Into the Night
Verified User
And it wasn't even cogent!
The problem of evil
- Thread starter Hume
- Start date
Into the Night
Verified User
Strawman fallacy. Buzzword fallacy. Define 'morality'.
Into the Night
Verified User
Why do you think there is no god?
Scut Farkus
Best
no.
evil is an issue for all victims of crime and other abuses, perpetrated by evil-doers.
and it's an issue for the evil themselves. they're going to hell.
Scut Farkus
Best
Daylight63
Verified User
Why do you think there IS? Who is required to prove a negative? If you have reason to believe in God then lay it out.
Daylight63
Verified User
^^ Perry claims I have a character flaw for wanting the mass murderer Joseph Stalin to have been held accountable.
I had family relatives arrested and held in the Gulag, Perry. You can forgive Stalin if you want. That's your choice!
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Jesus Christ. Here's what he said:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
You are free to deny the teachings of Jesus but then it would make a mockery of many of your own posts in which you LAUD Jesus' moral teachings.
I wish I understood your position because it seems to be very "pro-Jesus" except for what Jesus taught.
Yakuda
Verified User
It's the complete absence of good. That's evil. The complete absence of heat. Is absolute zero. Both only appear in the total absences of that which does exist, good and heat.
Daylight63
Verified User
SO let's take one of the "classics" of the PoE: the concept of an infant with an aggressive and vicious cancer. The question is "how could an all-loving God allow that to exist?"
By your reasoning it is an active behavior of God to keep people from getting cancers. That's about the only way for this concept of "evil as the absence of good" to work.
Like your example of "heat" vs absence of heat. So by your reasoning the Problem of Evil is simply turning it into the question: "How could an all-loving omnipotent God withhold the beneficence to keep the child from suffering?
Yakuda
Verified User
Oh yes the atheists tired old children with cancer argument. No "good" God would.allow children to suffer. It's evil that children suffer. Funny part is you're the one the once deciding what's good and what's evil. No offense but i don't really give a shit what you think is good or evil. You people think it's good to support people's delusions by claiming men are women simply because they say so. Based on that.alone.i.eoukdnt be inclined to let you watch my doget alone preach to me about what's good and what's evi.
Daylight63
Verified User
Tired and old? Glad this scenario doesn't "move" you in any way.
Then you haven't solved the problem of Evil then.
What evil did the infant do to deserve the cancer?
Ahhh, so in your world aggressive painful cancers that kill infants is not necessarily an example of "evil"? That's cool. I'm down with that. But why would God then allow the SUFFERING to exist? Can God not stop the SUFFERING?
No offense taken. Especially coming from someone who doesn't see infant cancers as something "bad".
...and we've lost the thread again. Too bad you can't stay focused on a topic.
Did the edible kick in here?
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
A phrase never stated by Jesus since Jesus preached love and unity, not hate and division.
There is no objective morality, no absolute right and wrong in a strictly materialistic universe, where we are all just collections of quarks and electrons.
Evil shouldn't even exist in a materialistic world. Just opinion, consensus, social conventions exist.
You or me might think a sickly child with a terminal disease is wrong. But the Nazis and Spartans would have thought it was just as well that the weak and sickly be culled from their gene pool.
Daylight63
Verified User
Why can't "evil" exist in such a setting? I mean I understand your undying hatred of all things atheist but you should learn that it is possible to disagree with a philosophy without painting it in the most stark and unpleasant terms you can imagine or comparing them to Nazis or Stalin.
Of COURSE evil can exist in that setting! LOL. Evil actions can be taken that harm other members of society without justification. Evil exists in people who can't understand the world without punishment. Evil exist in those who espouse a philosophy and then violate every aspect of it.
Why is this such a difficult concept?
The advantage of an atheistic philosophy is that we don't assume that there is an all-powerful being who could stop the pain and suffering but chooses not to.
There is no "problem of evil" in an atheistic world but that does not mean there is no "evil".
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I've seen no evidence of a god.
There is a slim possibility that there could be one, but no one has any evidence to support the notion,
The absence of good would be not helping someone. Deliberately inflicting pain, misery, and death on others are affirmative actions - not the absence of anything. Evil is not the absence of good, but the malicious acts to harm others.
There is no objective evil in a materialistic world.
You would have to have a standard apart from and superceding human opinion to say there is such a concept as absolute right and wrong. Otherwise it's just relative morality based on opinion or social convention.
For every reason you can think of to spare no expense at treating a handicapped, sickly and terminally ill child, the Spartans, the Nazis, the eugenicists would say it's better off to cull feeble and infirm humans from the gene pool for the overall sake of society.
Yakuda
Verified User
Malicious acts to harm other because of complete lack of good.
If you want to understand Christianity, you have to do more than read some quotes from Jesus on a webpage.
There is an enormous amount of extra-biblical literature which lay the foundation for Christian theology and practice.
Augustine is arguably the second most important Christian in the history of the religion, and Christian theology is pregnant with his philosophies and writings.
As a Christian, you have a duty to the state as well as to the religion. The Augustinian metaphor is the City of God and the City of Man. The state is God's imperfect and temporary agency on Earth that is supposed to keep order by keeping criminals and miscreants in line with the threat of punishment. War can be also justified in a Christian state if there is a compelling moral imperative to support it.
There is no conventional Christian denomination which would advocate that Himmler and Goebbels just be forgiven and allowed to walk away scott free.
Government is a necessary evil which should be limited, as our constitution attempts to do.