"Everything is God's fault."

[Byblos]

We can go this route (suffering) also if happycynic wishes but this reminds me of a story of this guy who went into a barbershop to get a haircut and was having a conversation with the barber about why there is so much pain and suffering in the world. The barber said well you know that's why I don't believe in any god. Look at how much poverty we have, how many people are homeless or sick and ain't no god doing anything about it. The guy felt bad but he didn't want to debate the guy so he left. On the way out he sees this homeless guy with dirty long hair and immediately runs back into the barbershop and tells the barber, look this guy has long hair, that is proof that barbers don't exit. The barber says of course we exist, after all here I am, the problem is guys with long hair just don't want to come to me.

And then there was this third guy who entered the barbershop. He listened to their conversation, and decided to intervene. He told the first guy "Wait, wait, wait, you are acknowledging the existence of people in need of a barber. You are, therefore, acknowledging an objective standard for judging whether people are in need of this person called "barber" or not. Therefore, a barber exists". That's basically what you are saying.

It is not basically what I'm saying, it is PRECISELY what I'm saying. I am acknowledging the existence of an objective standard by which EVERYTHING can be judged. Thank you smiley (I'm confused, are you making my arguments for me?).

Smiley,

Do you believe in God and resurrection of Christ? Please do not post anything else until you answer the question. All other posts will be deleted.

Yes. I already answered this numerous times. But let's not derail the thread about that. If you want, PM me.

Thank you. For some reason we (myself and other mods) were under the impression that you hadn't. No need for PM just yet, let's keep going.

[Sudsy]

Byblos, just want to understand what happened here. Smiley was asked - 'Do you believe in God and resurrection of Christ? Please do not post anything else until you answer the question. All other posts will be deleted.'

On this thread, happycynic, who identifies himself as not a Christian in his profile, is allowed to post, which I believe he certainly should be, but Smiley was questioned to state a certain belief or else his further posts would be deleted ?

In another forum I participate in, it is a rule that no one is allowed to question anyone's Christianity. IMO, thats a good rule. I thought I received a similar challenge about my Christianity shortly after I started to post, although there was no threat to delete my posts.

The simple way to find out if someone is a Christian or not is to take their word for it from their profile. Yes/No ?

[Sudsy]

In the past, comments made by those with Christian in their profile have been rather critical to Christian beliefs.

I see. And I guess this applies to all members critical of Christian beliefs different from their own, right ?

[Canuckster1127]

No it doesn't Sudsy. And this isn't really the place to discuss this. If you have questions I'll be glad to speak with you about them if you want to pm me.

Let's let this go for here please.

bart

[Sudsy]

OK

[Gman]

Sorry folks... I missed the party here.

Ok what is this "God could make the world be better" stuff, what do you mean by this?

[B. W.]

The real disagreement between utilitarian morality and...

Late to the Party as well,

Happycynic, do you mean Utilitarianism based ethics?
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[Echoside]

I am very confident that it is the argument that because, supposedly, the problem of evil presupposes that an objective moral standard exists, and morality cannot exists without God, it therefore follows that God must exist.

And it's not a very good argument at all. Because if the theist really insists, you can call it simply the "problem of suffering". It is an argument attempting to show an internal incosistency in the theist's beliefs, it does not require the skeptic to assume that objective evil exists.

I agree with this, to me it seems like the thread moved a bit away from the main argument. Happycynic could have the most ludicrous belief system I've ever heard, but his position's validity isn't resting on his own morality.

[CeT-To]

Whoops, a reply slipped past me. Sorry, CeT-To; I'll take care of it now Here's his post for reference.

LOL hahah damn thats huge wall of text

But anyway, you said aaalll that yet you never thought to yourself " hmmm hang on maybe there is a plan in all of this suffering?" Look at this: Luke 15:11-32 the whooole point of this parable is that God allows you to pervert your free will but it will only result in suffering, thus this suffering makes you understand that something is wrong like maybe what person is doing and then it will result in him seeking forgiveness. Another reason is maybe that the death of a person is part of His plan to bring some one else close to him, considering that the person who died IS christian or a person who will never ever believe ( not sure on the unbelievers death tho maybe some one else could fix that up) See God has every right to bring judgment and to raise up anyone.

