But you just created them. The whole of their lives they have been tied to that track the way a character is trapped in the holodeck. When have they had time to sin?
They'll be beside themselves if this ever gets out. They might be driven to buy multiple motor yachts that they'll never even clap eyes on, to cope with that
Substitute the trolley for a tornado, the tracks for homes, the deity killing randomly with said tornado, and the survivors thanking deity for their survival (and their neighbors’ deaths).
Not a good analogy? Of course it isn’t. God doesn’t exist, and if he does, he’s perfectly happy killing you and destroying your family for no reason whatsoever, and your neighbors will thank him for doing so.
Of course that is not something I could judge by myself. You will have to ask the people in the situation and see what they will answer of their own free will.
And then here comes Cormac McCarthy (RIP) to shit all over your idea of some benevolent god, to give you a real sense of how chaotically brutal the reality of life actually is, to question autonomy and the very notion of free-will, and to maybe, as a side-effect of literature, to make you think twice about everything you've assumed about the world.
Gonna miss that guy.
I don't know why the Nobel asswipes didn't give him the recognition he deserved.
My guess is that his work was too "American" for their tastes.
In this situation, I could see it being done in order to announce that you have the power to alter reality on a whim, and really need people to get with the program.
So I would say it would depend on your other intentions, as if you have the creative power that is chested, you could easily bring someone back to life and place them in another scenario until they actually understand what you're trying to tell them.
I don't have enough information to ascertain whether or not the omnipotent being is evil or just a prankster.
Why do you have to "announce" your capabilities to beings you designed? Why do you have to onboard them to your "program" at all? If you truly are omnipotent, simply make beings that already know, and are already with the program. Assuming that is indeed what you want, why would you do anything else?
Are you throwing in extra steps for your own amusement? Just as a prank? Why? You're omniscient. You already know how it ends. What's amusing about it?
You are either toying with beings you created to be non-accepting and deliberately presenting conditions that won't convince them, or you're lacking one or both of omnipotence or omniscience.
An argument straight from the edgy teen atheist textbook, sure, but nonetheless one I have yet to see a compelling rebuttal for.
It's just basic logic, not even edgy teen athiest.
If your God is all good and all powerful, it can't be all knowing. If your God is all knowing and all good, it can't be all powerful. If your God is all knowing and all powerful then he can't be all good.
One of the three being absent is an appropriate excuse for the state of the world, but if it's all three? God had full control of the entirety of creation and he chose to invent the system that causes hell and punishment to be required. Why did he need to sacrifice himself? Does he not have the ability to just... Forgive people for the rules he invented?
God simultaneously has all the power in the universe or is totally helpless to change the system he created, it just depends on what specific point is being argued at the time.
No not really, my friends and I fuck with each other all the time, but we never do permanent harm or majorly inconvience each other.
If I could just snap my fingers and rewrite reality, I'd totally put those closest to me through a haunted mansion to be just by a serial killer, maybe even have them die a couple of times as a joke...
Then I'd bring them back to life and we'd go to the planet of nymphomaniacs to laugh it off over a few ambrosial liqours and impossibly large breasted company.
"You really had me going with the whole Saw trap, but then when I cut off my leg to escape the trap you changed my biology so that I could just re-attach it. Such a kidder."
Agreed, what if... and here's the real kicker, what if none of your actions can be considered, period; because you define reality, and you choose not to.
I mean, if evil always shoots itself in the foot, this guy's off to a good start. Why would you get them to agree to blame you for putting them there, and then free them? Chaotic stupid.
As the creator of the universe you probably have the power to define the human constructs that are good and evil so it depends on yourself if you want to call yourself good or evil, it does not matter.
From the perspective of God the delineation between good and evil is a human perspective, not necessarily God's.
A similar point of view would be if a person sets a rule for a child or maybe a pet. The person strictly enforces this rule, but openly breaks the rule because it does not apply to them. The child or pet meet feel that they are being treated unjustly and categorize breaking of the rules as being wrong. Making the child go to bed at bedtime or not allowing the pet to eat certain foods.
What many atheists do not understand is that human logic does not apply to God(s), just like the feelings of my dog wanting a slice of pizza do not apply to me.
