• ReiRose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      6 days ago

      One of my favourite discussions of the problem of evil is the chapter below. It’s a discussion between two brothers regarding God and suffering in the world if the end result is eternal paradise. TW: child abuse, suffering and death. Children are used in the argument specifically because they don’t deserve suffering, they are innocent according to Dostoyevsky (I easily agree).

      https://philosophyintrocourse.com/the-course/part-2-does-god-exist-philosophy-of-religion/dostoyevskys-rebellion-chapter-from-the-brothers-karamazov/

      It’s heavy but worth the read imo, and not unnecessarily graphic.

      • yeather@lemmy.caEnglish
        01·
        6 days ago

        Dostoyevsky lived before the baby hitler question. If you knew without a shadow of a doubt a child would become the a very evil person, is it more ethical to kill the child now and spare the suffering of those later, or not kill the currently innocent child but condemn the others. A child does not deserve to suffer for the same reasons an adult does not deserve to suffer. No one inherently deserves to suffer and have evil happen. However, free will can lead to suffering and oppression.

        • ReiRose@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          6 days ago

          Dostoyevski would argue that having the child suffer so that everyone could go to heaven is wrong. Even if the child, the child’s mother and the “free will” person that caused the suffering all hug and apologize and forgive in heaven, it’s still not worth it.

    • acockworkorange@mander.xyzEnglish
      0·
      4 days ago

      What god and satan was Epicurus talking about here? Just curious what idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, loving god existed about 300 BC. My little Roman mythology knowledge has their gods closer to Greek gods: limited in power, easily fooled, and extremely flawed.

      • luciferofastora@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        AFAIK there is no proof that this paradox was actually coined by Epicurus, despite later being attributed to him. Epicurean philosophy holds that the gods exist, but don’t interfere with anything, so it’s pointless to fear or appease them.

        Hence, it would be a later invention attributed to him.

    • yeather@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      I have a few points to this.

      The first being) he already has, it’s called heaven, a world without harship, strife, and evil.

      The second being) the prevention of evil and the complete elimination of evil are different goals. If we are truly made in the image of god as the bible says, then god geels similar emotions to us as well. So the ultimate answer to the question of why hasn’t he is: he doesn’t want to.

      The third being) who is to say he has not already, and the goal post of what is evil has moved? How could we possible know god did not create a world before this, with “true evil” only to restart it into this world.

      The fourth being) in a world with free will and no evil, the definition if free will completely changes, so therefore he could, but it would not be the same to him or to us.

      • apocalypticat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        The first being) he already has, it’s called heaven, a world without harship, strife, and evil.

        What does heaven look like for babies and embryos that die before reaching maturity? Are they just out there floating around by the hundreds of billions?

    • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      6 days ago

      You know what they say, the best way to make someone an atheist is to make them actually read the Bible from front to back.

      • AItoothbrush@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        5 days ago

        I have a friend who was a serious muslim so she started reading the quran and then relized at the age of 8 that the whole thing is bs so she stopped believing. Its funny because there are a bunch of people who tell her how shes disrespecting her ancestors and she should at least read a bit into it. She probably knows more about it than 90% of the people telling her about it.

        • Snowclone@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          3 days ago

          I was also ashamed to find out, there is no tradition! Religion shifts focus and meaning constantly and usually as a reaction. The religion I was born in now says it’s ALWAYS been against trans people, and point to the written beliefs that came out of being anti feminism the last few decades and recontextalize it to fit their priorities now. I’m old enough that this lie is obvious and stupid. But this has always been the process. It’s been new age reframing old age material into current beliefs that not only have no logical connection to any doctorine or belief, but often defy the very principals they claim to extole. It’s always been people poorly copy and pasting popular opinions and priorities over actual historical beliefs.

    • Kanda@reddthat.comEnglish
      01·
      5 days ago

      Wow people from thousands of years ago were people from thousands of years ago. Checkmate, everyone. I am so smart.

        • Kanda@reddthat.comEnglish
          01·
          5 days ago

          Most Christians now accept female priests, gay marriages, fires on Saturday and clothes with mixed fibres. How would they do this without accepting that the book is outdated?

          • kipo@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            5 days ago

            It sounds like they are picking and choosing what to believe and follow, based on their own preferences. If that is the case, they’ll believe whatever they think benefits them, even if it is at the expense of others.

            We have seen this play out with christians against gay people. Now we are seeing it play out against trans people, even though the bible says nothing about trans people. The bible does say to love thy neighbor as thyself though, to judge not lest ye be judged, and to leave judgment to god.

            Picking and choosing only the parts people like makes them hypocrites. Picking and choosing only the parts people think are “good” makes the bible essentially worthless to follow and base one’s life on.

            • Kanda@reddthat.comEnglish
              01·
              5 days ago

              They are indeed picking and choosing. However, I’m just contesting the poster above claiming that believers would deny the book being outdated. It’s more like a “you have to interpret the core message of love thy neighbor… And sometimes hate the neighbours we specifically don’t like” kind of thing these days.

  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.eeEnglish
    31·
    5 days ago

    This is sorta the beginners philosophy question. There are plenty of answers, it’s not the “gotcha” it appears to be. Those answers unroll into all sorts of branching other conversations but they exist.

    Maybe it’s because free will exists.

    Maybe there’s a greater purpose for what we call “evil” that results in more good.