In a nut shell tho the whole suffering deal is to bring you back to the Lord. Its not that hard to understand but i do admit that there is more to it that we as finite beings cannot comprehend.

You also states -"Free will isn't an excuse if he's omnipotent--he could negate suffering and preserve free will if he were omniscient, even if that's impossible by defintion. If he can't, then that means the definition of free will is more powerful than God."

If God were to stop every evil action that were to occur that would eliminate free will, this is why there is suffering because God is Just, so he writes the the end from the beginning meaning every thing has been planned already. Free will isn't more powerful than God, God restricts himself purposely so that his creation could make decisions on their own and choose whether to be with him or not. Don't you know that self control is part of being omnipotent? If he couldn't be able to restrict himself how could he be omnipotent ? how can he allow free will? Don't get me wrong, he DOES have the power to do what he likes but he doesn't do so because is fully Just.

For the "larger plan" thing, an omnipotent God could create a plan that does just as much good stuff, but doesn't make us suffer to get there. In the parable, you say that God let's the guy screw up so that he understands the mistake. Why not just tell him? He can do that. Someone's death is his plan to bring a guy closer to him? He's omniscient and omnipotent, he can come up with a better plan that doesn't involve someone dying, and make it happen.

Genesis 2:17 - i'm sorry didn't he warn adam? Dont you already know whats right and wrong? "He's omniscient and omnipotent, he can come up with a better plan that doesn't involve someone dying, and make it happen" Relative to what? LOL the fact that he is omniscient and omnipotent means there can be no better. Self -defeating.

The "god has a right to judge us" point is perhaps debatable; depends greatly on the specifics of how we view god and judgement and the rights of who gets to judge whom. Which is a big can of worms, bigger than the entire POE in my opinion. But for expedience, let's say he has the right to judge us. Say that you're an omnipotent, omniscient judge. You can stop Clyde from raping Suzy, but don't because you have a right to judge him and has a right to free will. would you consider that to be benevolent, or vengeful and neglectful? And how does delivering judgement justify, say, the Haiti earthquake? Unless you think every 2-year-old orphan in Haiti deserved to have their parents killed, Judgement doesn't do much for this case.

The little kids will be in heaven, is there a problem with that? I already told you about free will, that God will take everything in to consideration once you die and judge you by what you have done, PLUS im positive there have been cases where people get saved from rape by God will ( by sending a person to aid her), so really.... that fact that you dont know his plan means you shouldn't have any say if its bad or not, and i'm not saying i fully comprehend it either but thats faith for you.... faith in an omni^3 God. How can you judge an action without knowing the intent? ( im referring to God here)

You say that if God were to stop every evil action that would eliminate free will. Forgetting for a moment about random evil (i.e. earthquakes and appendixes) that aren't from humans being nasty, this would mean that God couldn't, or wouldn't, keep free will around and still stop us from being evil. which means he's not omnipotent. If it's set up that way because God created the way free will and evil work, then God still is left holding the hot potato. If it's fundamentally that way, God's omnipotent and he could change the rules. If he doesn't feel like it he's not Omni-benevolent, if he can't he's not omnipotent. If being "fully Just" mandates that God has to allow us to kill and rape each other, then he could just change that rule--he's the one that made it in the first place anyhow, if he's a creator god.

God didnt create evil work, evil is the lack of love thus any action without love of any sort or amount is evil. Meaning we "create" evil. We humans that are in the perverted state called Sin can be empty of love. Why change the rules? that's just running away from the matter... by the way what rules? Fully just is allowing you to make your own choices in life, God is not out servant that we should order him around to do what we like, he is omniscient, he knows best.

By the way Jlay i was referring to God allowing satan to occasionally do his thing to bring us back and other times to make our faith stronger. Yes that parable can be interpreted that way tho. Unless im wrong please do correct me

[B. W.]

