Why did God create the Devil?

God IS the devil.

>>9990597
The devil was not evil to begin with

>>9990597
>>9990599
This^
God is bipolar af

>>9990597
Probably an ironic thing

Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.

If God is without flaw and wishes only the best for his creations, why would he allow for all the suffering and chaos the Devil creates?

A superficial explanation often is: to tempt humankind, to give them the freedom of will, to test whether they're capable of resisting the Devil and to reward those who, indeed, are.

I find this explanations very unsatisfactory, since it doesn't make God look any better. Imagine a parent that *chose* to leave his child near a syringe of heroin -- to see what happens.

I'm sure that this question of theodicy has been answered numerous times. I don't care whether you believe in (the Abrahamic) God or not, I want to hear your ideas and versions.


Background:
I'm writing a novel in which the hero, after losing everything to fate, meets the Devil (mistaking him for God) and he (the Devil, that is) begins to explain his motivation for rebelling against God and offers the hero a Faustian pact of sorts.

>>9990616
Do you want the devil to be an evil genius or a misunderstood rebel (or somewhere inbetween)?

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Why did God create boxxy?

>>9990616
Evil doesn't exist you brainlet it's merely the absence of being

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Modernity as a whole makes the idea of a morally just God look ridiculous.

Today, we can easily cure illnesses that people in the Bible died from, we don't have the slavery and mass starvation described on each page in the Bible.

Who did end all of this? God? No, scientific progress did. Also consider that the most religious countries today (Africa and the Middle East) are also the worst shitholes, whilst atheism is on the rise everywhere in the civilized world.

>>9990639
>Also consider that the most religious countries today (Africa and the Middle East) are also the worst shitholes
I know this post is bait, but the most atheistic countries like Japan and Sweden are degenerate as fuck.

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>>9990616
Chaos and suffering IS what's best for us. A universe of love without challenge or obstacle would serve no purpose. It would be like running a race of zero metres. It makes no sense. The universe that God made endures in love, despite all the evil. Suffering and chaos does not need to be eliminated for love to endure, it is always there.

But of course everything that I've just said will never make sense to a non-religious.

>>9990639
>we don't have the slavery and mass starvation described on each page of the Bible

Are you sure about that?

report non-literature threads
https://sys.4chan.org/lit/imgboard.php?mode=report&no=9990597

>>9990616
Look into Hegels theodicy. According to Hegel, the creation of the world was an actualization of the mind of God. The same goes for evil: when God allows evil to come into being (in the form of the devil, or human beings acting immorally, or whatever), Gods ultimate goodness can be realized by overcoming evil.
Evil is also necessary for the freedom of human beings, cf. Hegels Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, §507-512.

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>>9990643
From a religious point of view, they're "degenerate" and the peak of civilization would be something like Morocco, where people engage in pointless rituals and stone homosexuals to death, all while living in dirt.

From the point of civilization, however, Sweden and Japan are some of the best places to live, with the highest purchasing power and lowest crime and corruption.

>>9990639
>we don't have slavery and mass starvation
wat

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>>9990600
To begin with?

He wasn't evil, ever.

But he did Sin. His Sin was to think he knew better than God. His Sin was to give true freedom to Mankind, because he knew better than God did what was best and right. In so doing, Satan ensured that Man could commit evil, where once he could not.

And for this, God punished Satan with eternal damnation:
To contend with the souls of the evil he himself had wrought through his misguided actions. A shephard to the evil he created.

Satan suffers perhaps the worst damnation of all: To be surrounded with the pain and suffering he has caused by his intention to do what is right. Every day he is reminded - He did this. He caused this. Every soul before him in this hellfire is there because of what he did to Mankind.

Hell doesn't exist to punish us. It exists to punish Satan.

>>9990644
>But of course everything that I've said will never make sense to a non-religious.

It doesn't, since, more often than not, people don't even get the chance "endure" and "overcome" chaos and suffering to reach for love.

There are child soldiers that never get a name before they die, babies born with incurable conditions, plagues that killed whole continents without higher purpose (in Latin America, when the Europeans arrived).

>>9990597
read your bible, son.

>>9990624
He is a misunderstood rebel that ultimately regrets his deeds, as leaving everything as it was (with humans knowing no free will or self-awareness, but no suffering either) was the better choice, in hindsight.

Ultimately, the novel isn't about the Devil, but about how two heroes react differently to his temptation (one accepting the Faustian pact, the other rejecting it). But the Devils' motives still have to be made somewhat relatable.

>>9990653
How is a question about the Bible a non-literature thread?

>>9990661

Wrong you absolute mong

>He caused this

God created him, so God caused it

>>9990597
Same reason you created this thread. Same reason I created this post. Boredom.

>>9990667
People always have the chance, Grace makes sure of that. "Reaching for love" does not require you to be a literal professing religious, it is a state of the soul.

>>9990616
The devil doesn't create sin, that's pretty basic stuff. He tempts people to sin, but we still ultimately make the choice to.


A huge part of God's plan is to give us free will, and the ability to choose him or to choose anything we want really.

Are you arguing that a God who let's you make no choices at all, so you can only do good is better than one who let's us do as we please? Would you feel the same about a government who did that?


There's this idea that the devil is the source of all evil that I honestly don't know how anyone justifies. Humans make evil choices, the devil just is.

>>9990703
That's an existentialist interpretation of the Bible.

I don't dislike it, but find it too decadent.

>>9990597
why is there something instead of nothing?

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I've given the problem of the limitations of a God, as described in the Abrahamic faiths, some thought and i believe that such a God does not only lack limitation, but also contradiction.

A distinction that i think is more important.

And by that i mean that he can't intend to do something, and with sincerity attempt to bring it about, and then cause the opposite to occur. In contrast, humans, can and often do contradict their intentions via their ignorance of what could be abstracted as the truth.

And i think this is why, at least in the Christian genesis account, God allows the serpent into the garden. Adam and Eve are created to act as surrogates for the experiential simulation of duality through contradictory morality. To experience through us an instantiated and abstracted conundrum unsolvable to a more complicated and unbounded consciousness.

A consciousness devoid of ignorance, but also moral ambiguity.

>>9990999
so fucking close

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>>9991044
woke

>>9990597
Yes, in traditional Christian theology. Satan is identified with the serpent in Eden and Genesis says the serpent was created by God

Genesis 3:1a
>Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made.

There's also the view that Satan is a fallen angel, in which case he's also created by God, the angels are divine but are still creations.

>>9991051
M8 I'm so drunk i can't even see straight so i ap[precaite your appreciation of my observations.

You should give me your skype, i can tell you're a cool dude.

>>9991060
Well there's a reason us Catholics use wine at mass :^)

Tbh though, my Christian friends are the biggest piss-pots I know

>ITT: over-analyzing Jewish high fantasy fiction

>>9991044
I don't buy it, an omniscient God would be able to know what a limited human life with moral problems would be like anyway. It doesn't explain why He had to make a flawed creation.

>>9991067
I'm an Atheist, son.

Have anpother of my theads

>>9991036

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>>9991073
That';s the issue. Omniscience caries with it a single limitation; The lack of limitation.

return of the demiurge when?????????????????

>>9991075
>I'm an Atheist, son.
lol enjoy hell kiddo

>>9991083
Funnily enough, original monotheism knows no concept of hell

>>9991089
He's just a retard who doesn't, man, dw about him.

>>9990631
To prove His love

>>9991093
doesn't what?

>>9991077
But it would totally, fully understand what limitation would be like. If it needs to experience something by proxy to understand, it's not omniscient.

>>9991115
I dunno i'm drunk and have an IQ of 160 odd.

>>9991127
How could an entity without limitation experience limitation?Self imposed limitation would be temporary; Else Omniscience is not the correct label.

>>9991132
>an IQ of 160

Proofs?

>>9990990
>but find it too decadent.
How so? It seems awfully simplistic to me. That's why I like it.

It's sort of like:
>>9990999
>why is there something instead of nothing?
Why not?

>>9990616
So you're writing Faust.

>>9990606
Underrated

>>9991307
>Why not?
dude I don't know

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>>9991298
My memes speak for themselves.

>>9991367
Exunctly.

>>9990710
>Are you arguing that a God who let's you make no choices at all, so you can only do good is better than one who let's us do as we please?
But if humans were unable to commit sin, the idea of evil or freedom as we know it now wouldn't exist, so it would make no difference, and everyone would be happier and lead better lives, so definitely. You can't define something by a world that lacks it. Freewill is just the things that were are capable of doing as human beings and the choices we make - if you removed the choice for sin, as in we were incapable of it, we'd still have freewill but the confines of the freedom and human capability would be different, is all

>>9991374
They prove you spend a lot of time on 4chan

Which makes your claim about your IQ less, not more plausible

>>9991415
lmao rebuke my assessments of reality, faggot.

>>9991360
Not really, I'm only borrowing elements from Faust and inserting them into a high fantasy universe.

