Theodicy, the problem of evil

Doc Dutch said:
The fact you say you are a Christian then brag about your superiority in the same sentence is interesting, Pmp.
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I would say prove me wrong, except you constantly prove me right......how is it bragging to say that 99% percent of all humanity is superior to you?......
 
Cypress said:
We have evolved the cognitive capacity and reason to imagine how to avoid conflict with grizzly bears, how to minimize the risk of death by flood or earthquake, how to prepare for fire risks, how to treat and maintain our bodies to be at low risk of obesity, cancer, heart disease.
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This appliers to us but not to zebras who never die of old age; they die of being eaten by lions.
I doubt if that's pleasant for them.

Are people more important than zebras?
Did Zebras ask to be born and then slaughtered?

I completely reject the idea that humans have a "soul" and are more important to the universe than other mammals, at least.
I reject it because there's no logical reason for it.
Why?
What suggests that?
Nothing in my personal experience does.

My Avatar is a more pleasant being in whose company to be than I am,
and that's fairly obvious to ANYONE who knows us both.

I personally can prove nothing, but as a matter of faith,
I don't believe in God because WHY?

Why is a universe created by a deity more likely than one created by self-generating matter?

Neither makes any sense at all to me, so my preference is to not care,
this without casting any aspersions on those with the curiosity that I lack on the matter.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
I would say prove me wrong, except you constantly prove me right......how is it bragging to say that 99% percent of all humanity is superior to you?......
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The fact you claim to be a Christian while attacking others with lies and hatred is the point, Pmp, not the percentages you pull out of your ass.

You truly are an evil person, old man. I have no doubt those around you know this is true.
 
Doc Dutch said:
I tend to agree with this version. Ours is a dichotomic universe, at least from a human perspective; hot-cold, light-dark, up-down, left-right, good-evil. I disagree with the Christian version of evil as a force and favor a view that it is simply the absence of good like cold is the absence of heat or darkness the absence of light.

Atheists see death as evil. They use events like the tsunami of 2004 or the Maui fire as evidence God doesn't exist because they see life as a one-shot deal where their existence terminates upon mortal death. Those who believe there is more to existence than our mortal coil see life as more equivalent to K-12 schooling, there is a greater existence beyond this one. Ergo, dying at age 5, 50 or 105 is only a minor difference in the long run. How long a person lives is less important than how they live.
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Sounds about right.

I don't know whether or not there is a God.
But I've seen a lot of persons hollering that Hitler, earthquakes, and floods prove there is no God, and it's always seemed a poor line of reasoning to me.
 
Cypress said:
Sounds about right.

I don't know whether or not there is a God.
But I've seen a lot of persons hollering that Hitler, earthquakes, and floods prove there is no God, and it's always seemed a poor line of reasoning to me.
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Agreed there is not evidence for or against the existence of a creator or the force behind existence. Also agreed the atheist line of "reasoning" is flawed.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
This appliers to us but not to zebras who never die of old age; they die of being eaten by lions.
I doubt if that's pleasant for them.

Are people more important than zebras?
Did Zebras ask to be born and then slaughtered?

I completely reject the idea that humans have a "soul" and are more important to the universe than other mammals, at least.
I reject it because there's no logical reason for it.
Why?
What suggests that?
Nothing in my personal experience does.

My Avatar is a more pleasant being in whose company to be than I am,
and that's fairly obvious to ANYONE who knows us both.

I personally can prove nothing, but as a matter of faith,
I don't believe in God because WHY?

Why is a universe created by a deity more likely than one created by self-generating matter?

Neither makes any sense at all to me, so my preference is to not care,
this without casting any aspersions on those with the curiosity that I lack on the matter.
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I like dogs better than most people.

I don't think a planet with feline carnivores proves anything one way or the other.

For the most part, our treatment of confined livestock and poultry birds as a food sources is far crueler than anything experienced by zebras and lions. There are pigs right now confined to cages small enough that they can't even turn around. I think the slaughter house is probably
more terrifying to a cow than anything experienced by a zebra on the African Serengeti.

The difference between us and animals is we have free will. We could choose to not be extremely cruel to animals. And there is nothing about our survival that depends on the commission of extreme cruelty to livestock and poultry.
 
Cypress said:
The difference between us and animals is we have free will.
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I concede that this is possible because I can't illustrate otherwise;

nor can I or anyone else prove that it's actually so, at least in a way understandable to me.

Some will choose to imagine the possibilities with great intellectual curiosity,
and as I said, that's good if they derive satisfaction from that.

The contemplation tends to agitate me, sometimes severely, so I take the route of not thinking about it.:cool:
 
NiftyNiblick said:
I concede that this is possible because I can't illustrate otherwise;

nor can I or anyone else prove that it's actually so, at least in a way understandable to me.

Some will choose to imagine the possibilities with great intellectual curiosity,
and as I said, that's good if they derive satisfaction from that.

The contemplation tends to agitate me, sometimes severely, so I take the route of not thinking about it.:cool:
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Normal human beings have the ability to reason and choose....including the choice of sitting on their asses and refusing to choose.
 