Is God evil, probably, what is evil? What is good? Is God just? In application to others if you're following Christian ideology he theoretically is in the long term, but in application to their self definitely not.
The biggest problem I have with Atheist logic is that if there is a god that it should follow human logic and because there is suffering and issues in the world there must be no god or that God isn't worth following. If after life beliefs are correct do you think it matters if you took a moral high ground against an unfair god?
If you're an atheist because you don't believe there is a god then cool, but if you are an atheist because you think God should follow our rules idk what to say for you.
The same goes for religious people, you have to accept that God let's bad things happen to you.
The simple obvious answer is that there is no God. If there is, I want no part of an afterlife with him.
"God is so moral that he doesn't need earthly morals" is an absolutely laughable justification. May God strike me dead before I click the "reply" button, if I'm wrong.
Hey, that's chill. I'm not trying to appeal to people to change their opinions on whether there is a god or not. I'm simply arguing that if what is said about god is true, then taking the moral high ground because you're the better being doesn't really mean anything.
"Hey what did you do that landed you up in eternal pain and suffering?"
"Oh, I'm just morally superior to the being that put me here."
The same goes for religious people blaming the bad things in their life on anything other than the same all powerful being.
Tell that to the self proclaimed atheists that use the morality of God as a reason why there is no god. To be clear I agree, but I'm tired of hearing the argument.
Ah the argument from authority... this exact reasoning is I believe why christofascism is taking such a root in American politics. A pet still knows when it is being abused. Having rights and power over others does not make actions moral. This is basically a might makes right line of thinking except God becomes humanities bully.
You may not believe morality is subjective, but I do, and I define moral actions as led by my inner compass. You may choose to call your inner compass the holy spirit and assign gods divinity to it, making your interpretation of gods actions closer to divine authority, but it holds no more importance than anybody elses interpretation or convictions.
To think that any being would be exempt from judgement or morality based on their power or position of authority is in my opinion the weakest logic of all. By this logic, abortion should be a non starter for theists after all, my house my rules, right? No it turns out there is no equivalent logic to explain the relationship between man and god. All sinful humans must follow your inner compass whereas any command or action attributed to god is exempt from reproach, and since you inner compass is actually the holy spirit, it gives you or your interpretation of your favorite book dominion over all others without the need for any self reflection whatsoever. This way you can attribute acts that are considered evil by every other daily metric as good so long as you can delude yourself that it is gods will.
"Didnt you go out and do all these things in my name?"
If god exists and provided you free will and the holy spirit, why then would you not be expected to use it to discover more about god? To develop discernment instead of chalking up inconsistencies in the messaging to gods will and all actions dictated by men as "acts of God". Isn't it possible that the idea of god of the Bible or the Quran or whatever is inherently flawed and twisted to serve the desires of man? That god, if real, is not depicted accurately in any single book in the history of man?
I cant stand these ray comfort style gotcha arguments like no actually we don't have to follow logic or morality because divinity and anyone who questions our assertions has the absolute arrogance to spit in gods face.
I'm not trying to make an argument in support of religion or god, I'm making an argument that moral (subjective or objective) rationales do not validate or invalidate the existence of god. If god exists, then they do so whether you believe in them or not. If god exists and the supposed outcomes of not following their rules is true, then whatever judgements about them you have is irrelevant.
Is god evil because it allows bad things to happen? Yeah and so what? You can think god sucks and is unfair or unjust, be the better person and refuse to worship or believe all you want. If you don't meet their magic requirements for the good ending then you get the bad ending no matter how much more moral you are.
I think that trying to have a philosophical debate about the morality or ethics of god(s) is asinine since if a god exists your objections to it have literally no value.
It's not that we don't believe because we think he should follow our rules, it's that a God with such flimsy, ever-changing morality which falls all over the spectrum from one book to the next is clearly just an invention of the people who were writing about him at the time.
Or, in other words, the unreliability of God's morals leads inevitably to the realization that this god can't be the creator of objective morality (if such a thing even exists) considering he can't even follow his own standards. He's like a narcissist that thinks every rule applies to others but not himself. If such morality is actually real and objective due to his mere existence, then he wouldn't be able to break it. Yet he does constantly in the text.
It's basically "might makes right" on a cosmic scale.