Genesis 2:17 - i'm sorry didn't he warn Adam? Dont you already know whats right and wrong? "He's omniscient and omnipotent, he can come up with a better plan that doesn't involve someone dying, and make it happen" Relative to what? LOL the fact that he is omniscient and omnipotent means there can be no better...

Addition to Cet-To's point:

Genesis 1:26, 27, 28 - points out that God placed humanity in charge to govern this world - exercise dominion. In order to exercise dominion involves the use of using moral reasoning to do so. The test - would humanity rely solely on his/her own moral reasoning to govern, or would their exercise of governing dominion be guided by God's governance in whose likeness they were to reflect?

We can design or own brand of morals to live by because we do have the capacity of moral reasoning which aids us in governing our lives. So the question comes back to: Should our governing dominion be guided by God's governance in whose likeness we were to reflect or continue to govern on our own?

Which is good and which is evil?
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[happycynic]

Happycynic, do you mean Utilitarianism based ethics?

Ethics based on whether the action helps people or hurts people. If that's utilitarian or utilitarianism-based, then yes.

Ok what is this "God could make the world be better" stuff, what do you mean by this?

Is the world imperfect? If so, it could be made better. If god is the one who made it, then he could have made it better. If he's omnipotent, he could change it to make it better.

And then there was this third guy who entered the barbershop. He listened to their conversation, and decided to intervene. He told the first guy "Wait, wait, wait, you are acknowledging the existence of people in need of a barber. You are, therefore, acknowledging an objective standard for judging whether people are in need of this person called "barber" or not. Therefore, a barber exists". That's basically what you are saying.

It is not basically what I'm saying, it is PRECISELY what I'm saying. I am acknowledging the existence of an objective standard by which EVERYTHING can be judged. Thank you smiley (I'm confused, are you making my arguments for me?).

Change "Barber" to "magical hair-cutting imp" and perhaps you could see the problem with this. Using this same logic, I could justify the existence of skyhooks by saying "This construction site really could use skyhooks. This one could use it more. There's an objective standard for needing skyhooks, therefore skyhooks must exist."

Or there is another reason for it that we don't understand because we are fallible humans and an omniscient God is infinitely smarter and wiser than us.

More on that in a sec.... I'll make it two separate posts, just for less clutter.

[happycynic]

am

CeT-To wrote:
Genesis 2:17 - i'm sorry didn't he warn Adam? Dont you already know whats right and wrong? "He's omniscient and omnipotent, he can come up with a better plan that doesn't involve someone dying, and make it happen" Relative to what? LOL the fact that he is omniscient and omnipotent means there can be no better...


Addition to Cet-To's point:

Genesis 1:26, 27, 28 - points out that God placed humanity in charge to govern this world - exercise dominion. In order to exercise dominion involves the use of using moral reasoning to do so. The test - would humanity rely solely on his/her own moral reasoning to govern, or would their exercise of governing dominion be guided by God's governance in whose likeness they were to reflect?

We can design or own brand of morals to live by because we do have the capacity of moral reasoning which aids us in governing our lives. So the question comes back to: Should our governing dominion be guided by God's governance in whose likeness we were to reflect or continue to govern on our own?

happycynic wrote:
Whoops, a reply slipped past me. Sorry, CeT-To; I'll take care of it now Here's his post for reference.
CeT-To wrote: LOL hahah damn thats huge wall of text

But anyway, you said aaalll that yet you never thought to yourself " hmmm hang on maybe there is a plan in all of this suffering?" Look at this: Luke 15:11-32 the whooole point of this parable is that God allows you to pervert your free will but it will only result in suffering, thus this suffering makes you understand that something is wrong like maybe what person is doing and then it will result in him seeking forgiveness. Another reason is maybe that the death of a person is part of His plan to bring some one else close to him, considering that the person who died IS christian or a person who will never ever believe ( not sure on the unbelievers death tho maybe some one else could fix that up) See God has every right to bring judgment and to raise up anyone.