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unrelated, but does anyone want to play a quick chess match with me ?

https://lichess.org/vo285z9b

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>God made a man (oh yeah, God made a man)
>And man made a woman (maaan made a woman, yeah)
>But the woman made the devil
>We throw her out through the window

>>9990597
If you are coding a game that only you are going to play, it better have a stochastic element to it or else you are not really having fun.

>>9990597
Just remember that the universe is balanced. Remember that being is polar; and that you are bilaterally symmetrical.

>>9991456
I will anon

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>>9991533
thanks man

>>9991127
>lmao I have no idea what omniscience actually means
You realize that everyone argued over this in the 60s? It's done, we've hammered out the definition and ramifications of omniscience. It's a matter of public knowledge now. You could educate yourself on the topic right now.

The Devil is nothing more than the irrational fear of an imaginary bogeyman

>>9990667
>There are child soldiers that never get a name before they die, babies born with incurable conditions, plagues that killed whole continents without higher purpose (in Latin America, when the Europeans arrived).
Implying this didn't happened because of people.
>>9990597
Devil is the personification of human nature so it represents our instincts, cravings and selfishness. Since we can't perceive God through our five senses, it remains an aspiration of strength, reason and morality we all want to achieve. Man is a contradictory creature and it tends to be tempted by the 'Devil' because it's what comes from within. People cannot truly feel God without detaching from themselves as individual beings and thinking as a collective whole. Somehow, God didn't create the Devil, because the Devil was created by Adam and Eve when they committed the first sin.

It's a chicken-egg-problem theists won't be able to ever solve

Somewhere, sin had to originate
Even if it originated in humans or the Devil, it had to be inside God in the beginning

>>9991628
>Adam and Eve actually happened
Weeeeew

>>9991132
>Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made.
It can fully understand what limitation would be like, and what the experience of limitation would be like. It's not limited to experiencing one thing at a time, it can perfectly contemple limitation and the experience of limitation, without being limited itself, surely? It wouldn't just be experiencing limitation alone, that would be a subset of its thinking.

Humans don't even give it special experience of limitation because God doesn't become human, He can only understand perfectly what the humans are experiencing. In no way does He directly experience limitation itself.

>>9991746
>God doesn't become human
What is Jesus

>>9991738
Why do you have to take things literally? I meant the first people.

>>9991761
I'm just talking about an omniscient being creating humans and whether that creation alone allows it to experience limitation. Not becoming human as Jesus.

>>9991777
After seeing this lucky trips I have been converted

>>9991773
>the first people somehow literally ate from a metaphorical tree on the words of a metaphorical snake

>>9991628
>babies born with incurable conditions
>this happens because of people
Lmao

>>9990649
>>9990659
His full sentence obviously means to the same extent, nice reading comprehension

>>9990644
>God's omnipotent
>but he can't make a world where there is no chaos or suffering but there is still purpose
Heh, nice try

>>9991867
This this this couldn't have said it better

>>9990597
Used to wonder and then lit told me to read job.

The answer is in the book of job.

>>9991864
In most cases babies with incurable conditions are born to parents who aren't 100% healthy either.

>>9990597
Because he's a wicked demiurge and not the Supreme Good.

>>9990616
First time thinking about this subject, so I'm sorry for any intellectual holes in my 'theory.'

I assume it's like the movie "Click", if all we had were good times, our life would be a boring cycle of doing exclusively good things that eventually overlap each other in our memories. Much like "If everything is good, nothing is good".

Think about your stereotypical 80s family from the men's perspective, life was perfect: Food at the table, you don't need to heed for anyone (In modern times men would have to respect their wives, before they were free), your stereotypical family had money to do anything that isn't too lavish, and in the end it didn't matter- obviously that was purely fiction/marketing, but if we think about the 'perfect family' that's what we think about. The people back in that day really had nothing to live for other than short bursts of happiness now and then, while in the 'real world' people have ups and downs, and the downs inevitably make the ups feel much more genuine and pristine.

I hope this made sense as seen that English isn't my first language. If you want me to try and expand on it, I can.

>>9991393
So, put that in the context of the government. If you were surgically modified at birth to be incapable of taking any action bar the one that was seen as best overall, would you want it? Or would you rather be able to do what you want most?


Also, the whole point of humans was that they would have free will. God didn't want just servants.

>>9991956
You're forgetting once again that sin inherently comes from our ability to choose. If you take away our ability to sin, you take away our ability to choose.


And please don't come back with some dumb crap about how we can't fly yet still have freewill, those aren't comparable, and I've seen too many people use that as an argument.

>>9991909
Why did the Supreme Good create the demiurge?

He didn't, as for good and evil, he only created the "schism" between light and dark, and so good and bad. "And god seperated the light from the dark, and he saw that the light was good."

>>9991904
Generally they're heterozygous since most really bad diseases are recessive and recessive homozygotes get bred out of the gene pool quickly, so there's no way to really know that the babies will have a recessive disease. You can pay to god all you want, he won't give you a genetic assay. And really though the notion that the health of the baby may be influenced by the parents, if you go by the Bible it's a completely novel concept, since the understanding of genetics and its relation to phenotypes in the Bible is pants on head retarded

>>9991900
Book of job is retarded, God gets goaded into causing unnecessary suffering (which is cruel) by the devil. The book of job leads to more questions than answers

>>9991965
That actually would be comparable. The ability to fly is something that can be granted by God, yet is not, and the ability to sin is something that can be granted by God, and is. To say that removing the ability to sin would impinge on free will is to say removing or not giving the ability to fly also impinges on free will.

>>9991988
If you're creating the schism that's tantamount to creating whatever exists on either side of the schism.

>>9991956
But the context is different - every choice we are capable of within the confines of God's universe is freewill, if sin didn't exist we would still have freewill it's just that a decision to sin wouldn't be one that existed even conceptually. What you're saying is different as your example is the removal of something that we once had, which is different to God in his conception of the universe giving us the idea of sin which only exists to cause pain and suffering and only has a bearing on freewill because God decided it should exist - Freewill can exist without sin

>>9990597
Because he's a hack

>>9990597
The theological development of the concept of what God is and what the role of the devil was is fascinating. It was a lot easier to comprehend it in earlier Judaism.

>>9992242
God can't think, he can't make a logically coherent universe. There's no discernible talent

>>9992265
>God said "Let there be light. And there was light"
Wow God nice job, you really explained the plot there in an interesting way, great prose

When you read the bible you're truly being trained to read Stephens King.

>>9992280
I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "The Holy Bible" I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character had a child, the author wrote instead that the character "begat". I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times.

>>9992350
Why didn't the "prophets" just resurrect themselves out of the dullest book in the history of literature? Seriously, each episode following the fickle God and his chosen people as they fight assorted unbelievers has been indistinguishable from the others. Aside from the gloomy imagery, the book's only consistency is its lack of excitement and ineffective use of prophecies, all to make miracles unmiraculous, to make action seem inert.

Perhaps the die was cast when God vetoed the idea of Satan directing the book; He made sure the book would never be mistaken for a work that meant anything to anybody, just ridiculously profitable cross promotion for His ideology. The Bible might be pro-Gnostic (or not), but it's certainly the most anti-Greek pantheon in its refusal of wonder, beauty and excitement. No one wants to face that fact. Now, thankfully, they no longer have to.

>a-at least the prose was good though

No!

The writing is dreadful, the book was terrible.
As I read, I noticed that every time a character had a child, the author wrote instead that the character "begat". I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times.

The same reason I created my cyborg racoon megabrain: so that it will give me handjobs eventually.

>>9992617
I was incredulous. God's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that He has no other style of writing. Later, I read a loving, lavish review of the Bible by Joseph Smith. He wrote something to the effect of "if these kids are reading the Bible at 11 or 12, then when they got older they will go on to read golden plates". And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read the Bible, you are, in fact, trained to read Joseph Smith.

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>>9990639
>Who did end all of this? God? No, scientific progress did

>>9992681
This anon has a good point, scientific progress is capable of more than just alleviating starvation and poverty, it's also capable of reducing casualties due to immense shows of power that cause rapid surrender , and leading to potential scenarios of mutually assured destruction which keep world powers eager to negotiate.

>>9992704
Scientific Progress only ever created higher and higher kill counts, it has only ever been morality -- and the grounding of that morality -- that ever pauses it.

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>>9990597
>>9990599

Yeah, posting this again:

>The idea is that nothing is worth doing, neither in and of itself nor for anything else. All personhood is refraction carried out relative to Self-reflection. Pleroma being irreducible and indestructible means modes of plurality like space and time have infinitely negative value. The only meaningful aspect of Evil that must be realized is that it is pointless. This makes the nebulous Christian or Hindu idea of free will very clear, also simultaneously more comforting and more terrifying. "We" as persons are persons for no reason, though a Creator can be ascertained where Nous refracts into Logos, this is Ontological Pareidolia. There is no Mind and no Good in that process and certainly none to be found beyond it given infinite freedom. Acting to the contrary is replicating this illusion on a smaller scale, actually being the Demiurge. Refraction is incidental to reflection, perpetuating the former is its own punishment. The irreducible particle of everything, Truth and Good itself and Truth in Good itself, is such not by contractual exemption from corruption but by its own immanence despite infinite corruption. Look the other way.

