations on why and who and bla…
or he/she doesn’t give a fuck
Obligatory:
Gonna save this one
God doesn’t care, or God doesn’t know.
If he knows, but does not care, then he is not good.
If he cares, but does not know, then he is not god.
If this is part of the plan, then God is evil.
There’s no indication that God would be good. In the Bible, David did something bad so God had 10 of his wives raped as punishment. He ordered genocide, specifically including that suckling children were to be killed. He does a lot of bad shit. Maybe he’s real and he’s a Trump supporter.
Forking shirtballs, we’re in the bad place!
We’re in the only place, unfortunately.
God is obviously malevolent. All of his conservative representatives being evil should be a clue.
I think it makes more sense to say Yahweh is malevolent. It started off as a god of thunder and war, and when the ancient Judeans moved from a polytheist pantheon to a monotheist model, that’s who the groups that won had chosen as their god.
But yeah, name a single diety directly responsible for more death and destruction? It literally pits 3 and a half groups that worship it against each other! To generate war. To generate death. It feeds on death and pain.
Holy fuck that question is as deep as a puddle
You’re asking an existential question: why do bad things happen to good people? I would wager that this has been a subject of philosophical debate for as long as humans have existed.
Ultimately, I think it’s the wrong question.
What you’re experiencing is a form of confirmation bias. You expect bad people to live and good people to die, and that expectation is shaped by societal conditioning and the beliefs you’ve been exposed to throughout your life.
In reality, cancer, for example, affects a relatively small percentage of the world’s population at any given time, although that percentage still represents a tremendous number of people.
You’re seeing it affect people in roughly the proportions you’d expect. The problem is that the people you pay attention to tend to be the ones you believe shouldn’t be affected by it, while those you believe should be affected often aren’t.
We tend to perceive these events as unjust because we expect the world to operate according to some inherent sense of fairness. Unfortunately, nature doesn’t make that distinction between good and bad people.
The theological explanation from Catholic dogma would be along the lines of God doesn’t really interfere with the day-to-day goings on of the world.
Is prayer actively discouraged in Catholicism?
No, you can and should beg god for devine intervention that he probably doesnt do and thank for his gracefullness which he hasnt shown. Or at least whoreship him, because he is so great and benevolent while he is hearing the prayers and letting good people die nevertheless. Or maybe there werent enough prayers yet, for THE POPE.
It all makes a lot of sense you see.
“God works in mysterious ways” is the only “explanation” religious clowns have. It’s 100% post-hoc justification. If they’re bad, they deserve it. If they’re good, then they must secretly be bad and deserve it. If they’re really good and don’t deserve it, then, “God works in mysterious ways”. Always. Every time.
There is no questioning faith, only declaring heresy to such clowns. If things didn’t work out for you, it’s not a systemic problem here, it’s because you deserved it!
Have you considered the possibility that God is an incompetent moron?
In any decently run universe this guy would have been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago.
JD Vance decided to send him an email or smt
This always boils down to the Epicurean Paradox.
So, most religious mythology (including Christianity) defines its god as 3 absolutes:
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All good (not a shred of evil)
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All powerfull (its will is our reality, period)
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All knowing (it’s fully conscious of literally everything that happens in its universe)
So how is it that evil can exist? Cuz we can see that clear as day, everywhere. God either…
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is aware of it, has the ability to stop it, and chooses not to, in which case it is not all good.
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is aware of it, wants to stop it, but doesn’t have the ability to, in which case it isn’t all powerful.
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Has the power and desire to stop it, but isn’t aware it’s happening, in which case it isn’t all knowing.
Every single attempt to answer the Epicurean paradox does so by rugpulling one of the three pillars and presenting god as instead only being two of those absolutes. (and if anyone reading this takes that as a challenge, feel free to give it a go).
How can this be explained, other than God doesn’t exist?
Either Christianity and most other religions are being deliberately dishonest about the nature of their gods, or, as you said, god doesn’t exist.
Ehhhhhhh. You’re conflating this existence with all of eternity. Those are very different things.
Consider God as a parent. I used the example in an earlier response but my friend took her child to be vaccinated. For a baby, that’s a very unpleasant day. In a week, she won’t remember it.
Similarly, an all powerful, good God can be okay with someone suffering for a momentary blip because the end result is an eternity of paradise. (What is a lifetime of suffering against infinite years of happiness?)
“But wait!” you cry, “surely an all powerful God can skip the ANY suffering bit, right? He’s just choosing not to because he’s a prick!” Which misses the possibility of self imposed constraints on power. If I build a system and choose to work within that system, that’s still me being all powerful. And if, as an all knowing being, I know that a half moment of unpleasantness means an eternity of bliss (so I can reward free will, instead of just creating a bunch of automatons), that’s a tradeoff a good and all powerful God may make.
You’re conflating this existence with all of eternity. Those are very different things.
