what does /his/ think about the evil god challenge ?
if we are argueing about the existence of a god in general thats not associated with a particular religion one could argue that all the common arguments ( the cosmological argument the fine tuning argument the moral argument etc ) can be equally explained by a totally evil god
the good things in the world could be explained away by stating that good is necessary for some of the worst evils like injustice inequality and jelousy
so if the theist would dismiss this notion of an all evil god would, according to the argument , also have to dismiss the allegedly equal claim of the existence of an all-good god
also general thread about arguments for atheism
>an all-powerful entity of absolute evil created beauty and joy
Nah.
>>1418426
Beauty only exists to contextualize omnipresent ugliness. Joy only exists to make despair feel worse.
>>1418412
If you are an Augustinian then evil is just a privation and lack of good. And goodness= being. Evil is simply the falling short of something from its full potential. An "evil" God makes no sense, because God lacks nothing.
>>1418426
We could take the inverse of conventional Christian theology and suppose that this evil God didn't create beauty and joy, but humans did, perhaps along with fallen (or ascended?) angels.
Evil isn't necessary, it's conditional.
>>1418412
>so if the theist would dismiss this notion of an all evil god would
what
>the good things in the world could be explained away by stating that good is necessary for some of the worst evils like injustice inequality and jelousy
This is one idea of the nature of evil but there are others. Why do you assume this one?
>jelousy
>argueing
i hope that these were typos
Also, it's unclear how the sections of your argument follow from each other. I'm sure that it makes sense in your head, but it's difficult for anyone else to see your line of reason
I genuinely hope that you don't think that you're intelligent or something
>>1418431
>And goodness= being
Seems like a very large yet baseless supposition.
>>1418412
People say "absence of evidence" isn't evidence of absence, but if there is no evidence where evidence should reasonably be found, we can reasonably assume that the thing doesn't exist. That's my argument for atheism, anyway. Its not philosophically sound, but it is compelling on a pragmatic level.
For your evil god challenge, I would say that the more relative arguments for God and evil can be nullified by it, but not some of the others.
>>1418505
>>1418431
One could just as easily say that joy is conditional: that happiness follows only from the absence of evil. If you look at the animal kingdom, for example, one can see that literally everything exists in a constant state of terror and hunger. Just because humans are optimists doesn't deny the nihilistic idea that everything, everywhere, is miserable, and happiness only follows from humans' ability to stop horrible things from happening to them.
>>1418412
God isn't exclusive to any religion, this does not make God evil. That makes no sense. A wholly benevolent God does not need people arguing who gets to say they are His people.
there is a bunch of stuff God hates, read the bible
he isn't nice to people he hates. he kills them
part of being good is destroying those who are evil, justice is destroying the unjust
>>1418541
Well it is an analytic/definitional identity statement. You can talk about a different kind of "goodness", but you would have to give the Augustinian a reason to buy into that conception of "goodness" or even care about it's existence. It could be that you two are just talking about two entirely different things with your two conceptions of "goodness".
>>1418550
We have endorphins releasing, nurturing, and cooperation commonly in nature as well. Go watch some herbivores chilling at a watering hole without any predators around, their default at that moment is having a good time. And their is no reason to take the "less happy" state as the default over the "more happy" one. Someone who wants to say that nature is inherently and essentially nasty would have to make a case for it, because it is not prima facie true.
But we were talking about "goodness", not "happiness", anyways. And on top of that, an appeal to a natural contingency has nothing to do with what goodness and evil are. A world with almost nothing in it would not suddenly turn evil into goodness and goodness into evil, just because the normal state was nothing. Goodness is not "the norm", it is fullness and being, whether or not that is normal.
It's worth mentioning that most if not all evil in humans is directly caused by the ego.
