Chess and the Problem of Evil
One of the most popular Christian arguments in defense of the belief in a perfectly good omnipotent God in the face of intense suffering is that the atheist does not have an objective or ultimate moral standard from which to press this argument against the theist. I have tried and tried to explain why these are two separate problems. In my latest attempt I said this:
The fact that many professional philosophers agree with this can be seen in reading through the book, The Evidential Argument From Evil, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder. Not one scholarly Christian theist attempted to make this argument in that book; not Swinburne, not Plantinga, not Alston, not Wykstra, not Van Inwagen and not Howard-Snyder. I suggest it’s because they know it is not dealing with the problem at all.
But let me relate it to the game of chess. We call the game "chess" and we all agree to its rules. However, let’s say I make the chess pieces move differently than the accepted rules and/or I set the pieces up differently than we presently do. Let’s say I reject the conventional rules of chess, okay? For the sake of clarity I’ll call the conventional game “t-chess” (as in theistic chess), and my game “a-chess” (as in atheistic chess).
I can still watch as two players play t-chess, and say someone made a bad move, or that another move is better, even if I reject those rules and think the rules of a-chess are better ones. You see, it does no good to say I need to accept the rules of t-chess before I can criticize how someone plays by those rules. I can still think those rules are ignorant and yet show how someone could play the game of t-chess better.
Doing so is merely using the logical tool for assessing arguments called the reductio ad absurdum, which attempts to reduce to absurdity the claims of a person. The technique is to force a claimant to choose between accepting the consequences of what he believes, no matter how absurd it seems, or to reject one or more premises in his argument. The person making this argument does not have to believe what the claimant believes to do this. In fact, he does not believe the claimant and is trying to show why her beliefs are misguided and false to some degree, depending on the force of his counter-argument. It’s that simple.
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Even though I’ve made my main point here, let me go further. It does not make any difference if the theist claims that God made the rules for t-chess, or that God is the one playing the game of t-chess. I can still assess these theistic claims by arguing that God did not make the rules and/or that if God exists he does not play the game well.
When a theist claims God made the rules of t-chess, I can assess whether or not God in fact created these rules by arguing that these rules are not good ones based upon the believers own claim that God is perfectly good and revealed these rules for believers to follow in a divinely inspired book. I can also legitimately evaluate whether or not believers actually play by these rules and whether God consistently plays by these same rules.
For the theist to effectively counter my arguments he cannot merely assume God exists, or that he doesn’t like the rules for a-chess. He can do this, of course, but doing so skirts the issue at hand. The issue at hand is whether God exists, and the rules of t-chess do not lead me to think he does. In fact these rules are evidence against the existence of a perfectly good God, for the theist has to explain away this evidence. The issue at hand is whether t-chess rules are good ones based upon the standard of goodness laid out in God’s so-called inspired book about the game, not by the standards of a-chess rules. So once again, the issue isn’t about whether the rules of a-chess are good ones. This is a distinctly separate issue.
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Lastly, let me drop the whole distinction of t-chess and a-chess, and just talk about the game of chess as it is accepted and played around the world. Let’s say the theist claims God is playing chess and he makes a move. What if every world class champion and every Grand Master thinks he made a bad move? What do we do then? It depends on how bad the move is. The worse that God’s move is then the less we can continue to believe God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenelovent. That’s called evidence, and if world champion chess players cannot see the move as a good one, this is important evidence against the claim.
For my purposes let’s consider the 2004 Indonesian tsunami which killed a quarter of a million people. Who can look at this and be happy that it took place? Who would actually walk among the bodies, smell the stench as they decompose, and lift their hands in giddy praise for God’s goodness? Who can watch as a mother holds the body of her dead son and the next Sunday during worship say, “Praise God for the wonderful tsunami he didn't stop from happening!” Who could watch as half naked kids stumble around from building to building looking for their parents in the aftermath, and tell them to thank God for what he has done with a million dollar smile on her face? Does any Christian do this? We all intuitively recognize what is obvious. This was a bad chess move.
Actually there are some bad chess moves that not even an omniscient God can make good, once he purportedly makes them. Some moves lead to a loss of a chess piece, loss of positional strength, or checkmate, that even a novice chess player can take advantage of. That’s how bad I think God’s moves are. And I’m supposed to believe there is an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenelovent God? No. There is overwhelming evidence here against such a belief.
