• AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The question of suffering is the one question that all of theological history has yet to have a satisfying answer for. The book of Hiob itself concludes this question with faith being something you decide to have despite suffering, not because there is any good reason for it.

    I am not saying it is the only hole to poke at theism, but it is THE hole to poke at.

    If suffering is part of gods plan and requires deformed children to be born and immediately die, then someone like Stalin, Mao and Hitler were possibly more helpful in furthering gods plan than any good Christian believer ever will be. They certainly had a larger impact on society, laws, culture, etc. Than mother Theresa.

    This should lead to the conclusion that believers should embrace evil doers (whom they’re supposed to forgive anyway) even more than those that do good, as they are still pushing gods plan.

    So all their percieved enemies and lost sheep are really agents of their very own God doing his bidding more successfully than they ever will.

    • wharton@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Though, that argument implies that the only plan god has is death for deformed children. If everything is or could be part of god’s plan, then you could be as useful as Hitler or everyone else by simply being you and doing nothing.

      The more fundamental question to answer is “how would you completely stop suffering?”, which I find impossible without taking away everyone’s free will.

      What if eradicating suffering means that everyone has to go through equal amount of pain and hardship? Would that stop everyone from complaining or would it make everyone complain? What if preventing a greater suffering requires a lesser, necessary suffering? Would that stop people from complaining about it? What if everyone has to take the consequence of one man’s fault in order not to make him suffer?

      I think the only way suffering would truly stop is if everyone shared the same goal and had no ability for independent thought.

      • yata@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        The more fundamental question to answer is “how would you completely stop suffering?”, which I find impossible without taking away everyone’s free will.

        Free will can’t exist in a world of an omnipotent and omniscient god, so that is not a good excuse because Christians by default can’t have a free will.

      • AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        It’s not a philosophical argument around or about suffering in general. The problem of Theodicy is directly in relation to having an omnipotent and entirely good god while also having incredibly amounts of suffering in the world, which are pretty much mutually exclusive. If god is all good and all powerful, how can suffering be a thing, basically.

        That’s the theological question around suffering.

        The free will argument enters into it somewhat, but doesn’t resolve or answer suffering caused by things entirely unrelated to actions freely chosen by people, hence the “deformed child dying” example.

        • wharton@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Could you elaborate on how an entirely good god is mutually exclusive?

          Omnipotence still have its limitations. For example, can a god create an immovable object? Which doesn’t make sense because the question itself is contradictory. So that begs the question, is it even possible to be entirely good while still being totally authoritarian and eugenics?

          On a side note, I’m not even sure what you’re implying as the good option here. The child dying, the child growing up and having to suffer their entire life with deformity, or being eugenics? All of them sounds awful if I had to choose

          • yata@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Omnipotence still have its limitations. For example, can a god create an immovable object? Which doesn’t make sense because the question itself is contradictory. So that begs the question, is it even possible to be entirely good while still being totally authoritarian and eugenics?

            I think you are getting the wrong result out of that argument here. Because if omnipotence can’t exist, and any limitations would mean that it can’t, then the Christian (or any monotheist) god can’t exist, and that effectively ends any reason for further discussion on that particular subject because the foundation of that religion has been removed.

            Anything else would merely be thought games on fictional premises.

          • AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Theodicy issue assumes that omnipotence is absolute, as it is attributed to god. But it’s simply the same. If you have any limitation to the power, i. e. not being able to prevent deformed babies that are unfit for survival due to no fault of anyone’s actions, then god isn’t omnipotent and thus isn’t god. Just another way of approaching the same goal of having an unmovable object created.

            If god were both omnipotent and all good, as ascribed by scripture, they wouldn’t allow a child with birthdefects to come into existence in the first place. The child would simply be healthy and any negatives in their lives would be consequences of their actions, rather than genetic problems or environmental factors beyond their or humanity’s control.

            Otherwise god is not all good or not omnipotent. And if they aren’t one of those things, how are they god at all? That’s the basic premise.

            • wharton@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Theodicy doesn’t necessarily assume that omnipotence is absolute in the sense that a god can do anything including a logically impossible task, but merely the ability to do anything logically possible.

              Should omnipotentence include the ability to create a square circle? A married bachelor? Triangle with four sides? A number that is both even and odd?

              It seems that you’re taking it in what Thomasson calls a neutral sense as opposed to a sortal sense, which is meaningless for asking questions. For example, if I asked if there was anything in the fridge and you said it was empty. It’d be weird if I looked over and said “umm, excuse me? you said the fridge was empty but it’s actually full of air!”, because it was implied that I was asking about anything to eat instead of literally anything.

              And if we just ignore the fact that you support eugenics, where would you draw the line between healthy and “deformed”? Is deformity not driven in part by genetic mutation and therefore natural part of evolution? Aren’t we all result of a series of advantageous deformity? What if two deformed parents decides to have a baby even though doctors have warned them that the baby is definitely going to be deformed as well?