It's just so blatantly obvious that it was written to whatever moral standard of the day that the author existed in, which is why he goes through a personality change between testaments.
If you have a problem with the idea that God doesn't monkey-see-monkey-do set a good example as the rationale that God doesn't exist then you inherently still believe in God. If God exists they are beyond whatever beliefs or rationales you have.
If you don't believe in God then fine, if you don't believe in God because they don't meet your moral code then surprise you still believe in God. If that God exists then it doesn't care what you think. Either really stop believing in God or stop rationalizing with the giant outside our collective ant farm.
I'll be the first to say the new trend of atheists horribly mangle the Problem of Evil, and while they rebut responses like yours, they tend to do so horribly and emotionally. But properly stated, Divine Command theory really doesn't work.
The LPOE is challenging one of two traits for God: omnipotence or omni-benevolence. And those two concepts are defined in reasonable, quantitative ways. The God in the your example is a direct acceptance of the LPOE by the admission that god isn't "benevolent" at all by that definition. Which is perfectly fine, but it does create a lot of very valid moral or ethical problems, along the line of Hedonistic salvation.
The rest of my reply doesn't belong with LPOE, but this is focusing on the rules side instead of the suffering side.
You see it as a parent setting rules for a child, but it can also accurately be seen as (sorry, both of these come from the show Suits, and apparently the showrunners have a problem with moms) "mommy tells the child he'll get a Playstation if he lies to the judge about daddy hitting her". OR, "mommy will punish you if you tell daddy what she did with the mailman last night". Rules are not inherently Good by most standards.
And that's before you add the uncertainty. We're 100% definitely not "following rules that our parents gave us". We're following rules we found typed up on a piece of paper that some people **insist ** came from our parents, and maybe they did. And some of them seem really weird or even harmful, and seem to contradict what we think mom and dad want for us. And we have to decide whether or not we're going to follow them before our parents come home. Because daddy will murder us if we're wrong. And I don't mean a beating, I mean with his God-glock.
What many atheists do not understand is that human logic does not apply to God(s), just like the feelings of my dog wanting a slice of pizza do not apply to me
This is true, but you can still pass some judgement on a dog who acts out of possessive-aggression. But of course, we are more responsible for our actions than dogs, aren't we? Why? Because we have more agency than dogs. Guess who has the most agency, assuming there's a God? That would make him the most accountable. When he does something prima facie evil and the more you analyze his actions the weaker the objections get, then "Good is just what God wants and evil is just what he doesn't want" simply doesn't cut it.
Is God evil, probably, what is evil? What is good? Is God just? In application to others if you’re following Christian ideology he theoretically is in the long term, but in application to their self definitely not.
I think there are Christian ideologies that can make sense of it all, but contingent salvation is as filmsy to philosophical attack as wet cardboard. I would encourage you to listen/read Dr. Josh Rasmussen for his in-depth research into the Problem of Evil and Salvation from an open-minded Christian perspective. He, too, concludes that God cannot pass the Problem of Evil if there is contingent salvation. But he stands by the Ontological Argument, so conceding "God isn't all-good" is not on the table for his POV.
The biggest problem I have with Atheist logic is that if there is a god that it should follow human logic and because there is suffering and issues in the world there must be no god or that God isn’t worth following. If after life beliefs are correct do you think it matters if you took a moral high ground against an unfair god?
Ironically, I would hope a Christian would be the first person to say YES IT MATTERS because they stand behind martyrdom as a legitimate virtue. Let me put it this way. If Christianity were true with one exception, that the Devil ultimately wins instead of God, would you kneel to him because your eternity is more important than actually being a good person? Would you be able to respect a person who does unspeakable evils, knowing they are unspeakable evils, because they get to selfishly be immortal?
If so, I think you've just given atheists the win. If not, then at least you can understand (if not agree) rejecting a God you think is evil.
The same goes for religious people, you have to accept that God let’s bad things happen to you.
Yeah, I'm fine with that. I think the true god is neither omnipotent nor omni-benevolent. God can be a jerk sometimes, but so can I, and I don't have to debase myself or put him far above me, so I can forgive god. If that gets me a good afterlife, I got there in a way I'll never regret. If that gets me eternal damnation, at least I know I didn't selfishly throw away my morals for personal gain.