If there is a God, why is there evil?

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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heracleitos
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by heracleitos »

Pattern-chaser wrote: May 10th, 2022, 9:03 am Your world is filled with brutality, hostility, and the need to defend yourself.
The world is mostly filled with deception. To "believe in Nothing" is much more dangerous than it looks like, because it actually means something else than it looks at first glance. The original Nothing is the most deceptive liar that you can imagine. He is a genius at manipulation. Seriously, don't believe him. You will always regret it. Furthermore, you will have a hard time winning from him, because he is incredibly good at what he does.
Pattern-chaser wrote: May 10th, 2022, 9:03 am My response to this is that there are other perspectives too...
Yes, possibly, but I do not believe that neutrality exists in this universe. It contains something that has a very precise goal. That is why negativity is so widespread. That thing does not intend to leave you alone, if you let it. Even during the last seconds of your life, it will find a way to grab control. In fact, unless you make a clear choice that prevents it from doing that, it will automatically manage to do that.
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Sy Borg
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by Sy Borg »

heracleitos wrote: May 10th, 2022, 8:14 amThis is known as "selling your soul for power".
I freely give my soul to God. If I don't, then my soul would soon truly belong to Nobody.

The twist is that the original Nobody, i.e. the original Nothing, is also something. It existed before the universe started expanding. It wants to come back. For that to happen, the universe has to disappear again. That is why the original Nothing attacks everything that exists. I do not blame the original Nothing for doing that, because it merely makes use of the first law, i.e. everything that exists has the right to resist its own disappearance.

If you do not join a consensus in faith, then all that the original Nothing has to do, is to manipulate and grab control over just a few individuals, and instruct them to get at you. They will seek to subvert and compel you to enter a Faustian pact, which is just another kind of consensus. Hence, instead of solving the problem, you will only have made the problem worse. The universe is a hostile place. If you do not defend yourself, things will inevitably go wrong.[/quote]
Many would say that the Void is actually God - infinite, timeless, with infinite potential.

If we do not join a consensus in faith, then we do not separate ourselves from the rest of the world, and we don't spend our lives thinking of outsiders with hostility and contempt. Instead we are citizens of the world, denizens of nature, not seeking power for its own sake.

Being part of a religion - having all that conditional support - may help during extreme times. However, if society has broken down and people need to form violent gangs to survive, then life isn't worth living anyway; just a mindless, brute test of survival.

Whatever, Islam is far too malevolent for my tastes. I note that you showed zero care that the Taliban is severely stifling women's education and movements, immediately breaking promises and assurances made during their most recent takeover. Like fossil fuel companies, Abrahamic religions played an important role in developing civilisations, but now they are toxic and dangerous to the world.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Sy Borg wrote: May 10th, 2022, 4:29 pm Many would say that the Void is actually God - infinite, timeless, with infinite potential.
I think that Baudelaire is spot on in that regard:
Charles Baudelaire wrote: The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.
Technically, it is not even a lie that he does not exist. The original Nothing has existed. It no longer does. Only his desire to return, still exists.

The original Nothing seeks to make us join a consensus with him, instead of God, while he carefully keeps his own consensus with God in good standing. That is why we must be made and misled into believing that he is himself the real God.
Sy Borg wrote: May 10th, 2022, 4:29 pm If we do not join a consensus in faith, then we do not separate ourselves from the rest of the world, and we don't spend our lives thinking of outsiders with hostility and contempt. Instead we are citizens of the world, denizens of nature, not seeking power for its own sake.
That amounts to disarming and disorganizing while the ruling mafia obviously doesn't.

The ruling mafia would certainly love to completely individualize us and deal with us one by one. That is why the ruling mafia likes to destroy family ties too, as these ties are yet another impediment to singling us out individually.

The ruling mafia does everything to destroy religion and family. Furthermore, the more successfully they manage to destroy religion, the easier it becomes to destroy family ties. Just look at how spectacularly they have succeeded in doing that in the West after successfully discrediting religion.

An individualistic individual very well knows that Nobody is going to stand up for him. That is why he has no other choice than to enter a Faustian pact with the original Nobody.
Sy Borg wrote: May 10th, 2022, 4:29 pm Like fossil fuel companies, Abrahamic religions played an important role in developing civilisations, but now they are toxic and dangerous to the world.
Ideas that the ruling mafia really does not like, are almost surely a good thing.