>>9991968

See: >>9992729

>People still trying to envision God as a literal being in the age of Peterson
Ishygddt

>>9992724
Yep, vaccinations, bioinformatics and its medicinal applications, electricity and the power grid that let you cook your food and heat your homes, the insane destructive power of modern militaries that acts as a deterrent to escalation - they're all raising kill counts.

>>9992754
If God doesn't exist in a literal sense, at best that's heresy of a pantheistic vein , at worst he doesn't exist in any meaningful sense.

>>9992754
>age of Peterson

I hope not. Albeit, I fear, we are.

>>9992779
No one said God doesn't exist.
>>9992783
No, the world will be better off.

>>9992724
I also agree with you. We're living in the worst times in human history. Deaths every day from wars and preventable diseases have never been higher. I'm almost afraid to go outside.

>>9990597

Can you play a game of chess with only white pieces?

>>9992802
Even though livjng conditions have vastly improved in the West, large parts of the populations are still living in absolute misery

>>9992796
Nice reading comprehension, learn to read a full sentence. I said he doesn't exist in a meaningful sense. If God's just a dude metaphor lmao than there's nothing to really believe in as an entity when someone says "God"

>>9990616
>I find this explanations very unsatisfactory, since it doesn't make God look any better. Imagine a parent that *chose* to leave his child near a syringe of heroin -- to see what happens.

Better example: if you had super christian parents would you prefer they beat you every day if you didn't read the Bible and go to church and Sunday school and only let you watch christian tv, or would you rather they let you make up your own mind on the matter, even though they knew that might mean letting you make the objectively wrong choice and potentially, in their minds, letting you damn yourself for all eternity?

>>9992818
Comparatively to the past? Come on, anon, let's be real here.

>>9992772

Actually, by exponentially raising birth rates yes, they are literally making it possible for more people to die in a year than were alive on earth two millennia ago

>>9992830
Yes, most things are infinitely better than, let's say, in the Middle Ages

Yet, even now, humans are struggling with almost unsolvable problems. Even the wealthiest people in the World die of cancer.

What kind of God would create such a horrible World?

>>9992820
He does exist in a meaningful sense. It is the fundamental archetypal story of mankind. In following him you can orient your life correctly, and strive towards a better tomorrow.

Do not throw away an idea that's permeated mankind since ages past with a simple joke, especially after the profound affects its had on civilization.

>>9990616
It is not an superficial explanation.
God let all the seeds grow and at the end chose them

>>9992809
You can if you're omnipotent

>>9992841
Humans created God, and in doing so set the rules within which we can create civilization. In being the Highest Being, even Emperor's become bound by God's law. In being the Highest Being and offering salvation and the idea of Good, it is strictly spelled out what should be striven for.

Evil in the stories exists as a warning against ways of being.

>>9992729
Can someone help a brainlet like me understand this?

>>9992822
They should use unflinching logic to convince me. If not, then just because they believe something doesn't mean they should work to that end, and beliefs with a foundation of abuse are the weakest and most superficial beliefs anyway.

>>9992834
But the average quality of life is way higher, absolute death rates don't matter, but I see your point.

>>9992844
>fundamental
How about no

>in following him you can orient your life towards a better tomorrow
No, you orient your life so that is in line with what bronze age shepherds thought was a good life. Most of the justification for your orientation comes from going to and being rewarded in heaven, so if God doesn't exist in a literal sense, then heaven almost certainly doesn't, so the Bible is even more ridiculous.

Friendly reminder that God is Good and your parents are the Evil ones for using their Free Will to bring you into this hell hole of a planet.

>>9992904
You are arguing like a child and your casual dismissal speaks to your child-like nature.

>Fundamental
Provide a more universal archetype
>No, you orient your life so that is in line with what bronze age shepherds thought was a good life

Being this dense, really, you should be ashamed. Heaven is not a place you physically travel, its where you are when you are living life correctly. Hell being where you go when you are not living life correctly.
You have a very simplistic interpretation. I suggest actually watching his Biblical series lectures.

>>9992350
>The fact that so many books still name the Bible as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" book ever only tells you how far Christianity still is from becoming a serious religion. Indian critics have long recognized that the greatest texts of all times are the Vedas and Upanishads, which were not the most famous or accessible or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Chinese critics rank the highly controversial Tao Te Ching over classical books which were highly popular in courts around East Asia. Christian critics are still blinded by commercial success. The Bible sold more than any other boom (not true, by the way), therefore it must be the greatest. Vedic critics grow up reading a lot of the Vedas of the past, Chinesecritics grow up reading the five classics. Christian critics are often totally ignorant of the religious writings of the past, they barely know the ancient near east. No wonder they will think that the Bible did anything worthy of being saved. In a sense, the Bible is emblematic of the status of Christian criticism as a whole: too much attention paid to commercial phenomena (be it KJV or NOV) and too little to the merits of real religious philosophy.

>>9992875
>>9992994
>God is good
Stop this meme, there is literally no reason to believe this

>>9990616
>If God is without flaw and wishes only the best for his creations,
Stopped reading there. Why do you assume God only wishes the best for his creations. Also how would you even define what that means? What does "the best" mean? By what standards are you going?

>>9993087
Concepts like the alpha male are far more fundamental and often exemplified in the creation of other, less fundamental, archetypes like gods

Except for the fact the Bible does use naturalistic consequences to justify things being bad, and it also uses supernatural (heaven and hell) consequences. The distinction is clear, and your new age, nonsensical and (quite ironically) slightly postmodernist interpretation of the bible isn't supported by the evidence at all

Life is more interesting when evil exist.

>>9993203
There is nothing more tiring than talking to a pseud. God is the pinnacle of the alpha male archetype. The alpha male is the progression towards becoming God-like.

Yes, it does, use naturalistic consequences. The ones you believe are supernatural are only written that way; and it is clear if you study the older versions that they were meant as metaphors. If you've ever read the old testament this would be painstakingly obvious.

And what do you mean by it isn't supported by the evidence at all? It's built into how it's written - they are short stories only a few lines in length at time meant to convey deeper meaning. Do not pull statements like that out of your ass, you just look like an idiot.

Again, I will encourage you to actually do some reading or thinking on the topic rather than deciding on what you want to believe, then setting out to prove it. You just become ideologically driven. Heck, if your patience is that small you could even watch his videos.

>>9990687
>God created him, so God caused it
>parents are always responsible for their children's actions even if they are able to make their own decisions because the parents created them

>>9990597
For a laugh. That God, eh?

>>9993731
>uuuh guys you're not getting this
>the ONLY LOGICAL EXPLANATION, is God is like a father
>like a human father
>gee, I can't believe you didn't know that!

>>9990597
He didn't. Lucifer became Satan because of his own actions. God allows evil, but it doesn't mean He approves of it.

>>9993741
this, which naturally leads to "so why did he allow it"

because the existence of evil would be the only possible way for free creatures to recognize and truly appreciate good. If it good were simply the norm, like a law of nature, then it would cease to be good. It would simply be "normal" to us, and not something to be cherished

>>9991867
>but he can't make a world where there is no chaos or suffering but there is still purpose
Because the purpose of life is to live it and either to choose God or not.

>>9991867
>>9993774
God didn't choose to make the world this way. It's only us that do.

>>9993754
This.

>>9990643
Without religion, what does degenerate even mean? Without God there cannot be "objective morality." Degenerate just means high time preference, not an arbitrary moral code.

>>9993752
>can't understand being responsible for one's own actions
Is this the true comprehension limit of a brainlet?

>>9993801
>Without God there cannot be "objective morality.
Shh, you'll trigger the atheists.

>>9993806
No, it's just I'm a panentheist because the idea that God is like a person seems childish and ridiculous to me.

>>9990597
cuz hes a fuckin jerk

>>9990597
>God
Upvoted my fellow Jew.

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>>9990597
He fug up

>>9993816
Surely any atheist would agree with this

>>9993816
Serious though. Closest you can get is UPB coupled with NAP.

>>9993875
That's what you'd think.

>>9993871
>>9993834
>>9993833
>>9993751
>>9992623

do people really think these posts are funny or clever?

>>9993818
>that God is like a person
I can agree somewhat since pagan gods are no different to people in nature.
As for God being a person is something I can't give an answer, and is probably something along the lines of the Trinity. I think the closest answer I can give is Jesus Himself. He was both God and Son of Man. God gave us what is necessary to form our own understanding of Him withing our own limited minds, and that He's Good, Just, and Love.

>>9993936
Believing in the Trinity is the same as following paganism.

>>9990643
>extremely low crime rates
>strong regional economies
>high HDI's

yep, degenerate as fuck

>>9990661
>The Devil.

What, you mean Ha-Satan from the Book of Job, or do you mean the serpent from Genesis? Or do you mean the devil from the new testament?