In a nut shell tho the whole suffering deal is to bring you back to the Lord. Its not that hard to understand but i do admit that there is more to it that we as finite beings cannot comprehend.

You also states -"Free will isn't an excuse if he's omnipotent--he could negate suffering and preserve free will if he were omniscient, even if that's impossible by defintion. If he can't, then that means the definition of free will is more powerful than God."

If God were to stop every evil action that were to occur that would eliminate free will, this is why there is suffering because God is Just, so he writes the the end from the beginning meaning every thing has been planned already. Free will isn't more powerful than God, God restricts himself purposely so that his creation could make decisions on their own and choose whether to be with him or not. Don't you know that self control is part of being omnipotent? If he couldn't be able to restrict himself how could he be omnipotent ? how can he allow free will? Don't get me wrong, he DOES have the power to do what he likes but he doesn't do so because is fully Just.


Happycynic: For the "larger plan" thing, an omnipotent God could create a plan that does just as much good stuff, but doesn't make us suffer to get there. In the parable, you say that God let's the guy screw up so that he understands the mistake. Why not just tell him? He can do that. Someone's death is his plan to bring a guy closer to him? He's omniscient and omnipotent, he can come up with a better plan that doesn't involve someone dying, and make it happen.


CeT-To: Genesis 2:17 - i'm sorry didn't he warn adam? Dont you already know whats right and wrong? "He's omniscient and omnipotent, he can come up with a better plan that doesn't involve someone dying, and make it happen" Relative to what? LOL the fact that he is omniscient and omnipotent means there can be no better. Self -defeating.


happycynic wrote:
The "god has a right to judge us" point is perhaps debatable; depends greatly on the specifics of how we view god and judgement and the rights of who gets to judge whom. Which is a big can of worms, bigger than the entire POE in my opinion. But for expedience, let's say he has the right to judge us. Say that you're an omnipotent, omniscient judge. You can stop Clyde from raping Suzy, but don't because you have a right to judge him and has a right to free will. would you consider that to be benevolent, or vengeful and neglectful? And how does delivering judgement justify, say, the Haiti earthquake? Unless you think every 2-year-old orphan in Haiti deserved to have their parents killed, Judgement doesn't do much for this case.


CeT-To: The little kids will be in heaven, is there a problem with that? I already told you about free will, that God will take everything in to consideration once you die and judge you by what you have done, PLUS im positive there have been cases where people get saved from rape by God will ( by sending a person to aid her), so really.... that fact that you dont know his plan means you shouldn't have any say if its bad or not, and i'm not saying i fully comprehend it either but thats faith for you.... faith in an omni^3 God. How can you judge an action without knowing the intent? ( im referring to God here)

happycynic wrote:
You say that if God were to stop every evil action that would eliminate free will. Forgetting for a moment about random evil (i.e. earthquakes and appendixes) that aren't from humans being nasty, this would mean that God couldn't, or wouldn't, keep free will around and still stop us from being evil. which means he's not omnipotent. If it's set up that way because God created the way free will and evil work, then God still is left holding the hot potato. If it's fundamentally that way, God's omnipotent and he could change the rules. If he doesn't feel like it he's not Omni-benevolent, if he can't he's not omnipotent. If being "fully Just" mandates that God has to allow us to kill and rape each other, then he could just change that rule--he's the one that made it in the first place anyhow, if he's a creator god.


CeT-To: God didnt create evil work, evil is the lack of love thus any action without love of any sort or amount is evil. Meaning we "create" evil. We humans that are in the perverted state called Sin can be empty of love. Why change the rules? that's just running away from the matter... by the way what rules? Fully just is allowing you to make your own choices in life, God is not out servant that we should order him around to do what we like, he is omniscient, he knows best.

By the way Jlay i was referring to God allowing satan to occasionally do his thing to bring us back and other times to make our faith stronger. Yes that parable can be interpreted that way tho. Unless im wrong please do correct me

ok, lots to go over.

