12 Nov 03
Originally posted by Pyrrho
I hope this has something to do with an attempt at an explanation as to the reason for the existence of suffering. So with that in mind, I'll answer your question:
Not believing that there is God, or that Jeesus was nothing but a leader of a religious group, I don't think there was any "essential meaning" in his death.
But I assume that you mean to ...[text shortened]... nd this question, and correct me in any inaccuracy that may exist in that explantion.
-Jarno
So, God suffered in our place. He does not force us to accept that gift. It's our free choice to accept or to refuse that gift.
If He wanted us to suffer, than why has He offered to suffer in our place ?
12 Nov 03
1 edit
Originally posted by ivanhoeThat has so many things wrong with it that I'll have to break it down;
So, God suffered in our place. He does not force us to accept that gift. It's our free choice to accept or to refuse that gift.
If He wanted us to suffer, than why has He offered to suffer in our place ?
"So, God suffered in our place"
No, if there is a god that suffered, then he suffered in addition to the suffering we see every day in the world. If God suffered in our place, then why is there very real suffering done by people - including Christians - in the world?
Secondly, why did anyone have to suffer in anyone's place? If God is omnipotent, then why doesn't he simply eliminate suffering altogether?
"He does not force us to accept that gift."
If he created a world in which there is suffering, then it's hardly a gift to offer to take that suffering away. It's kind of like someone stabbing you in the back and then offering to pay for the doctor's bill to make it all better.
Anticipating the standard Christian answer to this (that it was the actions of mankind that drove a world initially created as perfect into one where there is suffering), if God is omnipotent and all knowing, then he is inevitably responsible for every feature of it, either directly or indirectly. He would have knowingly created mankind to be such that it would fail. Knowing all has the downside that you have no excuses.
"It's our free choice to accept or to refuse that gift."
If accepting that "gift" involves having to believe in a specific metaphysical claim, mainly that the Christian God is real, then it most certainly is not a free choise. We do not choose what we believe - we are persuaded by what we come to know through reading, experience and contemplation, quite without our concent as to whether to believe or not. The only thing we do have a choise about is what to do within the framework of what we believe in. We can also choose to challenge what we believe in, expose it to refutation, but we most certainly cannot simply choose to believe in something we don't currently believe.
This is easily confirmed by an experiment - can you, as a matter of free choise, for, say, 10 minutes, stop believing that there is a God? I mean genuinely stop believing that? Of course not. No more than I could, as a matter of choise, start believing that there exists a god, or the specific Christian God for that matter. I would have to be persuaided in some way, and if I was persuaided, then I would come to believe quite without having a choise about it.
"If He wanted us to suffer, than why has He offered to suffer in our place ?"
I don't know what suffering you are thinking about but it is surely not the suffering I am talking about. Take a concrete example - a child that gets cripled for life in an earthquick that also kills her parents. Better yet, a Christian child. How does her beeing a Christian remove the fact that she'll suffer from her injuries, and suffer from the loss of her parents? If God offered to suffer in our place, and she believes in God and Jeesus, why does her suffering persist? Why does a god who is supposedly good, and supposedly omnipotent not remove this suffering, when it clearly is in his power to do so? To me the only logical conlusion is that should there be a god, then that god either wants to see this suffering, or is indifferent to it. Can you see other options?
-Jarno
13 Nov 03
1 edit
Pyrrho, you want a god of your own making. You do not want the God who is, but you want a magician, a Santa Claus, fullfilling all your wishes and expectations even your logical wishes about how the relationship should be between God and His creation. You are telling me, if God isn't the way I want him to be then I'll choose another one, a god who will meet my demands.
Would you be able to accept a God who does not meet your demands and kneel for him ?
13 Nov 03
Originally posted by ivanhoeIvanhoe, you are missing my points entirely.
Pyrrho, you want a god of your own making. You do not want the God who is, but you want a magician, a Santa Claus, fullfilling all your wishes and expectations even your logical wishes about how the relationship should be between God and His creation. You are telling me, if God isn't the way I want him to be then I'll choose another one, a god who will m ...[text shortened]... nds.
Would you be able to accept a God who does not meet your demands and kneel for him ?
First, one cannot have wishes and expectations about things one believes to be fictious. I can no more have real world expectations of what God should do or be like than you (or I for that matter) can have real world expectations about what Santa Clause should do or be like. Wishes, expectations and demands can be made only of things and beings we believe exist. The points that I raised are not in the form of "God should do this" as in "Little girls should be polite", but in the form of 1+1 should always lead to an answer of 2. I am talking about logical inevitabilities, not of demands or wants.
