God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak - and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful - which is equally foreign to god's nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?Epicurus' view was that God has reached the perfect state of ataraxia and was indifferent to good and evil. It is contrary to the Jewish (and Christian) concept of God, who has created the universe with a purpose in mind and continues managing it. The illustration is called the Secret Garden (Epicurus's School was called The Garden).
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Epicurus' made a false assumption in his reasoning. Epicurus assumed that an entity with supernatural power would have the personal character that he thought a god should have, whereas power and character are two independent qualities. It would be possible to have a god who was both omnipotent and spiteful.
Epicurus' first flaw was assuming that he was the center of the universe, and therefore God's life would revolve around his.
Epicurus' view was that God has reached the perfect state of ataraxia and was indifferent to good and evil. It is contrary to the Jewish (and Christian) concept of God, who has created the universe with a purpose in mind and continues managing it.
Yes!
Jewish/Christian God always angry and enjoy to "smite" sinners! Very angry with lightning, plague, rain of frogs, water into blood, hellfire, and so forth!
Note to self: avoid piss off God...
Ronduck,
Epicurus's universe is pointless. Without God we have nothing.
Without God we have nothing.
You know, I have been thinking about whether God exists for the last few weeks. I know this sounds somewhat superstitious, but thinking about the destruction of the current world order, and its ongoing perversion, I have no doubt that such destruction is being organized by a single entity, which as a Christian I was always taught would be Satan.
Attempting to prove to myself the existence of God however, is something that always seems to follow from proving to myself that evil exists, and is organized.
I don't know, the whole exercise seems pointless at times.
You have no alternative explanation for the universe. God must exist.
But I am not sure if we matter.
Let me rephrase what I wrote. In many ways evil almost seems personal and very real, but God although He exists seems very impersonal, distant really.
I was thinking about this last night. Imagine a simple algebra equation that has an unknown variable - X. X is hidden, we can calculate the value of it, but we can't see what is there hidden behind the variable, only know its properties indirectly.
Based on what I've seen and read, the existence of evil and an organized force behind that evil, working to destroy us is very real. Based on the behavior of this force I can assume that it believes in the existence of God.
Let me give you an example. Both the Catholic hierarchy and the Jewish people claim to be the representatives of God on Earth. We've covered Jewish behavior here ad nauseam, and you are aware of the ongoing global pedophile priest scandal, and the Jesuit priests in LA spreading "liberation theology." If Satan were real, instead of setting up an open organization dedicated to opposing God, he would infiltrate and subvert the religious pillars of the community so that those looking for moral guidance would receive advice that was either completely wrong, or subtly misleading. Although Satan also had open opposition to God's work too, and we knew it as Communism.
The purpose of deliberately misleading the people on religious matters is not just to hurt them individually, but to hurt their creator, their parent indirectly. If someone were to injure one of your children out of spite for you it would probably hurt you more than an attack on you personally would. Whoever did such a thing would probably live in fear for the rest of their lives, whereas you might be inclined to forgive someone hitting you.
Stated directly, there is a force, an entity, whose entire work is directed towards wrecking what we build, perverting all sound religious advice, and twisting all natural desires to immoral ends, such as turning the natural desire for sex into a desire for a person of the same sex, or an animal. This wrecking activity doesn't yield enough results by itself to be profitable, but it would make sense if it was intended to hurt someone else.
Another example of religious perversion would be the ancient Roman polytheism under the early republic versus the base state religion at the beginning of the empire. In the beginning the average Roman had sound judgement in moral matters, but over the course of centuries the state cult was turned into something that debased everyone it touched. Unfortunately, As Christianity spread it absorbed a lot of the polytheism present in the Empire without any improvement.
Mankind has had too much misfortune to be justified as natural human stupidity, and to be direct Satan does exist.
Cont.
Cont.
This brings up the point Epicurus was harping on, mainly that if God exists why does he not act to stop evil. Or to put it another way, is God a neglectful parent?
As most parents know at some point a child must leave home and venture out on his own. A father knowing that his son will eventually have to survive without him will seek to give his son advice and training in his formative years to be a prosperous adult. God has given us an entire book of advice and much of the suffering in this world is directly attributable to disregarding the advice we have received. Therefore the goal of one who seeks to destroy, and eventually exterminate, man is to remove knowledge of God's word from the majority of the public.
Let me give you another analogy. Imagine a reporter from Ha'aretz goes to the minister of roads and says "so many people are dying on our roads, and its all your fault!" The minister's proper response would be to point at the thick book of traffic laws and say that almost every death on Israel's roads is caused by breaking one of those rules. If the motorists of Israel were to follow the traffic laws as written almost no one would die in car wrecks.
God, as a well meaning parent has given us what we need to overcome most evil in this world, and we fail to use it or heed it. So really we are the cause of our fall, even if there is one who is tempting us.
Its worth noting that peoples who have never been exposed to the word of God often, but not always, end up coming close to biblical morality. The ancient Romans under the early Republic disapproved of adultery, rape, sodomy and many other things.
I didn't finish my argument!
I said:
Based on what I've seen and read, the existence of evil and an organized force behind that evil, working to destroy us is very real. Based on the behavior of this force I can assume that it believes in the existence of God.
Therefore, solving for the unknown, there must be a God.
Second, just thinking about God as an abstraction that we create with our own minds shows that societies that have religion will probably do better than those without it. Back in antiquity every city had its own deity that actually represented that city in the abstract. Having this tool of religion gave the city fathers and the common man a tool for thinking about the distant future and imagining what direction their civil affairs should take. An atheist might reply that he can think about the distant future too, but such a person is less likely to do so in my opinion.
Just as a society lacking in algebra would be unable to advance beyond aqueducts, a society without religion will probably be unable to continue itself, even if God doesn't really exist. Religion is a tool for analysis that is deeply underappreciated.
Finally, Hal Lindsay wrote another book called (I think) Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth. I haven't read Hal's book, even though my mother has it.
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