I think the fundamental issue with this is that it presumes that our understanding of morality is perfect. If an all-knowing, all-powerful God acted contrary to our understanding of morality, or allowed something to happen contrary to our understanding of morality it would make sense for us to perceive that as undermining our understanding of God, making him imperfect. An all-knowing, all-encomposing God may have an understanding that we as mortals are incapable of understanding or perceiving.
It presumes to know a perfect morality while also arguing that morality can be subjective. It doesn’t make sense, just like an irrational belief in a God. I think the best way to go about this is to allow people to believe how they want and stop trying to convince people one way another about their beliefs. People get to believe differently and that is not wrong.
Edit: holy shit those reddit comments are full of /r/iamverysmart material lmfao
An all-knowing, all-encomposing God may have an understanding that we as mortals are incapable of understanding or perceiving.
That being could make us understand.
Sure, but the concept itself is that whatever entity it is knows better, so the fact you don’t undetstand has a purpose in the entity’s “grand scheme”.
What I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter because as humans we’re all just trying to make sense of ourselves and our place in the universe. The fact we exist is perplexing, and however we decide to deal with that fact is up to each individual, and that’s ok.
If you skip the “evil” part and just start talking about “things that are bad for us humans” it’s still true though. Sure, maybe child cancer is somehow moral or good from the perspective of an immortal entity, but in this case this entity is obviously operating on a basis that is completely detached from what’s meaningful to us. Our lives, our suffering, our hardship - obviously none of all this is relevant enough to a potential god to do anything about it. Or he would, but can’t. Hence the Epicurean paradox.
One answer I’ve heard from religious people is that life after death will make up for it all. But that doesn’t make sense either. If heaven/paradise/whatever puts life into such small perspective that our suffering doesn’t matter, then our lives truly don’t mean anything. It’s just a feelgood way of saying god couldn’t care less about child cancer - because in the grand scheme of things it’s irrelevant anyway.
To us humans, our lives aren’t meaningless. Child cancer isn’t irrelevant. We care about what’s happening in this life and to the people we care about. How could a god be of any relevance to us if our understanding of importance, of value, of good and bad, is so meaningless to them? Why would we ever construct and celebrate organized religion around something so detached from ourselves? The answer is: We wouldn’t.
Either god is relevant to our lives or he isn’t. Reality tells us: He isn’t. Prayers don’t work, hardship isn’t helped, suffering isn’t stopped. Thought through to it’s inevitable conclusion the Epicurean paradox is logical proof that god as humans used to think about him doesn’t exist, and if something of the sorts exists, it’s entirely irrelevant to us.
You may be right.
If a god does exist, then bad things are part of its higher morality, or evil design. If a god doesn’t exist, then who cares? Why waste so much energy disproving its existence? Just ignore the crazy religious people, and try and help make the world better. Those people may waste time praying, or not doing anything to help suffering and then act high and mighty, but that will NEVER stop. Religion has and always will exist. It’s a way for people to cope with their insignificance, cope with unfairness, and grapple with the concept of death and accepting its inevitablity. If you want to feel and be better than them by actually helping humanity go for it. But at the end of the day people can believe what they will and that’s ok. But whether or not there is a god, despising or looking down on people for believing is just as productive as you believe praying is.
Why waste so much energy disproving its existence?
I hope it doesn’t annoy you, as I said in it other subcomment trees already, but I feel the need to say it for potential other readers:
Because organised religion has caused and does still cause a tremendous amount of suffering.Just ignore the crazy religious people
That is easier said than done if the crazy religious, spiritual, superstituous people don’t ignore you and murder you for supposedly being a witch. Sounds medieval, but it isn’t. https://www.dw.com/en/witch-hunts-a-global-problem-in-the-21st-century/a-54495289 Or if you are being beaten and killed for being homosexual. https://www.dw.com/en/iran-defends-execution-of-gay-people/a-49144899 Or if you are being “honour killed” because you didn’t want to live in a forced marriage and wear a head scarf. https://www.dw.com/en/honor-killings-in-germany-when-families-turn-executioners/a-42511928
Long story short: too many religious people suck a lot. Worsened by their need to expand their religion by proselytizing the naive and thereby nurturing more maniacs.
Why waste so much energy disproving its existence?
To mitigate suffering and save lives in the long run.
Religion has and always will exist.
Probably true but changeable by peacefully reducing member counts of religions.
It’s a way for people to cope with their insignificance, cope with unfairness, and grapple with the concept of death and accepting its inevitablity
Which shows the need for further societal support solutions on a larger scale which do not need religion to function. Think of better education, better access to medical and psychological help as a start.
