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Then bens problems turns into the fact that he actually does make claims about the nature of god. A whole book even, that goes so far as to say dont masterbate to prevent impregnating your cousin.
Lloyd's fall of the angels hypothesis and free will defense merely suggest that suffering is the consequence of acting contrary to God's intentions. This gets nowhere close to addressing why an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent deity would allow so much of it. If God wants humans and angels to freely love, praise and obey him unlike robots, what could possibly be the purpose of allowing animals to suffer? Also, if Jesus' healing miracles demonstrate that God doesn't like diseases, why did God in 2 Samuel 12:15-18 inflict a painful and fatal disease on David and Bathsheba's infant child for David's wrongdoings? Would Jesus ever do that?
The idea that evolution plus time generates any current biological or social reality we observe, is basically an appeal to magic. Evolution as an explanation of the tree of life is so blown up by current science that I'm surprised smart people like Alex keep making the argument. Evolution is a mechanism that explains the change in species, but it has no explanation for the emergence of new creatures. That is just a faith assumption, no one has shown how random genetic mutations lead to functional and beneficial new creatures. Evolution devolves (see Michael Behe) it degrades the information in the DNA to vary one type of animal into different variants of the same animal. It does not turn a bacterium into a camel in the same way that an infinite number of monkeys banging on typewriters produce and infinite amount of gibberish and not the works of Shakespeare. Evolution theory has no explanation of where the information in living things came from (see Stephen Meyer). There is no reasonable explanation how random collisions of particles can create any useful information at all, let alone the interdependent set of information contained in living cells and bodies of complex creatures. If life is inevitable why has the spontaneous emergence of life occurred once in the history of the Universe? Why don't we see new creatures with entirely new cell forms popping up in puddles every time it rains? Life is not a normal thing that is driven by physical laws that just happens or we would see it on Earth. We know Earth is a great place for life so if we don't see life continually emerging spontaneously here, why would we expect to see it on distant planets that are far less hospitable?
Evil is simple natural evil is natural destructive properties causing damage to what is notvdestructive. Willful evil is human choice to experience the use of personal power to destroy what is innocent for the pleasue of experiencing that power. Why doesn't God intervene? Put yourself in His place. Which evils would you intervene in? What would your threshold be-no childhood cancer, but the moment you turn 18, or 21, then cancer can kill you?
It also continually astonishes me that philosophical materialists even exist, it is such an ill thought out position. Eternally existent matter is logically impossible as it requires the existence of an infinite regress of causality without a first cause. I know people have made arguments against cause and effect, suggesting that uncaused effects are possible, but they are unconvincing.
Listening to Alex's logical argument for the non-existence of free will (15:00), I think he has it exactly backwards. His argument is that events are either determined or not, and that if they are not determined then they are random, and you are not in control of that which is random. If everything is just matter and physical laws that describe its motion, then the movement is determined and seemingly random (i.e. we can't see the causes, so it looks random and chaotic), - a volcano does not decide to erupt, physical forces make it erupt, and a human is just matter and when a human erupts in murderous rage, that is just physical forces doing what they do with matter. Therefore, I think determinism = random behaviour, which is theoretically predictable if we had knowledge of all the matter and forces but we do not so it looks random. Now, if events are not determined but under the control of a mind that has free will (even though the mind may be influenced by its environment) then the behaviour is not random but determined by a mind. Alex's leap describing the opposite of determinism as randomness is an assertion that he does not justify.
The thing about the atheist point of view is it’s a scientific point of view so if they don’t understand something they don’t have to because science is constantly evolving. It’s a matter of we don’t know yet but one day we will.
There was a class of about 9 to 10 year olds. A few shouted we came from monkeys. And so I said okay, what comes before monkeys and then I drew it all the way to fish in the waters. Primordial soup, one of them exclaim. So I said I don’t think lighting strikes into the water and gets you fish. Scientists says it will be small things that joins up together. We know that when we make things , things need to be purposeful, like 😂baking cake, or building Lego things. So when lightning strikes what do you think happen, a boy shouted dirty waters. I think they came to the conclusion, it is ridiculous.
