Free Will, Evil, Suffering, and Innocent Victims.
Offline I think the theist argument that evils and suffering exist because of Free Will is nonsense. However, for the sake of argument let's pretend evil is, indeed, a result of human Free Will. Theists need to explain why we have innocent victims suffering horrible deaths from freak accidents and natural disasters. Why would someone suffer severely from something not related to another person's actions?
I'll give an example.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. IT IS DISTURBING ... AND A TRUE STORY.
I have a friend whose mother died in a house fire. No one caused this fire. It was a freak accident caused by faulty wiring in a table lamp. I won't ask the theists why she died because they'll say it was "her time" to go. Rather I'd like their interpretation as to why she suffered so horribly. This was not one of those cases where she died in her sleep from smoke inhalation before the fire even got to her. She was wide awake at the time, sitting in her favorite chair watching TV. The lamp that started the fire was sitting right next to her chair. It caught the chair she was sitting in on fire. She could not escape the burning chair because she was handicapped and no one was around to help her flee. There was not even time for smoke to overcome her before she was engulfed in flames. The autopsy revealed that her lungs were burned, indicating she was quite alive and gasping for breath while flames engulfed her face. She was burned alive and quite aware of it. I cannot think of a much worse and more painful death.
What does this evil have to do with human Free Will? No one caused it. No one deliberately tampered with the lamp's wiring. I seriously doubt whoever made the lamp back at the factory willfully assembled it to be dangerous. She did not know the lamp was faulty and just choose not to replace it. No one could have known it was going to happen and prevent it. Why would the fact that humans have Free Will cause this sort of extreme suffering on someone?
If not the result of Free Will then did God punish her? Did he think she deserved it?
I say she did not "deserve" this horror. I can think of few people who would deserve such suffering. They'd have to be along the lines of Hitler to deserve soemthing so awful, and even Hitler himself did not suffer this horrible an end. But she was nowhere near a Hitler. She was a good person. She worked 40 years as a nurse, caring for others. Her husband became handicapped at a young age and, despite working long hours as a nurse, took full care of her husband for the remainder of his life as well as raising 3 children by herself. She was a religious woman who went to church until she was too old to make the trip any more. So what would God have against her?
If this is somehow the result of human Free Will and the Fall of Man nonsense, I don't see how. But even if it was, why would our "merciful" God not have intervened enough to at least knock her out from smoke before the flames caught her?
There is just no rationalizing the existence of a merciful, all-powerful God with this sort of suffering to me.
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
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See also this thread:
http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/13852
Chrisitans will just say,'we can't know god's ways' or 'we let suffering enter the world through adam.'
Sad but true
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
Theists need to do better than that if they want to convince us they're right.
Doesn't God want us to know him? Why would he want us to know him if we can't possibly?
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
They need to do 'better' than they do on many accounts before they have a convincing argument. As Loc said, when they hit a brick wall, they cop-out.
"The Lord works in mysterious ways."
Yeah. So mysterious that he left a detailed record of his actions in the Bible, and so mysterious that your fucked-up pastor knows him well enough to preach about him.
Get fucked.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
well if i was a creative lil theitard i would come up with something along the lines of...
uh... hmm...
*maybe 1 persons sins/evil can affect/effect others, take that lamp shade for example, maybe the producing companies C.E.O was a bad christian, maybe he was pro-abortion, and his evils were seeping back into society as an ironic means of revenge against his ills, by killing off his customers in tragic house fires?
Ah damn... how high would i be to believe such crap?
(although it was a better answer then "Works in mysterious ways"... )
What Would Kharn Do?
You'd have to be pretty high, I think. Because if something you know nothing about and had nothing to do with and had no control over could kill you, then why bother to be good and moral and follow Jesus? Obviously it would have less effect on saving your ass than what some CEO does in his office across the country, so what's the point? If I'm going to get screwed for everyone else's bad behaviors no matter how good a person I am then I have little incentive to try to better myself. That would be one evil God would would put you in such a no-win situation....in which case we're back to God being responsible for evil.
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
Maybe God was just tired how people consider him as a personal protector of everything. A good woman, dying by senseless, torturous death would be a good example for religionally blind people, and some of them will be set them free from their delusion, that would be at least some benefit of this terrible event. I hope she agreed with such a life role before she was incarnated.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Of course, the real answer is that there is no answer that has not been shot down a thousand times in a thousand different ways. The Christian model of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God is simply irreconcilable with the fact that these things occur.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
Here is a possible theist response that kinda ties into the Free Will angle as well as a Chaos Theory angle (yes this will be horrid but hopefully entertaining) . . .