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On the one hand is the problem of suffering for you who believe in a perfectly good omnipotent God. On the other hand there is the problem of objective morality for those of us who do not believe in God. If you press the second problem on me as an answer to your problem, then you are skirting the issue of your problem. It's that simple. You cannot respond to your problem by saying, "yeah, well you have one too," and I cannot respond to my problem by saying, "yeah, well you have one too." I have dealt with my problem here. When will Christians deal with their problem? Their problem arises from within the things they believe. If they believe God is perfectly good and omnipotent, then they need to explain why there is so much suffering in the world. This argument is used by atheists, but it's not an atheist argument, per se. A Christian could make this argument and ask his Christian teacher to give him an answer. Many Christians have become panentheists because of this problem irregardless of whether on not they ever talked to an atheist or read what one wrote.
The fact that many professional philosophers agree with this can be seen in reading through the book, The Evidential Argument From Evil, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder. Not one scholarly Christian theist attempted to make this argument in that book; not Swinburne, not Plantinga, not Alston, not Wykstra, not Van Inwagen and not Howard-Snyder. I suggest it’s because they know it is not dealing with the problem at all.
But let me relate it to the game of chess. We call the game "chess" and we all agree to its rules. However, let’s say I make the chess pieces move differently than the accepted rules and/or I set the pieces up differently than we presently do. Let’s say I reject the conventional rules of chess, okay? For the sake of clarity I’ll call the conventional game “t-chess” (as in theistic chess), and my game “a-chess” (as in atheistic chess).
I can still watch as two players play t-chess, and say someone made a bad move, or that another move is better, even if I reject those rules and think the rules of a-chess are better ones. You see, it does no good to say I need to accept the rules of t-chess before I can criticize how someone plays by those rules. I can still think those rules are ignorant and yet show how someone could play the game of t-chess better.
Doing so is merely using the logical tool for assessing arguments called the reductio ad absurdum, which attempts to reduce to absurdity the claims of a person. The technique is to force a claimant to choose between accepting the consequences of what he believes, no matter how absurd it seems, or to reject one or more premises in his argument. The person making this argument does not have to believe what the claimant believes to do this. In fact, he does not believe the claimant and is trying to show why her beliefs are misguided and false to some degree, depending on the force of his counter-argument. It’s that simple.
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Even though I’ve made my main point here, let me go further. It does not make any difference if the theist claims that God made the rules for t-chess, or that God is the one playing the game of t-chess. I can still assess these theistic claims by arguing that God did not make the rules and/or that if God exists he does not play the game well.
When a theist claims God made the rules of t-chess, I can assess whether or not God in fact created these rules by arguing that these rules are not good ones based upon the believers own claim that God is perfectly good and revealed these rules for believers to follow in a divinely inspired book. I can also legitimately evaluate whether or not believers actually play by these rules and whether God consistently plays by these same rules.
For the theist to effectively counter my arguments he cannot merely assume God exists, or that he doesn’t like the rules for a-chess. He can do this, of course, but doing so skirts the issue at hand. The issue at hand is whether God exists, and the rules of t-chess do not lead me to think he does. In fact these rules are evidence against the existence of a perfectly good God, for the theist has to explain away this evidence. The issue at hand is whether t-chess rules are good ones based upon the standard of goodness laid out in God’s so-called inspired book about the game, not by the standards of a-chess rules. So once again, the issue isn’t about whether the rules of a-chess are good ones. This is a distinctly separate issue.
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Lastly, let me drop the whole distinction of t-chess and a-chess, and just talk about the game of chess as it is accepted and played around the world. Let’s say the theist claims God is playing chess and he makes a move. What if every world class champion and every Grand Master thinks he made a bad move? What do we do then? It depends on how bad the move is. The worse that God’s move is then the less we can continue to believe God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenelovent. That’s called evidence, and if world champion chess players cannot see the move as a good one, this is important evidence against the claim.
For my purposes let’s consider the 2004 Indonesian tsunami which killed a quarter of a million people. Who can look at this and be happy that it took place? Who would actually walk among the bodies, smell the stench as they decompose, and lift their hands in giddy praise for God’s goodness? Who can watch as a mother holds the body of her dead son and the next Sunday during worship say, “Praise God for the wonderful tsunami he didn't stop from happening!” Who could watch as half naked kids stumble around from building to building looking for their parents in the aftermath, and tell them to thank God for what he has done with a million dollar smile on her face? Does any Christian do this? We all intuitively recognize what is obvious. This was a bad chess move.
