[QUOTE=IRG SithLord]I understand them very well. I've indicated where your argument goes wrong but you seem to have some wild fantasy that it doesn't apply.

Here it is plain and simple: Your argument is insufficient. Adapt it to actually be something conclusive.

Also, even if it wasn't a fallacious argument as you put it, it is no argument to reject the existence of a God because now atheists have prove that there is no other solution to the conflict.[/QUOTE]


I'm sorry, but I appear to be an idiot. Can you reitorate, in a single, structered sentence, what precisely it is the argument 'lacks'?
I don't see that adding more premeses can resolve the conflict.

Do as I have, and structure your reply in a series of short, logical steps, detailing exactly how they lead on from one another.


The only two premeses that are usually rejected are either "Evil exists" or "God exists", and they'd both work just as well in resolving the conflict. (Rejecting "God is all-powerful" or "God is all-good" results in a radically different God). However, when rejecting "Evil exists" you need to redefine what exactly 'evil' is, and this is usually done in very wooly, roundabout and generally unelegant ways. My favourite one is "Evil is atheism". But anyway, rejecting "God exists" is a whole lot simpler and resolves the conflict just as well.

It's not adding more premises but correcting the ones improperly structured.

In elaborating on statement 4, you made a mistake in trying to keep it so simple. The correct premise for Statement B is One God allows evil to exist in its Universe for X purpose. Because of this correction, the first God and second God can be equally good. This means there may or may not be any conflict between #1 and #7 depending on said purpose.



But those are not the only 2 that can be rejected.

If you read the Bible, you will find that God is not all-powerful, all-seeing, or all-good.

If he has purpose, God should have the power to see that purpose through. And if evil is part of that purpose, then he is not all-good.

Flirb, I'm not actually trying to debate the existence of God or the existence of a God that is all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing. I'm just not satisfied with the way argument #2 is set up.

Mort, can you detail that last response a bit?

'Purpose' is only relevant if things that aren't 'God's purpose' can occur, which would make God not all-powerful, because things would be occuring against his purpose and he couldn't do anything about it. Or these things would be occuring and he deliberately wasn't doing anything, which would mean he is not all-good (because God is all-good, his purpose is all-good, anything that occurs that is not his purpose is not all-good).

Not necessarily.

God gave us free will, so that we could choose wether or not to love him (because, after all, if you're forced to love, or are unable to not love, then the love you give isn't sincere. Similar how if you force someone to apologize, the apology is worthless because the other party is only saying it because they have to, not because they're actually sorry.)

Man sinned (sin being a thought or act that goes against God's will), and through that brought evil into the world. God did not destroy sin, because it was a result of man's choices and actions, which leads back to the free will thing.

God didn't interfere and give us another sinless utopia, for the same reason a parent doesn't interfere when, say, a child is learning to walk. There's going to be some bumps and bruises along the way, but that doesn't make the parent "evil" for allowing it to happen. On the contrary, if the parent were to walk for the child (wether or not that would be possible is irrelevant, I mean it in a more metaphorical sense), the child would never learn how to walk by itself. Similarly, if God cleaned up after all of our mistakes, it would interfere with the whole free will, sincere love thing. Sometimes you have to experience the bad times to appreciate the good.

It was God's will to give us choice, but those choices have consequences. Sin was one of them. But for the gift of choice to be worth anything, we must also live with the consequences of those choices, which is why God did not interefere, and because of that, why evil exists in our world.

Mort, come on. Your argument is ridiculous. Why is it necessary for god to fit your arbitrary definition of 'all-good'?

God isn't exactly jueobdkyu either, and by jueobdkyu, I mean [insert arbitrary condition here]. Just because you've proven god to fit some arbitrary definition doesn't mean he doesn't exist.

Yeah, and how do you define "all-good" anyways? That all depends on your subjective view of what evil and good is. A god could be all good and allow so called "evil" things to happen if they are for the greater good or whatever.

Do i believe? of course. I use Psi energy to move stuff without touching them. I'm gonna have to look into the BMP fi- energy.

Absoulte free will does NOT exist.
Absolute choice does NOT exist.
The distinction 'evil' versus 'good' is a gradual and largely subjective one.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes :p


I seriously wonder: Could we just exchange paranormal experiences instead of degrading this thread to a pointless religious debate. I mean it should be possible without that. This has been off-topic for way too long.

Forget about god for once and let's just talk about things we have experienced.

We've hit upon another big problem here.

If God allows evil to exist, he is not all-good.

If God does not allow evil to exist, he is not allowing free will.


'Free will' also conflicts with omniscience, in that if God knows everything we're ever going to do, we do not have the free will to choose it and free will is merely an illusion by ignorance.




Moral relativism solves the conflict between Statements 1 and 7 by stating that Evil does not exist (and so "all-good" is just as meaningless as we've proven "all-powerful" to be).

This indeed does solve the conflict, but now that God cannot be all-powerful or all-good, what is left?

This is the set of thoughts that allows me to be a strong atheist, in that there is very little left that God can logically be.

