There is no God.
POSTED BY: oldenglanddry
UPDATED: Friday, May 9, 2025 05:01
VIEWED: 30440
PAGE 22 of 25
Hey, RugBug!
Thanks for the repsonse. I guess a "Choose your own adventure book" does kind of sum it up, eh? 
If god did not create the outcomes, though, from where do they spring? This question is based on the assumption of Christians (again, this is a gross generalization, it is not aimed at anyone in particular) that god created all things. The outcomes would have to spring from somewhere, and as god is the creator of all things... Does that make sense? Man is working on processes without working on the outcome, but we are Man, therefore we are less than god. We may be able to theorize possible outcomes, but the certainty is not there. That can be said for all things we endeavour to do, though. My big issue is still the "creation of all things"...if you (the "royal" you) do not think god created all, then from where does the rest spring?
Curiosity drives me.
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This is just a little thinking out loud sort of thing, but when it comes to whether or not god creating all things means god created evil I think the problem might be how people define thing.
Imagine I'm god, not necessarily the god, a god will do just fine, and I decide I'm going to create life. So I create a sun to give energy, and an earth to give raw materials, and plants to convert that energy into apples and raspberries. Then I create people to enjoy themselves there. Now as a god I'm pretty smug because I've created a place where no one suffers, the fruit is made to be eaten and doing so doesn't hurt the plant, there's enough food to go around so no one goes hungry, nothing must suffer for anything else to live, and I made the climate nice so there is no need for killing the plants to make shelter or make clothing out of fig leaves or whatnot.
It's all apples and raspberries, good times. But, thinking it would be useless to have mindless automatons eating apples and raspberries I did two things, first I made the act of eating pleasurable in addition to necessary. I made the food taste good. The other thing I did was I gave the people brains so they could talk about stuff like true love and the potential drawbacks of having a diet consisting of only two foods.
Then one of them uses his or her brain to say that if some apples and raspberries are good more must be better, the idea catches on, now everyone is eating more than they need to stay alive, some exercise to keep their weight down and others just get fat, but the problems is that I was only counting on people saying alive, not feasting. There isn't enough for everyone to have extra. In fact with everyone trying to take extra the ones last in line aren't even getting enough.
So now we've got a problem, the ones who won't stand up and fight for their raspberries are starting to waste away, and other people are hoarding the fruits so they can be traded for favors later on, greed, hunger and exploitation have been introduced into the world.
Damn, I'm a crap god.
So now the raspberry wars are going on, people are talking about the problem of evil and I'm considering the value of things that can't think for themselves. Maybe next time I'll create a watch, the cogs won't get greedy and horde food, then again the cogs won't do anything interesting either.
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My question is simple. In that situation did the god, me, create all things? Did the god create evil? (Let's say, for the sake of argument, that greed, exploitation and hunger are evil).
Certainly in my little hypothetical world of apples and raspberries everything you can poke was created by god, the sun, the earth, the air that I didn't mention but which was present, the plants, the people, every subatomic particle, so in that sense all things were created by god.
On the other hand evil was not directly created by god, it was indirect, the potential for evil was created by god but evil itself came about on it's own. So does the fact that god did not create evil directly mean that god didn't create all things?
I'm starting to feel that I shouldn't have written the little story thing in first person because if I say, "So does the fact that I did not create evil directly mean that I didn't create all things?" it sounds silly, but if I don't it seems odd considering the context.
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I think there is also a question of what is evil, for example if we assume there is a god, and that god can do anything, then god could just step in right now and make everyone hug and be friends, all enemies will have their personalities adjusted so that they'll be allies, all differences will be evened out, and everyone will always think and do exactly what god wants them to think and do. All will be good from here on out and there will be no more evil, no more suffering, no more bad.
Does that actually sound good to anyone? To me that, which amounts to the total destruction of freedom on a level no previous dictator even came close to touching, seems quite a bit evil.
In
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Quote:
Originally posted by DukKati:
If there is no God then there is no Satan.
So if no God then no good.
If no Satan then no bad.
So if no bad and no good then where are we at?
I have to take issue with part of this statement. You are presupposing that God is wholly good, when there is an abundance of Biblical evidence to suggest otherwise. Furthermore, a Satanist would see Lucifer as good and God as bad. One man's angel is another man's demon. It's a question of relativity. To a Satanist, God's demand for obedience is unbearable, as it was unbearable for Lucifer; hence, the only commandment in Satanism: "Do what thou will, that shall be the whole of the Law."
However, you are right about one thing: if no God, then no Satan. Lucifer is a construct of the Abrahamic religions, and as far I as am concerned, they can keep him.
Also, it's rather an erroneous concept to think that without God and Satan we would have no good or evil. Good and evil existed long before the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and will exist long after these religions diminish and disappear.
Morbid and creepifying I got no problem with, so long as you do it quiet like.
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Just as a warning, this post has nothing to do with god.
Quote:
Originally posted by nanite1018:
The answer is summed up in Carl Sagan's wonderful quote (although i can't remember if it's extraordinary or remarkable, i'll use extraordinary): "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Meaning the amount of evidence necessary increasing in proportion with the remarkable-ness of the claim.
I really need to get a list of his quotes, I don't agree with some conclusions he draws (obviously), but a lot of one liners I agree with in totality. That's one of them, when it comes to trying to prove a thing at any rate.
The problem is that it means that some claims are too extraordinary to get evidence to match and also that it leaves you (and me) in a place where it's very easy to trick us. I once met someone called Todd, I still know him, I think it was three years before I found out that, though he was and still is called Todd, when he told me his name was Todd he was lying.