Actually there are some bad chess moves that not even an omniscient God can make good, once he purportedly makes them. Some moves lead to a loss of a chess piece, loss of positional strength, or checkmate, that even a novice chess player can take advantage of. That’s how bad I think God’s moves are. And I’m supposed to believe there is an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenelovent God? No. There is overwhelming evidence here against such a belief.
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Comments
Instead of trying to use this as an arguement against God (which is flawed to start with) try using it (as I'm sure you already do) to propel you to make the the world a better place.
Or perhaps God's goodness is reflected in his gift of free will and free thought to us. That free will is necessary to express love yet also to express great hate (i.e. hurting someone or letting them live in squalor/disease/hunger while we eat oversized meals).
Or what if you've superimposed man's evil onto God? Perhaps we have the responsibility to stop evil, hunger and wars and yet we do nothing.
Just a few random questions and thoughts to ponder for the Christian and nonchristian alike, methinks.
You, my friend, demonstrate your ignorance of reality by suggesting that non-existent beings exist, and pathetically attempting to support their existence with logical fallacy and circular reasoning.(see below)
Anony': suffering came into the world because of sin. Sin came into the world because of man's disobedience. God gave man dominion, or control, of the Earth. Man has been made responsible for it and will be judged for their management of it. Since man allowed sin to come into the world, man is responsible for the suffering that is a result of sin. Don't blame God for man's problem.
No, I'm sorry, you and your presuppostitional "god-concept" are wrong. Firstly, no one is "blaming God". You cannot "blame" something that has not one single shred of empirical evidence for it's existence in the first place. Anony', you cannot "blame" a married bachelor for being married; nor can you "blame" a married bachelor for being unmarried---they are neither. Why?....because it's an impossible concept, that's why. And so is the biblegod you keep defending.
Secondly, even hypothetically---if your "Creator god" created man in it's OWN image; if it created man with the propensity to do things that displease it, and furthermore, it knew, a priori, that at least some of mankind would displease it?....then clearly, this hypothetical "Creator god" is at fault. Furthermore, and even more amusingly, if your alleged "Creator god" created man in it's "own image", and this creation is a disappointment, then in theory, I guess your biblegod is a disappointment too, isn't it?(rhetorical)
As far as "sin", there is no such act. "Sin" only exists in the dust-riddled pages of ancient superstitious text. Today, in the reality that you and I live in, there is only what is ethical; and not ethical. "Thou shalt not kill", and acting ethically, are not mutually exclusive. If you disagee, then I guess the soldiers that our "Christian Nation" has sent over to Iraq are all "sinners", and are going to "hell".
Annoynomous: Instead of trying to use this as an arguement against God (which is flawed to start with) try using it (as I'm sure you already do) to propel you to make the the world a better place.
News flash: We're trying to "make the world a better place" by eliminating thee most divisive, life-threatening, abhorant philosophy known to mankind---religion. Yet, it's ignorant people like you, with your out-dated holy books, and one-size-fits-all mentalities, that stop us.
Yup, this is the typical Christian argument for why evil exists. Have you ever stopped and thought about the kinds of *magic* that sin performed the minute Adam and Eve sinned? Okay, so mankind sometimes harms other people - I can understand why you can consider 'sin' to be the cause of suffering caused by people. However, are we really supposed to believe that: sin causes tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes? Sin is clearly a magical force that destabilizes the rocks of the earth. Are we really supposed to believe that sin gave snakes, scorpions, and spiders venom and poison to kill prey? Sin is a magical force that can redesign creatures with new biological structures and genes. Are we really supposed to believe that sin created HIV, influenza, malaria, and countless other diseases afflicting not only mankind (who sinned), but animals, too? Sin is a magical force that does genetic engineering.
Your answer for every evil in the world is "sin", but it's just a poor excuse to "explain" everything wrong with the world. You attribute all kinds of magical powers to "sin", and it simply does not make sense.