Doc Dutch said:
Normal human beings have the ability to reason and choose....including the choice of sitting on their asses and refusing to choose.
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I see, Oom.

And your credentials for having arrived at this conclusion are what again?

There don't seem to be any published texts which either confirm or explain your assertions.

The thing with you,
and so many other JPP "contributors,"
is that you like to express your beliefs as proven fact
when they very obviously are not.

You're not content to say that no conclusions are definitively proven and thus perceptions will vary.

Because of that, there's no exchanging ideas with you on an academic level.

You're content to be a "regular guy" with "common sense" when both of those things are the imaginary manifestations of
the non-distinguished.

I will continue trying to push you to get above that, and you will continue, I'm sure, to resist.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
I see, Oom.

And your credentials for having arrived at this conclusion are what again?
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Not my credentials, neef, but you're free to sit on your ass and disclaim responsibility for your own life. It's a choice. :thup:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/cogito-ergo-sum
cogito, ergo sum, (Latin: “I think, therefore I am) dictum coined by the French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes in his Discourse on Method (1637) as a first step in demonstrating the attainability of certain knowledge. It is the only statement to survive the test of his methodic doubt. The statement is indubitable, as Descartes argued in the second of his six Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), because even if an all-powerful demon were to try to deceive him into thinking that he exists when he does not, he would have to exist in order for the demon to deceive him. Therefore, whenever he thinks, he exists. Furthermore, as he argued in his replies to critics in the second edition (1642) of the Meditations, the statement “I am” (sum) expresses an immediate intuition, not the conclusion of a piece of reasoning (regarding the steps of which he could be deceived), and is thus indubitable. However, in a later work, the Principles of Philosophy (1644), Descartes suggested that the cogito is indeed the conclusion of a syllogism whose premises include the propositions that he is thinking and that whatever thinks must exist.
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Tinkerpeach said:
Why do you believe God is nice?
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I'm agnostic about God, and it's foolish to anthropomorphize god, if it exists.


I've never thought earthquakes, floods, or forest fires are evil because evil is defined by intent. Floods, earthquakes, fires are a natural and neccessary part of the biogeochemical cycle that makes life possible, by replenishment of top soil and nutrients, recycling of carbon and heat, keeping the continents and oceans active and habitable.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
I concede that this is possible because I can't illustrate otherwise;

nor can I or anyone else prove that it's actually so, at least in a way understandable to me.

Some will choose to imagine the possibilities with great intellectual curiosity,
and as I said, that's good if they derive satisfaction from that.

The contemplation tends to agitate me, sometimes severely, so I take the route of not thinking about it.:cool:
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Given that we can't even know for sure if we have free will I am honestly confused at how the other poster could claim animals DON'T have it. But then I tend to try to be logical about points like that.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
I concede that this is possible because I can't illustrate otherwise;

nor can I or anyone else prove that it's actually so, at least in a way understandable to me.

Some will choose to imagine the possibilities with great intellectual curiosity,
and as I said, that's good if they derive satisfaction from that.

The contemplation tends to agitate me, sometimes severely, so I take the route of not thinking about it.:cool:
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Free will doesn't seem like something that can be proven one way or the other with mathmatical equations or scientific experiments.

Science knows a lot less than most laypersons realize.

Questions like free will, why the big bang happened, or why the universal gravitational constant exists are metaphysical questions.
 
IlaceWords said:
Given that we can't even know for sure if we have free will I am honestly confused at how the other poster could claim animals DON'T have it. But then I tend to try to be logical about points like that.
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Just because you don't have it, son, doesn't mean other people don't. You obviously have mental issues, either genetic or damage, which prevents you from exercising free will. Most people on the backside of the IQ Bell Curve lack the ability. The lower the IQ, the less free will they have.
 
Doc Dutch said:
Just because you don't have it, son, doesn't mean other people don't. You obviously have mental issues, either genetic or damage, which prevents you from exercising free will. Most people on the backside of the IQ Bell Curve lack the ability. The lower the IQ, the less free will they have.
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I don't think free will can be proven scientifically. But the ability to freely make choices seems so self evident to us psychologically it would take unequivocal and iron clad scientific proof that our sensory perception and psychological awareness are deceiving us to believe otherwise.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
 
Cypress said:
I don't think free will can be proven scientifically. But the ability to freely make choices seems so self evident to us psychologically it would take unequivocal and iron clad scientific proof that our sensory perception and psychological awareness are deceiving us to believe otherwise.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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Can we agree that Human Beings are a step above all other animals in terms of reason? That humans can make decisions by reasoning out the consequences whereas animals simply react to their genetics and experience?

Animals can reason such as a pig working at a latch to get at food, but that's as far as they go. They don't think about what Farmer John has planned for them much less plan out their adult life.

While the religious part of Free Will, the independent soul, is unlikely to be proved, there should be no doubt that most normal human beings can plan ahead and make decisions based upon those plans. That, IMO, is free will.
 
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