It is exactly because the ruling mafia did not like Islam that I decided to study what it is. I really wanted to detect what exactly it is that they do not like about it, because that is exactly the instrument that I was going to start using.

The ruling mafia does not like religious law because it prevents them from liberally inventing and imposing their own laws. Ever since I understood this basic principle, I have become a staunch advocate of Islamic law and its core idea:

The ruling mafia is not allowed to invent new laws because Allah has invented all the laws already.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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heracleitos wrote: May 10th, 2022, 9:18 pm
Sy Borg wrote: May 10th, 2022, 4:29 pm Many would say that the Void is actually God - infinite, timeless, with infinite potential.
I think that Baudelaire is spot on in that regard:
Charles Baudelaire wrote: The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.
Technically, it is not even a lie that he does not exist. The original Nothing has existed. It no longer does. Only his desire to return, still exists.
Anthropomorphication of relative nothingness, which is actually a sea of diffuse radiation, magnetism and quantum fields. Nothingness is a relative term. All that exists is obviously something. If a patch of absolute nothing miraculously emerged in the universe, it be immediately infused with its surrounding stuff.

The universe is "stuff". Some small amount of material things exist on limited parts of the Earth's surface and atmosphere that is good for us humans. Most of space is lethal, as are the ocean deeps and deep underground. Or inside machines. In deserts. Most of the danger is not actively trying to kill you, just as a steamroller driver doesn't mean to kill any bugs caught beneath the roller.

heracleitos wrote: May 10th, 2022, 9:18 pmThe original Nothing seeks to make us join a consensus with him, instead of God, while he carefully keeps his own consensus with God in good standing. That is why we must be made and misled into believing that he is himself the real God.
Sy Borg wrote: May 10th, 2022, 4:29 pm If we do not join a consensus in faith, then we do not separate ourselves from the rest of the world, and we don't spend our lives thinking of outsiders with hostility and contempt. Instead we are citizens of the world, denizens of nature, not seeking power for its own sake.
That amounts to disarming and disorganizing while the ruling mafia obviously doesn't.
The closest the US came to a ruling Mafia was a recent POTUS who had been mentored by a Mafia lawyer.

There is no "ruling Mafia" otherwise, just governments.

heracleitos wrote: May 10th, 2022, 9:18 pmThe ruling mafia does everything to destroy religion and family. Furthermore, the more successfully they manage to destroy religion, the easier it becomes to destroy family ties. Just look at how spectacularly they have succeeded in doing that in the West after successfully discrediting religion.
Transition is difficult. The world is very, very slowly moving away from old animalistic models. That's okay, Homo sapiens slowly moved away from the ways of other apes too. Other apes, who do things the old way, have not gone away, just that humans have developed.

Some abhor change, which is only natural. It is also denialist. Chane must, and will happen and these is nothing - not even the almighty trilogy (in their own minds) of Xi, Putin and Kim - can stop change.
heracleitos wrote: May 10th, 2022, 9:18 pm
Sy Borg wrote: May 10th, 2022, 4:29 pm Like fossil fuel companies, Abrahamic religions played an important role in developing civilisations, but now they are toxic and dangerous to the world.
Ideas that the ruling mafia really does not like, are almost surely a good thing.
Some things that will put one in prison, ie. ideas that governments (or what you call "the ruling mafia") don't like:

- murder
- torture
- rape
- theft
- vandalism.

The Taliban and other Islamic extremist tyrants, on the other hand, clearly approve of murder, torture, rape and theft. THAT is the Mafia.

Your deity and others are absurd notions, given the knowledge of the last 2,000 years. It's sheer superstition that a giant, magic man (presumably with robes and beard) who has the primitive, vicious mindset of the Middle East 2,000 years ago created the universe. This mythical magic man rules the Earth, but he only actually cares about Muslims (or Christians, depending on which magic man we are referring to) and he will torture and obliterate all others.

The deity concept can be elegant and deep when interpreted as written - metaphorically - but it's childish, unhealthy and painfully superficial to take ancient metaphoric tales literally - and it is a stinging insult to the authors, who would be horrified to see the meaning of their works butchered by modern literalists, applying modern meanings to archaic expressions.

Evil is just when your life encounters more intense entropy than it can handle. That's it. There is no devil. It's all just fantasy, imaginative interpretations of natural phenomena. Abrahamic texts routinely refer to exorcisms - casting demons out of possessed people.