First off: "god is smarter than us so we can't question him". That's a big part of your argument there. It has the advantage of being completely untestable impossible to know; you can assert it and if you don't need to back up your assertion, then there's no way to disprove you. On the other hand, I can do the same thing. Watch this.

"You think God exists, but really he doesn't. Nothing you see before you exists, and everything you've experienced so far has been a lie. In reality, you're hooked up to a machine that feeds your brain signals to keep you in this artificial world, while your body is being used as a battery for evil machine overlords"

The Matrix proposal is just as inscrutable as the "god's ways are higher than ours" proposal. If you can say that an omni^3 god is incomprehensible adn therefore I can't make any claims about it (and therefore I cna't prove or disprove it), then it's fair game for me to make the matrix argument. Or the argument that the only thing that exists is your mind and everythign else is a hallucination put on by your subconscious. Or that undetectable pink unicorns orbit mars. Or that Russel's Teapot exists. Each of these has equal merit, and for each one there's an infinite amount of possible untestable, unknowable theories that are contradictory and mutually exclusive.

So, basically, saying that God can't be evaluated or understood and that there's a big super-deific plan we can't know about stops the discussion. It stops it in the same way that dividing by zero stops a math equation--everything explodes into not-making-sense, everything is unknown.

Now with that out of the way, let's take a look at specifics point-by-point... Ah. here we go. B.W.'s post.

I think you're talking about whether we should trust our morals or god's morals. Either way, it's like echoside said:

to me it seems like the thread moved a bit away from the main argument. Happycynic could have the most ludicrous belief system I've ever heard, but his position's validity isn't resting on his own morality.

The point isn't which moral system you go with. Pick pretty much any moral system and you'll find violations to it in reality. The point of contention is whether or not being Omni^3 requires the Omni^3 deity to fix those moral violations.

Genesis 2:17 - i'm sorry didn't he warn adam? Dont you already know whats right and wrong? "He's omniscient and omnipotent, he can come up with a better plan that doesn't involve someone dying, and make it happen" Relative to what? LOL the fact that he is omniscient and omnipotent means there can be no better. Self -defeating.

He warned adam, sure, but apparently he didn't make it hit home well enough. Adam believed eve & the snake when they told him the fruit was tasty, harmless, and would make him smarter (I'm paraphrasing here, obviously). God could have told adam the tree was bad in such a way that he couldn't be fooled into disbelieving it; he could have made some terribly convincing deity-ish argument explaining why and in the light of this amazing revelation of awesomeness adam wouldn't have doubted. God didn't, but he could have. And that's not taking away free will, btw; it would just be giving Adam complete knowledge to make his decision.

But anyways, the literal talking-snake story is thought of symbolic in many christian circles (not sure how many of those circles are on this forum though), so for a lot of people this discussion is kinda pointless.

"He's omniscient and omnipotent, he can come up with a better plan that doesn't involve someone dying, and make it happen" Relative to what? LOL the fact that he is omniscient and omnipotent means there can be no better. Self -defeating.

Eh, kinda... if God were Omni^3, you're right: the universe should be the best it can be. That's my whole point. I continue by saying, "But obviously the world isn't the best it could be," which you apparently disagree with... Hey, I have some land in China I can sell you cheap, just $5,000. send me a check or cash and I can get you the deeds a week later

But seriously...

happycynic wrote:
The "god has a right to judge us" point is perhaps debatable; depends greatly on the specifics of how we view god and judgement and the rights of who gets to judge whom. Which is a big can of worms, bigger than the entire POE in my opinion. But for expedience, let's say he has the right to judge us. Say that you're an omnipotent, omniscient judge. You can stop Clyde from raping Suzy, but don't because you have a right to judge him and has a right to free will. would you consider that to be benevolent, or vengeful and neglectful? And how does delivering judgement justify, say, the Haiti earthquake? Unless you think every 2-year-old orphan in Haiti deserved to have their parents killed, Judgement doesn't do much for this case.