Those are very different things, but I don’t see how or where they were conflated. Nor how conflating them would even be problematic in this context: they’d both be within god’s full scope of control, right?
Similarly, an all powerful, good God can be okay with someone suffering
So, not ‘all good’.
self imposed constraints on power. If I build a system and choose to work within that system, that’s still me being all powerful.
And if that system you just built includes evil, again we’re in not ‘all good’ territory.
I know that a half moment of unpleasantness means an eternity of bliss
According to self imposed rules that include evil
that’s a tradeoff a good and all powerful God may make.
A tradeoff? Why would god need to trade? If he wants something, he just makes it so – unless he isn’t all powerful. Or unless we’re still in the self-imposed-rules that allow for evil, which again is claiming that god is evil.
(so I can reward free will, instead of just creating a bunch of automatons)
Yeah free will usually comes up in these conversations, but right out the gate that’s an attack on god’s power: does he not have the ability to grant free will without also allowing evil? And even if he can’t, and ignoring that that claim is that he isn’t all powerful: why is the ability to commit evil always a criteria for free will? We can’t fly, shoot lasers out of our eyes, or fart out unicorns either, so with or without the ability to commit evil our freedom is still not absolute - does that make us a bunch of automatons?
Or rather, if the ability to commit evil was taken away from us, would we lose our free will? Let’s look at your freedom of choice within the context of dinner. Half a second’s thought, and I’ve got dozens of restaurant options, or grocery stores that allow me to cook up something that might fall outside of what the restaurants here offer: the number of options, while technically finite, are so mind-bogglingly huge that it might as well be infinite: so I’m gonna say my freedom of choice here is almost literally absolute.
One of those dinner options is to kidnap my neighbor’s 4-year old, throw him in the oven, and cannibalize him. Why? Cuz god lets me, right? Sure it’s illegal, but we don’t care about legal authority, we care about god’s. So if god snapped his fingers and changed our reality so that I’m no longer even capable of considering that, let alone committing it, evil is officially off the menu… but the billions of other possible combinations are still open, so I’d argue that my freedom of choice didn’t actually change all that much. Does that make me an automaton?
…and what about the things that I already don’t have the freedom to eat? Most of our reality isn’t edible. And even if it was, I can only fit a few handfuls of it into my belly at a time - I can’t have the moon for dinner, it won’t fit. …does that make me an automaton?
Point is our free will already exists within a system that has limits. Evil is one of many, many, many parts of that system, so even ignoring Epicurean Paradox, why is evil always a focal point of free will?
Those are very different things, but I don’t see how or where they were conflated.
Because a moment’s or even human lifetime’s suffering is effectively nothing when compared to eternity. Show me someone who wouldn’t trade a hundred years of suffering for an eternity of bliss and I’ll show you a silly goof.
So, just like my friend’s kiddo getting jabbed, yeah, sucks in the moment but no reasonable person would really call it horrific suffering given that, while unpleasant, it lasted under a day compared to her (hopefully) ~ 35,600 days on Earth. Saying because suffering exists on a human time scale when you’re talking about infinity is similarly silly.
You keep coming back to this “why can’t God make free will without evil? If he can’t, he’s not all powerful!”
But it’s a basic definition problem. You’re effectively asking God to make 1 = 1 AND 1 = 2, which fine, could do but it eliminates the entire usefulness of 1 as a number.
Similarly, if the idea of free will is to find and reward good people and punish those who squander free will (by being jerks) free will probably necessitates the capacity for evil. (Otherwise, just stick with angels. Haven’t read the bible thoroughly but I’m pretty sure that’s basically the point of angels, perfect beings incapable of doing evil except for the one God made rebellious etc.)
So if there will be no suffering and no evil in the eternity, why can’t it be like that already? If one is incapable of doing evil in heaven does he have free will? If your answer is that he will not be willing to do that, why? Because here on earth one can be good and die and one can be good and turn evil in the end, what makes heaven different and why it wouldn’t be possible right here right now?
If one is incapable of doing evil in heaven does he have free will?
What evil could you do in an eternal paradise? And similarly, in a paradise, what sort of temptation to evil do you foresee?
what makes heaven different and why it wouldn’t be possible right here right now?
Again, if you want to reward people who are good, you need a proving ground. In a paradise, anyone can be good. When life is harder (or has more temptations) that’s when our character shines through.
This weighing of temporary suffering against eternal bliss is just another example of what a lousy game God is playing. He could have come up with something else - but he didn’t. That makes him, in any case, a huge masochistic asshole.
And even if all of that were actually true, the question arises as to why anyone would ever regard such a being as the measure of all things, let alone worship it.
This weighing of temporary suffering against eternal bliss is just another example of what a lousy game God is playing. He could have come up with something else - but he didn’t.