A better question for the second coward is whether free will can coexist with omniscience. Omniscience means to know everything, of course. If a god knows everything, free will cannot exist simultaneously. Such would be an abject contradiction to omniscience, since the god would know, therefore it would not be free will, and such a thing would be destined rather. Mind you, I dislike the concept of free will, and believe every action determines the next one, and one cannot possibly get out of the trappings of fate (but let us reserve such a thing for a debate of a more intelligent variety). Man's evil is God's evil, cretin. Evil would not exist if God did not create it, idiotic panglossian. Go back to your stupid book of Leibniz's concepts and don't reiterate that garbage on here, as it has been said a thousand times over. And never use "methinks". I hate it when others use that word (a bit of hypocrisy as I myself use it, methinks :P). Blaming sin on man, the supposed creation of God, does not alleviate God of the final responsibility, even if your argument somehow held water.
Many Christians like using the "watchmaker" analogy for their argument from design, so I'll use one. A watchmaker makes a watch that has the capacity to kill the things that are near them. Would we not say, then, that the watchmaker is evil, or at least insane, as the watchmaker has made something that can hurt other things? To make things that Christians assume to be evil (i.e. cancer, humanity, etc.) is surely tantamount to insanity, at the very least. So would you argue God is, in fact, insane? I would, as why would a god wish for people to worship him forever, and throw them into a Lake of Fire if they didn't worship him, without care of whether that person was actually "good" or "evil", only whether the person had worshiped him in life. Such a personality in reality would be considered narcissistic at the very least, if not schizophrenic "they're out to get me" thought. God himself forces others to die due to their "heresy" against him. Undoubtedly, and by any human standards, God is an evil entity. He is, though, admittedly better than the parasite that is Jesus (that's also something different as well and for another argument).
Nature can also be capricious, as hinted by my mention of cancer. Why doesn't God come down and cure cancer? How about stopping deadly hurricanes? What about ending tsunamis? Is he not omnipotent enough to help others? Or is God evil enough to let them suffer? Or is God ignorant? You decide. He seemed to have no problems coming down to cure people in the god-man Jesus, so why is he having so many hang-ups at this point?
Chucky Jesus
"You demonstrate your ignorance of Christian beliefs by suggesting that the suffering comes from God."
Well anonymous,
You show your ignorance of your own bible when you say that suffering does not come from god.
2 Samuel 22:8
"The earth trembled and quaked, the foundations of the heavens shook; they trembled because he was angry."
That was when David called out to god and god got pissed an killed people via natural disasters. So your god must be pissed at someone when he throws a tsunami at them. Nice guy, huh?
Or how about Isaiah 45:7
"I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster."
There, he even admits it!
There are tons of other verses that claim that your god is in control of what goes on in the natural world here. That he opens the earth and swallows people he does not like. That he send evil or lying spirits to people when it serves his interest. And according to the bible he causes the natural disasters!
Your concept of sin and the fall causing natural disasters comes from a very twisted reading of the bible. Show me the verses that say that sin is responsible for natural disasters. Come on, where are they?
Personally, I don't believe god (if there is one) is that much of an asshole. But if you are going to have faith in your bible, then you have to come to grips with the fact of how god is portrayed in it. And it ain't pretty. Face it, your god is a jerk.
I agree with Thomas Paine when he said the crap in the bible is blasphemy to any good god.
I have to agree with the original post and say that either way, any omniscient and all powerful god that is in control of nature, whether it's the bible god or not, is still a jerk for causing the recent tsunami.
The only options that leaves are an evil god, a powerless god, one that chooses to not involve itself in the affairs of nature or the world, or no god at all. The last two options seem to be the only plausible ones, and really are not much different anyway, so I'll stick with one of those.
One comment by anonymous that I will agree with is that we should use the obvious evidence that evil is in the world to propel us to fight it and make the world a better place. And a better place as far as I am concerned, is one without religion.
Anonymous said:
"Or what if you've superimposed man's evil onto God? "
I ask in return: What if the writers of the bible superimposed their own evil onto god, and you are continuing that process?
What if you get to heaven and god says, "Why did you think I wrote that crap?"
Read the old testament and just take the evil that is done in god's name at face value. Don't try to explain it all away with your questions such as: "What if there is a bigger picture of good than you have yet discovered? What if it is far more complicated than you had imagined?"
You do not have a good god, all you have is a religion that explains why god can be a jerk if he wants to be. You are essentially saying "sure parts of the bible and nature make it look like god is a jerk, but other parts of the bible say he is not a jerk, so there must be some explanation we don't understand."
Well I have an explanation for you. Are you ready for it? Here it is:
You can't trust the bible. It is a horrible piece of fiction. Throw it away and enjoy reality as it is.