Ok, the Christian would say, we all know that man fell from God when he ate from the tree and was banished. By doing so, evil came into the world as did chaos. Could God have stopped the chaos from entering the world? Of course! To do so however, like preventing evil from entering the world, would involve direct interference of man's free will. Now, , the Christian would continue, we are all familiar with or at least have discussed evil at great length so there is no need to to go into it to save us the trouble of getting into the same old arguments. What we do not discuss a lot, however, is chaos. So, what is chaos? Well, chaos, while it can be evil, is not necessarily evil since evil is in direct opposition to good and chaos is both in opposition to everything and nothing simultaneously. Yes, yes, yes , the Christian will back pedal, God can understand and foresee this Chaos because he knows all which brings us to the case in question. Is this case horrendous? Yes. Unnecessary? Of course. However, this does not mean God intended it to happen or even wanted it to happen. He simply foresaw it as a result of the chaos that was released during the fall of man. Now, the christian will contradictorily and inaccuratley explain, chaos is the most unpredictable thing in the universe since the simplest and seemingly insignifigant actions can be the cause of disaterous and monumental catastrophes. So the most likely cause of this incredibly tragic event is something rather mundane or nto thought of during the time, such as, an overtired worker mistakenly miswiring the lamp. The Christian will then ask, is this fair? Of course not and God knows it is not and would have perferred to make the worker wire the lamp properly. However, much like the eating of the Tree of Knowledge, to do so would be to go against the moral law which He Himself fully understands and comprehends which includes not interfering with any man's free will for ANY reason
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
Ha! That's not exactly a news flash.
Not that I can really understand, but is it any wonder that God would hide? I mean, really. Anyone who believes in him has probably hyped the guy up so much that he'd be afraid of the disappointment when he did appear. What if it turns out "he" is a girl? Jeez, that would make things awkward. She'd say hi to everyone, and the really smart believers would ask stuff like, "where ELSE were we wrong about you? Was the four-legged insect thing a joke?"
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
That sound kinda like somthing I wrote when I was a xtian. Basically we did it to ourselves.God doesn't want us to suffer, but we allowed it to enter the world when Adam choose to sin against god. God, in his love, warned him, but our human pride led to our downfall and suffering.God created us in perfect happiness and wants that for us,but his love stops him from violating our free will.*
*I need to wash my hands after writing all that crap.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
I assume no one ever told Falwell that? ^_^
What Would Kharn Do?
Man, I just feel so bad for that old woman. It almost hurts my mind to even contemplate her awful death.
Interesting, no theists want to take this one on?
lol. Thats because "God" is possibly paying them back for something evil they have done... because "God" is a piece of shit asshole who loves to watch people suffer for doing wrong. Just look at the Old Testament in the Bible. He was "Jealous and proud of it" (Dawkins). I hate Theist. They try their hardest to substitute logic with rhetoric and it pisses me off because most of them suck at it. Those who are good at it make the big bucks.
We pop theist like Orville Redenbacher!
I didn't let Adam do shit. I wasn't there. Was anybody else?
Silly Christians.
Nobody I know was brainwashed into being an atheist.
Why Believe?
Yeah, I've always loved that one. God is so merciful and just yet he makes us suffer for something our ancestors did thousands of years ago? Where does that fit into the definition of "just"?
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
Because God is a sick fuck.
God likes to hold grudges.Though to be fair othertimes he doesn't,contradicting himself.
So why are we still being punsihed for Adam's sin?
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
Easy there.Remember,hate the belief,not the believer.(Ya ripped that off from the bible) We don't like theism.and rightly so,for it is dangerous. But if we hated the people,we wouldn't be trying to help them.I mention it because:
a)Hating them is what theists expect and want you to do
b)Lead to the dark side hate does
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
Yeah Loc , "Love the enemy" ..... we are ONE .... Education, caring communication, to end all DOGMA. Fix the TV asap ..... who owns it ???? Is that fair? Sue the FCC ..... for love sakes ....
Atheism Books.
Not that we don't all understand your frustration, Josh (which is what I guess you mean when you say "I hate theists" ). I'm pretty sure you didn't mean that literally anyway. You hate the bullshit, like we all do. Of course the person delivering the bullshit is annoying, but you can't really blame a person for getting sucked in, especially if they feel vulnerable, and someone allows them to feel powerful again (with the help of an invisible friend).
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence