Religion

[Reynard-Miri]

[noodles]

i suppose you did, but you didn't really have an argument. I don't see how anyone can, outside of personal experiences

[Lumnaya]

[SteelCrow]

[noodles]

[Lumnaya]

A God from which all good and all evil emanates makes a lot more sense to me than a single omnibenevolent God. But could we still call this good-and-evil God caring or benevolent in the usual sense? There is a lot more evil and suffering in the world than what would seem necessary or desirable.

All of it cannot be explained by free will — looking at natural disasters, illnesses, the way animals suffer, maim each other, starve to death, the very way life decays and feeds on death and the very existence of unbearable pain seem very hard to reconcile with the idea of a caring God.

All evil doesn't have a silver lining either; even though we have limited knowledge and understanding, we do have enough to see that a lot of it is gratuitous. Chronic pain from fatal, incurable diseases, for instance. I don't buy the idea that everything happens for a good reason we just can't perceive — that would be going completely against what I perceive from the world, only based on faith (which I don't have). (Plus, believing so is morally questionable, as — though that article isn't likely to convince any believers as it mostly looks at the question from a consequentialist, pragmatic perspective.)

[SteelCrow]

I take the stance that there are universal laws and codes of organization put forth by a universal intelligence that we call God, and it's up to us to make use of them, or deny them, as we choose. These laws and codes mainly describe systems of growth. There are not so much "good" and "evil" as there are "stronger growth" and "weaker growth".

I'll take aggression and altruism as examples. An aggressive entity, let's say a boy at school who is a bully, wanting to make himself better and stronger than others by weakening those around him. He'll convince people to become loyal to him, whether by direct intimidation or by uniting them against a victim. No one is really benefited except himself, and potential target victims have life made heck for them. But this is a type of growth, one that overrides and subsumes others. It's "good" for the bully, but "evil" for everyone else.

Then, a different boy at school wants to make other people strong. This boy has strong discipline and self determination, not easily cowed or intimidated, so that as he helps others, he is not weakening himself. He encourages others to not give up on things, makes them more confident in themselves. He seeks out low-risk, high-reward endeavors. He solves more problems than he creates. In short, he makes everything and everyone around him stronger, making himself stronger in the process. This type of growth cooperates and harmonizes with others. It's "good" for everyone, and "evil" for no one, and is thus orders of magnitude "stronger growth" than the bully.

So in consequence, I'm not sold on any one religion/denomination/philosophy, but just the ones that represent the most potent systems of growth.

[PLA]

The nature of benevolence is part of it, but what tends to really muck up any attempt at talking about theodicy is that "omnipotence" means whatever you want it to mean.
While there are a few people who will go all in on what their own god can do, most people will have a limit where they say, "he can do anything, but also can not do A, B, or C because that would be absurd, so it's not his fault".

[Wolfling]