- Lance
Priceless. I love it. Go, Go, Gadget-Guilt trip!
Fear and guilt is the only real power the supposed christian god has. Brainwashing. Mental abuse.
-Monk
"...How do you know that ...[etc]? What if there is a bigger picture of ...[etc]? What if it is far more complicated than ...[etc]? What if good is defined as ...[etc]? What if good is defined ...[etc]?
"Or perhaps God's ...[etc].
Or what if you've ...[etc]? Perhaps we have the ...[etc]
"Just a few random ..."
Random is right, 'nony. Are you aware of just how easy, and lazy, that sort of thing is? Trying to get other people to do your thinking for you, while you toss out quasi-"deep" questions like the local oracle? Are you aware of just how much harder it is to be a force for sense in the world than it is to be the guy who thinks up cool-sounding questions which, on inspection, not only don't have an answer, but _can't_ have one? This is the mark of someone with so little confidence in rationality that his sole enjoyment comes from trying to demonstrate the futility of his fellow creatures' efforts to reason things out for themselves.
you mean regardless.
tim
First of all, are you fucking kidding me? Have you ever even taken the chance to read the name of this website? The majority of us here were Christians at one time or another. Most of us are very much aware of all the doctrinal and theological bullshit that you and your friends keep bringing up, and we are probably ever more knowledgeable about these matters than the majority of you blind sheep.
The fact of the matter is that you are the ignorant one, my friend, because it is you who misunderstands the problem of evil, as is indicated by your generic Christian "solution" to the problem.
The problem with your apparent "solution" is that it does not take into account that man was created (unwillingly, by the way) by this God character in a manner that makes it impossible, according to Biblical standards, to be perfect and without sin, as the Bible itself states, "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10). This is incredibly problematic for Christian theology, for it makes God out to be evil after all, since he is Biblically understood to be a figure that punishes his own Creatures for being created in a manner that is inherently imperfect and inclined to sin! Think of it this way: God could have created us differently. We could have been created with free wills that were inclined toward only doing good. Doesn’t God have free will? Yet does he not only choose the good due to his nature? We could have likewise been created. We would have free will but would only do the good due to our God-given nature. This very idea makes God directly responsible for our, Biblically understood, shortcomings, for we were created this way, without our choosing, by him! How absurd it is to be held responsible for a nature you did not choose to have in the first place! It is God's fault and not ours that we sin (according to the Bible), my friend. So man's "problem", as you say, is indeed really God's problem after all.
Now, the reason why the problem of evil makes a good claim against the existence of the Bible God is because it makes the Bible run into self contradictions when it comes to the understanding of God's omni-benevolent and omniscient nature. As stated above, the very fact that we are held responsible for God's creation makes God out to be immoral according to our own standard understandings of morality, which are, by the way, according to the Bible, manifestations of God's nature. As his image-bearers, if we deem him immoral, the Bible fails to be consistent in its understanding of his divine nature. There are of course a myriad of other evils in our world that we see as indications of an imperfect God, which again, go against the Bible's understanding of God's perfect nature.
A self-contradictory source cannot be trusted.
>You demonstrate your ignorance of Christian beliefs by suggesting that the suffering comes from God. On the contray, suffering came into the world because of sin. Sin came into the world because of man's disobedience. God gave man dominion, or control, of the Earth. Man has been made responsible for it and will be judged for their management of it.
Then:
tinyfrog wrote:
> Have you ever stopped and thought about the kinds of *magic* that sin performed the minute Adam and Eve sinned?
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I didn't plan on this post being so long, so forgive me please for getting a bit carried away here.
I would like for a moment to look at this sin problem in some very down-to-earth ways.
These are mostly my own thoughts and they may indeed be flawed, but they are honest thoughts I've had about what doesn't make sense to me here about our first parents and the subsequent sin problem of us humans So if my thinking is in error, feel free to jump right in and make corrections to my meanderings.
Let's assume there really was an Adam and Eve, a very first pair of humans, that god directly created from dirt, or a rib, or whatever magic potion god had up his sleeve that 'day'.
Let's also suppose it's an historical fact that this first pair of humans really messed things up with god by eating that darn magical apple.
Let's also suppose that for some strange reason, this all knowing god just had no idea his creation would disobey and do something as horrid as eating from that tree of knowledge....a tree that god chose in the first place, to put in the garden that he created.
