God believes in Me.

That's not my take. It's not 1 in the sense of a divisible entity similar to how we envision a cell dividing; it's oneness in a unitive and indivisible sense. So there's never an apartness (outside of illusion) that comes back together, or the 1 becoming 2 and then 1 again. (I think looking at things in that manner is what's meant by Original Sin, but that's another matter.)

But my question still stands: if God is good and creation is good, how could we possibly establish (a priori) the ontological status of evil in the world?

What I mean is that negating the good gives us the logical opposite not-good, not the polar opposite (ontic) evil. That's not to say that from a meta perspective we couldn't say that from the perspective of theism, anti-theism is evil since it denies theism by positing naturalism as a polar. But theists calling atheists evil isn't a luxury they have since from within the theist perspective atheists aren't evil but merely not-good. And I would think that holds for anything within creation like abortion or whatnot. All a theist can say in that regard is that abortion isn't good since presumably all they have to work with is good, whether of God or creation. That's what I meant by "creating evil," not that they're engaging in it.

Since you want to stay within both
1) the objective, all good, God’s-eye-view
2) the confines of logic
how can you even hold the idea of “negating the good”?

"Admirable" might be a better word. But I wasn't talking only about lack of self control. I was talking about rationalizing that something is right rather than wrong or vice versa based on how they feel.

I'm not making a claim. I'm just setting the standard 'S is/is not P' judgmental framework, e.g., 'Dog is mammal' or 'Dog is not reptile'. In other words, to deny that dog (creation) is mammal (good) isn't to affirm dog is reptile or anything else (evil). There are qualifications/exceptions to that but they're not relevant to my point.

As to my point, I agree with you because to affirm either the not-good or evil is not simply to deny the existence of good in creation but rather to negate S, i.e., creation or God, when coupled with the other beliefs that both are good; similar to how theists believe that if God didn't exist then nothingness would obtain. So I'm challenging they're ability to claim the existence of evil taking their core beliefs as axiomatic and reasoning from or appealing to only them. What I think they can say is something akin to "That's an instance of a short skyscraper," which isn't necessarily a contradiction in terms if it's taken to mean amongst all the skyscrapers that's the least tall as opposed to implying it's a not-tall building.

I agree with what you're getting at in a theoretical sense but it doesn't appear near as clear when applied. For example and related to your earlier post, this study found that all straight males register disgust when viewing images of gay males engaged in displays of affection, individual prejudices not withstanding. So at least in that instance I'd say it's not a character fault but rather faulty reasoning. And I'd argue that extends to the potential Jeffrey Dalmers of the world as well.

From my view, discouraging people from holding contradiction and paradox is to discourage them from entering into the Christian story. You cannot stay within the Christian story while also denying the subjective of human consciousness.

As soon as you hold ideas such as separation from God, the need for salvation or even the idea that God and creation are good, then you are in the subjective. Christians should hold those ideas even though they contradict with the objective understanding of God. The same is true with evil. Again, denying the idea of evil from the atheist on the basis of contradiction is the same as attempting to push them further away from the Christian story.

The knowledge of good and evil?

Christ promised division between father and son (Matthew 10:35-38). There will be division between Christendom and the followers of Christ.

Can't argue against that—literally.

I posted the above on April 13, 2021 (over 50 days ago).

All of the regular non-Christian participants in this Forum have had the means, motive, and opportunity to debunk my above post. And yet, none have even attempted to do so.

I am pleased that we are all apparently agreed on at least this one amazing aspect of the Bible.

Peace.

I may have missed an attempt by anyone to answer this question.

Put your thinking cap on and tell us what you think might be likely explanations.



eta: Perhaps you should also go through the forums and make a list of all the comments and questions you've failed to engage.

yeah

Pretty obviously none. Why?