I think the fundamental issue with this is that it presumes that our understanding of morality is perfect.
By that measure, all religions have the fundamental issue of presuming that they have any actual knowledge or understanding of their god(s).
But not all religions claim to have perfect knowledge of their god? Some acknowledge that god is greater and beyond our understanding
Conveniently, they claim to know what their god wants when they’re telling you want to do, but also claim not to understand their gods ways when challenged on parts of their faith.
I mean yeah, that is the point. A higher being told you to do X, you understood X exactly as it is a concept that you already have built upon in the course of your life. But you still cannot comprehend the higher being itself.
Take a simple thought experiment from flatland. If a spherical (3D) being were to appear on an otherwise 2D (flatland) world and say “Do not go to your house tonight”. The flatlander can understand the meaning of what the sphere said, but cannot comprehend the sphere itself in its entirety. No matter how the sphere explains himself to the flatlander, the flatlander may not have the correct picture of the sphere.
My point is that none of it makes sense. Our existence and consciousness in a vast universe doesn’t make sense. So at the end of the day, who cares what someone else believes to cope with that? Bad shit happens, people will explain it was for one purpose or another, but at the end of the day bad shit just happens and we should do our best to stop it, regardless of whos fault it is.
It’s so weird. Athiests claim to not believe in a god but then blame a god for when bad things happen, asking believers why their god would let it happen. Why do they care about what an imaginary god lets happen? Some sick fuck murdered a bunch of people, who gives a flying fuck what some random religon’s god says about it?
So at the end of the day, who cares what someone else believes to cope with that?
I care as soon as religion causes suffering. Which was and still is the case. (Sorry, have to say it again.)
but at the end of the day bad shit just happens and we should do our best to stop it, regardless of whos fault it is.
Agreed.
Athiests claim to not believe in a god but then blame a god for when bad things happen
Personally, I can imagine that’s frustration coming from people who may have been raised in a religious household. But I can’t speak for all. Haven’t heard from such a phenomenon though.
who cares what someone else believes to cope with that?
I start caring then those “coping mechanisms” begin to be imposed on people who aren’t members of that religion.
Double this.
Basically God’s evil != Human’s evil
But God told humans what good and evil is, therefore human’s evil is at least a subset of God’s evil.
AFAIK that’s true for Islam and several branches of orthodoxy.
Regarding your first paragraph:
According to the christian bible their God literally told them that for example killing is evil. And yet, it exists and God is a mass murderer according to bible accounts. There are various explicit and implicit definitions of good and evil available in that book which is supposedly written by their God in some way or another. Therefore, the omnipotent being defined clear rules of morality which it doesn’t even uphold itself.
allow people to believe how they want and stop trying to convince people one way another about their beliefs
Although I agree in principle with the notion of “live and let live”, organised religion has caused unfathomable suffering and it still does. In a lot of religions it is sadly incorporated into their very core. That’s something which I can not tolerate and will speak out against.
Fun fact, if you arrive at this conclusion as an 8 year old in Sunday school at your ultra fundamentalist Baptist Church and proceed to tell the teacher, you get yelled at and spanked by the teacher and your parents! Ask me how I know.
How do you know?
This presupposes that “evil” exists as a universal concept that a god is bound, versus a god that exists outside of concepts of morality.
In Christianity there are several explicit or implicit definitions of good and evil and how their God judges them based on that. Therefore, concepts of morality exist in that context.
The god that gave His faithful the ten commandments and has His church promise heaven or hell depending on behavior exists outside of morality ? He literally defines it.
He/it creates and defines concepts of morality, but may not be a part of that system, or bound by those definitions. If we’re imagining a being of some kind that is (nominally) omnipotent and omnipresent, the I don’t see how we could realistically apply morality based on a mortal existence to it. How could you apply, for instance, a rule that says “don’t murder” to a thing that is incapable of death in any way that we would understand it?
I’m absolutely not a theist, but I think that exercises like this are ultimately futile. When I was a believer, this kind of mental exercise wouldn’t have made much of a dent in my belief. The nature of evil has been a study point for religious scholars for >2000 years, and mostly people ahve shrugged and said that they don’t understand, but they have faith, and that’s good enough. OTOH, I’m a sample size of one, so maybe there are people that would see this argument and question how rational their belief was.
The question whether god may understand or be bound by moral standards is irrelevant though. Apparently he doesn’t act on it. Either he doesn’t care enough to do or he can’t.