God only needs to be the [hypothetical] conscious mind from which existence as we know it originates.

Well, he could logically be a hypocrite.

Also: what about being pretty damn powerful and pretty damn good? Is that not possible for some reason?

I've said this before, and I'll say it again--trying to explain God through logic is pointless. Faith is the only way you'll ever believe in him, and it's the only way he ever intended you to believe in him. And before you start going off on me, I'm not christian, or jewish, or muslim, so I do not believe in their God, so to speak.

Also, if you believe god is all-powerful, an interesting nuance to that fact is that it is within god's power to cease being god. How do you know he hasn't already done it?

We've addressed this already, Mort. That statement is not always true.



Again, not true. Depends on the purpose.

No, we haven't. You've asked me to reitorate it, and I have, but you haven't provided any fallacy.



Bingo!

This is really the key point that strong atheists are trying to make.

There is no rational reason to believe in God.

Belief in God entirely through faith? There is no problem with that.

But as soon as you need logical or physical proof (a priori or a posteriori), that's when we have a problem.


I think that very few people are actually capable of believing anything without any physical or logical justification, and that is why religion has 'miracles' and 'priests'.

I must say I concur.

Mort, stop pretending you've made a flawless argument. I've pointed out the problem -- a false dilemma. You've yet to prove that God can't be all-good if God has a purpose that requires the existence of Evil.

You need to prove that if you want #2 to be a valid argument.

Firstly, it's not a false dilemma.

Secondly, you've yet to prove that God can have a Purpose that requires evil and still be all-good. A God that has a Purpose that does not require evil will be more good than a God that does not require evil, because the Universe of the first God will be less evil than the second. A God that is all-good must be the God that is the most possible good.

This is why.

You've stated something like: If X is true then Y is false, or if X false then Y is true when in fact, they can both be true or false. Looks an awful lot like a false dilemma to me.



Burden of Proof is on you. You presented logic you claimed to be flawless.

"A God that is all-good must be the God that is the most possible good."

This has no connection with a God's purpose in eliminating evil in God's universe.

Burden of proof refers to a posteriori reasoning, not a priori reasoning.

You have to back up a claimed fallacy just as much, if not more, than you do a conjecture.

The fairly obvious difference is that Tolkien is not creating evil.

From the view of the Elves, Dwarves and Men, they too might be irritated at Ilúvatar and the Valar and Maiar for not doing anything about Morgoth (the difference being that the Vala and Maia actually do try to combat evil, but neither are all-powerful. Ilúvatar relinquished power to shape Arda to the Vala, so he cannot combat evil either). The Vala discover that in trying to fight Morgoth, they actually mess things up even more, with Men being afraid of them.

I'm not quite sure what Orcs believe in.

Once again Mort-Hog, give it up. You may have contradicted some words in the bible on a technical level, but you have proved nothing about the larger scheme of things.

Ofcourse, but maybe Illuvatar is not spoon feeding the men and elves and wants to shape them in the way that he wants through a temporary evil rather than just going poof so that evil can be immediately gone.

No, Ilúvatar doesn't have any power over Arda at all. He created the Ainu, who sang and created Arda, and the Vala were sent to shape Arda. It is the Vala who have the power to shape Arda, but the Vala are not all-good (as shown by Morgoth). Ilúvatar is all-good, but he does not have the power. Hence, evil exists.



Not once have I quoted the Bible.

It wouldn't take a 5 page thread just to find contradictions within the bible.

The 'larger scheme of things'? What things are larger than the supposed qualities of God? Existence being one of those very qualities.

No, Illuvatar did intercede in Middle-Earth in atleast one occasion I can remember. He destroyed Numenor and took Valinor out of Middle-Earth. As Raoul was saying, you've yet to prove why an all powerful and all good God cannot have evil as a temporary means to shape His world.

It doesn't matter whether evil is 'temporary' or not, evil is evil. If God 'uses' evil, then he is not all-good.

A God that is all-good must use all his powers to oppose evil, or else he is not all-good. If evil still exists, it can only mean that God does not have the power.

And if he HAS to use evil, he's not all-powerful.

heh, the arguement of whether or not God exists falls into the thread titled "Paranormal Activity"

Only if he 'uses' evil to do evil.

Who the hell cares? Nobody here, beliefs aside, can prove whether god exists or not. In fact, nobody in the world can.

You can't prove god doesn't exist.

You can't prove god does exist.

End of discussion.

You obviously weren't listening when I detailed the difference between a priori and a posteriori. No-one can prove that God doesn't exist a posteriori (but I'm not so sure that proving that God does exist a posteriori is impossible...), but we're interested in a priori, where most everything is possible! (until proven otherwise)

I actually believe anything is possible. I was just pointing out the obvious fact that neither side can undeniably be proven.

Except it can a priori.

And if you're suggesting something is impossible to prove, you have to prove that too.

Prove it.

I don't believe in ghosts, evp, etc. I guess even if ghosts exist, it's the psuedo-science that "studies" the whole thing that I'll never believe in.