/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>687292

Natural process of nature as God sees it

>>687292

We live in the best possible universe. Whatever evil happens is necessary for the kind of universe we live in. Best possble universe does not negate the existence of evil, but regulates it in the best possible scenario.

Problem if evil is very strong argument, specially suffering of babies and kids. Freewill gets undermined by evil people, in Africa kids get drugged and coerced to become child soldiers and rapists…etc

Argument from disharmony (contra design)

Picking a religion is also a problem.

Picking which prophet is legit, discerning who is trustworthy.

Euthyphro dilemma.

>>687294

Who told you this? Sounds like fan fiction from the 17th century

Best response to theodicy is an Islamic one I think… Or they copied some Christian we don't know.

Reason evil exists is because the universe is imperfect. The universe is imperfect because only God is perfect and he didn't clone himself when he created. Creation implies separation and separation from perfection is imperfection. So that makes sense.

And God intended the world to be a test so we get challenges and chaos.

This means only way to get perfect heaven is to join with God, anything else would have imperfections… Which is a different problem.

>>687309

That pre-dates Islam. Isn't it pretty central to Platonic and Neoplatonic approaches to the Monad?

>>687326

Problem there is no creation ex nihilo.So no ontological separation. The monad emanates the world. Unless there is emanation ex nihilo…?

>>687292

1)Because Humans were created as rulers of creation, sin affected entire creation too (excluding angels that are subordinate to God)

2)Were we immortal with bodies like Jesus has (and we will have in the future) these disasters would be an amusement park for us.

>>687287

>Islam is wrong because Muhammad's visitation by an angel was private and not public,

tbh, you only need to read this to realize that Islam was just a headcanon of some retard:

>O you who have believed, do not enter the houses of the Prophet except when you are permitted for a meal, without awaiting its readiness. But when you are invited, then enter; and when you have eaten, disperse without seeking to remain for conversation. Indeed, that [behavior] was troubling the Prophet, and he is shy of [dismissing] you. But Allah is not shy of the truth. And when you ask [his wives] for something, ask them from behind a partition. That is purer for your hearts and their hearts. And it is not [conceivable or lawful] for you to harm the Messenger of Allah or to marry his wives after him, ever. Indeed, that would be in the sight of Allah an enormity.

I don't think atheist arguments are shitty. They're actually pretty solid assuming you believe in naturalistic materialism. They only work within that specific framework however and when you point out that materialism is a philosophical position that isn't necessarily true they start to splutter about "muh evidence"

>>687287

>God lets evil happen because he allows free will.

You don't lose your free will if every choice you have is pleasant and wholesome.

>>687372

Presumably the response to this is that any meaningful definition (and the standard definition that theologians and philosophers have normally worked with) is for free will to mean the ability to make moral or immoral choices

>>687334

>2)Were we immortal with bodies like Jesus has (and we will have in the future) these disasters would be an amusement park for us.

I have never thought of this but that is very cool

>>687331

bump for answer on this

>>687343

How do you break someone out of naturalistic materialism?

Their arguments might be crappy but that doesnt excuse Christian sloppyness. For instance some are ok but you are getting slack

>"God lets evil happen because he allows free will."

Is only a partial refutation and one that only really deals with superficial evil - its hard to tell the person suffering from huntingtons disease or harlequinism that their incurable genetic suffering is just a part of free will. Likewise it leaves one open to why didnt God create Humans with less inclinations towards evil. You need to ground ethics as a whole on God to be effective here.

>Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,

This is the reasoning equivalent of pleading the fifth, if you cant provide evidence and reasoning for your belief in Christianity the status of your salvation was probably tied to your parents and geography.

>It is inherently more reasonable to believe in God than the teapot

You are missing the point with this one its essentially a fancier version of Hitchens Razor.

>If pagan gods existed, they would have destroyed the earth by now due to no one believing in them or respecting them,

This doesnt follow and just seems to ignore the 2 billion pagans in China and India.

>so Judaism is wrong. Islam is wrong because Muhammad's visitation by an angel was private and not public, where as Jesus's mission and death was entirely public and had witnesses.