Today we know that the "demons" were bacterial, fungal, viral or proterozoic infections or they were brain dysfunction. There are no demons, although immature, highly damaged humans and certain natural organisms and phenomena can seem evil to us.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Sy Borg wrote: May 10th, 2022, 11:25 pm Nothingness is a relative term. All that exists is obviously something. If a patch of absolute nothing miraculously emerged in the universe, it be immediately infused with its surrounding stuff. The universe is "stuff".
I agree that "stuff" and nothingness are intimately intertwined. Nothing often falls apart into two somethings that are each other's opposite in some way:
Wikipedia on "virtual pairs" wrote: Virtual particles are often popularly described as coming in pairs, a particle and antiparticle which can be of any kind. These pairs exist for an extremely short time, and then mutually annihilate, or in some cases, the pair may be boosted apart using external energy so that they avoid annihilation and become actual particles, as described below.
There are also the Von Neumann ordinals that represent numbers as "structured nothing":

{} = 0
{{}} = {0} = 1
{{},{{}}} = {0,1} = 2
{{}, {{}}, {{},{{}}} } = {0,1,2} = 3

So, deep inside, every number is just nothing. What you see, is a convoluted mess of structure only. There is no substance. Under the hood, there is only structure.

In my impression, it looks like something was introduced into the original void, which did not like that, because then it was no longer a void.

The original void tried to get rid of the disturbance by covering it up with some of the virtual pair production which it produced out of sheer irritation. However, instead of getting rid of the disturbance, the entire mess turned into matter-energy, which was an even worse disturbance to the void.
Sy Borg wrote: May 10th, 2022, 11:25 pm There is no "ruling Mafia" otherwise, just governments.
Call it the "oligarchy" instead of the "mafia", if you prefer. I deeply distrust them. I certainly do not want to give them free rein. Religious law is one of the tools that we can use to undermine them. That is one of the reasons why I am so attached to religion.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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heracleitos wrote: May 11th, 2022, 1:04 am
Sy Borg wrote: May 10th, 2022, 11:25 pm Nothingness is a relative term. All that exists is obviously something. If a patch of absolute nothing miraculously emerged in the universe, it be immediately infused with its surrounding stuff. The universe is "stuff".
I agree that "stuff" and nothingness are intimately intertwined. Nothing often falls apart into two somethings that are each other's opposite in some way:
Wikipedia on "virtual pairs" wrote: Virtual particles are often popularly described as coming in pairs, a particle and antiparticle which can be of any kind. These pairs exist for an extremely short time, and then mutually annihilate, or in some cases, the pair may be boosted apart using external energy so that they avoid annihilation and become actual particles, as described below.
There are also the Von Neumann ordinals that represent numbers as "structured nothing":

{} = 0
{{}} = {0} = 1
{{},{{}}} = {0,1} = 2
{{}, {{}}, {{},{{}}} } = {0,1,2} = 3

So, deep inside, every number is just nothing. What you see, is a convoluted mess of structure only. There is no substance. Under the hood, there is only structure.

In my impression, it looks like something was introduced into the original void, which did not like that, because then it was no longer a void.

The original void tried to get rid of the disturbance by covering it up with some of the virtual pair production which it produced out of sheer irritation. However, instead of getting rid of the disturbance, the entire mess turned into matter-energy, which was an even worse disturbance to the void.
Sy Borg wrote: May 10th, 2022, 11:25 pm There is no "ruling Mafia" otherwise, just governments.
Call it the "oligarchy" instead of the "mafia", if you prefer. I deeply distrust them. I certainly do not want to give them free rein. Religious law is one of the tools that we can use to undermine them. That is one of the reasons why I am so attached to religion.
Heracleitos says "religion". While I am with Heracleitos I wonder how might Heracleitos teach children and others the core belief in ontic order without making God into a Person?
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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heracleitos wrote: May 11th, 2022, 1:04 am
Sy Borg wrote: May 10th, 2022, 11:25 pm Nothingness is a relative term. All that exists is obviously something. If a patch of absolute nothing miraculously emerged in the universe, it be immediately infused with its surrounding stuff. The universe is "stuff".
I agree that "stuff" and nothingness are intimately intertwined. Nothing often falls apart into two somethings that are each other's opposite in some way:
Wikipedia on "virtual pairs" wrote: Virtual particles are often popularly described as coming in pairs, a particle and antiparticle which can be of any kind. These pairs exist for an extremely short time, and then mutually annihilate, or in some cases, the pair may be boosted apart using external energy so that they avoid annihilation and become actual particles, as described below.
There are also the Von Neumann ordinals that represent numbers as "structured nothing":

{} = 0
{{}} = {0} = 1
{{},{{}}} = {0,1} = 2
{{}, {{}}, {{},{{}}} } = {0,1,2} = 3

So, deep inside, every number is just nothing. What you see, is a convoluted mess of structure only. There is no substance. Under the hood, there is only structure.