    • daqqad@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not on the scale of 3 others you mentioned, but Teresa was all about suffering. You don’t even have to read Hitchens (although I highly recommend it). Just open her Wiki for a quick summary of how much of a piece of shit human being she was.

      • AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Which, again, makes her probably a great agent of god in his never ending campaign to further his plan ™ by throwing shitty, evil people at humanity.

  • Wes_Dev@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    One of my favorite ACA hosts back in the day. She also appeared on God Awful Movies once or twice. Really smart and cool person.

    • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Matt was getting high on his own supply. He’s gotten away from good discussions/arguments to just shouting and virtue signaling on the calls.

      I guess he’s had to, because the people donating love this low effort “own the Christian” crap.

      I still enjoy Matt on actual debate shows he’s one of the best if not best Atheist debaters.

      • HeavenAndHell@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        He’s gotten away from good discussions/arguments to just shouting and virtue signaling on the calls.

        Not even remotely true. Don’t mean to sound rude, but you need to look up what virtue signaling means. The reason why he’s like that sometimes is because some people will not answer a simple question or they’ll be dishonest or they’ll call in to preach instead of having a conversation. IDK if you watched a lot of it, but it gets annoying whenever a caller wants to waste time and Matt just doesn’t put up with it, as he shouldn’t. Many of the other hosts are too nice and that can get pretty annoying after a while.

        this low effort “own the Christian” crap.

        Matt never did anything like that. I’m fully convinced now you only seen clips of the show and never actually paid any real attention to the show. If you did, you would know Matt just wants to have a discussion and he only gets aggressive when the caller doesn’t want to listen for a second. Stop bullshitting and actually watch and pay attention to an entire episode of the Atheist Experience with Matt on. If you think what Matt did on the atheist experience is low effort, I would love to tune into your podcast. It’s completely fine to not like it, but calling it “low effort” is extremely ridiculous. You wouldn’t stand a chance against any of these callers.

  • wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    But their good will still take credit for it if you do something and prevent it.

    “Thank jeebus god sent you to save that child.”

    • III@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Actually, the meme was to point out the absurdity of the concept of God. And I doubt the Atheist is asking god to intervene… But go ahead and be upset, it just shows that the original point of the meme point landed.

    • VenoraTheBarbarian@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I bet that sounded cooler in your head.

      Some people read what they wrote before they post it, you know, to make sure it makes sense and whatnot. But not you, you know a cool statement when you think it! No need to worry about little things like no one asking a god they don’t believe in to do jack. I mean, that’s kind of the whole point, that god won’t do anything to stop a rape. So what’s the point in asking?

    • EphemeralSun@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      As someone who’s stopped actual child SA, I have done everything in my power to stop such things from occuring.

      Gods are omnipotent, and yet they refuse to do what I have done within my abilities 100% of the time.

      So what now?

        • EphemeralSun@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Why argue in bad faith? Whether or not I spend every waking moment of my life preventing child abuse, I would still do more than god has when it comes to a ratio of how much impact I have v.s. how much impact I could have. My life is finite. The lives of deities are not.

          I can only prevent one lifetimes worth of child abuse at most. God can stop child abuse from happening. And from that alone, I am fundamentally doing more to prevent child abuse per second than any god is.

          And if you really want to go down that argument, there’s only so much I can do. But when it happens right in front of me, I step in. I donate to charitable causes to can make much more of a difference that I could alone, converting wealth from my labor into action. But fundamentally, I also need rest and relaxation. I am only human.

          But gods don’t have such limitation. And yet, here we are.

          Literally it just boils down to: If given the option to prevent child abuse from ever happening by simply pushing a button, I would smack the button in an instant. Gods can’t even do that.

            • OwenEverbinde@reddthat.com
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              1 year ago

              They are showing kindness and understanding and openness and giving you the benefit of the doubt right now.

              Meanwhile, you scramble and grasp for words that you imagine might somehow hurt.

              You’re the only one who looks unnerved. You’re clearly bothered by the calm, compassionate, composure that none of your provocations can crack.

              Ephemeral Sun hasn’t stooped to your level once.

            • yata@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Your sad attempt at an ad hominem proves that you ran out of arguments, not that you had any to begin with.

            • Platomus@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Well you are blaming them for child abuse/assault.

              I’d be pissed if I was him too.

            • OtakuAltair@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              What the fuck? You’re blaming them for ca happening. What kind of weirdo wouldn’t be mad about that

        • hdnsmbt@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          So, you’re fine with kids being raped? Since all you do is tell other people to do something about it?

          Ah, logic! Always working both ways!

        • Platomus@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          It’s weird that you’re focusing on the “weak human”, instead of the all powerful God.

          Why hasn’t God just not made people who assault children? Why did he create a person who does that?

        • 6mementomori@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          tf you on about. what do you want them to do, they already stopped a sexual assault, what more can be done? make a secret society for the purpose of murdering rapists and making it look like an accident? that’s not in their power. y’all will find anything to justify your god, even if it means saying that stopping a sexual assault is not that cool. in the time you wrote your comment, what would you have done?