Nah, it's just that your concept of free will is broken. Free will is not the ability to do whatever one wants whenever one wants. For example, the inability to fly is not an example of a lack of free will. Nor is being overpowered by other people's actions.

No I wasn't. It's inflammatory rhetoric, I'd be the first to admit to that (in fact I borrowed it from Bill Maher) but it makes a serious point I think.

The point is to do with God and whether or not he is capable of sin. Since he deliberately drowned almost the entire population of the world, and yet no one who believes that story considers that a sin where anyone else would be guilty of sinning in that example, it appears that God can't sin, because he's God. Don't you think that this special pleading type of logic seems to occur often with religious argument?

Is it evil for God to drown someone? After all, from God's perspective He could be certain that the person would be accepted into an eternal afterlife. We do not have that perspective.

To a young child, a doctor approaching with a needle could look like pure evil. But the doctor, with his awareness of the need for an injection to preserve the child's life, is in fact completely free of any evil intent.

The point is that it is absolutely ridiculous for us to speculate on the evil of events in this world from the perspective of God. I am actually a little surprised that people keep doing it. How is that possible when the limitations on our perspective are so obvious? Are they really unable to grasp that concept? Or do they simply ignore it because it enables a simple (albeit flawed) argument to confound believers?

RLK answered that better than I could have. The only thing I would say is what I previously emphasized, that God is just, and part of that involves punishment.

One other thing on the flood - would it really be better for God to kill all the adults and leave babies to fend for themselves? Imagine killing an entire nation of all the adults, and "sparing" the children, that seems even more cruel. I'm not saying that's why God did it, but I think the alternative is worse, given the incident as a whole.

Human beings do not have the ability to understand God, to understand the non physical. If they did, there would be no atheists. Of course, there are many of us that believe we are more than just human beings. With this perspective, you can seek understanding beyond human limitations, outside of the brain.

Becoming more aware of the physical world is easy, but the non physical? Not so much.

Then it should be equally wrong to speculate Gods inaction's on evil are good. His mysterious ways could go either way.

I think some of my earlier points are being misunderstood.

First of all, God could wipe out everybody who is alive today and it would not be sin to Him. You talk about starving people as if God has some moral obligation to feed us, pay our car bill, etc. He doesn't. Man is thoroughly corrupt through and through. Anybody who has had a child knows that even your own children will test limits, defy you, be as disobedient as they can. They will steal food right out of their sibling's plate if no one is looking. The cookies are never safe in the jar.

As for the verse about the children of abraham, I wasn't stressing that God only feeds a select few, but that the verse that was quoted above was quoted out of context.

If God cant sin, do bad. Then can he do good?

So the people he killed with the Flood were accepted into the afterlife? I'm curious about how you could know that, or whether you can support it with some kind of argument for how people who were too wicked and flawed to be allowed to live, were then accepted into heaven. If he was capable of intervening, removing their free will and killing them all and then forgiving them, why not just change them in some way where they still get to live?

Are you suggesting that all the people that God killed in the flood were better off dead?

I'm not trying to speculate from the position of God, I'm wondering why he can't be said to have sinned when he's done things that would be considered sinful otherwise. I think that claiming 'he's god and we can't know what he knows so we assume it was done for good reasons' is just another example of special pleading. I could insist that in fact he did it because he's deeply flawed, psychotic and cruelly vengeful and that assertion has as much weight as yours.

Like I said, it's just not sin when God does it, because he's God. God can't sin, because God can't sin. Does this seem like begging the question to anyone else?

I really hope that you're not serious here. That you would justify the killing of babies and young children as a kindness on the part of God. You sound like WLC defending God's extermination of the Canaanites, not his most popular move.

No.

"Like I said, 1=1 because that's what the equal sign means. The equal sign means that both sides are the same. Does this seem like begging the question to anyone else?"

You can't do that without redefining sin to be something that God was capable of doing.

For the record, I've already mentioned that I don't believe in a God that intervenes. The contradictions in scripture are nothing new and are a large part of why so many people leave religion.

No. It's not sin because the starving man deserves to starve and die. He never deserved life to begin with. It came to him unearned, as a grace.

You are the one muddling this up by tossing in this "God can't sin" stuff. I don't know whether God can sin or not. I just think the example proffered is a bad one.

Furthermore, most people in this world are starving because of the actions of other people. We are in control. And things are looking great, aren't they?

I'd think these things would humble a person, and make them understand that 'man's ways are not good. They are not God's ways.' But man is delusional and egotistical. Hell, even if we don't blow ourselves to smithereens, one day the sun will swallow up the earth, matter itself will be stretched out so thinly that almost nothing will exist.

All of your running around and yelling and screaming will be for nothing, anyway, in the end.

