My point is that that’s logically inconsistent. A genocide killing thousands of people and an earthquake or famine killing thousands of people both leave thousands of people dead.
The distinction is intent, which is an important factor if we’re talking about will. If you stub your toe on your coffee table, there’s no ill will coming from the table. If I approached you and whacked your toe with a mallet, there would be ill will coming from me. In those cases, the outcome is the same, but you’d be silly to be upset at the table; but very justified in being upset at me.
So, take something like thousands of deaths from an earthquake: in a godless universe, it’s a shitty situation, but not an evil one. There’s no intent: the universe has no will. Throw an omnipotent and omniscient controller into the mix and suddenly that earthquake isn’t something that just happened as a result of planetary physics; it’s something that was intentionally designed to happen.
…which kinda makes sense that you’d think of them as being the same, since through a theocratic lens they kind of are, it’s just that ones a genocide at the hands of men, and the other’s a genocide at the hands of god. Either way, both are very much evil.
When you get down to it, the only kind of world that would not run afoul of the Epicurean paradox would be a no-scarcity paradise with only 100% happy thoughts, and at that point we’d be looking at robots (or I suppose angels, if there’s a material difference), not humans.
Agreed, hence my disbelief.
Worse, when you get down to it in such a world people would either lose the ability to even conceive of evil, or be prevented from committing it by an external force. Imagine if at the mall you always had an angel making you return your shopping cart, now multiply that by ten thousand times. Essentially we’re looking at a world of lobotomized robots, which to me doesn’t sound all that appealing.
I’m kind of surprised to see that’s something that isn’t appealing - isn’t a blissful existence completely devoid of evil basically what we understand heaven to be? (or the Islamic equivalent - I’m kind of a dumbass when it comes to religious-anything outside of Christianity, so if I mislabel something or otherwise say something stupid, please call me out)
evil is baked into the concept of free will.
Disagree here as well. We are incapable of many actions - I’m sure you could rattle off hundreds of examples just off the top of your head - we can’t fly, breath under water, teleport, see in the dark, speak with squirrels, etc - you get the gist. But the absence of those abilities never calls into question whether or not we have free will, they’re just accepted as things we can’t do despite having free will. So why is the ability to commit evil so critical to the notion of free will?
Another way to look at it: I haven’t had dinner yet tonight: there are literally thousands of options to choose from, between what I have the means to cook or by having a restaurant do it for me. There’s a lot of freedom in that decision. I could also satiate my hunger by abducting my neighbor’s 4 year old son and committing cannibalism. In this case, my freedom is narrowed not by a divine force, but by the law: if I make that kind of evil a part of my dinner decision making, then I spend the rest of my life in prison. Let’s switch to a different universe where my meal options are the same, but instead of a legal force, this time it’s divine: I’m literally incapable of even considering cannibalizing my neighbor’s kid, let alone performing the act. The other thousands of dinner options are there, but evil is fully off the menu… do I have free will?
Without objective morality (which immediately follows from the lack of belief in a creator), how can there be good and evil? This application of the Epicurean paradox assumes that evil can exist independent of a higher authority able to determine good and evil, so it’s a case of circular reasoning more than anything else.
Good and evil can exist without divinity because the lack of an omniscient creator means the baseline for the universe is apathy. It doesn’t care if you choose to be good or bad. Those are values that we created, and that we adhere to or not according to our choice… and as we see every time we turn the news on, there’s no shortage of people who choose evil. …and the ones who are proficient at it go on to become billionaires or world leaders or w/e. None of that would make sense in a universe that had a omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent god.
The Epicurean paradox can only be used to reject complete benevolence (which, well yes), not complete goodness.
Edit - misread that part earlier, sorry if you’ve already read this part of my reply. Anyway: I don’t understand the distinction between benevolence and goodness. How can the two be offset in the context of godly absolutes?
The distinction is intent, which is an important factor if we’re talking about will. If you stub your toe on your coffee table, there’s no ill will coming from the table. If I approached you and whacked your toe with a mallet, there would be ill will coming from me. In those cases, the outcome is the same, but you’d be silly to be upset at the table; but very justified in being upset at me.
So, take something like thousands of deaths from an earthquake: in a godless universe, it’s a shitty situation, but not an evil one. There’s no intent: the universe has no will. Throw an omnipotent and omniscient controller into the mix and suddenly that earthquake isn’t something that just happened as a result of planetary physics; it’s something that was intentionally designed to happen.
…which kinda makes sense that you’d think of them as being the same, since through a theocratic lens they kind of are, it’s just that ones a genocide at the hands of men, and the other’s a genocide at the hands of god. Either way, both are very much evil.
Agreed, hence my disbelief.
I’m kind of surprised to see that’s something that isn’t appealing - isn’t a blissful existence completely devoid of evil basically what we understand heaven to be? (or the Islamic equivalent - I’m kind of a dumbass when it comes to religious-anything outside of Christianity, so if I mislabel something or otherwise say something stupid, please call me out)
Disagree here as well. We are incapable of many actions - I’m sure you could rattle off hundreds of examples just off the top of your head - we can’t fly, breath under water, teleport, see in the dark, speak with squirrels, etc - you get the gist. But the absence of those abilities never calls into question whether or not we have free will, they’re just accepted as things we can’t do despite having free will. So why is the ability to commit evil so critical to the notion of free will?
Another way to look at it: I haven’t had dinner yet tonight: there are literally thousands of options to choose from, between what I have the means to cook or by having a restaurant do it for me. There’s a lot of freedom in that decision. I could also satiate my hunger by abducting my neighbor’s 4 year old son and committing cannibalism. In this case, my freedom is narrowed not by a divine force, but by the law: if I make that kind of evil a part of my dinner decision making, then I spend the rest of my life in prison. Let’s switch to a different universe where my meal options are the same, but instead of a legal force, this time it’s divine: I’m literally incapable of even considering cannibalizing my neighbor’s kid, let alone performing the act. The other thousands of dinner options are there, but evil is fully off the menu… do I have free will?
Good and evil can exist without divinity because the lack of an omniscient creator means the baseline for the universe is apathy. It doesn’t care if you choose to be good or bad. Those are values that we created, and that we adhere to or not according to our choice… and as we see every time we turn the news on, there’s no shortage of people who choose evil. …and the ones who are proficient at it go on to become billionaires or world leaders or w/e. None of that would make sense in a universe that had a omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent god.
Edit - misread that part earlier, sorry if you’ve already read this part of my reply. Anyway: I don’t understand the distinction between benevolence and goodness. How can the two be offset in the context of godly absolutes?