Of course one can imagine god in a way that’s compatible with our world - for example an evil god, a god that doesn’t care about humans, a god that has no relationship with the world, or a god that’s incapable of interference with it. Epicurus doesn’t say god doesn’t exist, merely the (formerly prevalent) idea of an all loving, all knowing, omnipotent creator god. That one is apparently impossible and therefore most likely doesn’t exist.
And going one step further we can say: Well okay, maybe god doesn’t exist, but apparently not in a way that’s relevant to this world. At least not beyond the idea itself. There is no tangible influence of god in this life - he doesn’t interfer (for whatever reason). And since the formerly prevalent idea of god is obviously wrong it’s hard to say if humans were ever justified in thinking we know something about god at all. (Would be a feat anyway, giving the fact that god apparently doesn’t interfer with our reality.) This however leaves very little room to justify or explain the need for religion.
When I was a believer this was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. I understood that we know nothing of god, cannot know anything of god, and cannot claim to say he does exist - and that religion therefore made no sense. Back then I called myself an agnostic, taking into account the possibility that, as unlikely as it might me, god could yet exist in some form. Today I don’t even believe that. The term “god” stems from a tradition of groundless and increasingly refuted attributions, and there’s just as much reason to assume the existence of such a concept as every other work of fiction out there. If you’d experience the world without the predenomination of religion you wouldn’t arrive at anything close to their idea of a god in the first place. This was my conclusion from the Epicurean paradox.
So, n=2, now we have a tie.
(Exercise like this might feel futile to you - I find them immensely interesting.)
Seem confusing?
That’s right - because anything that’s made up and subject to interpretation IS!
More like our very existence as sentient, conscious creatures on a rock orbiting a star in the vast emptiness of space contained in a umiverse doesn’t make sense in the first place, so any attempt to explain it would barely make sense anyway.
And even if it does not make sense, here we are. We ourself are the proof that things are not true or false just on the basis of our understanding of those same things.
What if an almighty God created the universe without evil but with free-will, and then one angel decided to challange the way God rule, so that God has to let him rule to show everyone whose way of rule is the best?
Simply killing that angel would not answer the challenge, on the contrary, killing that angel would demonstrate that God is a dictator.
As if the christian God had a problem with killing, considering they are a mass murderer compared to their angel.
Furthermore, why did they create an angel which became “evil” in the first place? This brings us right back to the Epicurean paradox.
One of the funniest things humanity has done is to invent the concept of God as a super entity and then reduce him/them/it to their level.
Why would a super entity be bound by “love” which only humans understand ? Why would “it” have the concept of “evil”, something that humans invented out of fear.
As a species we just need to accept we are just stupid.
Why would a super entity be bound by “love” which only humans understand ? Why would “it” have the concept of “evil”, something that humans invented out of fear.
It doesn’t. That’s the point. The Epicurean paradox doesn’t say god doesn’t exist in some way or form, but the idea of god as someone with a relationship to humanity based on love, omnipotence and omniscience (in any way that’s meaningful to us) is apparently false.
Or from your perspective: God loves us in his way; he doesn’t love us in our way, which means we can’t expect the same mercy, the same support, the same commitment from him as we humans are capable of.
Epicurus refuted one very specific idea of god, which was prevalent at one point in time, but is today only believed by very devout evangelicals. What we today conclude from the fact that apparently no god will alleviate the suffering in this life is up to each individual.
And that is why religion is effectively meaningless. We have invented a being full of contradictions, much like ourselves, but declared [it|whatever] perfect besides that. The answer to the paradox is that there is no God.
People should learn to strive for good without the threat of eternal punishment from a being of their invention, otherwise those individuals were never good to begin with, and their imaginary all powerful, all knowing and judgemental god would punish them regardless.
Define “good”.
As a species we just need to accept we are just stupid.
Or in the words of Socrates: “I know that I know nothing.”
Or in the words of (possibly or possibly not) Einstein: “Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”I agree. It is better not to assume anything and take it for a truth, but to find the truth through reliable and provable methods.
Just being the devil advocate here: I disagree with the “destroy Satan” part, Satan isn’t the definition of evil, he is only the HR department that deal with the evil people, and the part of God not stopping evil, maybe he don’t because it go against free will? About the not loving, he promises a perfect infinity world after all of this, after a few centuries of perfection you don’t care/remember I guess
Good advocate. Anyway, “God not stopping evil, maybe he don’t because it go against free will” - That enters the loop at the bottom. Could God create a universe where free will exists, but evil does not exist? If yes, then why didn’t He? If He could not create such a universe, then he’s not all powerful and/or not all loving and good.
