I think you're missing the point.

Correct.

Well okay, then you have established that you do not agree.

I wouldn't call that earth-shattering stuff.

okay cool because we could talk about my make believe gods characteristics. He has 12 heads. The first head is all loving, the second head is all jealous, the third all hate, etc...hey ask me about my god..the one I just made up.

While that is interesting in a vacuum, your god's believers (none, really) aren't making policy that affects most of the known world. The belief in moral grounding of religion is very strong and influential in our world, and there is reason to believe it is often holding us back. That's a trend, not something that I think applies to every single believer in this world.

If there was just one old geezer on the corner who believed in this stuff, we probably wouldn't be that interested.

Oh I see...gotch' more of a political conversation then.

I don't quite follow why tame is being so dismissive. Over the years of paying attention to the kinds of things that lead people to stop being religious, the general category of "problem of evil" seems to be among the more persuasive. It is hard to reconcile this idea of an omnipotent god who loves all his children with the pervasive, horrifying,seemingly undeserved suffering we see on the news every day. I'm sure there are plenty of theological dances that can typed out to try and make it all ok, but I find it one of the more palpable causes against religions with purpotedly loving central characters.

If it didn't exist, we wouldn't be able to imagine it and communicate about it. That doesn't mean it's existence must mean anything particular to anyone.

Well, I can flip that around and say that the idea of evil is one of the biggest recruiters to religion, the central tenet usually being something ala "you can't fight it without this".

anything you talk about exists?

Is that what you imagined that says?

Is it? At least in the christian west, I'd say the mode catchphrase on church signs is something like "God is Love". Being Christian as a way to "fight" against evil and suffering in our current life isn't really a big theme. Nor are establishing theodicies a big theme, it seems when the challenge is made it is often just shrugged off sort of like how you did it without really trying to muster a meaningful defense.

I'm a billionaire.

I exist to imagine you maybe that. An act of imagination which exists and comes from existence. An unexpected act of imagination because I have no pre-existing want or need to know something like that about you.

So you believe I'm a billionaire just because I said. Because that is your claim.

Did you read the post you quoted? It doesn't contain the word belief or believe.

But if I did believe anything you might guess I believe, it would would be my belief, so what would you do about it anyway?

Your claim is because we can talk about things and because of that fact they therefore must exist.

No, I've established that it's a contradiction.

Well, it's pretty much the logical equivalent to "atheists must be nihilists", so it isn't a very meaningful attack.

We have already communicated about that which you stated doesn't exist- which is impossible to have happened if it didn't exist because in order to reference anything to communicate about it, it must exist to be available for reference.

Maybe I didn't read far enough back to when you actually made a decent exposition of your rationale here, but I noted at the start that you seemed to be rather dismissive with mightyboosh and it has been nothing but the same vapid one-liners to me too.

Rampant, seemingly senseless suffering of innocents is a prominent feature of the this world. It has been a part theological discorse for literally thousands of years (at least to epicurious, i presume longer than that tho) that there a sort of on its face tension with that suffering and the notion of a benevolent deity. Of course many people have offered theodices that address this, but you have seemingly offered nothing but huffy dismissals that there is anything to even address.

Because there is pretty much nothing in it. It's a couple of premises with a deduction at the end.

a) Evil can't exist if God is pink.
b) Evil exists
c) God is not pink

This is also logically valid, and if the premises are true then the conclusion is true. Impressive.

You want PoE to be sound, then you (or MB or whomever) have to show that the premises are true.

Would you thus say that anyone else - clearly not you - who offers a theodicy is making a mistake because there was nothing to address? "loving benevolence" and "pinkness" don't seem interchangeably unrelated to the notion of senseless suffering. Let's see if a worldview does a decent job of explaining phenomena in the world. We observe widespread, seemingly senseless suffering of innocents. The deity is premised to have the power to change that and is claimed to have a loving nature. Why the seeming indifference then?

Look, I've always leaned towards quietism, so I don't really care for my comment of a "tension" being recast as a modus tollens deductive argument, but was the forumsplain about valid vs sound really necessary? Come on.

I think if people see their belief attacked, they will feel a need to defend themselves.

And I never said "pink" and "loving benevolence" were interchangeable. I used an absurd example to show that logical validity isn't the end all of things.

Why? Lecturing on valid vs sound was unnecessary, uncalled for, and even more condescending than your "Says you"-style dismissals of Mightyboosh. Nobody was confusing that.

Rampant, seemingly senseless suffering of innocents is an apparent feature of our world. What explanation does Christianity have for this? Is it consistent with a deity that has the power to stop it and loves all humans? Quite possibly so, but I submit that that reason you have not joined a long tradition of christians meaningfully addressing exactly this is because you have confused the problem of evil as being nothing more than a quick modus tollens offered by people who can't tell the difference between a valid and a sound argument.