I'm not telling you that "if God isn't the way I want him to be then I'll choose another one, a god who will meet my demands", I am telling you that I don't believe there to be such a thing as God, no god at all, not of my choosing, nor otherwise. Moreover, I could not choose any god, as (like I explained in my previous post) we do not freely choose what we believe to be true.
My arguments in the previous post were not some protest at God's nature or policies, they were an explanation why the Christian view (at least in the form I'm familiar with it) of God cannot be true - because the Christian view is incoherent, incompatible with the reality around us. And this has nothing to do with my wants or wishes, it has to do with the clear and unambiquous logical contradiction in a belief that includes a benevolent, all powerful god and a world in which suffering exists.
As to your last question, accepting a god requires as a prequisite that you believe that that god exists. You cannot accept or kneel to things that you believe to be fictious. In asking an atheist to "accept" God, you are putting the cart before the horse - you first have to convince him that there is such a thing to accept.
In order for me to believe that there is such a thing as god, I would first have to be shown that the god you propose exists is consistent with logic - I cannot believe (and not out of choise either) that 1+1 could be 3, because that would be a violation of logic. For the same exact reason I cannot believe that there exists a god with the properties you assign to the Christian god, simply because they lead to several logical contradictions, an example of which is the contradiction of there being suffering in a world where you propose a perfectly good omnipotent being exists.
If I am to believe that there exists a god, or specifically the Christian God, first I would have to be shown that I am wrong in the claim that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being is incompatible with the existence of suffering. That would be the first step. If that, and the other logical obsticles which absolutely prevent me from being able to believe that God exists were to be taken down, only then it would be plausible that I come to believe. If then I was convinced by some evidence of the actual existence of God, then, and only then would the question of whether I would accept and kneel to him become applicable and meaningful.
I have to say that these questions you pose seem to be dodging the issue - the existence of very real contradictions that I've pointed out. If I am wrong about the existence of contradictions, then it is only a matter of pointing out why those contradictions don't really exist. After all, contradictory things don't exist, so if God exists, then my logic must be in error in some way.
-Jarno
13 Nov 03
Originally posted by ivanhoeMaybe another example will clarify exactly what I mean. Bear with me.
Yes, I'm missing your points completely .......
There was a news story a number of years ago that really got to me. There was a pragnant woman who suffered from the more severe form of epilepsy, characterised by periods of "absense" (Grand Mal seisures I believe they are called). Now patients who suffer from these seisures have been studied, and what happens is that they loose awareness without loosing alertness. They become like zombies, or sleep walkers, in that they may walk around and perform various simple actions, but completely without an appreciation of what they are doing, and completely without any long term plan or coherence. They react to their environments by executing routine actions. For example, if they see a glass of water, they may pick it up and drink from it, if they see a door they may open or close it, etc. After the seisure they have no recollection of what happened between the time it began to the time it ended.
Now this woman had recently given birth to a baby, so this was her second pragnancy. She was worried that the epilepsy medication would hurt her unborn baby, so during the pragnacy, as many women do, she stopped taking all medication. One day she had a Grand Mal seisure, during which she had, quite reflexively picked up her baby, and put her in a situation that led to the death of that baby. I don't really want to get into more details as to how the baby died, suffice to say that it was so gruesome that it turns my stomach.
So here is a pragnant woman, who, in order to protect her unborn baby, gets off medication, and as a consequence she could not foresee, ends up causing the gruesome death of her other child.
Now my point is that in a world where these sorts of things happen, how can there, even in theory, exist a god that has the qualities omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and all-knowing?
Note that I am not "blaming God" for anything, I am saying that should there exist a god that knew everything, and was all-powerful, then that would mean that he knew about the episode I recounted above while it was happening, had the power to prevent the tragedy, but did not do so.
This seems to invalidate the claim that this god could, as a mater of logic, be good, would it not? If there was a god with all the three properties atributed to God, then wouldn't he, without question, intervene? I should think that most of us, even with our inperfections whereas benevolence goes, had we had the power to stop the death of that baby, we would do it without hesitation, quite obviously.
Now if there was a human there watching this episode, who had the power to stop it but chose not to, what would we call that human? I don't know about you, but I would call him sadistic, and that would be in the mild end of characterisations.
Now if there is a god, then that god was in the position that the hypothetical human would have been. He had full knowledge of the events when they were unfolding, and had the power to intervene. Yet no intervention took place. Why is it right to call the hypothetical human evil and sadistic, while at the same time calling the hypothetical god perfectly good?
This, I think is a logical contradiction that can only be solved in four ways:
1) there is no God
2) God exists, but his power is limited
3) God exists, but he is not aware of everything that goes on
4) God exists, but he is not good - at best he is indifferent to the suffering of mortals.