“About the not loving, he promises a perfect infinity world after all of this” - Then why do we have to go through this initial, temporary and imperfect part?
Maybe free will requires the infinite complexity of this world and hence must also contain “evil” in some way.
Then god is not all powerful
That’s trying to sidestep the answer, but it just loops back: could God create an “infinitely complex” world with free will where evil does not need to exist? I’m effectively asking the same question, “could God create a universe with free will and without evil”?
Assuming that your assertion is true, that the infinite complexity of this world must contain evil, then God is not all powerful nor all loving.
I dunno. To be all powerful does God need to be able to create paradoxes? Things that are and aren’t? I think that by limiting choices, free will is no longer fully free.
The all loving part I think gets resolved by the free will idea, too — he’s not going to step in and be a nanny.
I’m not really advocating for some biblical God, btw. Though, admittedly, I am spiritual in different senses which might overlap with the biblical God in some ways.
To be all powerful does God need to be able to create paradoxes?
To be all powerful means you literally create all the rules, including any that might lead to paradoxes, or being able to create a set of rules that lead to no paradoxes, ever.
The all loving part I think gets resolved by the free will idea, too — he’s not going to step in and be a nanny.
Again, he creates the rules, the “state machine”. If we humans can reach a “failed” (evil) state, it’s only because it’s an option that has been created.
Also, free will automatically breaks either god’s omniscience (and omnipotence) or being all-loving. If god knows everything that will ever happen, free will cannot exist except as an illusion, for everything is already predetermined. If free will exists, well, then we can safely imply that god is not all powerful, for god cannot predict our decisions.
Choices are already limited… by our brains. Some people choose to stick objects up their urethra. Based on statistical probability, I would guess you do not. Does the fact that your brain limits you from making that choice mean your will is not free? You didn’t choose which brain you would get. Or are you going to go stick something up there to prove how free you are?
Don’t appreciate (i) your disgusting example and (ii) your attitude. Most of this is obviously amounting to different interpretations of “free will” and even “omnipotence.” Ok, if it’s free with no limitations, you win, buddy. If it’s free will in the sense that, well, obviously, there are constraints, but it is precisely those constraints that give rise to different wants, desires, actions, and pursuits, and there is freedom to choose them, then ok, there might be free will. In any case, free will is vague and not precisely defined. Similarly, does omnipotence entail the ability of creating something outside of yourself? If no, then ok, the paradox stands. If not, then the paradox doesn’t.
Then in paradise there won’t be free will either, or evil will prevail there as well.
Literally advocating for the devil.
evil exists -> no
Honestly that’s probably the only way out of the problem of evil.
That said you are on a path of ethical relativism, and from a practical standpoint it’s fucked up beyond belief.
Also so much of religion is founded on the good/ evil dynamic that if this was removed, everything else would crumble.
I have never before encountered an “aC” dating system. A quick google shows the dates to line up with BC, but it’s still new.
heh, it’s the ante christ
What if I disagree with the premise?
Replace with “bad stuff happens”.
“tree falls in a forest”
Care to elaborate?
“bad stuff happens” is a subjective evaluation based off humans perceiving some outcomes as good and others as bad; “if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around, does it make a sound?” is a common english-language expression about whether subjective experiences exist in the absence of consciousness to perceive it.
does “bad stuff happen” if nobody experiences it?
Are you questioning that people experience bad things?
Nope!
So what are you saying? I really don’t get it.
Bad stuff is happening to people. People suffer. Suffering exists. This is not the question.
Is this fact of our reality compatible with the existence of an all knowing, all loving, omnipotent god? Epicurus says no.
So assuming an all knowing, all loving, omnipotent god and our reality we’ve got ourselves a paradox. How do we solve it? Either one of the premises is wrong (so god could be two or less of those things, but not all three) or there’s an entirely different explanation (haven’t heard a good one so far tbh).
As a bonus we could now ask ourselves if an entity that is merely two of those original three things would be worthy of worship or would in another way justify the existence of organized religion.
It’s a simple task in logical thinking. No idea where you were going with the tree metaphor.
I don’t know, have you been to West Bank?
Maybe Satan is also all-powerful, and each time they fight it’s a coin toss. Unstoppable force meets unmovable object.
Assuming that Christianity is even slightly based in fact and that entities like God and Satan actually exist.
My understanding is that God is big on free will, including for the angels. Angel wants to fall and be the lord of darkness? Whatever, go for it.