You arent going to prove Pascals wager wrong to athiests by holding that other religions are false on the grounds of not functioning according to Christian standards just as Muslims seldom prove to Christians that their faith is wrong for not being correct under Islamic ones.

>Old Law of standards fulfilled by Jesus's death,

Far too broad for non Christians "well then I guess the 10 commandments are also nulified ect". Dont assume athiests have any understanding of Christianity and these kinds of ceremonial and moral distinctions.

>>687292

Was thinking about this when I came across this in the middle of a wiki-dive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_paradox

Let me explain. Assume you take the Bayesian solution to the paradox (non-black things are *really* small pieces of evidence that ravens are black, but not infinitesimally small).

Hypothesis; If God exists, then he is omnipotent, omnipresent, and entirely good.

Contrapositive: If it is not entirely good, omnipotent, and omnipresent, it is not God.

Remember, the contrapositive is logically equivalent to the hypothesis, so evidence of the former is evidence of the latter. If you accept that nothing of this world is entirely good, omnipresent, or omnipotent (which shouldn't be hard to get a non-believer to agree with,) everything on this plane of existence is now evidence in favor of the hypothesis. It doesn't explain why there is evil, but it prevents them from saying that because there is evil, God is not what we believe he is.

>>694666

>You need to ground ethics as a whole on God to be effective here.

Could you elaborate on this?

>>694685

>It doesn't explain why there is evil

Evil, we must remember, is not the opposite of good, but the lack of it. God wanted to give us a choice to either follow Him(good) or the lack of him(evil.) If there was no evil and only good, that choice would not exist because we would have nothing to choose from that is not God.

>Pascal's Wager is Illogical Because Other Gods

Well its not illogical you just have to establish that God rewards faith, and which religion to choose, and then which denomination, etc etc.

>>694710

Anon and St. Augustine forgive me, but I am blind to the point of these semantics. More than that, evil, as I have observed it, is very much extant. The absence of good just gives it fertile ground.

Let me make this harder for myself and wrestle with Augustine directly:

> "…disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance,—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else."

Wounds are an absence of health; the healthy part of the body that was there has been broken or torn away. Diseases are living things. They infect vulnerable points when we're not careful to keep clean. They feed on our health to make themselves healthy. They use us to spread and hurt others. Both are afflictions of the body, but one is hostile and one is not.

It's the same with the absence of good and the presence of evil; both are afflictions of the soul, but one is passive and the other is active.

>>694708

Alright thank you. I am a newly converted Christian, and feel like I am playing one big game of catch-up. that does lead me to wonder though, is it possible to align your own ideas of ethics with God, or are certain things simply unknowable to us? Using your example, it seems like no one could possibly understand the purpose of things like Huntington's disease or harlequinism, and even attempting to put yourself in a place to be able to justify it could lead someone down a very dark path. I don't know, just thinking out loud really.

bump

>>687306

I believe its along the same lines as this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_ontological_proof

There is no real proof though for this line of thinking, but I have often imagined God would be capable of of solving the perceived unfairness of say a short life with multiple universes. One might argue that if it is possible for God to create one universe, it should be possible for him to create more than one. He could then decide to create a Universe where you get a good long life, even if others perceive that you die in the present one. You won't find any evidence of this in the bible though, so its not something I would argue with an atheist about, but if unfairness is the concern, there exists a solution.

>>687287

I disagree with Pascal's wager on the reasoning that voluntary affiliation in the hope of hedging one's bet is not really desirable Christian behavior. One actually needs to choose to believe rather than simply hope by acting the part they might partake.

Regarding the food laws and such, pointing out why we don't focus on these things is important too since these things are small concerns. Sins like lying, fornication, murder, vengfulness, slander, drug use, drunkeness, etc are the major issues that Christian's have to learn to address in their life.

>>687309

If the goal of the universe for us is to receive salvation then there must exist a possibility to not receive salvation. In the grand scheme of things, the argument that the human mind will not accept is that one might endure all evils if only to receive the cherished reward. In the face of that, the trials and adversity become nothing. How can God really be unfair when the goal is within everyone's reach? That one had to endure some temporary loss of any magnitude is ultimately rendered meaningless.