Was life on Earth created by an evil designer?

mtf said:
How do you know?
Do you think it would be unfair for God to kill the infidels?
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I see it as beside the point. The OP's question is about whether God himself has created a world of suffering. Folding in what humans thin they're supposed to do about it muddies the waters.

mtf said:
I'm talking about the difference between emic and etic:
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True, but:
mtf said:
Bottomline, if you're not a member of a certain group, you can't have insider knowledge of that group.
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Your conclusion is wrong. Nowhere in there does it suggest one cannot understand insider knowledge. Simply that there are two points of view to be considered.


mtf said:
Which statement of mine? The DA? That was a DA. A DA is necessarily mean, by PC standards.
Not at all.
Why would it be a negative judgment? It's a correct one. Many religious people want us, infidels, as they call us, dead.
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It is not a correct view that those M's and C's think God is vengeful and evil. They don't. They see him as loving. Because of their internal logic.

You need to understand hteir internal logic to answer the OP's question.


mtf said:
I take it you've never seen a political debate?
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Fair neough.
Self-correction: a debate certainly can be civilized.


mtf said:
An informal debate is also of little use,
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Little use to you perhaps. ;)

We are having an informal debate right now. We have a clear topic, two viewpoints and we are using logical, rational arguments to adress each other, and eventally arrive at an agreement. Arbiter is our own good sportmanship, and any other readers to care to step in if we go off-track.

You re calling it a discussion, but the difference is semantic.

mtf said:
Not at all. It certainly appears that aggressive, mean people do a lot better in life than the nicer ones.
So it would be better if one were also aggressive, mean.
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So, yes, then.

You are advocating debasing onesself, lowering onesself to the level of one's opponent, because they're being mean.
 
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mtf said:
You seem to be starting from a particular Christian perspective only, ignoring the numerous other theistic perspectives that have a vastly different narrative than Christianity.
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I don't need to address them all. I simply need one example, of my choosing, that addresses the OP's question.

Q: How can God not be evil, in creating such and awful world?
A: Here's one way how: He gifted us with free will. We did the rest.
 
DaveC426913 said:
It is not a correct view that those M's and C's think God is vengeful and evil. They don't. They see him as loving. Because of their internal logic.
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Sure. But we outsiders, the receipient so all that religious love, do tend to think of their god as vengeful and evil.
If one wants to have a positive view of God, one needs to belong to a theistic religion.

You could even say that outsiders to theism have neither reason, nor need, nor worry about God's nature, because it's none of their business, them not being theists and all. With an outlook like that, you could dismiss the vast majority of atheist literature and their various reasons for not believing in God.

You need to understand hteir internal logic to answer the OP's question.
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Actually, the way the OP is formulated, it ties to the usual ways that the problem of an evil god is conceived in popular discourse.

But you are looking at it quite differently.

and eventally arrive at an agreement.
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Not sure about that.

You re calling it a discussion, but the difference is semantic.
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What else would it be, but a difference of meaning?

So, yes, then.
You are advocating debasing onesself, lowering onesself to the level of one's opponent, because they're being mean.
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Duh. I'm not advocating that yet. I, for now, merely acknowledge a readily observable phenomenon that aggressive people do better in life.
The question is whether, in the name of civility or "being the bigger person," one ought to sacrifice certain social (and potentially economic) perks.
 
DaveC426913 said:
I don't need to address them all. I simply need one example, of my choosing, that addresses the OP's question.

Q: How can God not be evil, in creating such and awful world?
A: Here's one way how: He gifted us with free will. We did the rest.
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What about devastating volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, small pox, floods, all those natural catastrophes and diseases? They aren't due to our free will.
 
mtf said:
The question is whether, in the name of civility or "being the bigger person," one ought to sacrifice certain social (and potentially economic) perks.
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Character is who you are even when no one is looking.