I was watching a documentary about a captain in the fire department arson investigation squad tonight, who was a real deviant and set tons, suspected thousands of fires himself, admitted some then retracted, was convicted of others. His young daughter at first denied it all. Of course one expects all kinds of lying arse denial to be set in stone. But over time in the face of incontrovertible evidence she actually changed her mind and repented from her denial. Actually no repentance necessary as she didn't have the info once upon a time and was very young. When she was of age and had the info, she changed her position.

It struck me as heroic on her part, to admit such a difficult truth ... when denial is a more common reaction. And it relates precisely to this thread. Because, philosophically and practically speaking, every time someone admits a difficult truth it is inspiring to others to be able to do the same. And every time they lie and practice denial and deception, subverting consciousness in the process ... it is a blow to justice, honesty, decency, reality, and respect for reality. And this last part is close the root of all evil.

Probably because the list is of trivial things that could be figured out or guessed by anyone, and even then you have to insert your own modern understanding into the text.

I don't think anyone with a modern understanding would say something weird like "life is in the blood". What does that mean? Life is in living cells. Life is in the heart, the brain, the lungs, the kidneys, as much as it is "in the blood". But to figure out that blood is important you'd only need to see something bleed. It's incredibly trivial and it's still not clear what the author's understanding even was.

I'm assuming the reason no one else addressed any of it is because they've been around here long enough to get bored of these lists.

The only likely explanation, in my opinion, is that there is no good response to my post. People around here aren't shy about responding to my posts.

I agree I should do this.

Having said that, in the last three months, I have made 250 posts in this Forum, the majority being responses to comments and questions addressed to me.

It's hard to argue that I'm typically shy about engaging arguments and counterarguments in this Forum.

Now that I have successfully re-located to Chico, California, I can spend more time going back and addressing what I've missed, and/or purposely delayed/avoided responding to.

Blood-letting was still a thing into the nineteenth century. The OT writer was over 2,000 years ahead of modern science.

I don't agree. People love responding to my posts.

addendum: I've put a couple of people on Ignore who (imo) aren't helping discussions move forward and just apparently want to create strife. That should help give me more time to respond to serious posts.

Bloodletting wasn't done under the belief that blood wasn't essential for life, so this is just irrelevant. Everybody knew that if you lost too much blood that you'd die.

Not being able to conceive of a single alternate explanation isn't a good look.

Here's one - since that post is a list of things that have no bearing on why you are a Christian, and that you will likely reject most criticism of its contents, and in the event you did accept any criticism, there would be essentially no change in the beliefs you are expressing here, there would be no point in a futile and time consuming response.

Another explanation that Bladesman gave is that the passages you quoted don't say what you're claiming they say.

Yet another, mentioned by more than one other person, is that your claim that the Bible was ahead of its time is untrue (and you didn't even attempt to support it).

There's also this:

Please read the question and my response more carefully; I was asked for and provided what I thought was a likely reason for a lack of responses. Not worth my time to list every possible explanation.

Problem is, what you just stated could be said about almost all of my posts, and yet I get responses to my posts all the time.

I agree that is a cogent response that I will need to address. I'm surprised it wasn't brought up about a month and a half ago.

Huh? I literally attempted to support my claim with the very post we are discussing right now. You're not making any sense to me right now at all.

So are we dropping "life is in the blood" from the list, given it's completely trivial?

Please show where you made any attempt to support your claim that anything you listed was "ahead of it's time".

It's appalling the way otherwise rational and well reasoned people in their role as apologists distort and twist anything and everything to represent the lie. No wonder they love the you-know-who movement. They become the most devious and deceitful con men, the biggest liars on earth, to defend. They have no choice, after all, once they commit. There is no other way to defend it. So the lady who struggles with and comes to grips with and admits that her father was a horrible criminal and fraud, instead of being all-in in spite of the evidence, is a hero. And when we do the opposite, deny and deceive and reject reality, we are behaving disgracefully. It's a very human thing, of course. And in no sphere is it so pronounced as religion, where this fundamental component of morality is turned on its ear.