In my impression, it looks like something was introduced into the original void, which did not like that, because then it was no longer a void.

The original void tried to get rid of the disturbance by covering it up with some of the virtual pair production which it produced out of sheer irritation. However, instead of getting rid of the disturbance, the entire mess turned into matter-energy, which was an even worse disturbance to the void.
Sy Borg wrote: May 10th, 2022, 11:25 pm There is no "ruling Mafia" otherwise, just governments.
Call it the "oligarchy" instead of the "mafia", if you prefer. I deeply distrust them. I certainly do not want to give them free rein. Religious law is one of the tools that we can use to undermine them. That is one of the reasons why I am so attached to religion.
Glad you added the virtual particles of "empty" space. I was keeping it simple but the existence of "vacuum energy" aka virtual particles is, to me, further suggestive that nothingness is only relative. Even extremely vast voids have millions of planets and stars, even a few galaxies at times. A number (information) might be nothing, so to speak, but as far as has been observed information cannot exist without a matter substrate.

As far as I can tell, virtual particles cancel each other out but it seems one of them did not. I wouldn't say that other virtual particles "try" to inhibit the rogue particles any more than waves aim to erode sandstone cliffs. A effect without volition.

"Oligarchy" is a better word, cheers. Personally, I see religion in the US as working in lockstep with some of the worst oligarchs like the Kochs, the Adelsons and the Mercers. I would feel more comfortable without these cosy political arrangements between political parties and religions, just as I'd prefer that the media did not take sides but simply reported. Ideally, politicians, Christians, Muslims and the media would all be bitter rivals, without these affiliations, so they cancel each other out and open up the possibility of pragmatic policy making.

I re-iterate that evil is just a subjective impression and not objectively real. It's a blend of chaos and immaturity. Mature people are not evil for the same reason that the Hedonist school recommends ethical behaviours, that is, when one thinks long-term, ethical behaviour is the best option.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Belindi wrote: May 11th, 2022, 4:21 am Heracleitos says "religion". While I am with Heracleitos I wonder how might Heracleitos teach children and others the core belief in ontic order without making God into a Person?
I think that children naturally tend to believe in God and to adopt the religion of their parents. In fact, there is little need to "teach" the transcendental part of religion. Just let them experience the liturgy and prayer in a place of worship. No need to explain much. In my experience, children understand it without explanation.

Problems occur when children come under pressure by their peers to disavow their natural beliefs.The teachers actually don't matter. The teachers don't control these things, even when they try. It is the other children that control the situation. Even the parents seem to be powerless against peer pressure at school.

In Europe, peer pressure amongst Christian children is to reject the faith, while amongst Muslim children, there is peer pressure to rally to the faith. For Christian children, I think that the only solution is home schooling. For Muslim children, as long as there are some other Muslim children in the otherwise secular class, the faith will still find itself reinforced. Christian children often graduate into recalcitrant atheists from public schools, and do so even from Christian schools. For Muslim children the situation at school seems to be mostly irrelevant.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by LuckyR »

heracleitos wrote: May 11th, 2022, 10:11 am
Belindi wrote: May 11th, 2022, 4:21 am Heracleitos says "religion". While I am with Heracleitos I wonder how might Heracleitos teach children and others the core belief in ontic order without making God into a Person?
I think that children naturally tend to believe in God and to adopt the religion of their parents. In fact, there is little need to "teach" the transcendental part of religion. Just let them experience the liturgy and prayer in a place of worship. No need to explain much. In my experience, children understand it without explanation.

Problems occur when children come under pressure by their peers to disavow their natural beliefs.The teachers actually don't matter. The teachers don't control these things, even when they try. It is the other children that control the situation. Even the parents seem to be powerless against peer pressure at school.

In Europe, peer pressure amongst Christian children is to reject the faith, while amongst Muslim children, there is peer pressure to rally to the faith. For Christian children, I think that the only solution is home schooling. For Muslim children, as long as there are some other Muslim children in the otherwise secular class, the faith will still find itself reinforced. Christian children often graduate into recalcitrant atheists from public schools, and do so even from Christian schools. For Muslim children the situation at school seems to be mostly irrelevant.
Well, you are correct that the dependant, the immature, the inexperienced and the unsophisticated (like children) are among the most easily influenced by those they trust (their parents). Understanding of the relevant issues involved in decision making is completely not required, they commonly jump to the conclusion (the choice) with little to no thinking involved.

As to challenges to these (relatively) unconsidered decisions in later life, most of the time they originated from internally generated concerns based on personal observations, rather than external attempts at "peer pressure".
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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heracleitos wrote: May 11th, 2022, 10:11 am
Belindi wrote: May 11th, 2022, 4:21 am Heracleitos says "religion". While I am with Heracleitos I wonder how might Heracleitos teach children and others the core belief in ontic order without making God into a Person?
I think that children naturally tend to believe in God and to adopt the religion of their parents. In fact, there is little need to "teach" the transcendental part of religion. Just let them experience the liturgy and prayer in a place of worship. No need to explain much. In my experience, children understand it without explanation.

Problems occur when children come under pressure by their peers to disavow their natural beliefs.The teachers actually don't matter. The teachers don't control these things, even when they try. It is the other children that control the situation. Even the parents seem to be powerless against peer pressure at school.

In Europe, peer pressure amongst Christian children is to reject the faith, while amongst Muslim children, there is peer pressure to rally to the faith. For Christian children, I think that the only solution is home schooling. For Muslim children, as long as there are some other Muslim children in the otherwise secular class, the faith will still find itself reinforced. Christian children often graduate into recalcitrant atheists from public schools, and do so even from Christian schools. For Muslim children the situation at school seems to be mostly irrelevant.
Unfortunately the way Xianity is usually preached and widely understood by children and adults includes the myth of the personal deity. Modern educated people are generally dissatisfied with the myth as it is and as a result the good moral code as taught by the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth seems to depend on belief in a supernatural Person.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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LuckyR wrote: May 11th, 2022, 2:06 pm [Understanding of the relevant issues involved in decision making is completely not required, they commonly jump to the conclusion (the choice) with little to no thinking involved.
The transcendental part of religion, i.e. liturgy and prayer, do not require thinking. They connect directly to natural predisposition, intuition, and instinct.

Liturgy and prayer are meant to refuel spirituality on a regular basis. It is an instrument to protect and enhance mental strength.

There are people who do not make use of them, but that amounts to not eating when you are hungry, or not drinking when you are thirsty. Non-users often end up swallowing psychotropic medication instead, but I doubt that it is a valid substitute. In my opinion, it is the wrong tool for the wrong problem.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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heracleitos wrote: May 11th, 2022, 8:35 pmThere are people who do not make use of them, but that amounts to not eating when you are hungry, or not drinking when you are thirsty. Non-users often end up swallowing psychotropic medication instead, but I doubt that it is a valid substitute. In my opinion, it is the wrong tool for the wrong problem.
I don't see it that way at all. Pascal's naive wager aside, one cannot just decide to believe in God, Allah etc. There are degrees of belief and doubt, and these translate simplistically to either belief or non-belief.

I don't decide not to believe in the claims of ancient mythology and their cast of invented characters - God, Zeus, Odin, Allah and so on. I simply accept that these myths were meant as metaphor and the meanings have been mangled by modern literalism.

So let's consider the wickedness of Islam, such as condoning dictatorial and cruel violence and bullying of women, and denial of women's life opportunities. The only justification, or at least reason, for such a primitive and self-defeating dogma is immaturity.

It's cultural arrested development, stuck in a time when the Middle East was "the greatest goddam place in the world" - a cultured and highly educated link between Europe and Asia. It was millennia ago, but it was such a wonderful time that, after being severely harmed by the Crusades, the Middle East has not been able to move on, still mired in cultural practices that have no place in a world with an extra 2,000 years of knowledge and experience.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by LuckyR »

heracleitos wrote: May 11th, 2022, 8:35 pm
LuckyR wrote: May 11th, 2022, 2:06 pm [Understanding of the relevant issues involved in decision making is completely not required, they commonly jump to the conclusion (the choice) with little to no thinking involved.
The transcendental part of religion, i.e. liturgy and prayer, do not require thinking. They connect directly to natural predisposition, intuition, and instinct.

Liturgy and prayer are meant to refuel spirituality on a regular basis. It is an instrument to protect and enhance mental strength.