My own interpretation of God and Satan, which is highly limited by what I learned about the Bible when I was a kid — and thus may be extremely incorrect — is that Satan viewed God’s “requirements” of being “good” to gain eternal life in heaven to be paradoxical to free will. Following God means not making decisions for yourself. So Satan represents the rebel, the true free will, with no regard to God’s plan or will.
But there’s a trick, I think: choose to follow the path of “good.” Don’t follow God’s plan because you have to but because you want to.
This resolves the problem and Satan can go back to being “good.”
I view this all symbolically and as a metaphor for how each of us confront and balance our individuality and selfish interests with harmony and collective good.
Are you 16 and this is deep?
What if an almighty God created the universe without evil, but with free-will, and then one angel decided to challange the way God rules, so that God has to let him rules to show everyone whose way of rule is the best?
Simply killing that angel would not answer the challenge, on the contrary, killing that angel would demonstrate that God is a dictator.
Pasted from a reply to another user.
God is already a dictator by choosing the state of everything. Designing a chaotic system and letting it run also supports being a dictator. He designed the system. An omnipotent God is unable to escape His own designs. The rebellious angel was by design. His planning thereby is guile.
If the rebellious angel was evil by design, then there is no free-will.
Prove there is free will anyways. All modern studies of the brain and consciousness indicate our free will only exists in a compatibalist way, in other words we can be free to act without another actor forcing us. But libertarian free will, such as would be required for any being to act against their “design” has no evidence whatsoever.
Omniscience is knowing all that will happen. The rebellious angel’s free-will creates a smaller God.
God created angels. If God created an angel which challenges them and is “evil” (saying that about some angel dude who isn’t a mass murderer like their creator according to bible records https://www.wired.com/2007/04/old-testament-m/ https://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html ) then we arrive again at the Epicurean paradox.
Still wouldn’t answer why god doesn’t interfer with evil. Why doesn’t he help us against this angel? Heals sicknesses? Stops wars? Saves victims of murder and rape?
There is a few problems with this diagram:
- Why should God want only the good? What is the paradox of God wanted to do whatever it want with its creation? The all-powerful, all-knowing God would have create Satan and wanted that he did all bad things he did.
- Why should the test be to let God know about us? It could be about letting us know about ourself.
Also the branch that are not yes/no does not cover all possibility. Therefore, this is not a paradox but rather an incomplet thought. I know that much from UML.
I don’t know much about history but didn’t Epicure lived at a time where people believe their was multiple gods? Why is it not mentioned in the scheme? Did he believe that there was only one god?
We know paradoxes exist in the real world. Therefore proving that the existence of God is paradoxical does not prove that God doesn’t exist. It simply proves that God is paradoxical. Which most people knew already.
Paradoxes don’t “exist” in the real world. Reality isn’t paradoxical. Paradoxes are what we call problems we haven’t found answers for yet. They point to unsolved questions, false correlations, and wrong premises - precisely because nothing in the real world can actually be paradoxical.
We know of apparent paradoxes, like the conflict between quantum gravity and relativistic gravity
Exactly - apparent paradoxes. There’s a lot of theoretical work attempting to solve it. The paradox isn’t the end point of what we assume to be the truth, it’s our way of describing a unsolved problem hinting to the fact that there’s something we don’t understand just yet.
To Copernicus what he learned about the geocentric world and what he observed in his astronomical research was a paradox. It didn’t make sense, so he started to question the premise. Learning more about the nature of things eliminated the apparent paradox. Today we know better.
The Epicurean paradox has a very obvious solution as well. The premise of an all knowing, all powerful, and all-loving god is wrong. A god of this nature doesn’t exist. The people who came up with the idea were wrong. Simple as that. As soon as we accept that, the paradox is resolved. Because it was a problem of thought - an error - not a problem of reality.
You can’t prove nor disprove that you’re a big brain floating in the void just imagining the world around you. ( Boltzmann Brain)
Proving a concept which is unverifiable by nature is impossible. On that level of argumentation everything is as valid as anything else if you label one of such concepts as “true”. Either all religions are wrong or all are right. Either you are a Boltzmann brain or you are not and you are really here. Who knows, maybe you are a pink giant elephant, hopping around on the moon, imagining the world around you as it is. Why not believe in that?
I see the Epicurean paradox as another a tool to unveil the unverifiable nature of christian fairy-tales. As if that were still necessary.
I once heard omnipotent doesn’t mean they can overturn logic itself, which seems a little unintuitve to me, but hey why not.
Being unbound by logic / information theory would make it impossible to reason about anything at all
Thereby implying that everything becomes meaningless and there is no point in believing anything.