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IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.
Atheism
- Thread starter Disco08
- Start date
Six Pack said:
See, I think that depends on what you compare us to. If you compare us to a frog or a duck then, sure, we're very intelligent. But can we create planets, stars or solar systems? Can we even see or visit all of the stars and solar systems in the universe? Can we even cure cancer or the common cold? Do we definitively know exactly what happens after we die? Do we know exactly what is going to happen to us tomorrow?
The answer to all of these is of course No. By those standards we are fairly simple people. People who have come a long way in the past 6000 years but still limited in our intelligence. But man are we smart compared to those ducks!
evo said:
The whole discussion came out of my take on Antmans' diagram, that Atheism had better answers than Christianity for life's questions. I thought I would find out. This is the Atheism thread after all. If you don't mind answering I don't mind asking.
Why is a relative take on good/evil superior to an absolute one? The way I see it if good/evil are simply societies consensus then definitions are easily and quickly changed and morality becomes the slave of political expediency. I don't believe this could be described as positive.
Just one last one on evil, do you believe that some acts can be described as pure evil with no redeeming features or not?
jayfox said:
No. Thats the narrative, but doesn't answer my why. Why did he give the angels choice? Why did he create a universe where evil is possible?
Also why is Satan evil just because he disagrees (or even envys) God? That would make my little sister evil when she was a kid to me, but she was just disagreeable and a *smile*, not evil.
Six Pack said:
Wasn't that the second one? Anyway have you never heard the saying 'many a true word is spoken in jest'?
Tiger74 said:
God gives His creation a choice of whether to follow Him or not because that is the only way that He can have a true relationship with Him. If we were all programmed to love Him then it is not a true relationship as we would have no other option. You could argue that we are only there purely because there is no other option. At least with choice God knows we are there in the relationship with Him because we want to be. The same goes for the angels.
God is 100% pure and perfect. Anything that opposes perfection will be imperfect. Satan is evil because he wants to be God and will do anything it takes to make that happen, regardless of the consequences or who that hurts. Satan cares only for himself and his own praise. Satan tricks people into doing things that are against their better judgment by making them seem attractive but neglects to tell you that they are against God's will and you will go to Hell for them if you don;t repent. Satan hates mankind and wants as many of us to go to Hell as possible. He is not interested in saving any one of us. God is the opposite. He loves us all and wants to share eternity with all of us, if we wish for the same thing.
The sister analogy is not perfect but it would be more like this -
You are an absolutely wonderful, perfect person. Your sister is evil because she envies you and will stop at nothing to hurt you in any way possible, physically or emotionally. Your sister wants you dead so that she can get more attention for herself. You love your pets dearly but your sister takes great pleasure in torturing and killing them. Your sister tells everyone behind your back of how bad you are and how things would be so much better if you weren't here. A third of your close friends have now left you and are not only no longer your friends but sworn enemies because of what she has told them about you. She devotes her entire life to nothing other than trying to destroy you and any good that you stand for.
evo said:
Similarly Richard Feynman used to say "Not even wrong" in response to a question or a hypothesis that is essentially unrelated to the real problem.
It also shows the folly of thinking in dichotomies - good/bad, good/evil, yes/no, God/Satan, God/absence of God. Dichotomies are almost never a sound way to think about anything as the reality is almost always more complex than a dichotomy can describe or allow.
OK another: Is man a sinner, a rule or law breaker by nature? Perhaps this avoids the good/evil dichotomy. Perhaps this is the origin of man's inhumanity to man (evil)?
An absolute objective take on good/evil is impossible.And even if it wasn't how is one supposed to find out for sure what Gods will is anyway?Djevv said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_command_theory (see objections)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma
Well then what's you alternative--Some Sharia Law type arrangement?
Evil is a theistic word that has no real resonance with me.
Did some event (say the act of the holocaust visited upon the Jews) have no redeeming features? Yes.
