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Why does God allow evil and suffering? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/atheistmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 5 points 2 months ago (11 children)

I think religion would be way more convincing and appealing if we just gave up on the "all-powerful" aspect of God and focused on the "all-knowing" and "maximally good" parts

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago

    Just accepting many gods rather than just one; each with their own power and personalities... like in old paganisms... it is far more convincing to me. None of the producted texts are absolute truth, just a poetic view according to the dream given by the servant of one of the gods: of course it is not exact, so proving it wrong brings nothing... Responsabilities are diluted, and if you are more a fan of the god A, you can accuse the god B td oe responsible of most bad things…

    That said, the original version of the monotheists god was not claiming to be the only one existing, he was requesting to be the only one they pray for and honor. A bit as it was the minor "god" of jealousy of a large pantheon…

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    Its kinda hard for the creator of the universe to not be all powerful though. The other two are much more maliable.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    Maybe He created the universe and then the universe took on a life of its own? In the same way that a parent may create a child but doesn't then have absolute power over the child or their behavior?

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    That's basically deism. Which a lot of enlightenment thinkers believed in. That there's an all powerful God who just chooses not to be involved past the start. Grandfather clock Theory.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Are programmers all powerful over code they created and then released into the wild? (TLDT: No, but there is likely some control, especially over new versions)

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    The metaphor would be code running "locally", not released into the wild. So yes. Whatever you originally wrote you could remove, rewrite, augment or fix. If god "released us into the wild" then god is not omnipotent anymore, and it also would never be required for an omnipotent entity.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Perhaps, also perhaps the classic Jesuit argument that for judgement to be meaningful free will must exist applies. Similarly a scientist should state the results being experimented on before running the experiment rather than just running p-values on a bunch of resultant data and claiming whatever pops as the intended result. Perhaps God is a scientist with a multiverse of experiments with small tweaks to initial conditions. In that sense you'd have a bunch of (or just one) locally running code(s), but effectively in the wild for fear of tainting the results.

    I'm agnostic FWIW, I just find these ideas fertile ground for playing with thoughts.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    Perhaps, also perhaps the classic Jesuit argument that for judgement to be meaningful free will must exist applies.[...]
    Perhaps God is a scientist with a multiverse of experiments with small tweaks to initial conditions.

    Not in any of the mainstream monotheistic views that would be relevant. They are omniwhatever as a matter of... well, canon, I guess.

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