Because none of them are ever described as in hell.

What, do you get your scriptural basis from Milton?

>>9991044
Oh man you mean we need to exist as a counter-balance to God's perfection? As in, omnipotence and omnibenevolence implies that could actually COULDN'T do evil, and therefore needs us to do it for him? Because that's a fucking rad idea.

>>9993990
Ever heard of a little book called the decline of the west, dipshit?

>>9990599
holy...

>>9991044
That's actually pretty profound and interesting.

>>9990999
Nice palindrome dubs

What's the difference between the devil, Satan, and Lucifer?

>>9990597
Entropy

>>9994600
How can you be this retarded and still manage to form a complete sentence?

>>9990710
>A huge part of God's plan is to give us free will, and the ability to choose him or to choose anything we want really.

The problem I have with this is the double standard such theology presents.

God wants you to have free will and to make your own choices. But God will also very much punish the shit out of your for eternity if you don't make the choices he wants you to make.

Like, what the fuck God? That's like saying I can pick where we go for lunch, but if I don't pick the place YOU wanted to go you beat me up and steal my car. Why did you present this as a choice in the first place?

>>9990599
Dubs confirm
Also 999 upside down is 666 soooooooooooooo

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>>9990599

>>9994762

>Lol, thanks for giving me the chance to live God,, but why you gotta be a dick about it?

You want to complain about the fact God didn't give you superpowers next?

>>9994614
Why am I retarded? Each has their own name so I should expect that they are different entities but any Christian I've ever met has only ever treated them as names for the same being.

>>9994098
He's mixing every possibly iteration into one. So he's wrong.

>>9992885

You can understand. No one knows anything you don't.

>>9992885
it's pseud garbage.

>>9991132
God experiences limitation through the life walked by Christ. Christ never did nor said anything that wasn't from the father, and the father is one in him as he is one with the father. The father is a spirit, and a man. He is both able to pick up a rock, and able to create one he cannot.

>>9990599
I want more

>>9991777
You are implying God always experiences reality as you do with no other perspective. God is not limited, and he was always limited. He was never a man, and always a man. He was, and always will be. God is the 10th dimension, the point of original for all conceivable possibility; "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end." God exists both inside and outside of time's influence. "I am what I am."

>>9990599
N-NANI?!

God is just the Universe's slavebitch to make juicy observers. The devil is his fuck you.

>>9993615
No, the alpha male is independent, self sufficient and people flock to him purely because he exudes masculinity and because of his charismatic personality, not because he has to manipulate them to join him like a beta with an alpha facade. An alpha would have no need to display his power or boast about his abilities because it's obvious from his appearance and the way he carries himself what he can do. God is the opposite of those, being such a jealous God who gets triggered by unbelievers and has to threaten people with hell (even if it's just a metaphor dude lmao), and he's constantly boasting about how much he knows and how much he can do. To be God like as described in the Bible, especially in the OT, is maybe to be an alpha in capacity but not in personality, and since the alpha male archetype hinges on the personality, it is to be not truly an alpha.

What exactly do you mean "only written by that way"? Because it sounds a whole lot like you're looking past the clearly intentioned meaning and delineation, and using some autism-tier exegesis skills to interpret the opposite of what the words actually say. And how exactly is "painstakingly obvious". Don't pill statements like that out of your ass, you just look like an idiot.

I don't know what children's edition you're reading, but the books aren't short and there's no way to know which are simply "stories" anyway.

Your hypocrisy is obvious when you tell people to not setting out to prove a presupposed ideology, then do that exact thing with your poor understanding of the alpha male archetype.

>>9992849
That is superficial since God already knew what would happen to those seeds before he planted them, so to subject them to needless suffering is evil

>>9993731
If you choose to create a child in a specific manner with full and complete foreknowledge of what they will do, then yes you are responsible for your actions

>>9993774
God could still have made a world I'm which you can choose God or not, but there is still no sin or suffering

>>9993789
By creating people and knowing what they would do, God still ultimately chose to make the world this way.

>>9994971
Not an argument

>>9993816
>>9993801
>>9993875
>>9993887
>>9993878
Even with God, there is no objective morality. Doing what God says is no different from Greek virtue ethics, and the entity who defines virtue still does it subjectively and is only allegedly omniscient

The least religious nations on earth are also the safest and least violent ones
The most religious are the poor and war-torn

Ergo, the less God, the more morality

>>9995075
They are and you can refer to him however you want, but Lucifer is usually referred to the angel before he fell.

>>9994762
>punish the shit out of your for eternity if you don't make the choices he wants you to make
He doesn't. He's just giving you what you want: a place away from His grace. Also, God the Father is good. Wouldn't God want what's good for you? Just like a good father who wishes to best for his children?

>>9990599
>digits
I wonder who is behind this post...

>>9995536
This.

>>9996078
And you would rather He take away evil and free will?
>subject them to needless suffering is evil
You're in the assumption God is evil because He is allowing evil, but He's not.
>complete foreknowledge of what they will do, then yes you are responsible for your action
Yes, He knows what will happen to us, but at the end it us making that decision, not Him.

>>9996224
>What are ancient civilisations?
Do you actually think you would have the same morality as you do now if Christianity never happened?

>>9996315
Neither you, nor I can say for sure, there are too many variables in a hypothetical history of Western thought without christinity

>>9996308
>free will
>existing anyway
Oh I'm laffin

If you allow evil with full foreknowledge, that's tantamount to causing evil because the intent to do evil upon a person is there. This is basically Spiderman's origin story

Not really, because what you choose is dependent on your genes and your environment and essentially how God chooses to create you. Free will is a meme

>>9996258
>God the Father is good
Lel see
>>9993182

I also want eternal pleasure and rewards, why isn't there an option to have that but still be away from God? That would make it a real choice rather than just a carrot and stick since choosing to be with God would be an optional addon? But anyway, it doesn't follow that if you don't believe in God you don't want to be with him. It just means you didn't see sufficient evidence for him, especially over other comparable deities and mythologies, and there's not a conclusive ontological backing to support belief in him.

>>9996332
In the afterlife, you don't get "eternal pleasure and rewards", at least not in a way mortal beings like us can see.
In the afterlife, God gives you a choice. Will you be with Him, or will you be away from Him? You are given complete freedom over this decision, but this choice will undoubtedly be influenced by your life on Earth. Virtuous men will feel enclined to embrace God, for his presence will feel as eternal pleasure. Vile men will be burned by God's fire, and will want to be away from Him, a wish He will gracefully grant.
It's not a carrot and stick, it's a natural choice.

>>9996588
Good job ignoring all but the most facetious part of my post

Rewards are consistently described as being given to believers in the Bible, so it is fair to say you get eternal rewards for being a believer

Your interpretation doesn't sound canon at all, your decision to be with or away from him is made by your beliefs in your life on earth, which is what is described in the Bible. You can't reverse your beliefs and to say it is merely "influenced" by your life on earth seems like a huge understatement. It would also be silly to suggest that your personality is set by what you do in your life on earth more so than how you are created

How exactly do you make the distinction between a "natural choice" and a carrot and stick?

>>9990644
Why didn't he just make beings that could be happy in a world without fucking strife and sorrow. Oh, no, God just wants the best for his creations. That's why people are beheaded, burnt alive, raped, mutilated and broken. What a good guy.

If god exists, he is a bored child playing with his fantasy

>>9990597
The devil doesnt exist, you dont need religon to know right or wrong guys. Snap out of it.

>>9993789
>God didn't choose to make the world this way. It's only us that do.
God has set every event in motion. God has created every person and all their beliefs, virtues and faults. You want to argue that WE are the ones to make the world a shit place, when he is the one that determines every single fucking thing from the start of the universe until its end

That's like you writing a story, and then proclaiming your characters evil because they could just choose to be good. What a fucking asshole

>>9994971
Once you have created life it is your responsibility to create it.

The created has no obligation to support its creator if their creator has not supported them in turn.

Its like if you gave birth to a kid and then expected it to pay YOU for having given birth to it. God is omnipotent ffs if his power is unlimited then he hasn't sacrificed anything to have created life and you should have no real moral obligation to him.

If you really treat god as any other normal human his morality becomes bad very plainly.

>>9996327
>Spiderman's origin story
You can't be serious.
Are you going to blame your parents next for the shit that's going on in your life, anon?

>>9996699
Why doesn't God just give me what I want and everything else can fuck off?

Tippers are on full power today. What happened, /lit/?

>>9997680
>Are you going to blame your parents next for the shit that's going on in your life
Well, parents do have a great part in how someone turns out. Not relevant to the current discussion, just wanted to point out that you CAN be completely fucked up by bad parents

>>9997680
It literally is philosophically identical to Spiderman's origin story, a story which serves to show bad things happen when good men do nothing, and doing nothing is essentially causing the bad things to happen

My parent's didn't have full foreknowledge of what would happen in my life so your analogy is complete and utter shit, anon

>>9990597
Read the opening scene of Goethe's Faust, it explains perfectly

>>9990597
Why couldn't god make it a cool alignment choice, So that you got an alternative ending if you sided with the devil, but not one that resulted in eternal torture because that's just mean

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How can the Bible not be an impeccable piece of literature when millions are still in a raging debate about its content?

why did god wrestle some guy then when the guy beat god god cheated and broke his ribs and then the guy still beat god anyway

>>9993899

Yeah man, reddit is all over the place.