Michael, you say that Jesus is your “window on God,” but although there are stories about Jesus from the first century, none of these may be considered good evidence for the divinity of Jesus. I hope that you know that there is not a single first-person, author-identified, low-bias, promptly written, eyewitness report of any event in the life of Jesus or its aftermath. Zilch! Also, if God did exist (he doesn’t BTW), he would not use messengers, profits, offspring, assistants, or angels to communicate with human persons. He would communicate with us directly, all of us at the same time! You say that God does not want death or suffering in this world. Of course, here you are begging the question of God’s existence, and that is a bad start. But I agree partly with you. I think that if God did exist, he would not allow as much harm and suffering in our world as now occurs. He would not allow moderate, major, or horrible harms. If he did, then he would be partly responsible for them, and that would be immoral. And this could not be the case since God would be perfectly moral, if he did exist. Michael, you ask a good question: “If God exists, he does not want evil and suffering, and he is omnipotent, then why does evil and suffering happen?” Yes, thanks for saying this so bluntly. But your answer, i.e. “It wasn’t of him” just does not work. You see, God would be omnipotent and perfectly moral. To allow a horrible harm, like the Holocaust to occur, when you could prevent it would be immoral. The conclusion is obvious - God does not exist and cannot exist. What you do, Michael, is much hand waving. And blaming horrible harms on “a rebellion of the angels” doesn’t solve the problem. God would never create angels with the powers to instigate trouble which you have imagined or if he did create them, then he would subsequently wipe them out after they first caused trouble. They could not resist him since he would be all powerful. Your idea is clever, but it just doesn’t work. The idea that God could not make a physical world which did not involve suffering is ridiculous! Of course he could. After all, he would be omnipotent. The idea that God would create harm for some higher purpose has some merit. The purpose might be teaching. However, he would never create great harms where the benefit of teaching would be swamped by the cost of the harm and suffering. God would do a perfectly rational utilitarian analysis in these cases. And so, we would never see anything like the Holocaust or the Great Southeast Asian Tsunami of Dec 2004. God might only allow minor harms for teaching. Yes, it would be immoral if an all-powerful deity caused horrible harms to human beings, but although it would be less immoral, it would still be immoral if he allowed, enabled, facilitated, or authorized horrible harms. He would not do any of these, if he existed. It would be contrary to his nature. The problem of horrible harms to human beings is not solved by imagining that angels would have free will like human beings would. God would never give angels the free will or the power to cause great harms to human beings. That would be immoral. If God did exist, the only kind of world which he would create with other persons in it would be one in which only MINOR HARMS occurred to those persons. He might cause these little harms as punishment or he might allow them as ways of learning what to avoid in the natural environment. If God did suffer at all, it would not be as we suffer, not in the same way or to the same degree.. It might be empathetic suffering, but not direct suffering. It is impossible that the world could be other than what an all-powerful deity intended it to be. Why? Because any intention he might have he would bring it to fruition. If God did not intend for there to be a Holocaust, then there would be no Holocaust. The stories of the falls of Adam and Eve or of the angels are just fiction. They cannot be true and are not true. The stories don’t make any sense. If God did exist, he would not tell a single, ancient, male author (Moses?) the causes or reasons for horrible harms. He would tell all human beings at once what was up with this. Just as God would not give human beings the free will to assault, murder, and commit genocide toward other human beings, he would also not give angels (if there were any) the free will to cause horrible natural harms or to influence human beings to assault, murder, or commit genocide towards other human beings. That type of creation by God would be immoral and God’s nature would not allow him to be immoral. If God did exist and he didn’t want any violence at all, then there wouldn’t be any violence at all. He would prevent it! Duh. He would be all-powerful. If some of the stories about Jesus were true, then we can say that he is a much better person than God, morally speaking. At least Jesus tried to alleviate suffering as much as he could, according to the stories. Angels, demons, really? Come on. As with the case for God, there is no good evidence that angels and demons exist. Just because most cultures have had beliefs in a spiritual realm and spiritual beings does not necessarily mean that these things exist. Most cultures had the belief that the Earth was flat and that the Sun revolved around the Earth. We outgrew these beliefs as we learned more about the cosmos. And we will outgrow beliefs in deities, angels, demons, ghosts, etc. Michael, you make the same mistake that most theists make - you assume that free will is all or nothing. If God did exist, free will would not be all or nothing! God would impart some kinds of free will, but not others. In human beings he would impart the free will to love or not love or to choose strawberries rather than blueberries, but he would not impart the free will to choose assault, murder, or genocide or not. And if he ever created angels (he wouldn’t) once again he would give them some kinds of free will and not others. He would not give them the free will which would result in horrible harms to human beings. Also, Michael, you are making another error typical of theists - confusing love with obedience. These are just not the same thing. This is an old flawed patriarchal or male chauvinist idea. Michael, our decisions and behaviors probably are determined. For more on this, read Sam Harris’ book “Free Will” and Robert Sapolsky’s new book “Determined.”