The little kids will be in heaven, is there a problem with that? I already told you about free will, that God will take everything in to consideration once you die and judge you by what you have done, PLUS im positive there have been cases where people get saved from rape by God will ( by sending a person to aid her), so really.... that fact that you dont know his plan means you shouldn't have any say if its bad or not, and i'm not saying i fully comprehend it either but thats faith for you.... faith in an omni^3 God. How can you judge an action without knowing the intent? ( im referring to God here)

First off, the orphans aint dead yet. So they're not in heaven. They're probably starving in a rather unsanitary street whilst their parents' bodies are dug out of the rubble. I think there's a problem with that. If you don't think there's a problem with starving kids, then I'd be rather hesitant to use you as a baby-sitter. And are you implying that death isn't bad because we end up in heaven (or hell, but we had it coming if we go there)? Why not save money on vaccines and hospitals then and just let people die from the measles and pneumonia and whatnot? I doubt you actually value life so little. If people really believed that so fervently, they wouldn't be so sad at funerals. Even if it's just the loss of the dead person that makes us unhappy here on earth, it's still making us unhappy and is therefore a not-good thign.

Second, judgement afterwards doesn't make the crime suddenly erased. Clyde rapes girl. Jury locks Clyde away. Girl is still traumatized either way; it already happened. If that's not what you're getting at with that judging/free will sentence, please explain more.

Third, it doesn't change the argument any if God saves Julie from being raped by lets Maurice pull the short straw. Whether or not he prevents other rapes, letting one of them happen is still just as bad.

".... that fact that you dont know his plan means you shouldn't have any say if its bad or not, and i'm not saying i fully comprehend it either but thats faith for you.... faith in an omni^3 God. How can you judge an action without knowing the intent?" This is the matrix-type argument (or "russel's teapot", as it's more formally known). I touched on this earlier.

God didnt create evil work, evil is the lack of love thus any action without love of any sort or amount is evil. Meaning we "create" evil. We humans that are in the perverted state called Sin can be empty of love. Why change the rules? that's just running away from the matter... by the way what rules? Fully just is allowing you to make your own choices in life, God is not out servant that we should order him around to do what we like, he is omniscient, he knows best.

For problem of evil/suffering, it doesn't matter where the "evil" comes from. Us, god, satan, Xenu, whatever. God could still stop it, being all Omni^3 like he is. Why change the rules? Because if he did, people would be happier. that's not running away from the matter, that's fixing it with a magic wand of omnipotent-ness. And then "God knows best" is back to the matrix/teapot thing. And "God isn't our servant" might be true or not--not gonna get into that tangent here--but that doesn't matter either way because a benevolent person helps out even if he's not obligated to; and that goes infinitely for an Omnibenevolent person.

ok, think I hit all the points... now to read those "evidence for god" articles adn see if they've got some merit.

[happycynic]

Oh, and if we have anyone on the forum actually named clyde, I apologize for using your name as our generic example of a child rapist.

[Byblos]

Wow, many posts since yesterday but as promised I am revisiting your initial post happycynic so here goes it. I must admit I am a little disappointed as here I thought you were bringing something new to the table but alas, it is an old argument that has been answered many times over (not the least of which the articles by Rich deem on the main page posted earlier). But I will answer here nonetheless.

Perhaps I can clear this up a bit, as I'm quite a fan of the problem of evil myself (that's basically what you're getting at, right?).
So, even before we get started on the POE (ironic that it spells "poe" ), I should prolly say what kind of deity it argues against. POE works to the fullest on an Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent (all-good) deity. I'll abbreviate this as Omni^3 (omni-cubed).
So, onto the argument.
Two Premises:
1) God is Omni^3
2) The world could be better
]From the first premise (Omni^3) we can say that God wants things to be the best they possibly can, and he's got the power to make them that way, therefore they oughtta be that way. From the second premise, we can see that there's room for improvement. They're contradictory statements, so one of them has to be false. Let's look at the Omni^3 one first.