Also checked.

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>>9990616

God is perfect.
God created the world.
Creation implies separation.
Separation from perfection implies imperfection.
With imperfection comes 'evil'.

Evil has no self-existence.
Evil is a lack.

All evils lack self-existence, all evils are transient and unraveled by God, in time.

Theodicy is not even a problem. Evils are temporary, Good is eternal.

The point of life is to remember God and return to him. This world is imperfect yet the imperfections allow us space, space to acquire virtue and become benevolent and generous and good to others, space to overcome our selves.

Believe in God and be saved.

>>9999523
Pagans have the coolest gods. Yahweh haven't really been the same since the first testament. Lost his touch

Why have God made anything at all?

>>9999651

"I was a hidden treasure and wanted to be known"

That's part of it,

but also because he loves relating to other persons. God is love. That's why he made us in His image.

>>9999670
I really feel God's love when I'm struck by painful, life sucking seizures. Or when I see videos of a guy laying helplessly on the ground, both hands cut off and a box cutter knife forced repeatedly into his mouth, while those around him laugh and blast pop music, setting a horrible contrast, as some final affront to the pain of the victim

I hate this banal garbage. God's love, if such a thing isn't an oxymoron, is completely twisted. That egomanaic wants me and you to suffer, but It's okay because it's part of some completely arbitrary, needless "plan" that he conjured out of his misbegotten asshole - same as the rest of his creations. If he is real, he surely thinks this of himself, as well, else I wouldn't be sitting here shitting on him

>>9999670
>>9999713
Even further; If by some freak chance I met God upon my death, I will want to spit on his damned face. Knowing him, however, he'd probably force me to love him with a flick of his wrist. Then I can be another worshiper for his eternal dick stroking

>>9990644

I take it that God would be extremely bored without a world with evil and the overcoming of evil.

The most comprehensible form of God would be one that creates a world where glory and love is possible in a vortex of pain and evil, so as to make you fight for something. Then, occasionally, he may birth himself into it as a blind fool, so as to entertain himself. Basically, game developer God.

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>>9999713
> Or when I see videos of a guy laying helplessly on the ground, both hands cut off and a box cutter knife forced repeatedly into his mouth, while those around him laugh and blast pop music, setting a horrible contrast, as some final affront to the pain of the victim

Those situations are terrible and perverted because they contradict what is good, they go against God's laws and our deepest nature which is made in his image.

If God was evil or neutral/impersonal or didn't exist
there would be no objective grounds, no justifiable reason to find such torture scenes objectionable and to have an existential crisis over suffering itself.

I addressed the general theodicy problem here >>9999523

We are going to suffer and fall victims to evil because the world is fallen, broken, it is not perfect, we have lost our primordial connection to God that Adam and Eve once had.

Also consider [from the Christian perspective] that even the Son of God himself suffered brutally at the hands of men, he thirsted and hungered and they gave him vinegar to drink on the cross.
They flogged him, spat on him and crucified him and impaled a spear in his rib. So if the divine incarnation is not "above" suffering and pain, how can we (his creations) demand or expect to be above it in this life on earth??


>I hate this banal garbage. God's love, if such a thing isn't an oxymoron, is completely twisted. That egomanaic wants me and you to suffer, but It's okay because it's part of some completely arbitrary, needless "plan" that he conjured out of his misbegotten asshole

You're struggling with God and that's good, hopefully in time you will see the bigger picture and how most (but not all) suffering we experience here helps release us from our attachment to trivial things and flee towards what is good and eternal.

However, all suffering is transient here, however painful some situation is it will be unraveled and annihilated by God via time. Evil is evil and should be repudiated but you can only be disgusted at evil, suffering and death if you accept a transcended and eternal Good, a divine law maker, a personal God who takes interest in your life and the life of mankind.

>>9999744
>The most comprehensible form of God would be one that creates a world where glory and love is possible in a vortex of pain and evil, so as to make you fight for something. Then, occasionally, he may birth himself into it as a blind fool, so as to entertain himself. Basically, game developer God.

That's the hindu version of God.

I think it's flawed because it requires God to "get bored" or become "unsatisfied" with himself to such a degree that he creates illusions and deceptions for himself as temporary distractions, so he forgets who he is and his perfect nature.

>>9999787
I guess bored might be too harsh for a perfect being. Perhaps it's just a matter of artistic creativity. Perhaps every human is his the vessel. Just throwing shit out there.

>>9999670
but at the same time, there is a thing that worries me: to exist is also to experience pain, suffering, evil. Even tho God didn't made evil (we do create it through sin), this is a world of many frustrations.
I'm not saying I'm not thankful for ever existing, I'm glad there is an existence and that I'm part of it (how could I not be glad?).
But isn't there people dying from hunger and thirst in infancy too? Aren't people dying without experiencing joy as well?

It is a really confusing thought, and that's why I'm always balancing between belief and atheism (which also another kind of suffering)

>>9999771
>they go against God's laws and our deepest nature which is made in his image.
God made EVERYTHING. He set EVERYTHING and EVERYONE into motion. There is not a single snowflake he has not conceived of. He created the world, and HE decided that we were going to suffer. HE decided that we would lose our connection with him. HE created every single thought that ever occurs in any mind. So when people are evil and disregard God, it is because he has forced them to. He forced them the day he created the world and decided how it would all pan out.

>also consider [from the Christian perspective] that even the Son of God himself suffered brutally at the hands of men, he thirsted and hungered and they gave him vinegar to drink on the cross.
They flogged him, spat on him and crucified him and impaled a spear in his rib. So if the divine incarnation is not "above" suffering and pain, how can we (his creations) demand or expect to be above it in this life on earth??
But this was all the doing of God himself. He made up every single one of these moments. Why did he need to create a being and then send him to suffer at our hands so that said man could bear our sins. What sort of mental patients comes up with this shit? Why couldn't he just fucking forgive our sins without all the theatrics? I mean, he had already decided the fate of Jesus and all around him, even before Jesus was born. Why not just skip all that shit?

>You're struggling with God and that's good, hopefully in time you will see the bigger picture and how most (but not all) suffering we experience here helps release us from our attachment to trivial things and flee towards what is good and eternal.
I don't want to see the bigger picture. From where I'm sitting, I think it would be a sickening one. I don't want to see how he wants to justify his manchild ways.

Why couldn't god make a world where people were happy, and had no need for strife or pain. Why couldn't he just make paradise instead of earth? And don't give me anything about Adam and Eve and how they fucked it up for the rest of us. As with everything else, God had already planned that shit before he had even spat out the first straw of grass. They were completely at the mercy of the story God wants to tell. No doubt to amuse himself.

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It is interesting, I was for days having insomnia and going without praying, everyday I was feeling that I was losing my faith.

I don't usually talk about my faith with other people because I know it is a complicated issue, I am afraid of talking to my priest and having him shocked to what I might say about the ideas I am having about God and the Catholic Church.

So I made the mistake of keeping it for myself and looking for answers in the internet... navigating over fundamentalist websites and their sadistic, irrational views of God made my faith to sink more than it was already sinking.

Today I've been shitposting, insomniac again, I've got into this topic, read some post, anon replying to one another, and suddenly, after reading some quite enlightening posts, I finally felt like praying. And it feels good for now.

Thank anon, I won't say which post it was, but it lead me to some good questions.

I'll stop "blogging" now, keep on discussing.

>>9999817


>So when people are evil and disregard God, it is because he has forced them to. He forced them the day he created the world and decided how it would all pan out.

Lets say for the sake of argument that everything is God's will, everything that occurs is his doing. Thus, I am no longer the "doer" of my actions instead God is. Very well, God is Good and All-knowing (axiomatic), what do I have to worry about? Nothing. God is in control of everything, and everything works to achieve his aims. Let him do with me as he pleases.

If something seems unjust to me I simply recall that it is due to a limitation, a veil God has put on me. I am no longer culpable for my actions and I have no reason to complain or worry about diseases, natural disasters or the ''apparent'' evil that men do, for they are all the will of God. And God is good.

If you hold this strong determinist view about God it can be very liberating, it can be a blessing from God if you actually internalize it. Because there is nothing to worry about. The world becomes a show and you become a spectator.


>God made EVERYTHING. He set EVERYTHING and EVERYONE into motion. There is not a single snowflake he has not conceived of. He created the world, and HE decided that we were going to suffer. HE decided that we would lose our connection with him. HE created every single thought that ever occurs in any mind. So when people are evil and disregard God, it is because he has forced them to. He forced them the day he created the world and decided how it would all pan out.