Your left brain or dominant hemisphere shouts so loudly you cannot grasp that "God does not exist "simply means, "the God you must see to believe in Him cannot fit into the mirror walled box called "the verbal/analytic/rational half of your brain." Any god which fits in a box the mind creates ( and I hope for you that you find the other half of who you are) is not a God. It is a caricature of God, which no one believes could be a God. So why do you not see the caricature your mindvis generating? Why do you call that thing "what god must actually be like," God,? Suffering is impersonal, and personal. Impersonal comes through evolution and God's creation of pain receptors in evolution without which the weakest could not flee and pass their genes on for later species which gave rise to the hominids. Excellent book "Rare Earth" by materialist scientists who have examined everything ftom elemental abundance. Goldilocks zone. Our Moon, Jupiter, the type of star we orbit, plate tectonics, down to the quantum properties of H2O all which combine to keep Earth 's climate habitat for life. Step away, and you will see the absurdity of everything random fitting together like a cosmic clockwork. Yet, destructive forces trigger pain sensors to create suffering.
"Show me God" you invite me to a Royal Shakespeare Company's production in the rebuilt replica of the Globe theater to a performance of Macbeth. And, I insist that you show me Shakespeare. And I tell you I will not believe in this Shakespeare person until you show him to me. Because you can't, I will never believe in Shakespeare ( or whoever used that pen name). God is not a thing. All you know of are things. Because your verbal half of your brain is incapable of handling "not things." The laws of physics are not things. Nor is the color magenta, nor found on the visible spectrum. Nor is the love you feel for you dog or cat or child or spouse, a "thing." A dog is not really a "thing." It isconly a thing inasmuch as you allow your reductive, categorizing, simplifying dominant hemisphere to delude you into believing that calling him or her "a thing" somehow changes its true nature anywhere but in your thoughts. Your dog is "a thing" only in that you have the power to destroy it, and that it will die. You did not create it. It did not suddenly become a dog. While it is alive, it is a being or a process from dancing quarks up.
@@glenliesegang233 GL1: "Show me God" you invite me to a Royal Shakespeare Company's production in the rebuilt replica of the Globe theater to a performance of Macbeth. And, I insist that you show me Shakespeare. And I tell you I will not believe in this Shakespeare person until you show him to me. Because you can't, I will never believe in Shakespeare ( or whoever used that pen name). GW1: Glen, Shakespeare is dead. He no longer exists. I can’t show Shakespeare to you, but I could present evidence that he once exited, and you might come to believe he did. On the other hand, if God did exist (he doesn’t), he would present himself to all of us at the same time. So, your analogy doesn’t work. GL1: God is not a thing. GW1: Of course, God is a thing! He is a hypothetical thing, specifically a hypothetical supernatural person or conscious intelligent agent. However, we now know that this hypothetical thing is not real. It does not exist. GL1: All you know of are things. GW1: Yes, that’s all you know of too - hypothetical things, real things, imaginary things. GL1: Because your verbal half of your brain is incapable of handling "not things." GW1: My verbal half of my brain (and yours too) handles the God thing. GL1: The laws of physics are not things. GW1: False, the laws of physics are things. They are descriptions of the way the cosmos works. GL1: Nor is the color magenta, nor found on the visible spectrum. Nor is the love you feel for you dog or cat or child or spouse, a "thing." A dog is not really a "thing." GW1: False. Those are all things. Maybe you are just using a different definition of “thing” than I am. How are you defining “thing” in this context? GL1: It is conly a thing inasmuch as you allow your reductive, categorizing, simplifying dominant hemisphere to delude you into believing that calling him or her "a thing" somehow changes its true nature anywhere but in your thoughts. GW1: Nonsense, Glen. God is a hypothetical thing with a hypothetical nature. What definition of “God” are you using in this context? GL1: Your dog is "a thing" only in that you have the power to destroy it, and that it will die. GW1: You are just talking about the real nature of the real thing known as a “dog.” So what? If God did exist, he would be invincible and eternal. Those would be parts of his nature. GL1: You did not create it. GW1: Straw man. GL1: It did not suddenly become a dog. GW1: Another straw man. GL1: While it is alive, it is a being or a process from dancing quarks up. GW1: A dog is a particular kind of thing. It is a real living mammal, from dancing quarks up. GW1: God does not exist, and this has been proven.