There are people who do not make use of them, but that amounts to not eating when you are hungry, or not drinking when you are thirsty. Non-users often end up swallowing psychotropic medication instead, but I doubt that it is a valid substitute. In my opinion, it is the wrong tool for the wrong problem.
Part of the problem with commenting on the subject of the religious, is that "the religious" includes both the devout and those who are members in name only. Those Catholics who only go to church on Easter and Christmas, jack Mormons, I'm sure there is a term for "Muslims" who drink alcohol, eat pork, kiss their dog and act identically to the average American teenager, yet tell their mom that they pray five times a day (when they don't).

This "in name only" group is counted when tallying the popularity of religions, yet are absent in discussion of the religious.

In other words a substantial portion of the religious live their lives almost identically to the non-religious.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by Sculptor1 »

LuckyR wrote: May 12th, 2022, 3:33 am
heracleitos wrote: May 11th, 2022, 8:35 pm
LuckyR wrote: May 11th, 2022, 2:06 pm [Understanding of the relevant issues involved in decision making is completely not required, they commonly jump to the conclusion (the choice) with little to no thinking involved.
The transcendental part of religion, i.e. liturgy and prayer, do not require thinking. They connect directly to natural predisposition, intuition, and instinct.

Liturgy and prayer are meant to refuel spirituality on a regular basis. It is an instrument to protect and enhance mental strength.

There are people who do not make use of them, but that amounts to not eating when you are hungry, or not drinking when you are thirsty. Non-users often end up swallowing psychotropic medication instead, but I doubt that it is a valid substitute. In my opinion, it is the wrong tool for the wrong problem.
Part of the problem with commenting on the subject of the religious, is that "the religious" includes both the devout and those who are members in name only. Those Catholics who only go to church on Easter and Christmas, jack Mormons, I'm sure there is a term for "Muslims" who drink alcohol, eat pork, kiss their dog and act identically to the average American teenager, yet tell their mom that they pray five times a day (when they don't).

This "in name only" group is counted when tallying the popularity of religions, yet are absent in discussion of the religious.

In other words a substantial portion of the religious live their lives almost identically to the non-religious.
yes, the vast majority of people the world over are practical atheists. Few feel the daily need for "spiritual" thinking, ritual, or observance.
There is no need to protect their mental well being, and it is well known that Theism predicts high in mental institutions, and prisons, low in universities; indicating that religion does not provide any assistance in this respect.
I would go further to suggest that the very act of submitting to faith is highly damaging to the capacity for reason and rationality, which are great bolsters against mental health.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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heracleitos wrote: May 9th, 2022, 9:16 pm
Greatest I am wrote: May 9th, 2022, 1:52 pm Islam has the worse humanitarian policies in general use.
Second in evil only to Christianity.
I am always in the market for an alternative for pretty much anything. I have already replaced Windows by Linux but if something better than Linux comes along, then why not?

However, I am not going to use nothing at all.

As an individual, you become incredibly ineffective if you do not join a consensus with other individuals when the choice to make clearly has network effects.

Concerning moral theory, I can only emphasize the following issues about criticism on existing religious alternatives:

- You always make a choice of moral theory. If you don't manage that choice properly, you will end up using something undocumented, vaguely specified, and almost surely inconsistent.

- A haphazardly concocted moral theory cannot represent a consensus that anybody can join, because there is simply no agreement on what exactly it is. A consensus joined by just one person is totally ineffective.

Behind the corner, you have the ruling mafia waiting, which invents and eagerly tries to impose their own pseudo-moral concoctions.

The ruling mafia cannot do that with me, because all I need to point out, is that their newly-invented concoctions are in violation of Islamic law. At that point, the ruling mafia had better back off because they know that they risk facing reprisals and retaliations that are ruthless and merciless.

However, as an atheist, how exactly do you intend to defend yourself from the ruling mafia's new pseudo-moral concoctions? What exactly is your defense strategy?

In my opinion, an atheist is completely defenseless. He will get overrun either by the ruling mafia, or else, by an aggressive religious consensus that has the desire and the wherewithal to brutally impose its views onto weak targets.

So, what you are doing, amounts to disarming, disorganizing, and then haplessly waiting to get pushed off a cliff. It is a Darwinian war out there, and you are clearly setting yourself up for failure.
Thanks for the opinion.

I do not see as you do.

Take refuge in an atheist church.

Regards
DL
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