All he had to do was tell people his name was Todd and, because the claim was so mundane that most people don't require proof, everyone was fooled. Obviously some people must have been around him when he was doing something where he had to use his real name, and someone probably looked at his driver's license, but for the most part people believed and it was just a show of how easy it is to fool people on a random whim. (Actually it wasn't quite a random whim but it's not worth going into in depth.)
Of course that's not reason to check whenever someone tells you their name because for me it's not just that, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," it's also that mundane claims aren't worth the effort. For example, if I were fooling you what would that mean to you? For me it might mean a waste of a lot of time or a lot of research data or something else I can't think of at the moment, but for you it doesn't really have an effect.
I was just wondering if it was the same way for you and the answer seems to be, "Sort of." Thanks for indulging me, by the way.
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Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
One last thing.
While evil, with its slippery relativistic definitions, probably doesn't need to exist I think suffering, pain, and all of that stuff does. . . Someone who has always been comfortable doesn't appreciate comfort as much as someone who has never had it until now, but neither one seems to understand how good it is as much as someone who was comfortable, had that snatched away from them (especially if the method of losing it was particularly painful in itself) and then got it back.
Even if you don't go through the get it, lose it, get it back thing if you really want to understand the good in life I think you need to feel the bad. I've certainly noticed that those who suffer the most seem to have the ability to attain far greater joy (if they ever find something to be happy about), where those who have virtually eliminated pain and struggle from their lives seem to have also suppressed happiness and fulfillment.
Holy
, CTC. We're in complete agreement with each other. 
Morbid and creepifying I got no problem with, so long as you do it quiet like.
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::takes a cookie from msg::
Thank you much-ly for the cookie!
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Go to http://richlabonte.net/tvvote/ and vote Firefly!
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Quote:
Originally posted by misbehaven:
Good and evil existed long before the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and will exist long after these religions diminish and disappear.
I disagree. If the god of the Jews and Christians is actually the god he claims to be, there was no "before." Yes, there was good and evil before those religions were organized and given names, but that doesn't mean good existed before their God.
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"My feelings are changeable but intense" Anya (season 7 Buffy)
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Quote:
Originally posted by misbehaven:
Good and evil existed long before the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and will exist long after these religions diminish and disappear.
Quote:
I disagree. If the god of the Jews and Christians is actually the god he claims to be, there was no "before." Yes, there was good and evil before those religions were organized and given names, but that doesn't mean good existed before their God.
I'm not sure we're in disagreement with one another. It would seem to me, that what you're saying falls into the realm of a relative statement, as "their God" isn't necessarily everyone else's God. Truly, if you're a follower of the three Abrahamic based religions, then good begins with God; however, if you are a follower of one of the world's many other religions or you are not a religious person, then good does not begin with "their" concept of God.
Morbid and creepifying I got no problem with, so long as you do it quiet like.
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Quote:
Originally posted by RugBug:Quote:
Originally posted by misbehaven:
Good and evil existed long before the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and will exist long after these religions diminish and disappear.
I disagree. If the god of the Jews and Christians is actually the god he claims to be, there was no "before." Yes, there was good and evil before those religions were organized and given names, but that doesn't mean good existed before their God.
While I agree that if the god claimed by those religions exists it would be impossible for good and evil to predate him I think that the real issue is being missed.
misbehaven was responding to a post that said without God there is no such thing as good and without Satan there is no such thing as evil. While I, like you, disagree with the reasoning used I think that the larger point is correct.
The idea that without God and Satan there would be no good and evil is limited to a few groups of thought. If you say, "Raping someone is evil," I, personally, don't think you need God to back you up. Of those Christians who I know well enough to speak for none would say, "If there is no god then rape is not evil." I know that there are people who disagree (obviously none among those I know that well) but just the fact that some think that way means that even among those who believe in God and Satan the idea that they are required for good and evil is not universal.
Certainly on the other side there are many atheists who will tell you that good and evil do exist even though they are convinced that God and Satan do not. There are also members of religions that have no Satan who believe in good and evil and even religions without a wholly good god who believe in good and evil.
Obviously I can't prove that good and evil exist independently of God, there isn't even a universal agreement for what they are. But I think the concepts and applications of good and evil are independent of the existance of God and Satan. I suppose if you said, "Good is that which God desires and Evil is the means by which Satan tries to thwart that," then an argument could be made, quite well, that good and evil are dependant on God and Satan but that is a very limited, very narrow, way to define good and evil and not very helpful.
What I mean by, "not very helpful," is that if you were you say, "Good is that which God desires," then that doesn't actually tell you what good is, you need to then say, "God desires that you do this, this and this," so isn't it easier to say, "Good is doing this, this and this," and more to the point isn't it more helpful to have the entire defintion of good in one place?
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I guess the real question is, if you believe something is evil would you still believe it to be evil if you believed there is no god?
Apparently DukKati's answer is very different from my own.
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Quote:
Originally posted by misbehaven:Quote:
Originally posted by misbehaven:
Good and evil existed long before the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and will exist long after these religions diminish and disappear.
I'm not sure we're in disagreement with one another. It would seem to me, that what you're saying falls into the realm of a relative statement,
Well, were only in disagreement when you make your relative statement sound like fact.
You can't disprove God, I can't prove him, therefore, both of our statements are relative.
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"My feelings are changeable but intense" Anya (season 7 Buffy)
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