Imagine this were a heated argument involving racist slurs. You wouldn't fight fire with fire would you? I wouldn't.

mtf said:
What about devastating volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, small pox, floods, all those natural catastrophes and diseases? They aren't due to our free will.
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To the internally logical(-ish) model I laid out earlier: Adam and Eve did not experience any of those things within the walls of the Garden of Eden.
 
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DaveC426913 said:
Character is who you are even when no one is looking.
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Sure, when noone's looking, it's easy to be nice, then niceness has no bad consequences.

Imagine this were a heated argument involving racist slurs. You wouldn't fight fire with fire would you? I wouldn't.
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To the internally logical(-ish) model I laid out earlier: Adam and Eve did not experience any of those things within the walls of the Garden of Eden.
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But then their eating of the tree of knowledge unleashed an endless avalanche of disasters for everyone to come?
 
mtf said:
Sure, when noone's looking, it's easy to be nice, then niceness has no bad consequences.
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You miss the point of the statement. It's easy to be bad when no one's looking.

When a 20 dollar bill is lying on the floor, and no one is looking - what kind of person are you? That is character.

mtf said:
But then their eating of the tree of knowledge unleashed an endless avalanche of disasters for everyone to come?
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He gave them free will, and a single, simple rule.

That's not evil. Any loving parent understands it.
""You can play in the yard, but you must not go near the road. Going near the road will get you spanked and sent to your room."
 
DaveC426913 said:
You miss the point of the statement. It's easy to be bad when no one's looking.
When a 20 dollar bill is lying on the floor, and no one is looking - what kind of person are you? That is character.
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That doesn't address what we were talking about.

The question is whether, in the name of civility or "being the bigger person," one ought to sacrifice certain social (and potentially economic) perks.

If you're nice with people this will likely have bad consequences for you.
 
mtf said:
That doesn't address what we were talking about.

The question is whether, in the name of civility or "being the bigger person," one ought to sacrifice certain social (and potentially economic) perks.
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You call it "being the bigger person" - with quotes. I call it character. And I don't put "quotes" around it.

Does one sacrifice one's character for the sake of a cheap, ephemeral win?
 
He gave them free will, and a single, simple rule.

That's not evil. Any loving parent understands it.
""You can play in the yard, but you must not go near the road. Going near the road will get you spanked and sent to your room."
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The analogy doesn't hold. Below:

DaveC426913 said:
1] By definition, God is both beyond judgment and beyond morality. As God, it is his universe. By definition, humans cannot judge God.

2] Evil was not inevitable. The whole point of free will is to see what they choose.
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There are numerous problems with this, though.

If God, Adam, and Eve had as much power over eachother as three ordinary people do, then what you say would hold.

But if God is defined as the one without whom nothing can happen; as the one who makes it possible for humans to think, feel, speak, act; the one who makes the chemistry in cells possible, etc. etc. -- then there's a problem, if Adam and Eve think this way about God. If they do, they can't see themselves as meaningfully different or separate from God, and so their own self-understanding, their own understanding of their own free will is compromised. They don't see their free will anymore the way they see it if God were essentially just a fellow being much like themselves.

There is a further problem if for a one-time disobedience, there follows an eternal punishment.
When the punishment for making the wrong choice is eternal, making any choice at all becomes moot, it's ceases to be a meaningful act of free will.
 
mtf said:
There are numerous problems with this, though.
There is a further problem if for a one-time disobedience, there follows an eternal punishment.
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Without a doubt.

But there being "problems" with it (allegedly - since they haven't been addressed or resolved yet) doesn't invalidate the thesis, that God acted as he (supposedly) did.
 
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mtf said:
Not sure what you mean.
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Essentially you've moved the goalposts.

You went from:
- utterly disagreeing with the thesis (that god gave us free will out of love and we made a hash of it)
to
- arguing the details of it (if we grant god's rule and that rules have consequences, how much punishment is warranted)

Details don't necessariy invalidate the thesis. It just means a deeper discussion (and an implicit, if only provisonal, concession to accept the overall premise).
 
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