So we now have to assume this all knowing, all foreseeing god just had no clue his pride and joy human couple would partake from his tempting sacred tree. Either this is true, or he never had any intention of creating a first couple that could resist such a temptation and we humans never even had a fair test to begin with, as then he obviously gave us a built-in weakness where he had to know we would not be able to resist such magical fruit.
So here is the very first dilemma......Either god couldn't see ahead in time to know they would screw up, or his creation was flawed right from the start, and seeing as how we didn't create ourselves then the only one left to blame is the creator.
Sure, someone will argue that this so called god given 'free will', was the reason he made them this particular way. The blame then fall on us humans for turning out to be the very thing god chose to create by his own hand?
I'm already scratching my head here over this conundrum, aren't you.
One also has to wonder how god didn't SEE adam and eve heading for the tree to eat that apple and stop them cold in their tracks with a stronger warning etc..
At the very least, poor adam and eve would have known that god really can watch them all the time, even remotely from heaven.
Ahhh, but then some believer will say it was all a huge test and even though the bible implies that god only discovered the deed after the fact, well just maybe he really was spying on them the whole time and just sat back to see if they would eat that apple.
If a Hollywood movie was made using the 'features' of this plot, the critics would tear it to pieces for sure.
Now we move on to how god responded once his new creation sinned their big sin.
What choices did god have once his children disobeyed him?
I see a couple choices here that were possible:
1. Like any parent, he could have handed out some discipline and after some period of time things would be back to normal with god. Isn't that what parents do with their children here on earth.
2. If the knowledge they gained couldn't be removed by some god instilled amnesia, then I'm sure he could have reversed time itself and started the human 'experiment' all over again.
After all, if god created the whole universe, then god must have created time and has total control over time itself. He could just move everything back in time, much like superman did in the movie to the earth to save Lois. Perhaps if he started the clock over again in Eden, the second time his creation might not have taken the darn apple. Aren't we loved enough by this god to be given a second chance to fill the earth with humans that wouldn't have that original sin upon their shoulders.
Now if you say adam and eve would have done exactly the same thing a second time, a third time and so forth, then if that is true, then god must have also known they would behave this way every time he might start up this scenario of the human creation test. If that is an accepted fact, then god surely had to know BEFORE he created his humans that they would mess up each and every time he would test them in this manner.
If he knew this about those two humans, then he should have known that HE FAILED to create the very thing that he demands us to be to him. Sounds to me that god had all the control over our design and if we were prone to eating that apple each time, then he failed in his formula for a human being, to make us per his own specifications.
If you design a chair and then build that chair, and the chair falls apart when you sit upon it, is it the chairs fault it broke into pieces or the person who designed and built the chair?
Granted the chair has no life in it, nor this free will to make choices, but if we were designed with a type of free will that would always lead us to eat that apple in every test case, then I ask you, how is this the fault of our own selves and not the being who designed us?
3. If he was so disappointed with his creation's actions, and he is the only god and doesn't answer to anyone above him, then he could have just taken adam and eve out of existence and made a brand new model of a male and female (Dick and Jane?) to see if they would behave the same way as adam and eve did. Why did god feel it to be so set in stone, that only this person adam and this person eve, could be the only humans to reproduce and fill the earth with beings of god's image?
Seems to me, if plan 'A' fails to your liking, you develop plan 'B' and make a new model of what you want. Isn't that what us humans do with everything we build or write or draw etc.?
Did this god do any of these above things....NO !!!!!!
Instead, for whatever reasons he had, he decided that time itself had to march forward, that adam and eve couldn't be replaced by Dick and Jane and that there just wasn't any legit way to fix the problem of his own creation's sinful spirit.
He couldn't start over for some reason, not with another new couple, nor by turning back the clock, nor by wiping their memories of what they had learned by eating the apple, nor it seems to just forgive the crime against him itself.
Basically, god was boxed into a corner with this problem and saw no immediate solution to the problem. No, I won't even get into god's fix of using jesus to repair this grand problem, because that leads to other issues, like why did it take thousands of years for god to find a way to come up with this jesus solution.
Now I ask you, why wouldn't it have been enough to inflict his punishment ONLY upon the TWO people that didn't obey him?
What odd type of reasoning does god use that makes it okay to have millions upon millions of humans over the course of several millennia, land up paying for a crime they had nothing to do with. Humans since adam and eve, weren't even born knowing the original sin happened way back when.