(Note that number 3 would also imply that his power was limited by the extent of his limited knowledge about events.)
Now can you see any other resolutions to the dillemma?
-Jarno
13 Nov 03
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Originally posted by PyrrhoHow does the concept of satan fit into your reasoning ?
Maybe another example will clarify exactly what I mean. Bear with me.
There was a news story a number of years ago that really got to me. There was a pragnant woman who suffered from the more severe form of epilepsy, characterised by peri ...[text shortened]...
Now can you see any other resolutions to the dillemma?
-Jarno
13 Nov 03
Originally posted by ivanhoeIf there is satan, then who's responsible for his existence? If God is omnipotent and omniscient, and he created the angels, he also created the angel that would fall and become satan with the full knowledge that this would happen. As said before, an omnipotent being has no excuses whatsoever. With infinite power comes infinite responsibility.
How does the concept of satan fit into your reasoning ?
Also, if there is an omnipotent god then it doesn't make any difference whatsoever what his opposition is - there is no way satan could possibly stop God from intervening in the example I gave in the previous post, or any number of tragedies of suffering in the world.
How exactly do you propose that the concept of satan would resolve the dillema I'm presenting?
-Jarno
13 Nov 03
1 edit
Originally posted by PyrrhoPyrrho,
If there is satan, then who's responsible for his existence? If God is omnipotent and omniscient, and he created the angels, he also created the angel that would fall and become satan with the full knowledge that this would happen. As said ...[text shortened]... cept of satan would resolve the dillema I'm presenting?
-Jarno
I hope you will not use the fundamentalist interpretation of the concept of satan, but rather an interpretation of satan as the non-being, that wants to lead us to his realm of non-being.
In your interpretation of the Judeo-Christian world view you hold an eventual God responsible for all evil, but Pyrrho, God can choose whatever he prefers in order to implement his plan. He does not have to obey your reasoning nor has he to submit himself to the laws that He created in His Creation. You assume to know what will be His plan and you also seem to know the way God has to choose to implement this plan. God, being Love, wants to be loved. In order to achieve that goal He has to give human beings a free will, because without free will there cannot be true love. In your interpretation God has to take away the free will otherwise He will be held responsible for all suffering, because He created free will ....... you say: things just don't add up in my view. I agree .... they just do not add up in your view. In the end however, the situation will arise that you require, the Kingdom of God will be realised, but not by taking away free will but giving human beings time to exercise free will and choose for instance to fight diseases and to find methods to ease the pain and suffering of the ill, disabled and the dying people, not only in a scientifical logical way through developing ways of releaving suffering, but also through being there and taking care of them and loving them ....... . Of course a lot of questions arise and you will undoubtedly confront me with those questions and I hope you will. It is all right to investigate, indeed we have the obligation to investigate. In the meantime we have not found all the ansers to these questions. I do not pretend to have these answers.The question of in our view unnecessary or seemingly senseless, meaningless suffering is one of the most (de)pressing questions we cannot answer. Our obligation is to ease that suffering, however not by choosing a way that wé seem fit but through choosing a way God seems fit. He has showed us the way to deal with suffering through his Son, who chose to be Emmanuel, that means God With Us. Throughout history mankind has tried his ówn way of fighting and releaving pain and the ultimate way of releaving pain in the eyes of humans is to kill, to choose the way of non-being. God tells us that that will nót diminish suffering but that it will increase suffering. History has proven that time and time again, but every generation thinks that théy have found their own way in order to diminish suffering and always this way includes killing, one way or the other. Our generation also believes to have found a way. This time with the help of reason and logic and if you like with the Categorical Imperative, etc. etc. ... with what I call the Logical Thinking Machine and again, no surprise to me, it involves killing. According to bbarr we even have the obligation to kill in certain situations. That is even a step beyond the steps Dutch Freethinkers are preparing at the moment. When I would confront the Dutch freethinkers with bbarrs statement, of which I think that it is a logical and inevitable result of the way he and Dutch freethinkers think, they would say that I'm being irrational and they would not take me seriously. They even would say. "No, no, no there is not such a thing as a Slippery Slope". They even would become angry. "We are not such people. How dare you ..... "
I know a lot of things just do not seem to fit in when thinking and reasoning about God, but I'm afraid a lot of things do not fit in even in questions and problems that are far less complicated than the questions and mysteries surrounding the Ultimate Mystery of which (of whom) is said in the Judeo-Christian perception of reality that we will see and know that Mystery face to face after we have ended our journey here in the realm of necessity, the material world ..... of course we will see Him only in the case we have choosen for the Being instead of the non-being .......