And here is where my disappointment mainly lies; right off the bat you start with a false assumption. Remember when I asked you if you wanted a god according to your own personal standards? Well the bolded/underlined above is a perfect example. You are fashioning a god according to your own rules and assumptions by claiming God wants things to be the best they possibly can. That is a fallacious assumption my friend, made up by you. Who told you God wants things to be the best they possibly can? According to the source (God’s Word) nowhere does it say God wants things to be the best they possibly can. It says the creation is good and very good, it does not say anything about it being perfect nor that it can be perfect. In fact, a good, albeit imperfect, world is precisely the kind of world God said he had in mind when creating it. It is exactly the kind of world that will permit free will allowing us to choose him or not. It is exactly the kind of world we need to make us realize we need a savior and happiness in this world is utterly meaningless compared to eternal happiness with him. That was the purpose for creation according to God, so we can have eternal fellowship with him, not temporary happiness here on earth. So what you’ve done is attribute a false assumption to the reason for God creating the world, then attach it to one of his attributes of omni^3 then turn around and deny this attribute because of the false assumption. Your entire argument is built on this false assumption and falls by it so I really don’t need to go any further.

By the way, here’s an interesting fact you unknowingly stumbled upon by your mere acknowledging that ‘the world could be better’. Just by admitting that, you have implicitly (though inadvertently I am sure) admitted that not only perfection does exit, but also that perfection is not of this world. You see, by saying the world could be better implies the existence of a scale of perfection. A line if you wish where somewhere in the middle things could be better if you traverse the line to the right, and things could be worse if you traverse to the left. And of course, the extreme ends of the line on the far left side is pure imperfection, and on the far right side is pure perfection. Here’s the interesting point, since in this world things could always be better, no matter how good they are, then perfection is unattainable in this world. So where is perfection attainable? You guessed it, outside of this world. We happen to call this perfection God. I know that makes you a little uncomfortable but you can call it anything else you wish. What you cannot do, however, is deny its existence as per your own argument and its inescapable logical conclusion.

That's the Problem of Evil in a very large nutshell. Perhaps a coconut shell. If you spot any holes in my logic, lemme know. Hopefully you can understand where we're coming from with this a little better now

As it turns out, it is what I told you before that the problem of evil does nothing but strengthen the argument FOR the existence of God. And if someone wants to argue that the problem of suffering is a better argument than evil, no it is not. There are different kinds of suffering, due to evil, accidents, as a result of temporal punishment, or just plain old suffering by natural means. All of which are necessary for the kind of world God had intended to create. So the argument of suffering suffers ( ) from the same fate. Hopefully now you can see your argument does not hold water.

[happycynic]

You are fashioning a god according to your own rules and assumptions by claiming God wants things to be the best they possibly can. That is a fallacious assumption my friend, made up by you. Who told you God wants things to be the best they possibly can? According to the source (God’s Word) nowhere does it say God wants things to be the best they possibly can.

I'm not really fashioning a deity of my own here. I'm taking the stripped-down version of the popular muslim/christian/jewish deity, and only looking at one part: the omni^3. The bible traits are rather irrelevant to the discussion. The point is to prove that an Omni^3 deity does not exist.

Why would God create an imperfect, temporary universe only to replace it later with a perfect one? Why wouldn't God have created a perfect universe in the first place? This is a good question, but shows a lack of understanding of the biblical reason of why God created the universe. One can find the reason for the creation of the universe in the first few chapters of the Bible. God created humans in order to have a personal relationship with them, which He had with Adam and Eve before they sinned (Genesis 2). Jesus said that the first and foremost commandment was to "Love the Lord your God..."14 A personal relationship, characterized by the possibility of love, is only possible if created beings are given free will. If God had created the universe with no possibility of evil or sin, then the created beings would have had no free will, and, as such, would essentially be programmed computers. Such beings would be incapable of love, since love involves making a choice - which requires the ability to choose not to love.