Personally I don't go full determinism.
It's true that God created everything and counted the hairs on your head and providence pushes us towards our destiny, but I believe we have free-will as well, we can choose how we relate to our experiences, how we relate to others and God, what we believe and what we do, within certain parameters/constraints I believe we have wiggle room...and we can choose different paths in life within the greater pre-determined path set down by providence.

Evil itself is a lack of good, so what evil occurs is not God's fault directly but a side-effect of the fall of man, but God ''accounts'' for evil and either annihilates it or transmutes it into good. All evil and suffering are transient in this world. I am not phased by the "problem of evil" instead I think about how to help others.

>>9999817


>But this was all the doing of God himself. He made up every single one of these moments. Why did he need to create a being and then send him to suffer at our hands so that said man could bear our sins. What sort of mental patients comes up with this shit? Why couldn't he just fucking forgive our sins without all the theatrics? I mean, he had already decided the fate of Jesus and all around him, even before Jesus was born. Why not just skip all that shit?

Your asking two big questions, #1 why God made anything at all, and why did he need to incarnate in history to forgive sins.

1st, On one hand God is personal and God is love so he loves to relate to other persons so it's not surprising he would create people to relate to, so that he could know them and they could know him. Also God is sovereign and plentiful so creating living worlds is in his nature and his right.


2. God is a God of justice and justice requires sacrifice. Debts require payment. Wrongs need to be righted and the process involves an exchange of some sort.
God knew man would fall, but he also knew the final outcome would be glorious as well, in a sense the serpent was right when he said "if you eat from this fruit your eyes will be opened and you will be like God." because once the redeemer came he opened up man's potential to unite with the divine again. To answer your question God was "theatrical" because man is theatrical, we love stories, we are beings within history, we live in a material world, we want visible signs, the incarnation is an expression of God's intimacy with mankind and also his divine justice, an exchange had to be made for our sins.

>>9999879
>God is in control of everything, and everything works to achieve his aims. Let him do with me as he pleases.
So you want to be a puppet.
>If something seems unjust to me I simply recall that it is due to a limitation, a veil God has put on me
It's due to fucking bullshit is what it is. This was exactly what I meant when I scoffed at his "plan". Why would he fuck with you like that? For what purpose do you need to be kept in the dark, other than he just feels like it.
>If you hold this strong determinist view about God it can be very liberating, it can be a blessing from God if you actually internalize it. Because there is nothing to worry about. The world becomes a show and you become a spectator.
I don't need God to feel this way. I do not believe in the fellow yet I am convinced we live in a deterministic world.
>It's true that God created everything and counted the hairs on your head and providence pushes us towards our destiny, but I believe we have free-will as well, we can choose how we relate to our experiences, how we relate to others and God, what we believe and what we do, within certain parameters/constraints I believe we have wiggle room...and we can choose different paths in life within the greater pre-determined path set down by providence.
For this to work, he would have to not be omniscience. If he does not know everything, then how can everything come from him? We can't choose any paths because he already knows which ones we will tread. It has already been determined by him.

God seems a neurotic conman to me.

>>9999900

Another thing I just thought of is that the incarnation and crucifixion is like God saying "we're in this together" he came and suffered with us and "entered the matrix" so-to-speak for our sake. He's no longer simply the transcended, far-away, pristine God of the ancients. But he came down in a lowly form to see what this MMORPG is actually like for us.

Which is why Jesus says "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you."

And somewhat related why Paul says "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

>>9999900
>On one hand God is personal and God is love so he loves to relate to other persons so it's not surprising he would create people to relate to, so that he could know them and they could know him
You keep talking about his love and how he wants to relate to people, and I keep being confounded. God is also unadulterated HATE and spitefulness, if the world and the old testament is anything to go by. Why do you conveniently disregard all the fucked up shit he has authored. He created hate just as he did love. He is both, if anything.
>God is a God of justice and justice requires sacrifice
Why? Because he says so. You keep telling me that God does this and that because of rules like the one you just mentioned. But do you forget that he arbitrarily makes these rules to begin with. Why must justice require sacrifice. Why create a world where either is needed?
>God knew man would fall, but he also knew the final outcome would be glorious as well
So, he wants to write a story and is using us a characters to enact his fantasy. I probably would too. Boredom is his invention, after all.
>To answer your question God was "theatrical" because man is theatrical
Yeah, and man is theatrical because God is theatrical. God makes humans theatrical, so he can execute his "son" in a theatrical way. Bravo, Yahweh.

>>9999905
>I do not believe in the fellow yet I am convinced we live in a deterministic world.

Determined by who or what, for what purpose? The world needs a source, a source unlike itself. So it can't be temporal or spatial.

A world can't create itself because then it would have to pre-exist itself. It can't order or determine itself because that pre-supposes order and design already at some level.

The world can't be eternal because there would never be enough time to traverse any moment, we would never reach the "present".

There is too much design and harmony for its "determined nature" to just happen out of nothing, for no reason, randomly. Even the chaotic and suffering bits require insane amounts of harmony and design to function properly, cancer cells, a bullet hitting a kid, a volcano erupting and melting thousands of romans, a meteor hitting the dinosaurs, all of the chaotic and seemingly "bad" shit requires such intense fine tuning and design to occur and exist and be comprehensible to us.

Get the fucking 10000000

>>9999965
One more try
Btw, i love you /lit/

>>9999927

>Why? Because he says so.

Ya, that's the simple answer.

>But do you forget that he arbitrarily makes these rules to begin with. Why must justice require sacrifice. Why create a world where either is needed?

They aren't arbitrary they are consequences of his nature and wisdom, and since we are made in his image his rules are actually good for us and elevate us towards what we are meant to be, divine.
Human's have a sense of justice, even children are hyper-sensitive to injustice, when someone steals from them, or hurts them, etc.
Sin is a type of debt that requires atonement. With atonement comes sacrifice, an exchange has to be made, the debt has to be paid; the Son saw it fit to sacrifice himself so that we may have eternal life.

>So, he wants to write a story and is using us a characters to enact his fantasy. I probably would too. Boredom is his invention, after all.

Boredom is what happens when people forget God and distract themselves with earthly trinkets, passions and trying to fulfill petty desires.

>Yeah, and man is theatrical because God is theatrical. God makes humans theatrical, so he can execute his "son" in a theatrical way. Bravo, Yahweh.

"No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.” - Jesus

>>9999958
>Determined by who or what, for what purpose? The world needs a source, a source unlike itself. So it can't be temporal or spatial.
A simple initiation of events. The big bang, for lack of a better word. Like the domino effect.
>A world can't create itself because then it would have to pre-exist itself.
Why? There is no particular reason to believe it couldn't. Besides, the same principle could be applied to God. And if you want to argue that he has always existed, then that is just as strange a proposition as the universe suddenly creating itself.
>The world can't be eternal because there would never be enough time to traverse any moment, we would never reach the "present".
I'm not really sure what you mean here, Anon
>There is too much design and harmony for its "determined nature"
I call it a lot of chaos and happenstance. Name it what you will, it's the same thing
>Even the chaotic and suffering bits require insane amounts of harmony and design to function properly, cancer cells, a bullet hitting a kid, a volcano erupting and melting thousands of romans, a meteor hitting the dinosaurs, all of the chaotic and seemingly "bad" shit requires such intense fine tuning and design to occur and exist and be comprehensible to us.
I don't understand how you came to the conclusion that all of this requires design. Design doesn't have to be conscious. The universe could design itself through random furnaces without any plan or particular function

>>10000030
Children do not have an inbuilt sense of justice, it's very definitely something we learn.

>>10000030
>They aren't arbitrary they are consequences of his nature and wisdom
And his nature and wisdom has been arbitrarily created by himself.
>Boredom is what happens when people forget God and distract themselves with earthly trinkets, passions and trying to fulfill petty desires.
I'm talking about God, not us. I assert that God has made the story of the universe because he is just a bored kid. Like a day dream you have on any given day.
>"No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.” - Jesus
I don't see how this is relevant to what you qouted.

>>9995536
But that was exactly my point, God has perfectly understood literally everything eternally, he knows what every single experience possible is like. The other anon was saying God had to create humans to experience limitation, which I disagreed with because God is omniscient.

>>10000054
>A simple initiation of events. The big bang, for lack of a better word. Like the domino effect.

The initiator of such events/world would have to be unlike the things it initiates (unlike matter-space-time), otherwise you have a contradiction, the initiator would pre-exist itself.

God works as the initiator because he is atemporal, non-spatial, beyond matter, etc. God is beyond causality and time so the question of his "cause" does not apply by definition. The universe/world is not beyond causality at all, the chain of events and dominos is stuck within causality.

A determinist should definitely believe in God otherwise his world view has a big hole in it.

>I'm not really sure what you mean here, Anon

If the universe had a past that stretches back forever then this moment would never occur. Just like you can never reach the end of infinity you can never reach the present from an infinite past. The distance between moments/events would be infinite.

>I call it a lot of chaos and happenstance. Name it what you will, it's the same thing

No, even the chaos is strictly ordered, fine tuned, harmonious.