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13 Nov 03
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Originally posted by ivanhoeIvanhoe,
In your interpretation of the Judeo-Christian world view you hold an eventual God responsible for all evil, but Pyrrho, God can choose whatever he prefers in order to implement his plan. He does not have to obey your reasoning nor has he ...[text shortened]... o seem to know the way God has to choose to implement this plan.
I think you are not far from understanding what I mean, even if you don't agree with it, but here I've got to correct something.
Indeed there is nothing to oblige God (if there be such a thing) to chose any particular "plan", but what words we can use to correctly describe his atributes, or what atributes he may have without including logical contradictions, depend on what his actions are.
Benevolence depends on, well, benevolent actions. Omnibenevolence depends on nothing but benevolent, good intentioned actions. If God (or anyone for that matter) does things that are not benevolent (such as including suffering in his "plan" ), then the description "benevolent" does not apply to him.
This is simply the point - one of the atributes that you describe God with Omnipotence, Omniscience or Omnibenevolece cannot, not even in theory, be true, because the combination of these lead to a logical contradiction, if there is evil or suffering present.
Logical contradictions are not merely "things we can't yet figure out", they are "things we've already figured out, and things no additional information can change". No further advance in science, or mysterious insight will ever tell us that 1+1 equals anything but 2, and this is also why no further insight or revelation will tell us that the combination of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence could exist alongside with events such as the one I described as an example.
The word "benevolent" does not accurately describe someone (whether a god or a person) who has the power to easily prevent horrible suffering and tragedy, but instead simply watches doing nothing. If one describes such a person or a god as being beneovolent then one is quite unceremoniously wrong in that description.
Now a person or any limited being, may be good even if he causes suffering - for example, to save a person's life in the battlefield in war, in poor conditions without proper medical facilities, a doctor may have to amputate the patient's limb without much in the way of anasthesia. He causes great suffering, but does it only because it is the only way to achieve a greater good - to grant the patient a chance to go on living.
But the picture changes immediately when you are talking about an omnipotent being. For an omnipotent doctor to amputate a limb of a patient without anasthesia, even if that were to save the life of the patient, would be unconscionable and sadistically cruel. This is because there was nothing forcing the omnipotent doctor to do the life saving in a way that included all that suffering. Being omnipotent, he could have simply snaped his fingers and the patient would be as good as new. With power to do things becomes responsibility - if you have no limits to restrict the "plan" you use to ultimately achieve a good result, then to chose a way that included even a single element of evil or suffering, no matter how temporary, would be less than you could do, and thus would make you less than perfectly good.
This is why there cannot be any way out of the set of conclusions I offered as possible solutions to the problem of evil - some property you use to describe God must be incorrect, or alternatively he may not exist at all. The option that all these properties used to describe God could somehow be reconciled does not exist.
Indeed, nothing can force or oblige God to prevent suffering, but if he doesn't, then he can't be good. Being good means doing good things, even when no-one is forcing your hand. If you have the power to achieve good ends without allowing bad things, a power which an omnipotent being would by definition have, then you can only be perfectly good if you do so.
Furthermore, as previously explained, the claim of free will also leads to an unresolvable contradiction with the idea of an omniscient being, so the only attempt at some sort of justification for suffering (though it doesn't even try to explain suffering caused by things beyond the scope of human choise), and thus the only attempt to get out of this logical contradiction itself contains a logical contradiction.
Personally, I simply cannot (out of choise or otherwise) beleive in things that are contradictory, and I can't see a reason why anyone would want to believe in such things - after all, only claims which are self-consistent and without contradictions have a possibility of describing anything real. I should think that having at least a possibility of being true would be a prequisite for any reasonable belief.
-Jarno
13 Nov 03
Pyrrho: "But the picture changes immediately when you are talking about an omnipotent being. For an omnipotent doctor to amputate a limb of a patient without anasthesia, even if that were to save the life of the patient, would be unconscionable and sadistically cruel. This is because there was nothing forcing the omnipotent doctor to do the life saving in a way that included all that suffering. Being omnipotent, he could have simply snaped his fingers and the patient would be as good as new. With power to do things becomes responsibility - if you have no limits to restrict the "plan" you use to ultimately achieve a good result, then to chose a way that included even a single element of evil or suffering, no matter how temporary, would be less than you could do, and thus would make you less than perfectly good."
You write:
"Being omnipotent, he could have simply snapped his fingers and the patient would be as good as new."
You claim that God does not do anything to releave or end suffering.