Wait, why is an asshole move? He figured out a way to figure out who ought to be rewarded for all eternity after a moment’s existence, that’s pretty amazing. Think how much of art etc is grappling with the concept of death or non-existence. God instead figured out, “hey, here’s a way to sift through a bunch of people with free will and temptation and reward the good ones for all eternity.” I’d be impressed!
a huge masochistic asshole.
I mean, I agree but only because I think you’re not using the word you mean. (Masochist enjoys harming themselves, you probably mean sociopath or somesuch.) And yeah, I think you’d have to be a masochist to create this potential for infinite reward and then have ungrateful snots running around bitching about a temporary inconvenience.
Why would God create a system to “figure out who ought to be rewarded” when he already knows that information? He’s omniscient, he knew that information since the beginning of time, no system required.
If he needs to create this system, he is not omniscient.
If he chooses to create this system anyway, including creation of childhood cancer and starving puppies, then he is evil.
Of course I meant sadistic, you’re right. I guess my coffee was bad.
As for the rest of your answer, I don’t understand why you show understanding toward a being that had every opportunity, and it explicitly chose to play a cosmic game that seems to serve no purpose other than its own amusement.
But George Carlin said it best:
Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money!
Because a moment’s or even human lifetime’s suffering is effectively nothing when compared to eternity. Show me someone who wouldn’t trade a hundred years of suffering for an eternity of bliss and I’ll show you a silly goof.
And if that were a real scenario a mortal was faced with, yeah it’d be a good tradeoff; but we’re talking about god, and he doesn’t need to make those kinds of decisions.
So, just like my friend’s kiddo getting jabbed, yeah, sucks in the moment but no reasonable person would really call it horrific suffering given that, while unpleasant, it lasted under a day compared to her (hopefully) ~ 35,600 days on Earth. Saying because suffering exists on a human time scale when you’re talking about infinity is similarly silly.
The vaccine makes sense for us to do despite the pain because failing to do so leads to more pain - but all of our options regarding vaccines are all within a system that includes pathogens. If we had the option to just magic our immune systems to perfect without any suffering at all, you bet your ass that’s what we’d do. But vaccines are the best we got. But god made the pathogens, and god gave us vulnerable immune systems to those pathogens. God had the power to create a universe without them, or without our susceptibility to them, but he chose not to, allowing us instead to suffer at his whim. Not all good.
You keep coming back to this “why can’t God make free will without evil? If he can’t, he’s not all powerful!” But it’s a basic definition problem. You’re effectively asking God to make 1 = 1 AND 1 = 2, which fine, could do but it eliminates the entire usefulness of 1 as a number.
Did you just skip over that whole spiel? I gave an example of free will without evil. So, now you’re just just whipping up some strawman bullshit about ‘1=1 and 1=2’ - I’ve already explained why that’s not the case. You also skipped over why the ability to commit evil is always so pivotal to the concept of free will. Again, in the system that god made that is our universe, I’m not free to shoot lasers from my eyes or fart out unicorns: why are those any less of a requirement to having free will? Without those freedoms, we’re just automatons, right?
Similarly, if the idea of free will is to find and reward good people and punish those who squander free will (by being jerks) free will probably necessitates the capacity for evil. (Otherwise, just stick with angels. Haven’t read the bible thoroughly but I’m pretty sure that’s basically the point of angels, perfect beings incapable of doing evil except for the one God made rebellious etc.)
Yeah you might want to read it a little more thoroughly before trying to defend it: scripture is pretty explicit about not giving a fuck about you living a sinful life, so long as you repent in the end. …you’re familiar with Jesus, right? That’s kinda his whole story. Like, you could live absolutely stuffed to the brim with sin, defraud your way into a position of high office, use it almost excusively for greed and to do things like start wars to distract the world from your visits to some sketchy island to rape children… and then open your heart to Jesus on your death bed, and enjoy eternity in heaven with no consequences at all.
And going even further than that, according to scripture you can live an extremely moral life and still get thrown into hell if that moral behavior was for its own sake and not as a function that repentance. One of the stories is about the Pharisees, which is a big cautionary tale about walking the walk without actually believing in the message. Doesn’t matter if you’re doing good, if you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, yer gonna burn!
…I grew up in a Christian household, church, sunday school, the whole 9. If your only exposure to it is through sermons and things like sunday school, you’re not going to notice all the red flags, cuz they’re not gonna talk about them. Start reading that shit on your own, and take the time to really understand what it’s saying… it gets pretty fucked up. But again, don’t take my word for it - read the fuckin thing.
What are “good” and “evil”?
Why are you asking me? Those already have established meanings, there’s no need for me to reinvent them, nor do I have any kind of authority on our language even if I wanted to.
Why are you asking me?
Jordan Petersonesque comment. I think he was just sea lioning.
“What do you mean ‘do’? What do you mean ‘you’? What do you mean ‘believe’? And what do you mean ‘God’?”
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