> Design doesn't have to be conscious. The universe could design itself through random furnaces without any plan or particular function

Randomness doesn't exist, specially to a determinist.
Design requires will, intention and consciousness, otherwise it's another blind link in the chain of causality. And a blind chain of causality , or a series of random events can't bring itself into existence, can't design anything, that would require it to pre-exist itself.

The design of the world is self-evident to anyone with eyes and ears. Thinking it "made itself" out of nothing or lucky accidents is ridiculous.

>>10000068

IT's defintely inbuilt, we nurture it later as we grow.
If it wasn't inbuilt it would not even exist to be nurtured or developed.

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>>10000154
Yeah no. Kids make a fuss if things happen that they don't like, regardless of the 'justice' of it.
>If it wasn't inbuilt it would not even exist to be nurtured or developed.
Just like iphones already exist within us otherwise they'd never have been developed, right?

>>9993731
>parents are always responsible for their children's actions even if they are able to make their own decisions because the parents created them

Yes. Yes they are.

>>9999879
>>9999523
>>9999771

>God is good
This is a dead meme and needs to disappear, there is no evidence for it other than your own gullibility

>>10000164


>yeah no. Kids make a fuss if things happen that they don't like

that's their sense of justice kicking in, humans don't like injustice in general; obviously kids are selfish and confused as well and have short attention spans, but they have a rudimentary feeling of justice too; if someone steals from their friends they will feel it and cry to an authority figure it right the wrong

>Just like iphones already exist within us otherwise they'd never have been developed, right?

you're comparing a quality of the mind/person to an external trinket that took centuries to develop.

I would compare justice more to something like jokes/humor. Children have an inherent sense of humor, but it starts off crude and simple, it develops more complexity later on as they mature.

I guess the potential for creating 'tools' is also within us, creating weapons, making the wheel, figuring out fire....iphones take obviously way more external nurturing though, so they seem very alien and distant.

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>>10000184

>there is no evidence for it other than your own

the demand for evidence or 'proof' presuppose truth, and truth necessitates God.

The supreme being is above pettiness, otherwise he would not be supreme. Triangles have three sides by definition, otherwise they would not be triangles.

God is good is a basic axiom, it is self evident to anyone who thinks about the world deeply.

>>9999523
Terrible, you're playing fast and loose with the word "perfect" and creation doesn't imply separation, the universe could exist inside God's mind
And if you're omnipotent , there's no reason to assume you couldn't create a world that is separated from you and is still perfect.

>>9999771
How do they go against what is good? In the Bible, particularly the ot, God allows and orders horrors beyond that
Why is the world broken?
Jesus chose to experience that suffering because of a convoluted plot on God's part to save his creations from what he made happen to them in the first place, not a good example
Nah, if God is omnipotent he can produce a world where we release our attachments to trivial things and towards what is "good" and eternal, yet there is no suffering.

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>>10000193
You call that a sense of justice, I call that mental gymnastics. Kids want to get their own way, even when it's a logical or physical impossibility. What is thought of as being justice varies culturally. It is not inherent or universal.

>you're comparing a quality of the mind/person to an external trinket that took centuries to develop.
nah bruv I'm comparing an invented system to an invented system.

>>10000203
>presuppositionalism
>unironically posting that Peterson tweet
Thanks for the belly laugh anon. Peterson makes a huge leap from you need an axiom, to you need MY axiom. It's an invalid argument

If you concede there is one reality we all experience, which is a pragmatic viewpoint, then how closely any statements correspond to the reality of this reality shows how true that statement is. You're basically trying to force postmodernism on unbelievers

>>9999802
No, God creates sin by creating his intentions such that they create sin. It's like pushing a ball down a ramp and when it makes a hole in the floor, saying "I didn't make the hole, the ball made the hole"

>>10000149
>Thinking it "made itself" out of nothing or lucky accidents is ridiculous.
Thinking it was made out of some eternal being, with will and ambition, that had always (somehow) existed is ridiculous. Who are you and I to conclude was is ridiculous and what is not. The universe has no obligation to makes sense to anyone. Any explanation for the universe is ridiculous because it is the strangest and most unfathomable question, especially for humans limited understanding and biases

>>9999879
God is good is not axiomatic

And, this strong determinist view may be liberating, but not for the reasons you think. You are no different from his other creations in that what you do is determined by God, so you're free to do whatever you want and it's good. Pillage, steal, rape - it's all "good"
You don't become a spectator, you become a pawn on the board.

Provide evidence for free will.
Everything is God's fault directly if he's omniscient and omnipotent. Everything that happens is down to him, good or bad, though if you maintain free will then only good or bad natural things like droughts and good harvests are really down to him. So, saying evil is just a lack of good, is dodging around the key fact that such a lack is down to the actions of God.

>>9999900
No, justice doesn't have to require sacrifice, debts don't have to require payment and the righting of wrongs doesn't have to require an exchange. Those would be limitations, which God is free of.

>>9999958
Why would something have to pre-exist to create itself?

Your attempt to refute an eternal universe is similarly bad and just generally nonsensical. In an infinite set, like the natural numbers, it's still possible to count to a number of that set, say 968, in a finite amount of time

>>10000218
>>presuppositionalism

no, holding a hidden assumption or having a presupposition is not the same as "presuppositionalism" in the modern sense.

>>>unironically posting that Peterson tweet

it's a good tweet. Peterson is a deep thinker.

>If you concede there is one reality we all experience, which is a pragmatic viewpoint, then how closely any statements correspond to the reality of this reality shows how true that statement is.

superficially and pragmatically correspondence theory is okay, in some areas....I guess. Not sure what your point is.

>You're basically trying to force postmodernism on unbelievers

The idea that God is a foundation and guarantor of 'truth' itself goes back to the ancient greeks and hindus, definitely not "postmodernist", maybe the word "presupposes" triggered you, but the relation shouldn't.

>>10000268
>it's a good tweet. Peterson is a deep thinker
Please stop, my sides can't take this much punishment

How exactly is it superficial? And the point is God is not required at all for truth. If I say this pillow is (the wavelength at which we perceive) red, and you say it's blue, I can measure it, corroborate the data with repeats, and we can empirically determine which claim is truer

Lots of ideas go back to the ancient Greeks, since they had lots of ideas. Also, your reading comprehension isn't great.

>>9990616
I think it's a little more complicated than that. God is infinite, since he is all knowing, all powerful, all places etc.

There are a lot of things that, according to the Bible, God cannot be. A liar is one. From this we can surmise that God has logical restrictions. So God can't make that is true suddenly false. Another thing God can't do is be anything at all. He's infinite and therefore without restriction but restrictions are what give things definition.

So God made finite beings. Angels and humans and probably other beings too. These conscious beings have something God lacks. Limits. They exist and have free will because there are limits on them. God made beings to live out the finite through them that he can't live because he doesn't have limits.

So did God create evil? Technically, in that he created beings with free will but if they did not have free will they would pointless since God himself has almost none. He is essentially boxed in by limitlessness.

>>10000238
>The universe has no obligation to makes sense to anyone.

Well the universe does make sense to me, I can comprehend parts of its design and harmony and structure, and I see how life emerges and how things in the material realm are conditioned, temporal, subject to change. The idea that matter and life just appeared out of nothing, or 'made themselves' is illogical.

>Any explanation for the universe is ridiculous because it is the strangest and most unfathomable question, especially for humans limited understanding and biases

God is the most logically coherent and yet unfathomable explanation for the intricate design of the universe and the existence of life.

The alternative is that matter made itself, structured itself, made laws and patterns to follow, made life out of rocks and slime (by accident) and all this was done blindly with no consciousness or intelligence guiding it. And after billions of years it made you and me, again by accident, with no foresight or intention or understanding of who you are or who I am or what it would take to make us and make this moment occur.
How can anyone believe this?


>>10000263
>Provide evidence for free will. Everything is God's fault directly if he's omniscient and omnipotent.

Neither of those properties exclude our having free-will.
The fact that I know someone will do X does not infringe on their freedom. The fact that God knows with certainty what you will do does not infringe on your freedom. It means he knows your character, your intentions, desires and thoughts and how the world works perfectly.

>No, justice doesn't have to require sacrifice, debts don't have to require payment and the righting of wrongs doesn't have to require an exchange. Those would be limitations, which God is free of.

Justice has such limitations because justice is meaningful.
God can do anything but he only does what is good, what is true and righteous, in accordance with his nature. God's justice involves righting wrongs, paying debts, and honesty, and punishing evil, sacrifice. etc

justice that has no values and no constraints, no sense of balance or truth, no repercussions is not justice at all, it's nothing.

>Why would something have to pre-exist to create itself?

how can you create yourself if you don't exist?

>Your attempt to refute an eternal universe is similarly bad and just generally nonsensical. In an infinite set, like the natural numbers, it's still possible to count to a number of that set, say 968, in a finite amount of time

Your example is flawed because the natural numbers are not infinite into the past, they have a pre-defined starting origin at 1.