In fact he díd snap His fingers by sending His son to us and raise Him from the dead. Only the time that it takes for God to snap his fingers is way too long for you. Why can't he do that instantly. A question of a truly post-modern man wanting instant solutions ... As a matter of fact your problem of omnipotence is mentioned in the New Testament when Jesus leaves a certain region where he was preaching without being able to perform miracles because the local people lacked faith ... I've always found this an extremely difficult part of the New Testament to understand and I still don't. As far as omniscience is concerned; when Jesus was asked when the day of judgement was going to be, He answered that only the Father knew. As far as omnibenevolence is concerned, he once ran away from home to be in His Fathers house, the Temple, leaving his unknowing parents very worried. Not a good thing to do .... There are more examples of "being mean" to find in the New Testament and they usually relate to "hurting" His mother. The most important event of suffering of his mother is of course when she is standing under the cross, also suffering to see Her son die, when this Roman soldier asks Him why He does not save Himself, being an omnipotent God. The last words of Our Lord on the cross were words of not knowing, not feeling loved, not being able to do anything at all, absolute despair. It was a question ... Being deserted by His Loving (?) Father and totally powerless nailed to the cross, he said: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani ?" My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me ?
Jesus Christ is said to be the Image of the living God ... Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnibenevolent .....
His question is your question .......
13 Nov 03
What you are saying here seems to put in question why Christians would claim that their god is Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnibenevolent in the first place? It seems that these properties are disputed even by biblical events. Indeed, that is something I've argued previosly in other debates with Christians - pointing out that many of the story-lines of events described in the bible do not make sense if God were to have the properties Christians assign to him.
What is so wrong with "exeedingly powerful, exeedingly knowledgeable, and perfectly good"? This would not be contradictory, so it would be at least conceivable that these may be the properties of a god. This would also remove the contradiction with trying to fit omniscience of God and free will of people together.
If "God snapping his fingers" to remove suffering takes longer than, say, me snapping my fingers, then that in itself is an admittance that God is not omnipotent. If he has the option of doing it instantaneously, and any delay would be allowing great suffering, indeed thousands of years of suffering of sentient beings, then doing it slowly is sadistic.
Only if God has no option than to do it slowly, and he's doing it as fast as he can, then and only then can he be said to be perfectly good.
Note that I am not trying to impose some impatient "modern age" demands on god - I am merely pointing out the demands that exist in what it means to be "perfectly good". If you assign that lable to God, and insist on omnipotence and omniscience as well, then it is you claiming that God meets that "modern age" speed demand - because it is implied in the combination of the terms you use to describe God.
-Jarno
13 Nov 03
Originally posted by Pyrrho
What you are saying here seems to put in question why Christians would claim that their god is Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnibenevolent in the first place? It seems that these properties are disputed even by biblical events. Indeed, that is something I've argued previosly in other debates with Christians - pointing out that many of the story-lines of events ...[text shortened]... emand - because it is implied in the combination of the terms you use to describe God.
-Jarno
The concept of time is a difficult one, considering Jesus claimed to be the "Way" , the "Light" and "Life" itself, not to mention his claim being the Alfa and the Omega .......
His Father has never claimed to be that .....
14 Nov 03
Originally posted by PyrrhoPyrrho,
This, I think is a logical contradiction that can only be solved in four ways:
1) there is no God
2) God exists, but his power is limited
3) God exists, but he is not aware of everything that goes on
4) God exists, but he is not good - at best he is indifferent to the suffering of mortals.
(Note that number 3 would also imply that his power was ...[text shortened]... d knowledge about events.)
Now can you see any other resolutions to the dillemma?
-Jarno
A god with those three properties is not inconsistent the mere existence of evil, but rather with the existence of unnecessary evil. Some evil may have to exist in the world for there to be particular goods. For instance, some theists claim that the existence of evil is necessary prerequisite for the existence of virtues like compassion and charity. They view this world as "the best of all possible worlds", in that it contains the least amount off evil possible sufficient to bring about the existence of certain goods. In fact, the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz held this view, and was soundly mocked for it by Voltaire in "Candide". Now the faults with this response are obvious; it is inconsistent with the existence of free will and thus with sin and thus with moral judgement, all things that most theists believe in. But it is a coherent position, and as such deserves a place on your list.
14 Nov 03
Originally posted by bbarr
Pyrrho,
A god with those three properties is not inconsistent the mere existence of evil, but rather with the existence of unnecessary evil. Some evil may have to exist in the world for there to be particular goods. For instance, some theists claim that the existence of evil is necessary prerequisite for the existence of virtues like compassion and charit ...[text shortened]... t theists believe in. But it is a coherent position, and as such deserves a place on your list.
Who is to decide what is necessary and what is unnecessary evil and above all how do you decide that ?