Hmm, edits don't show up as new posts, so I didn't know about this response. Anyway: How can you say that without God we are brutal? In ancient Greece, culture, philosophy and society flourished. Being gay, something that you can't choose to be, was seen as a strength, especially in the army. What about now? Gays are hated throughout the US because God said they shouldn't be. Fundamentalists claim people who don't believe the same as them should be executed like savage beasts. That's some progress and non-brutal shit right there. Without God, there'd be no crusades, no Inquisition, no mindless indoctrination and raping of children by disgusting men who abuse their position of power to satisfy their sick fantasies because God will forgive them anyway. No, Jesus didn't tell anyone to rip out hearts. He and God did call out for every unbeliever to be brutally murdered, though. I know that Allah is basically God. Didn't stop the Christians and Muslims to mindlessly slaughter eachother in the name of their God, though. Of course, they had God, so weren't brutal at all. Your soul empty? How do you know that? How can you possibly know how people felt thousands of years ago? And the Romans didn't go to Hell, they went to the Underworld, everyone did. It's just as you said: it's a matter of belief. However, there's a point where belief ends and blind ignorance and hate starts. The priests who did the evil stuff? Like the ones that raped little children for all those years? The ones that coldly denied it, or stated they thought it wouldn't affect the child? Those people are disgusting human beings, and should be tried and put in jail. The same as those people who deny the Holocaust ever happened, or say condoms are bad things. And what are real Christians? Those who directly follow the Bible? Look at battleearl's post to see what the Bible commands. Cry me a river.
You left out the most critical element: that God is the Creator. Not that it really matters, because your logic is equally infallible if we assume two things: 1) that God is omni-malevolent, and 2) that omni-malevolence is compatible with omniscience. The first proposition is silly, because we have no reason to believe that God is omni-malevolent, but it's not entirely impossible and you can believe it if you want. The second is flawed, however, because omniscience is the same thing as omnibenevolence. If one is incapable of wrong action then one is incapable of evil. The existence of God provides an objective morality, the standard of which stems directly from Him, so that means that what is moral is what God decides is moral. Omni-malevolence is impossible because evil would simply be 'that which God does not.' You could take the easy way out of that and simply argue that some other standard of morality is the true objective one, or that there is no objective morality, but that doesn't address the other core problem with an omniscient, omni-malevolent entity: intelligence. Perfect intelligence would be the same as perfect good, because suggesting any course of action than the right one simply can't be considered a good. What is right and perfect is known by God, because God is omniscient. No matter your ethical disposition, you cannot argue that what God does is wrong; what God does is by its nature the correct thing to do. There are plenty of "real" religious deities that are significantly more sadistic than the God of the Bible. But that doesn't really matter, because there exists a worse state than the one we currently live in. We can easily imagine things that are more cruel and vindictive than the God of the Bible.
Time to dust off my theodicy cap: The concept of free will is the go-to argument for most contemporary theodites, I know you will say, "but why would he give us free will if He knew why would mess it up"? Well the popular answer is that without free will moral good cannot exist because free will involves making a choice. Now one of the earlier theodites: Liebniz said that this might be the best possible world and the presence of evil allows for a greater good, however 40 years after saying that his city of Libson was demolished in an earthquake, this destruction seemed to be the end of Leibniz. Because the concept of free will might explain certain evil things but the Lisbon earthquake could not be explained until van Ingwagen came along, he said that we should not attach arbitrary constraints to a higher power. Suppose 5000 people died, would that be horrific? Probably. Not suppose it was just 1, would it still be horrific? Probably not. There is no real magic number between the two and maybe we should not dictate the will of a higher power, if He existed he would most likely know more than you would about how to run the universe. Take the story of Noah and the Flood for instance. Noah was preaching the end of the world for about 100 years. And could not get any takers to renounce their ways. If you were warned about the end of the world and knew how to stop it can you still be mad when you refuse to fix your ways? I personally don't like religious arguments as people are already 100% set in their positions but I hope this shed some light on your questions. Oxford put together great group of essays on the topic, if you want to read more.
Theodicy is easy. Leibniz was just a punk who couldn't handle his philosophy whenever reality struck. And he ripped off that one Arabic dude in the first place, who also fell victim to pansy syndrome.
More like, whatever He does has to be the right thing. He can take whatever course of action He wants, but whatever action it is is the right one.
It's not that God is incapable of action, it's that whatever action is taken is by its nature correct.
Of course he is capable of action, but not choice. In every situation he can only do the perfect thing. He has no choice but to do it perfectly so he has no free will. He can imagine an imperfect action (seeing he's omniscient) but he cannot make it. If we did things only when it was logical we would have no free will, we would be constrained by our nature, just like god is constrained by his.
God is not bound into performing an action. God's action will just always be right. It's impossible for God to make a mistake not because He cannot deviate from a set position, but because even if He does the action will be correct. Being right about everything doesn't strip you of your free will. I know from experience.
That's nonsense. A wrong action doesn't magically become right just because god did it. In the case of a god you described it does. Thinking you are right and being right are not the same.
When I say correct, I mean morally. I think it would be possible for God to make a mechanical error, though He would know that is an error. In other words, God could lie. However, all actions that God takes are morally correct because objective morality stems from God. The metric for determining the correctness of an action would be to compare it to God's action, so God Himself would be incapable of immoral action because what is right is defined as what He does. It doesn't mean that God has to respond to the same circumstance in the same way because His prior actions were right, it means that whatever response God has to a circumstance cannot be wrong. You are imagining wrong as something that exists independently of God, which doesn't make sense because you've got not basis for objective morality aside from God. If there is no objective morality, then it doesn't matter what you say and God will simply be a standard agent (albeit omniscient and omnipotent).
Circular reasoning. All actions that God takes are morally correct because objective morality stems from God, objective morality stems from God because all actions that God takes are morally correct.
First of all fundamentalist aren't all ways Christian (int he heart). Second what church does is not what god wants.. You know this is basic stuff, free will and all that. And god wont forgive if the person does not repent it. And last, having a god doesn't stop crusades etc etc but if they would have believed in him truly the Crusades wouldn't have happened. How do I know, well ancient Romans were the same in mind as us. (hope you get the point) if we talk about Christianity you can almost throw out the old testament. You see those commands only applied to Jews and when Jesus came there is no need to do those things. you know jesus died for our sins and all that. in the old testamnet all those things were sin payers.
The first statement is true, the second is not. Objective morality stems from God because God is omniscient.
He gave us free will ,so that we could choose our paths ourselves without anyones intervention,humans must try to resolve their problems themselves,we must understand our mistakes and learn on them.And the part about people dying,well if people didnt die than how could new life be born?
I don't understand why you quoted me. The reason that objective morality would exist is because God is omniscient. It's objective because God's knowledge is perfect. The metric for determining morality is to compare something to God's action. God would always be moral because His actions are His own, even if He were to completely contradict a previous position of His. This means that God has choice, and yet is perfectly moral no matter what He chooses to do. In a sense it means that God cannot do the wrong thing, but that's not because God is prohibited from any specific action or forced into any choice. Your supposition that God has no free will is substantiated only by semantics. Yes it's impossible for God to do the wrong thing, but only because what's right is defined as what God does.