Try counting to 968 from a set of numbers that has no explicit and pre-defined origin point, but is infinite in both directions. Start from the beginning, without picking an arbitrary starting point, tell me how long it takes you to get to 968.

>>10000317
>Well the universe does make sense to me, I can comprehend parts of its design and harmony and structure, and I see how life emerges and how things in the material realm are conditioned, temporal, subject to change. The idea that matter and life just appeared out of nothing, or 'made themselves' is illogical.
Pure hubris. Your god explanation is just as "illogical"

>>10000317
You're going in circles with every person that responds to you. On and on and on and on. God will reward you greatly for this, I'm sure. You're quite the servant

>>10000317
No, but the fact you create them to do X precludes their free will. And the fact that you know what they will do yet make them suffer needlessly would make you cruel.

Anything is in accordance with his nature. The sheer fact he does things makes that thing good, stop trying to impose limitations and patterns on God.
The fact that God chooses to do it would make it meaningful. You've gone from saying there's only meaning with God to saying only when God does the things you think have meaning, do those things have meaning. Is the meaning of God's actions yours to determine?

How would you not create yourself if you don't exist? The self-caused universe is simply proposed as a just as sensible alternative to the first cause argument. Another sensible proposal is that the universe simply exists without a cause, as God is hypothesised to do.

If i count from negative infinity towards zero such that I get a smaller (in magnitude) negative infinity the change in time can still be finite, and existence can fully occur in finite time frames.

>>10000337
>No, but the fact you create them to do X precludes their free will.

What? You said omniscience negates free-will, now you are saying something else entirely.

>And the fact that you know what they will do yet make them suffer needlessly would make you cruel.

Why do you think God makes you suffer needlessly?

>Anything is in accordance with his nature. The sheer fact he does things makes that thing good, stop trying to impose limitations and patterns on God. The fact that God chooses to do it would make it meaningful. You've gone from saying there's only meaning with God to saying only when God does the things you think have meaning, do those things have meaning. Is the meaning of God's actions yours to determine?

Are you saying that God could tell lies and be lustful and those things would then become good?
Who told you this?

God has the properties and nature of God. Omnipotence, omniscience, benevolence, all-true, etc...
You are talking about a being that is not all-true and all-good, so it's not actually God. Just like if I were to talk about a being that was not omniscient/omnipotent, if I called it God I would be mistaken.

>The fact that God chooses to do it would make it meaningful.

Sure. He has intention and all his values are noble. So his choices are meaningful.


>How would you not create yourself if you don't exist? The self-caused universe is simply proposed as a just as sensible alternative to the first cause argumen

Nothing lacks actuality and potentiality. So nothing comes from nothing. Only God can create and design something out of nothing. Nothing in itself, is inert, impotent, by definition. The universe can't come from nothing.

> Another sensible proposal is that the universe simply exists without a cause, as God is hypothesised to do.

That is illogical and goes against science.
It's illogical because the universe changes, if it changes its not eternal. If today A = A, and then tomorrow A turns into B, then A can not be said to be eternal.

It's illogical because of the impossibility of reaching the present from an infinite past. Just like you can't reach future infinity from the present moment.
It's against science because even science is saying the universe had an initial starting point at the big bang, prior to which they can't analyze even conceptually, because it's t=0.


>If i count from negative infinity towards zero such that I get a smaller (in magnitude) negative infinity the change in time can still be finite, and existence can fully occur in finite time frames.

If 0 is the present moment, and you start counting from negative infinity, you will never reach 0, in fact you will never begin to "count", because negative infinity has no starting point.

A universe with an "eternal past" simply can never exist.

There can only be good if there is evil.

>>10000396
This same fallacious argument has been made multiple times ITT, and refutes multiple times itt

>>9990597
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZZWnDC0NSI

>>10000403
The thread is huge. Direct me to a post debunking my claim, and I might change my mind.

>>9999771
>If God was evil or neutral/impersonal or didn't exist
>there would be no objective grounds, no justifiable reason to find such torture scenes objectionable and to have an existential crisis over suffering itself.

Maybe there wouldn't be any reason for you, a clueless wind-up toy.

>>10000391
Since all of your life is known by God when he creates you, all

Any suffering at all is needless because God can impart upon anyone whatever you think that experiences of suffering are required to give, without the actual suffering.

Yes, he could do those and they would become good. It's a natural extension of the abandonment of human derived morality and the assumption that everything God does is good, as held by people like WLC. It doesn't matter what God does, it matters only that He does it, and the fact he does it is all that's required to make his act good. It's required to rationalise atrocities committed and ordered by God like complete genocides.

Yes, but a noble choice is simply a choice God would make so that's worthless tautology.

How so you know nothing in itself lacks potentiality? What empirical studies do you have to show this?

The contents of the universe change their arrangement, that doesn't mean the universe changes in terms of its actual content. And regardless, I didn't say it was eternal, I said it didn't require a cause to exist.
You can reach future infinity from the present moment, if you have infinite time. There's a well defined start point so there's no mathematical problem.
The big bang is not necessarily the beginning of time, it's just the point at which models fail, likely due to the lack of a unification of QM and GR.

You can reach smaller (in magnitude) infinities with finite time from negative infinity. Negative infinity is in itself a starting point, and though you will always have infinites when you subtract from it, time can still pass and finite time differences, which is all that's required, can exist.

>>10000421
>>9991867
You should read the whole thread though, there are some interesting arguments on both sides

>>9998729
that's like asking why someone would still be traumatized about being raped when they were 7 years old even though they are now 95

>>9999915

So he's evil AND mad?

>>10000396

No.

>>10000396
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB9UU8WD-0E

>>9999771
>>10000217

I like how Christians directly contradict each other so much that mutually exclusive apologies are the rule rather than the exception. A perfect indication of their vantage point and the monster they worship.

>>10000451
I don't think the second guy you quoted is a Christian

This shouldn't be a fedora vs christcucks thread, yet it's slowly becoming one.

>>10000483
christcucks won it seems, fedoras just kept repeating God is a big meanie and maybe the universe made itself.

>>10000483
It's kind of inevitable since you have to rationalise it, and there are people who will dislike those rationalisations, so the debate will essentially fall into two sides against each other.

>>10000501
How disconnected from reality can you be? Look at all the fedoraposts that have been left with no replies, and look at the christcuck posts that are generally refuted.
Tbqh God is a big meanie, and the universe making itself makes as much sense as God existing without a cause and making the universe

>>9999713
Waahh life is hard!

>>10000501
>fedoras just kept repeating God is a big meanie and maybe the universe made itself.
that's as deep as they go after reading Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, and quotes from Voltaire and Neitzsche on wikiquote. sad.

>>10000000

>>10000601
Damn straight it is

>>10000501
>fedoras just kept repeating God is a big meanie and maybe the universe made itself.
And the chrsitfag keeps repeating that God is a good guy and he made the universe (Also he always existed and didn't create himself, because that's wholly more fathomable than a universe creating itself)
Of course the christfag had a deeper argument than that, but it's nice and easy to reduce it to two lines of text and completely ignore any merit he may have had. By the aforementioned, I hereby declare fedorafags the undisputed winner of this thread.

Stop posting anytime

>>9990597
for the same reason he created chlorophyll and plants before there was a sun.

>>9999853
nice blog faggot

>>10001078
You just have to believe hard enough, then it makes sense

>>10001078
I think the modern stance is genesis was just a mettyfor, you'll be hard pressed to find a literalist creationist in the first world

>>10001829
The 'it was just a metaphor d00d xD' argument can hide only do much factual inconsistency in the Bible.

It's quite clear this book was written by humans with very little knowledge about the World.

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>>9990606
David was right all along

>>9990597
chaos sparks peace. Ying and yang retard

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Imagine if part of you had the ability to break off and try to overthrow you

You'd let it cause it's interesting, isn't it

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>>9990597
Because it's a dualist religion that had to be rewritten into a monotheistic one. All of the problems that stem from OP's question can be traced to this irreconcilable issue.

This is Robert Fludd's illustration of God separating the cosmos from the rest of nothingness, solving the aforementioned problem in a single elegant gesture.

>>9996699
you could argue that that whole business was ruined as a result of the first sin. In the beginning of genesis, he has it exactly the way you say where all things are without blemish, and its man's curiosity of the unknown that simultaneously ejects him out of eden and propels him toward a means of culture.

>>9995482
it really degenerates toward the end, doesn't it?

the devil is merely a symbol of the temptation of humanity to sin.

>>10003657
>someone fixes a problem with Christianity
>hes an esotericist

every. fucking. time.

Because people who wipe their asses with their hands have trouble writing a book without plot holes.

>>10004214
You should come to the /esoteric/ and /gnostic/ threads and stop being a pleb.

>>10004217
But Indians didn't write the New Testament?

>>10004169
But God still knew completely that man's curiousity combined with the words of the snake would lead to ejection from Eden, so God wanted the humans to leave Eden, so he wanted them (us) to not experience a world. Without blemish