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
The theological answer doesn’t hold up. We have a god that’s supposedly all knowing, all powerful, and all good (complete absence of evil), yet he turns around and creates a world full of evil. So he either isn’t aware that evil is happening, is powerless to stop it, or is himself evil.
If there is a god, the Christian presentation of it is at the very least dishonest about the core pillars of what that god is - and if it can’t even describe its own god honestly, I certainly don’t trust the rest of the mythology.
The theological answer, by its own text, a lie.
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?
That’s a good illustration of how free will could exist without evil. Neither pizza nor burger are evil: we can choose either without compromising our spirit.
Now imagine a third meal - your neighbor’s 2 year old kid strapped to a table next to a fork and knife, screaming for their life. You have the option for the prior two; or you shove a fork in that kid’s eye and dig in.
The absence of that third option does NOT equate to a lack of free will. Giving people that option is evil. Why would god give us that option?
You have free will though…
Do people in prison no longer have free will, are they exempt from sin?
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?
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.
So what’s his barrier? Does he lack the power to create free will without evil?