A VERY INTERESTING CONVERSATION (between an atheist professor and a christian student)
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Most atheists I know have other reasons for being one other than the usual "why is there evil and devastation in the world" there's so many arguments you can make against that weak ass argument the professor had.
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lighthearted26 wrote: »Most atheists I know have other reasons for being one other than the usual "why is there evil and devastation in the world" there's so many arguments you can make against that weak ass argument the professor had.
I would be interested in hearing them. The central problem of evil directly lead to my conversion to atheism. The problem as it appears to me is straight-forward. ? is defined as a being all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving.This leads to the paradox that this ? exists and 500,000 children, mostly in Africa, die each year due to malaria. This ? can trivially help these children, loves them as his own children, but lets them die.
To resolve this paradox I can assume ? acts mysteriously, however ? is all-powerful. If he has a hidden agenda he can achieve that agenda without killing children. To say otherwise means ? is not all-powerful.
Perhaps I can argue that ? has dominion over us and anything he does is right. This reduces ? to a psychopath that kills children by the boatload then demands we worship him. I must drop the all-loving trait assigned to ? and accept that this entity is inherently evil.
If I eliminate ? from the equation everything I sees starts to make sense. Malaria kills people according to the rules of nature no supernatural being is needed. It strikes people in Africa and equatorial areas because the species that causes malaria thrives there. With ? I am left with contradictions while without ? the worst I have are unanswered questions.
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Snopes does what they canSnowBunnySmanger wrote: »good looks on that link janklow
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@whar well one argument is that ? creates a world where ? just happens based on the nature of the world itself. Lets say you slip on some ice and break your leg. ? didn't set out to make sure you broke your leg on April 23, 2012 at 4:00pm. He just created a world where people exist, ice exist, and if a person happens to walk on it they might slip.
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lighthearted26 wrote: »@whar well one argument is that ? creates a world where ? just happens based on the nature of the world itself. Lets say you slip on some ice and break your leg. ? didn't set out to make sure you broke your leg on April 23, 2012 at 4:00pm. He just created a world where people exist, ice exist, and if a person happens to walk on it they might slip.
? is the creator of that world's nature. If by the nature of that world millions of children die each year from disease and famine they fall by ? 's hand.
If a ? has the traits all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving a paradox arises. Since ? is all-powerful and all-knowing any world this ? creates is exactly the way he wants it. Since ? has the power to create any possible universe then he could have trivially created one where I did not slip and fall on ice on April 23, 2012 at 4:00pm.
It is not lost on me either that you moved from the wholesale slaughter of innocent children to something rather trivial like a broken leg. Your argument makes a certain sense for the small events that touch our lives like a broken leg but when we examine the world in total it simply fails. 10,000 dead in an earthquake, 200,000 dead in a tidal wave, 5,000,000 dead dues to a disease. When you look at slaughter on this scale it becomes quite clear that there can not be a personal ? that loves but murders us on such scales. -
Yea it doesn't account for the amount of evil and devastation in the world. But there's also the free will defense saying for us to have free will evil must exist. If ? did away with evil, then a person wouldn't be able to ? or ? because they wouldn't have the free will to do so. You can't have conditional free will "you can do what you want unless its evil"
There's also natural evil like tsunamis and hurricanes which I think can be explained by my previous statement about the nature of the world itself. We have certain laws like gravity, not being able to walk on water, etc. Without this, the world would be a scary place. I might walk outside and fall through the concrete or something So ? chose to create a world with these natural laws and because of the specific nature of our world, things just happen like tornados and floods. -
? gave the angels free will and no evil exists, allegedly, in heaven. For ? , free will and natural law without the possibility of evil would be possible.
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Yea in heaven but how can you have free will on earth without evil? That would mean everyone would be naturally good right? So ? creates a world where everyone is good and kind?
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1. ? created the universe. He could have created any possible universe but chose this one.
2. ? loves us
3. The universe ? created kills us by the 10s of thousands
Your argument simply states he did it. It ignores the central paradox. If ? loves us why did he create a universe that is so dangerous to us? Free will works for the evil we do each other but that pales in comparison to the random evil the world inflicts.
Once one realizes ? can not be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, in fact he can be none of these things, it is easy to see how rational the world is without him. Your own posts lighthearted26 acknowledge this impossibility of these traits belonging to ? .
"Yea in heaven but how can you have free will on earth without evil?" - ? is all-powerful he can trivially achieve this.
The basic rules and laws of the physical world lead to the straightforward conclusion that a all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving ? is an impossibility. If a ? does he mus be a ? of the deists, a sort of removed prime-mover. -
? does things beyond our understanding lol. That's the last argument I got. But you should check out the "argument from evil". Its a good read. Just Google it.