The reason this world looks like it does is because it must look this way, if our stubborn exterior is to be cracked. The lessons are apparent.

I agree. I was trying to say the same thing, perhaps with poor phrasing. I believe the rich have a moral obligation to the poor in a broad sense. I think it is difficult to be specific and put hands and feet to that statement.

What I was getting at is if there is moral obligation for the poor in front of us vs. poor in some far away place. Kind of making mental reference to the good samaritan. We have moral obligation to those we come across with need.

Yes, that is one possibility. It just makes for a short thread

I don't think being kind to humans is the top of God's priorities. And if it is He definitely subscribes to "tough love".

SW,

To speak more directly to the OP and the PoE. I think to discuss the PoE and human suffering we also need to address the positive side of life. If we are going to place guilt/blame squarely on God's shoulders for the worlds suffering we also need to be willing to then acknowledge him for every good part of life.

That is what makes things complex IMO. God is "responsible" in some sense for the holocaust but also responsible for the beauty of an orchid.

All the joy and pleasure found in life should wholly be attributed to God. Placing blame on God for suffering is a 2 way street.

I don't think I follow. Why is membership in the tribe of abraham a relevant factor? What additional context is provided by this fact? If the answer is that God preferentially helps feed members of his tribe over others, then I would find that to be a very immoral god. If something else is being implied by your statement, then I have missed it.

The question here is about suffering. "Evil" is an abstraction to which we can all speculate but "suffering" is somewhat more within the individual human being to which we can all relate.

I'm only pointing out how this is a lose-lose proposition if you're looking to point your finger at God. The big problem people have is that babies died along side with adults. If he had left the babies live, we would still be having this conversation of how God "left the babies alone, without their parents, to simply die." That's neither here nor there, though, that was more food for thought.

What I don't understand, if this conversation is simply philosophical, or based on Christian tenets, because the point no one seems to be discussing is that God killed people because he is a just God, and requires that sins be punished.
That's what it means by "God cannot sin", he MUST punish sins, because he is just. It would be unjust of him to let sins go unpunished, which is why he let his own son be killed. Biblically, God cannot unite himself with sin, it's the basis of Christianity, that God is holy, and it is that same holiness that God requires of us.

Strictly speaking I agree. God's perspective is hidden from us so speculating on His good or evil is fundamentally incorrect.

For the most part, religions that characterize God as "good" do so as a fundamental of faith, not as an expression of a complete understanding of God's perspective.

You never seem to understand my point. I did not say that I have any knowledge of the fate of the victims of the Flood. (Full disclosure - I am not a Biblical literalist so the Flood is not necessarily real for me, but that is not important since people have drowned from time to time.)

What I am saying is that not having that perspective makes speculation about the good or evil of God's allowing a drowning to occur invalid. Not correct or incorrect, simply devoid of content.


See above.


When you try to say that He has sinned, you are speculating on the perspective of God. That is the entire point.

The first bold statement is not a "special pleading". It is a statement of fact. Assuming a God, we cannot know what He knows. That is part of the logical structure that we are considering. The assumption that it was done for the good is just that, an assumption. Or in the case of religion, a statement of belief.

I have presented arguments before about why the assumption of good is defensible, but I have never argued that it is incontrovertible.

Concerning the second bold, neither statement has "weight" in the sense that we can establish it based on our observations. That is the whole point of the first bold statement. So strictly speaking your second statement is correct. The problem is that it does nothing to advance your conclusion that the Flood (or any other mishap) helps us to draw conclusions about the existence of God.

The belief that people deserve to be punished by God is fascinating to me. Can someone clarify this for me?

Can we first agree that if someone knew with 100% certainty that if they "sinned" they would be punished by God and be faced with eternal suffering, that they would not sin? I'm not talking about faith, but about knowing this "truth". If you really knew this, then this would be on your mind always.

If you can agree with that, then it would follow that people are really being punished for a lack of awareness of this. But many Christians have claimed that their belief is rooted in an act of 'divine intervention' - "God came into my life."

So then is God not punishing these "sinners" for a lack of awareness that he did not provide? That game seems rigged to me.

I would disagree with your first premise, to begin with. Biblically, we are sinful by nature. You are sinful the minute you are conceived. Trying not to sin is futile, even if it were possible.

The other thing is that Christianity doesn't teach that if you sin you will be punished, only that if you do not accept Jesus' death as an atonement for your sins, then you will be punished.

Okay so just substitute accepting Jesus in for sinning. If people were aware that eternal damnation is waiting for them if they do not accept Jesus, then of course they would do it. Again, they are being punished for a lack of awareness that God did not provide right?

No. What observations of human nature do you have that would suggest this is true?

Edit:

This doesn't help anything.