God doesn't hard wire this very important piece of history into our brains, like god believers assume he did for other human attributes we need to survive on earth.
Heck, some assume today that god gave us a piece of brain to adore him, that some call the god-brain. If you believe this, then why didn't he wire that part of the brain with this critical information about our parents.
Why aren't we born knowing our distant parents screwed things up for us and we are expected to help pay the price for their crime.
Why aren't we also born knowing this Jesus was the 'fix' to the problem and all we need to do is to just believe in the fix and we'll be just fine.
Why is it that all of us need some other human to inform us of these things. Shouldn't god himself put that knowledge into our souls before we are able to speak our first words.
It's obvious to me that right from adam and eve's time, we humans didn't meet the standard that god expected from his OWN creation. We are told we all are born in sin and we all sin and need forgiveness etc..
We are told that we got so sinful, that in the time of Noah, once again there just wasn't anyway for god to fix his creation, so what does god do. He kills off almost all his human creation (not to mention all the other life forms that had nothing to do with this evil sin) and decides to start all over again.
Wait a second.... god decides to start over again?
Excuse me, but if he could kill off all the humans and life forms of Noah's day to solve this problem, then why did he seem to have a problem of just killing off adam and eve and inventing a dick and jane to try again?
So here we have a god who for some reason couldn't kill off the very first TWO humans to start his project over, but it was just fine and dandy to kill of thousands later on for the same purpose?
Okay, perhaps god knows something I can't fathom here about his odd solution to the problem. Surely we can now take a look at how well his Noah solution worked out and find it was the right action to take to make us humans less sinful, no?
I ask you then, is the human spirit any different over the course of history as far as us sinning goes?
Obvioulsy adam and eve sinned, as did their offspring.
Okay, so punishing adam and eve by tossing them our of paradise didn't really solve the human tendency to sin.
Perhaps he fixes the problem later on then, so let's move down the timeline.
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Obviously between the creation time and the flood of Noah, humans grew in their nature to sin....or did they.
Surely god greatly reduced human sin when he flooded the earth and saved just a handful of righteous humans.....not to mention all those sinning life forms that needs to perish.
His plan had to be, that if you start with just this righteous bunch of human flood survivors, then surely their offspring would turn out far better than the humans he killed off in the flood.
God keeps killing off the sinners and his enemies in some feeble attempt to change the very nature of the human spirit.
Another example: Obviously sin was rampant in Sodom when he killed all those horrid sinners, except Lot etc..
Here again he uses the plan of starting human descendants from 'good' god worshiping humans. Not being familiar with the descendants of Lot's family, perhaps someone can tell me if those descendants turned out to be saint-like in nature?
Then we move to the time of Jesus and god big plan to save our souls from that original sin.
Perhaps his thinking was something like this.
If I show them how much I love them by letting them kill my only son, maybe they'll change their ways.
If I hand them some new guidelines to follow and give them a flesh and blood representative of myself, maybe then they'll finally get the message that they must cut down on this sinning stuff.
Moving forward to the present day now, does anyone reading this really think human nature has changed one iota since Jesus showed up?
Has our overall nature really changed since adam and eve, since noah's day, since jesus paid us a visit?
If god felt he had to wipe life off the earth in Noah's time because of sin, and we agree that us humans really sin pretty much as we did in those days, then why hasn't god repeated that same plan and started all over once again.
If you say that the flood plan didn't work out, then one has to ask the question, why didn't god know it wouldn't work the first time around. Shouldn't he have known it couldn't work and if so, why did he choose to put that plan into action anyway.
Maybe he just likes to knock off the human race once in awhile for grins.
Is there any expert out there that can tell me that god's fixes to the sin problem have actually made ANY difference in how we humans behave in an overall fashion???
It seems to me that his fixes not only ever work, but that he really messed up from the start when he failed to create a more suitable Dick and Jane who would obey him far better than history shows we have done.
Why didn't god know the moment he made adam and eve that he messed up.
Heck, we can simulate our designs using computers today to week out the flaws BEFORE we actually build the item we design. Granted, it's not perfect but neither are humans.
If we can weed out faults ahead of time using computers, then shouldn't the all knowing god have known beforehand that his formula for adam and eve was greatly flawed?
I dare to speculate here, that the human spirit we've seen throughout history will only slowly change as we move forward in time. Perhaps as slowly as evolution changes our physical selves over the eons.