That's from the main site. It seems to be pretty much the same argument you're making, and it's the standard free will argument with the extra caveat of "free will is neccesary to love" thrown in. But I don't this quite cuts it. If God created everything, that means he created the laws of logic, the way that logical fallacies work. If he created logic, then he created it in such a way that automatic love and free will were mutually exclusive, and where free will causes pain and suffering and death. He didn't need to. And being omnipotent, he could fix it at a later date if he wanted to. So, no, free will isn't necessary for anything if an omnipotent guy says he isn't. Unless you mess with the definition of "Omnipotent" and put restrictions on it, in which case it stops being omnipotence.

Alright, next, all the stuff about God wanting an imperfect world.

nd here is where my disappointment mainly lies; right off the bat you start with a false assumption. Remember when I asked you if you wanted a god according to your own personal standards? Well the bolded/underlined above is a perfect example. You are fashioning a god according to your own rules and assumptions by claiming God wants things to be the best they possibly can. That is a fallacious assumption my friend, made up by you. Who told you God wants things to be the best they possibly can? According to the source (God’s Word) nowhere does it say God wants things to be the best they possibly can. It says the creation is good and very good, it does not say anything about it being perfect nor that it can be perfect. In fact, a good, albeit imperfect, world is precisely the kind of world God said he had in mind when creating it.

The point of POE isn't to say stuff about the God of the Bible. It's to say "this is what an Omni^3 god would look like, this is what it would do, and here's proof that it hasn't happened". Then you go to the bible or koran or whatever you feel like and compare, and see if the God there fits the Omni^3 definition; if it does, it can't exist. If it doesn't, it's not Omni^3.

My assumption is that a perfectly good, beneficial deity would want to stop all suffering. You're saying the God of the Bible doesn't want to stop all suffering (or perhaps can't). Fair enough, but then if you accept my assumption (Omnibenevolent would want no suffering), you must also admit that the god of the bible isn't perfectly good. If you're going to attack this argument, you need to be able to show that an omnibenevolent deity wouldn't want to eliminate suffering; providing reasons why he can't doesn't cut it when we also have omniscience and omnipotence on the board.

By the way, here’s an interesting fact you unknowingly stumbled upon by your mere acknowledging that ‘the world could be better’. Just by admitting that, you have implicitly (though inadvertently I am sure) admitted that not only perfection does exit, but also that perfection is not of this world. You see, by saying the world could be better implies the existence of a scale of perfection. A line if you wish where somewhere in the middle things could be better if you traverse the line to the right, and things could be worse if you traverse to the left. And of course, the extreme ends of the line on the far left side is pure imperfection, and on the far right side is pure perfection. Here’s the interesting point, since in this world things could always be better, no matter how good they are, then perfection is unattainable in this world. So where is perfection attainable? You guessed it, outside of this world. We happen to call this perfection God. I know that makes you a little uncomfortable but you can call it anything else you wish. What you cannot do, however, is deny its existence as per your own argument and its inescapable logical conclusion.

Fancy argument, but I'm still not convinced. You make a rather unsupported leap in the middle of the argument, and have some wobbly assumptions throughout. First off, just because you can think of a scale for something doens't mean it exists.

Going back to my skyhook example, I can think of each way a certain crane is like a sky-hook. This one is more hook-like, that one is more immovable, that one you can't see the supports to. A line if you wish where somewhere in the middle things could be more sky-hook-like if you traverse the line to the right, and things could be less sky-hook-like if you traverse to the left. And of course, the extreme ends of the line on the far left side is the anti-skyhook, and on the far right side is a real skyhook. Since these things are unattainable in the real world, they must exist outside of this world!

Eh, no. Just because you rate how much like a concept something is, doesn't mean that concept exists as anything more than a concept. I can rate how close things are to a perpetual motion machine, but those will never actually exist. I believe you're sort of shifting sideways into the ontological argument here.

Anyhow, I'm done with lunch and my special lady friend (she is awesome btw ) actually has time off of classes today, so I'm off to campus for the rest of the day. Might post back again late tonight.