whitetrshsoldier wrote:How do you call it freedom when:

1) God knows all.
2) God knows some of us will 'fall'.
3) God created us knowing we would be cast into eternal damnation.

Sorry, to butt in here, but what do you call freedom?

I call freedom being in control of my own actions; I don't think this means the universe cannot be deterministic. I mean, yes, I am composed of physical atoms which act in a predictable way, so what I do is just the outcome of that matter behaving is it would behave; but I am that matter, so I'm still in control of what I do.

The next question is, what do you call punishment?

I call punishment the rightful or logical outcome of a person's actions as imposed by an external authority. Hence, it is right to punish a murderer by taking away their freedoms for a long period of time; such destructive behavior much be reflected on that person's life. That is to say, you deserve punishment because of what is a natural consequence of your actions, nothing more.

On the other hand, I think Hell is just a metaphor for what the universe would become if evil 'won out;' not an actual realm where bad souls go, so I can't really defend the position completely.

Belinda wrote:The original question would be better framed as 'In the presence of evil, can all-powerful God also be good God?'

Obviously not.You have to dispense with the all-powerfulness of God.

No it is not so obvious. You've made the fallacy of composition; just because there is evil in the world does not mean the world is evil. If God created things that are evil, that does not mean that He is evil. Isn't it quite possible that God created a universe with some evil in it, but that the universe on the whole is not evil?

Belinda wrote:I have not.

Presumably if God is all-powerful he could do anything including making a world devoid of suffering.Since there is no known world that is devoid of suffering then there is no such entity as an all-powerful God.

Your previous argument was indeed making the fallacy pretty directly. This one makes it implicitly. Evil, to us, is not necessarily absolute evil; perhaps, from God's perspective, it is better (good) for the universe to have evil as it appears to us. Therefore, again, you cannot conclude that God is not good just because we see evil.

whitetrshsoldier wrote:If the bible can't be read literally, then it means whatever I want it to. If that's true, it's worthless.

If the bible is worthless, so is everything it preaches. If everything it preaches is worthless, so is the person who 'supposedly' preached it.

End of story.

Err...? Is a poem worthless? Fantasy story? Philosophical argument? The bible has all of these things even if it wasn't meant literally.

Belinda wrote:Are you saying that this is the best of all possible worlds, or are you saying that God moves in mysterious ways?

I am saying that it is possible this is the best of all possible worlds.

Belinda wrote:I conclude that neither of those gods are good. Good is a human category.If God fits one of those two descriptions, then God is not good. The God that is worthy of worship, for me, is a God of love, not a God who justifies suffering.

Love would not be what love is if suffering did not exist, so I find that to be a pretty strange statement.

I agree in that human consciousness transcends life as it was before humans; this is just as life transcended physical existence as it existed before life. But I would call this process of growing complexity natural.

Belief in God is not about believing in the power of human imagination or spirit specifically; it is about believing that human awareness in general can recognize things of ultimate value--and, as a consequence, believing that human existence has some margin of ultimate importance. As such, belief in God, and other beliefs about the ultimate, is a consequence of our own sense of self-worth.

Finally (actually on topic), beliefs about the ultimate, like a belief in God, are inherently unjustifiable. It is possible that anything you can imagine is the real, ultimate reality; it is possible that, ultimately, our logic is incorrect. So there is no conclusion to be made of the ultimate, other than that it is beyond knowing, and therefore no logical reason to believe or disbelieve God's existence; it only makes sense to believe in an ultimate God as I described above, not from any rational induction. Certainly we could not adopt any conclusion of His nature (good, evil, fat, etc.) that is logically necessary, because there are an infinite number of alternate possibilities.

Belinda wrote:I don't recognise that there is ultimate value.

I think it is human nature to believe in ultimate value, although the existence of such value is just as impossible to justify as the existence of God.

At the same time, I don't disagree that our values follow cycles of revolutions, have vast cultural variations, and generally are socially clustered. But we don't accept our values as if they were just something we made up, just like we cannot believe in a God that we also just believe we made up. We assume, whenever we make a real decision based on values (every moment), that what we interpret as valuable is tied to what actually has value to everything in the universe.

Belinda wrote:I don't think that the ultimate is so much beyond knowledge as that it is a way of embracing change itself.The ultimate is doing the best we can within our state of ignorance, not what is the goal forever and ever.

I think most reasonable people believe that as well, in a way, but at the same time we do think there is ultimately value; otherwise our approximations would not be approximating anything. We also really accept our values at any given time, rather than saying, "I'm too ethically ignorant to do anything besides meditate" (at least most people).

Belinda wrote:You say that beliefs about the ultimate, like beliefs in God ,are inherently unjustifiable. I agree.I would phrase it as lack of belief in the objective reality of God or of anything else.Is this also what you mean, Alun?

No, for me it's agnosticism. I'm an agnostic theist. I do not believe I have any grounds for justifying, with logic or empirical evidence, my belief in God; I do not think that, if God exists, I can know His attributes; and I think that anything with implications of ultimate value is similarly unknowable.

God is the way I explain to myself ultimate value. I believe everyone believes (perhaps at least implicitly) in the existence of ultimate value, but sees its source differently. For example, an atheist might believe that value stems from ultimate principles of conservation and growing complexity, so that, ultimately, it is good to promote growth and development in all forms.

The catch here is that there is sparse ground for actual debate ("you're right; you're wrong") in the basic premises of religion or worldview. There is no rational contest to a person's belief in ultimate value, because that belief cannot be logically contradictory or logically justified--although beliefs that stem from it can contradict it or each other and be debated on those grounds.

Faith wrote:This is something you will all be interested in. Scientific evidence that supports intelligent design.

Intelligent design does not support the Christian God's existence. Let's say, for example, that there is undeniable evidence that the world was created by a conscious being (which there isn't). How would you show that this being is all-powerful? You would need, among other things, evidence that this being created all things. We would need to see that all quarks (subatomic particles that make up matter) have a mark that is undeniably the result of the being, along with all electromagnetic waves (like visible light). Even if we had that, we would then need to know that nothing else exists, existed, or will exist in the future beyond the power of the being.

We have not even gotten to the first step, but my point is that there is no way to have evidence of an all-powerful being unless one is all-knowing. Otherwise, your evidence is only of an intelligent being with limited powers, not God.

Juice, surely you understand that accepting facts from a book is something people do not do without justification?

WTS, I think the point of Job is that no matter what **** goes down, no matter if millions are in war every day, no matter if a maniac has an entire country on their knees, and no matter if some children in Africa have to try to eat feces to survive, we should not give up hope that something good comes out of existence. That is all it needs to mean to have faith in God.

As to truth; what possible good comes out of questioning whether there is good at all?