God is love just don’t ask for the receipts
He’s all powerful except for whenever
How many Jesus, the Living Embodiment of YHWH, does it take to change a lightbulb
God is love just don’t ask for the receipts
He’s all powerful except for whenever
How many Jesus, the Living Embodiment of YHWH, does it take to change a lightbulb
Theologically, the answer is that God the creator gave us the world and free will. We built this rolling disaster of corruption and self destruction by handing control of the world over to evil people.
The more practical answer is that people using God to advance evil agendas have drowned out honest discussions of spirituality and religion, especially in the online world.
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Yes, this is basically the Riddle of Epicurus.
I like to put it this way: Omniscient, Omnipotent, Benevolent - Choose any two. The evidence around us is ample proof that God cannot have all three properties.
Or he’s just a sadist
He’s a narcissistic, petulant child, which actually makes sense that he created man in his image considering the history of the church.
If he created a world without the possibility of evil, when we wouldn’t have free will. You can’t eat the cake and still have it.
Thats not true.
I lack the ability to flap my arms and fly into the air.
Does that mean I lack free will?
Why is the ability to do evil required for free will, when so many other abilities are not?
This makes no sense. To do evil is nothing like a physical ability.
Why not?
Are not evil things a series of physical actions?
Evil actions are, but not will. Will is what command the choice between different physical actions, some good, others evil. If you retire evil from the equation, you have only one option and then, no choice, and then no will, thus no freedom.
You’ve not explained how… why are some actions required to be permitted for free will but not others.
If will is what matters, what if someone was allowed to want to do evil things but not allowed to physically perform evil actions. Would that not suffice?
Imagine you have two meals before you, a pizza and a burger. You’re free to want either of them, you’re free to say what’s your preference is, but I physically restrain you and force you to eat the pizza whether you prefer it or not. Would you consider yourself free?
But if God was all powerful, he could.
It depends on your definition of power. Is not being able to do something impossible not being all-powerful?
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But our choices aren’t the cause of all evil. It’s evil to inflict painful, terminal diseases on people just because of who their parents are.
That’s an anthropocentric vision. It’s hard for me to explain that in English, but what is free will essentially? The possibility for humanity to do things that God doesn’t want. The nature doesn’t have will of course, it doesn’t choose anything, but in order to live in a world free from God, it should follow rules that God chose not to control. Thus evil is not a reality per se, but the absence of Good, which is God.
So children have to suffer and die so that people can make free decisions? That makes no sense. They could make free decisions in a reality that isn’t so harsh.
That’s not what I said, and you’re anthropocentric again. Could the world have been less harsh? Possibly. The truth is that we have no way to judge that.
And we were given the means to fight evil, we could stop wars, hunger, a lot of epidemics… we choose as a species, not to. We should stop blaming God for.our shortcomings.
TIL: Don’t help others because it impedes their free will.
It’s the conservative Christian way!
Not at all. Jesus was all about people helping other people. God interfering in the affairs of man would impede their free will, but people helping people would be them exercising their free will.
That doesn’t make sense.
If i choose to murder someone i am impeding their free will.
If god chooses to save someone from murder, then it impedes the free will of the murderer.
Why is only one of those a problem?
It’s like the difference between the government punishing you for free speech and a Lemmy mod banning you.
In your example the outcomes are different. What if the only difference was the actor who stopped the murder, would that still make a difference?
Eg: if i trip a murderer so they can’t kill the victim, vs if god causes a murderer to trip. Ia one of those violating free will and a other one not?
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Maybe it’ll help to think about it in terms of an experiment. God is the scientist and humans are the test subjects. If the scientist interferes with the test subjects, the data loses meaning, but if the test subjects interfere with each other it’s just part of the experiment.
Basically: supreme authority interfering = bad.
Except an all knowing entity has absolutely no reason to run experiments. This is a bad analogy.
It’s not a bad analogy, you’re just not understanding the core concept that a higher power interfering is different than interpersonal interactions.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/eso-
https://www.etymonline.com/word/exo-
Because people think it’s exoteric rather than esoteric. And one thing people hate is walking through the hell inside to get to heaven.