    Maybe it’s a definitional thing, where “evil” to us is always going to be the most-evil existent thing so if existing evils were gone “evil” would still exist but it would consist of aggressive kitten licks or something. So “evil” can’t not exist, but it’s not because God can’t get rid of what we call “evil” now.

      • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        5 days ago

        An omnipotent being would be able to setup the universe in such a way that it could be done, anything less is just being very powerful. Its only really a problem for monotheistic religions, most with pantheons portray their gods as very powerful but not all powerful.

    • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      Maybe there’s a greater purpose for what we call “evil” that results in more good.

      A work of fiction I very much enjoy called UNSONG uses a variant of this as the answer to the question of evil. The basic notion being that at the level of abstraction that God operates at two identical things are essentially one thing and so in order to maximize the total net good he creates universe upon universe, all slightly different but each ultimately resulting in more good than bad in net. The universe the story takes place in is recognizably similar to ours until the Nixon administration, and it is explicitly said to be “far from the center of the garden”. IOW in a region of possibility space in which few potential universes are good on net.

      The story is also an absolute master class in foreshadowing to the point that if you just listen as the story repeatedly tells you how one should interpret text, you can derive the ending from like the first paragraph of chapter 1 by just digging deep enough. And it goes a lot deeper than that. It’s not just an aesthetic choice that every chapter name is a Blake reference, or that the story is arranged into groupings of four, ten, twenty two and seventy two. It also manages to analogize itself to both the works of William Blake and the song American Pie because why not?

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          I’d be shocked if he wasn’t, depending on one’s definition of dickhead. Everyone is a dickhead for some definition of dickhead.

          UNSONG is still a great fantasy story and a master class in foreshadowing, regardless of how one feels about the author.

    • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      Maybe it’s because free will exists.

      Then God shouldn’t have given it to us, still his fault, OP still applies

      Maybe there’s a greater purpose for what we call “evil” that results in more good.

      Then God should have given us the understanding of it so we’re not left to question him, OP still applies

      Maybe it’s a definitional thing, where “evil” to us is always going to be the most-evil existent thing so if existing evils were gone “evil” would still exist but it would consist of aggressive kitten licks or something. So “evil” can’t not exist, but it’s not because God can’t get rid of what we call “evil” now.

      Shitty point, we have a clear definition of what these evils are currently and yet nothing is done about them. Maybe if we somehow lived in a world that no longer had the evils we see today you’d have a point but this is just a silly one

      • Comalnik@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        But free will cannot exist with an omniscient god, because if he knows everything, then everything is predetermined, giving us no free will and also making god evil for allowing all the suffering to happen. And if free will does exist god isnt omniscient

      • cravl@slrpnk.netEnglish
        03·
        4 days ago

        Without free will, true worship cannot exist. (If God is God, he certainly has the right to create us for the sole purpose of worshipping him.)

        To your latter points, I agree that we know clearly what evil (a.k.a sin) is—sin is anything apart from God’s character (e.g. the fruit of the spirit to start).

        However, it’s not up to us to “get rid” of evil, that’s on God, and that’s exactly what he did when he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross as a substitute for the punishment we deserve, and when he rose from the grave he signified that substitution was complete. If we truly accept that fact, then God considers us saved (“redeemed”). And, one day Jesus will come back and eliminate evil once and for all.

        As to why God allowed evil to enter the world in the first place, well, that’s one of the cornerstone discussions of Christian theology, I can’t easily summarize that here. In short, a redeemed world can know God’s love and worship him more deeply than a world which was never fallen to begin with. (And again, if God is God, he absolutely has the right to create us—and all of creation—for the sole purpose of bringing him glory.) Here’s an excellent article that explains this more fully.

    • Doorbook@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      What annoying when people who have no grasp of what philosophy about starting saying these statement and expect me to answer them.

      Edit: reading the comment is also annoying. When someone mention God, many assume the statement reference their own religion and draw conclusion based on it. I had someone start talking about god doesnt exist because “the proofs” are wrong, but these proofs all driven from his own religion. ( ex christian talking about statement that doesnt make sense in the bible) when I attempt to speak on higher level ( forgot all religions lets talk about god as an entity or thought ) they kept circling around to same points.

      Many people dont know how to debate or what they are debating.

        • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          5 days ago

          Religious people whose religion tells them their god is inherently good or benevolent and all-powerful (Abrahamic ones for example) feel a cognitive dissonance when they see that evil exists in the world, and thus have to discuss it with each other in order to figure out the best doublethink to maintain their religion

          To those of us not trying to prop up a fundamentally self-contradictory belief system it’s not an important thing to think about _at all because our beliefs don’t require conflicting statements to be true

          • passiveaggressivesonar@lemmy.worldEnglish
            01·
            5 days ago

            Quran 2:30 ˹Remember˺ when your Lord said to the angels, “I am going to place a successive ˹human˺ authority on earth.” They asked ˹Allah˺, “Will You place in it someone who will spread corruption there and shed blood while we glorify Your praises and proclaim Your holiness?” Allah responded, “I know what you do not know.”

            No denial of evil here, I’d be curious to know your thoughts on the video I linked. Watch at least halfway

  • rowrowrowyourboat@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    The simple solution is that there is no “evil.”

    I like the story The Egg by Andy Weir. It gives an example of that idea.

    Alan Watts also talks a lot about that sort of thing.

    • toynbee@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      You remind me of my wife.

      When we met, she introduced me to lots of short stories that made me reconsider my perspective on things. This was one of them. She still makes me reconsider my convictions whether I want to or not. I sure do love her for that.