Just my own thoughts here.
AtheistToothFairy
That was an excellent reply. Actually too good to be just a reply. Why don't you rephrase the first few lines and re-post it as a rant to start a new thread? I don't think webmaster Dave would have any problems with that.
One more item you could add about Lot. Check out from Genesis 19:31 on. After god burns Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's daughters don't have any guys to get knocked up by, not to marry, just to sleep with, so they get Lot drunk and have sex with him. Two nights in a row!
You think Lot would have figured it out by the second night.
So here is my question: If you were on a jury in a trial where some guy is accused of screwing his daughters, and his only defense was, "They got me drunk", would you buy it? I don't think so.
And here is the kicker: Lot was the ONLY righteous man god could find!!! Kind of makes you feel sorry for god.
Thanks again for your thoughts. Very well done.
- Lance
I was thinking the same thing.
One more item you could add about Lot. Check out from Genesis 19:31 on. After god burns Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's daughters don't have any guys to get knocked up by, not to marry, just to sleep with, so they get Lot drunk and have sex with him. Two nights in a row!
You think Lot would have figured it out by the second night.
------------
Lance,
Firstly, thanks for the kind words about my very long 'rant'. I really didn't mean to get so carried away, but alas, I do have a tendency to do so.
I had forgotten that the two daughters in the bible, who 'raped' their father, was about this same righteous Lot character.
Well, there goes the chance I spoke about that this righteous man's offspring turned out to be saint-like in character.......Oh well, another god plan bites the errrr, dust, I guess.
You bring up some good points yourself, but let me add more thoughts, now that I know a bit more about Lot.
Once again, I'm assuming lot was a mere human and also had no errrr, 'helping hand', from god, sexually I mean.
What are the chances that if you had sex with your two daughters, two nights in a row, that BOTH of them would land up pregnant?
Perhaps god makes righteous men 100 times more fertile than your average male, but even if he did, we still have to assume that both daughters were at the "right time of month" to be impregnated. Not impossible, but not all that likely either.
I also wonder if Lot was so drunk that he didn't know what he was doing with his own daughters, then how was he able to, well, 'perform' his male sex functions, not only twice in one 'orgy' session, but perform twice again the very next night.
I'm assuming he was drunk as a skunk, both nights?
I don't know what equivalent age Lot was at this time, as compared to our current life expectancy and degradation we suffer as we age etc..
Obvioulsy his daughters were old enough to 'need' sex and used him to their own ends.
I would therefore believe that he was 'no spring chicken' and that leads me to believe that a very drunk man;old enough to have sex craving daughters, who would rape him, would probably have a bit of a problem making even one girl pregnant, let alone both.
Once again, this clearly indicates the stories of the bible are pure fiction and in this case, it was probably some incest fantasy the author wrote down for others to get-off on.
Who said the bible doesn't contain edgy pornography?
AtheistToothFairy
So, sin popped into existence just like God did. Let's see what the Bible says:
Isaiah 45:7 (KJV)
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
Sin came into the world because of man's disobedience. Since man allowed sin to come into the world, man is responsible for the suffering that is a result of sin. Don't blame God for man's problem.
According to Xtianity, who the heck made man? If man just let sin come into the world, who created sin? And just in case, who was the omnipotent, omniscient being who created the being who created sin? Who made the rules saying that sin yields suffering?
Zen: Yeah, Christian fundies were happy when quarter of a million people in Aceh killed by Tsunami because 99% of them were MOSLEM. No wonder if they compared it with Noah’s flood. Some kind of God’s punishment. And as Indonesian, I heard with my own ears that Moslem fundies here called the Aceh’s tsunami as an Allah’s test or temptation. And in the other hand, do you want to know what Moslem fundies said about 911? Allah’s punishment to the enemy of Islam! I remembered they’re happy to see WTC crushed. I heard Moslem’s preacher in Mosque (with noisy loudspeaker) said “Praise Great Allah! Down with USA!” What an uncivilized sermon! And on the contrary, Christian fundies in USA said that 911 was God’s test or temptation or God’s warning because some of Americans are now secularist, agnostic, or atheist! Well, I think both (Moslem fundies and Christian fundies) are crazy and evil! Who is evil? Allah, Father, Satan or Devil? Christian fundies will think Allah is Devil and on the contrary Moslem fundies will think Father is Satan. ONE’S DEITY IS ANOTHER’S DEMON.
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