Romans 8:20-22 ESV [20] For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope [21] that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. [22] For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. Even if Satan (a fallen angel) had a part to play in the misleading, it seems like the pain and suffering comes from humanity's federal head? (him = Adam) But yes, God doesn't like suffering. Your guest accurately pointed out how Christ generally amiliated suffering. However he did allow Lazarus to die for the purpose of demonstrating his own resurrection powers/Godness - probably an allusion of the final resurrection. So, a one-off.
My way of dealing with the problem of suffering is the second approach explained by this theologian. I believe that God could not create (as opposed to clone) without bringing into being Not-God, a universe which necessarily is at least partially evil...God alone being wholly good. The next question I ask myself is whether it would have been better for God to have refused to create this imperfect universe, if that was the only way it could be created. My answer is a resounding NO. I have speculations about why Not-God had to have the balance of good and evil that it appears to have, but an internet comment is no place to go into them.
I think this was superficial and unhelpful. Mike Winger's treatment was much more thorough and careful. Nothing against NT Wright as a scholar or anything. Just, on this issue, I don't think he is doing justice to the text. For instance, the argument seems to be -- letter carriers often read the letter, therefore Phoebe read Romans, therefore Phoebe preached in at least one instance, therefore women can do any leadership or teaching in any context. Likewise, women were witnesses of the resurrection, therefore women can hold any ministry position in the church. No speaking of 12 disciples being men, 7 deacons being men, 1 Tim 2; 1 Tim 3; 2 Tim 2:2. Complementarianism, if biblically faithful, is not sexist or bigoted. In addition to Mike Winger's video, I recommend the Journal of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood; Wayne Grudem, and Jack Cottrell on the issue.
When there's many a giant plot hole in your faith, just say a wizard ... sorry ... say God did it. Great. Although all you need to do is say "no he didn't". Not exactly the great escape clause you think it is Ben.
The only witness that matters is God! ... God knows the 100% truth !, think of the written truth about the temptations of Jesus, according to the holy bible Jesus and the devil were there! But if it took place, then God was the witness to the event!, ... while the historical truth about times like " helen of troy", or " spartacus and rome!" ... how many can see the pyramids in egypt? Even Aztec nation or mayans existed in the usa, but European people lie about Indians or those native to the usa! ... look at african historical truths. The slaves were slaves in africa and sold by their own people! Yet here in the usa they blame those slaves ships? Or spain and Christopher Columbus, i heard Columbus never made it to north America but only as far as Bahamas, and he was not a good person! Or lets remember the history of the pope and vatican! They claim and teach the first pope was the apostle peter, but the new Testament saids the apostle peter was the apostle to the jews ! The apostle paul was for the gentiles or non jews!, the new testament? Claims to be fulfilled prophecy of the torah and tanakh! Yet how did the greeks who worshiped zeus and pagan gods and Olympus, become the trusted historians? How much racism played a role then and now?... the hebrew nation knew God would bless them with a holy prophet, and the holy prophet Moses was given! And yet even with the holy prophets life ,living with Egyptians, and being sent away in punishment from egypt, then returns as the chosen holy prophet! The hebrew nations God blessed them to know the truth! So they fled and left egypt ! And still ceasar and cleopatra connected and united egypt and rome! ... so how many historians trusted in their system of life? ... while the jews trust in God and the words and scriptures from God! Through the torah and tanakh! Thats what these two men must learn! Watch men like rabbi tovia singer for truth!
Innocent? In what sense? There are hierarchies of innocence as well as guilt. Wash his hands? When he partook in suffering just to show his affiliation?
I generally tend to gravitate towards Dr Lloyd’s position. Nonetheless, one can’t help wondering whether the Angelic realm would be entirely satisfied with the hypothesis as currently formulated. I imagine that they must have wondered and perhaps still do, about evil’s existence . It seems to me that humans, in relation to this question, have a mea culpa get out of jail card of sorts in the sense that we can point the finger at the angelic realm as the primal cause for why evil exists in the created order. Now, while we may use this argument to absolve ourselves of blame for evil’s existence, how would we have reacted if we were angels? Might we not have been tempted to ask how God could have allowed such a catastrophe to happen? For this reason I am inclined to think that there may be some merit to the Free Will Defence. The question is how do we make it cohere with Dr Lloyd’s argument which must essentially be true.
Nobody knows how the universe works in the extreme. I absolutely do know however that humans really love to make up complete BS whilst they pretend to know. Then they infect their children with this nonsense.
Shapiro is the one claiming that his imaginary skydaddy is the cause of everything so it is for Shapiro to show his evidence. Just as Shapiro doesn't believe in the gods of Asgard and Olympus an Atheist doesn't believe in Shapiro's deity.
Good come back and raw intellectual honesty by Shapiro. This is him at his best, since i dont care about his views on race and black people. For me, the question of evil in the world is always answered by the principle that the Supreme Being grants us FREE WILL.
Ben is making a very foolish claim. The materialist view of existence does not mean that I have to explain or understand every mechanism at work. It just says that the mechanisms at work are natural instead of supernatural, and do not have an all-powerful and all-knowing creator at their core
Weak, the very existence of the Universe is an insurmountable problem for materialist. There was no material to -ist! Everything from nothing is not possible in a materialist Universe.
I would make the same claim about the existence of God for you. It’s an insurmountable claim as you have no evidence to support it other than an appeal to popularity.
@@Idontknowwhatswaitingforme I have a lot of evidence to back up my beliefs as well however I'm no debater so I stay in my lane with discussions rather than debates but I do enjoy watching them. Also in this specific debate I didn't necessarily have a horse in the race so it was quite intriguing for me I can agree on a few things on both sides but I will say that I am in agreeance that the angle Ben took was pretty weak. That actually shocked me because usually he's pretty damn brilliant in my opinion.
Right before my mom died, I had a sudden conversion experience that made me really start considering becoming a follower of Christ. Some time after my mom died I had a vision of a sun, a man with long white hair smiling while covered in flowers and gold light. Like gold light of the sun, but it wasnt exactly the sun's light. It was a light that radiated love, peace and joy, like basking in it. I then suddenly felt empathically a fraction of what my mom was feeling. And that was perfect love and that moment I knew she was being held in perfect love. It brought me to my knees. I cried like a baby for about 15 minutes. I have never been a crier. Im not exactly a Christian just yet, religously, but I am still studying the Bible and all the gospel of Christ, trying to follow the morality of the beatitudes and I do have doubts... but I cannot deny that experience and I often feel that I don't deserve the peace and joy that came from it.
Tim Stratton is just rehashing C.S. Lewis' "argument from reason". This is nothing new. I do believe outside conditions are forming my beliefs. When I see something outside of me, I form a belief about it. So the way reason works is...I receive input, my physical brain processes that information as a reaction to that input, and then I form a belief as output. All of those things can be purely determined.
Ravi was a wolf 🐺 in sheeps 🐑 clothing. He appeared as an angel of light but he was a sexual predator. Let God be true and every man a liar. Ravi was a man pleaser and a compromizer and he had become ecumenical. Look to God and His word, not Ravi. Ravi was compromising by being with women alone on a regular basis. Ravi had no accountability. Ravi was narcissistic and sociopathic and he did great harm to the body of Christ. His intellect was his invisibility cloak, like a super villian. The biggest most important question here was: Why did he operate in a realm of zero accountability everywhere he went, and with every organization he was in? He did not have a doctorate degree and he lied about that. There were many red flags along the way but Ravi was given a pass by everyone. Ravi was primarily a philosopher, and he did not deal with the text of the bible. Ravi did not present the gospel clearly and call all men to repentance because he did not have a heart for the gospel. Ravi craved the accolades of men and not the purity of Gods word to lead men to repentance. Ravi was enamored and puffed up by his own substantial intellect, and not by the simplicity of the gospel to save souls. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?
Pain seems to be an intrinsic evil. It's badness is part of its intrinsic nature and is not bestowed upon it from some external source. One of the many reasons you don't need God for morality.
If a Creator built an ecosystrm on Earth plus digitally encoded information-based life capable of evolving, able to sustain itself 99.9999% of the time with only a little tweak here and there, then suffering is necessary. To modify a system for less suffering will not cause evolution to work as it needs to. But, actually, God is far kinder than most realize- with the onset of pain, as seen in mice in a cat's jaws, the mouses" brain releases a large amount of endorphins Same reason teens cut themselves, and get tattoos. "The Fall" is metaphor, and hard to use science to parse the words used into meaningful concrete concepts. That evolution has wired our systems for climbing the dominance heirarchy, satisfying dominant hemisphere processes with emotional contentment or decreased fear when a narrative sufficiently explains an observation. I recommend Jordan Peterson's analysis of Genesis. Anything which requires> 1 hour of deep discussion to unpack by people as intelligent as he and J Pageau is not trivial, and to ridicule it without exploration, is to be both arrogant and intellectually shallow. Have you ever met the people with"the dark triad" of narcissism, sadism, and machievellianism and seven this "thing" which "possesses" that em? Watch the tapes of Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, others. If you have not met them, I encourage you to learn about this level of evil. The People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck MD addresses this. and are dangerous physically and pdchologically
God is needed to teach people they are expected to behave better than human standards. "Just do the best you humanly possibly can," actually leads to a child to make excuses for why they did not strive for excellence. The indoctrination of society members to behave by a moral code everyone agrees on, taught in part by stories whose scientific truth is essential relevant than their ability to convey meaning and significance in a commonly and communally understood way. Throw out the Bible stories the Western culture knew by heart,, and each individual posessrs their individual family and lived out stories but no stories are held in common to bind the social structure together. When a teacher ot adult wishes to adress a concept or moral principle, simply mentioning a story which encodes that principle which is already understood by all, is so much simpler and unifying thatn each grown-up telling their own story or explaining ad nauseum, the concept. Throw our the Bible and you lose David and Goliath- the belief that you can slay large problems in your life even though you are weak, Jonah and the Whale- when you are assigned a task which takes great courage, and you run from it, you will end up a whole lot worse off, and still have the job to do once you've gotten yourself out of the mess you created. Samson and Delilah- where lust will get you when you are blinded by desire ( literally in the story) Adam and Eve- if you are in a good place in life and you obey the rules, and someone lies to you that you really won't get in trouble if you break those rules,, you will soon find yourself kicked out of that pretty good place. Rehab the Prostitute- society ay look down on you, but if the chance comes along to do something courageous by doing what is moral, you will b rewarded. Mary the Unwed mother-though your society shames you, and you know you did nothing wrong, find an ally who cares about you, stick with them, and things will turn out OK. The prodigal son. If you screw up and disappointand hurt someone who loved you, if you are brought low by your choices, if you acknowledge you do not deserve the love or the same favored status you had before, true humilityand apology can restore a broken relationship, us,we must be willing to forgive and love again the truly umbled and apologetic. Plus, we must not be jealous of the love someone else gives to another, because you have no right to be jealous of, or dictate how another chooses to love. The Good Samaritan- to truly care about someone who needs help in danger , even if they are your enemy, when you are in a position to help them, you must be willing to put yourself in danger. And if you help someone in need, meet all their needs, don't stop just because you did something to help and "now it's someone else's turn to be made poor because I've done my part." And, "If that were me beaten up and lying in a ditch, how old I wish for someone to care for me. Each of the commonly held and taught Bir stories have no science in them, but have truths about what it means to be human in this human existence we share together, woven together through stories. This is why people of faith shake their heads sadly when people say the Bible is only good as soft toilet paper when camping, the "Freedom From Religion Foundation says all religion is evil, and to help stamp out religion is one of the highest good things humans can do. Make sense?
