[scotty79]

Sorry about two answers. This is the second one. My eyes initially glazed over because of wall of text. So at later time I decided to give it a second read and I'm glad that I did because you provide so many good examples of God's malevolence. Nothing that I haven't heard before but it's nice to see so many in one place and misinterpreted so confidently.

> Some virtues like mercy and grace can only be exercised when not deserved. Forgiveness can only be exercised after a wrong. This did not force God's hand in creation in any way -- he was completely free to possess a virtue and yet leave it unexpressed forever

Damn... That's next level evil. It's like getting a dog and keeping it inside so you can express your mercy by occasionally not beating it up when it pisses on the floors. Even though you could skip that. You could skip having a dog, or give it access to the garden, or even just not beat it to show your mercy every time. And all that just because ... you want to.

> yes we can choose to prefer our wisdom to God.

I'm very glad we did over last two millennia so now we don't need to sit and wait for his mercy in more and more cases.

> We don't want to answer to God. We don't want to live life his way. We have ideas and plans and standards of living that we think are better than his.

> A penalty must fit the crime. Justice requires the penalty to be proportional to the crime.

What are you getting at? What crimes an infant with a brain that barely starts to develop (and will never develop further) already committed against God so that death is a fitting punishment? What ideas, plans and standards of living did the baby already have so that it deserves to die?

> God is infinite in worth. Our obligation to him is infinite

Wait, so God created sentient beings in a way that thay are worth nothing compared to him so that he can torture them freely for any offence and it makes every act of torture an act of mercy because they deserve infinite punishment for any infraction? And he did this because he wanted to? That's peak evil.

> Angels seem to be accountable to God purely as individuals. > With us humans however, God had a different rule: that one could represent a group as a surety.

Oh. There it is. So the babies themselves didn't offend God in any exceptional way, however God decided they still deserve fo die for the offences of others.

Punishing individuals for something someone else did is universally recognized as evil. Humanity outgrew group punishment. Why perfect God haven't?

> Adam's responsibility was to heed the only prohibition God stated at the time with the consequence for disobedience being a fallen world and an infinite penalty hereafter.

And you don't see any problem with the fact that he was created by God to behave exactly like that? If I intentionally design a system that can fail then when the system fails is the failure my fault or system's fault? Setting up someone to fail in a way that deserves infinite punishment is another peak evil.

> If Adam and Eve had never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then they would have never known evil, including suffering.

But that couldn't happen because the God made them specifically in this way that they were capable of making this offence and given their infinite lifespan they were sure to make this offence eventually. God designed it in the exact way so that it happens. Again it's like getting a dog and keeping it in a house so that it eventually pisses on the floor so you can then beat it senseless as a punishment. How can you be so blind to plain evilness of everything you describe?

> You and I have committed offenses, each with infinite weight, and we each owe and infinite penalty to God. We could spend forever in hell and still never pay it off.

How convenient that Jesus spared himself the experience of rotting in hell forever. Was he really fully human as you postulate if he was spared this experience because he could, unlike us, pay infinite price in finite time? Instead of true human experience he spent a blink of an eye here and went back to status quo of his infinite blissful existence. Doesn't sound very ... benevolent. It reminds me of rich people doing kind of hobo-tourism for some time, when they don't use their wealth for a week or two and live like a poor person then come back to their mansion happy about themselves fondly thinking about their experience and lives of others they touch through their excursion.

> One illustration for this is if a child earned a spanking but the father covered the child's skin with his own hand before spanking his own hand

A child never earns a spanking. It's evil to beat a child. And doing it through your hand is just mental. It shows disturbed, conflicted mind in which evil and good fight constantly and I'd say evil is winning.

> So when an actual Christian parent mourns the loss of an infant child, one help is to consider that God himself in Jesus also died.

Yeah but he didn't stay dead. And permanence of death is kinda big thing about it. So did he really taste death if he can come again whenever he pleases?

> Ignorance of the law or its consequences does not fly in court

But it was a bit more nuanced wasn't it? They were explicitly mislead about the consequences by the lawgiver. Adam and Eve were told they are going to die not that they are going to be expelled to toil and spawn billions of people like them who are all gonna suffer and die and the potentially rot in hell for all eternity. How is setting up a law and lying about consequences of violating it not evil?

> And another help is the hope of reunion with the lost infant in the hereafter

That's no help at all. Their baby was robbed the experience of life on Earth. How exactly that reunion should look like? Is it still infant with undeveloped mind? Is it adult that somehow grew without experiencing life? Without having a childhood or any interaction with its parents? It doesn't make any sense. What's the best case scenario for heavenly reunion with dead infant?

> Life in heaven for one who died as an infant would put into perspective any imagined life they could have lived on earth -- to think otherwise is to suppose life on earth to be worth more than time with God and thus idolatry.

Isn't God everywhere all the time? How is life on Earth worth less than any life in heaven if life on Earth is spent with God as well? Arent both infinitely valuable?

And if life on Earth is so much less valuable why don't we just murder all infants so they can spend more time with God? Wouldn't it be a superbly moral act according to this logic? Selfless even because the murderer would destin themselves to eternity in hell so that the infants could spend more time with God.

> We tend to imagine the good that a dead infant lost out on. But we don't know what their mortal future really would have been like.

Yeah. It could have been tortured by the world that God intentionally created so maybe it's mercy that it dies. Why then once we finally manage to treat previously mortal illness and extend lives we often see that those saved lives arent particularly bad? No worse than others really. It would be quite a coincidence if all children dying before invention of for example insulin would have terrible lives if they were spared, but somehow the children after invention of insulin that were saved by it seem to be leading perfectly average lives. Coincidence or truly wicked design.

> because men naturally are God's enemies

If I were to believe in God I would tend to agree. I just have the complete opposite opinion on who's more evil in this conflict for the reasons you so clearly displayed in your comment and many more.

Your response to a problem I posed looks like throwing stuff at the wall to see if anything sticks. None did of course and I can't blame you because no one (supposedly) can know true mind of God. Thanks for giving it your best shot.

[m1n1]

Pretend to be a believer for just a second and think about these two questions:

What makes idolatry wrong?

How is God not an idolater?

[scotty79]

Sure thing. I had to look up the definitiy of the word.

"Idolatry is the worship of an idol as though it were a deity. In Abrahamic religions (namely Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baháʼí Faith) idolatry connotes the worship of something or someone other than the Abrahamic God as if it were God."

If I was a believer in Abrahamic God, I'd believe idolatry is wrong because, I'd believe there's only one God and no other thing is God, so people worshipping anything else but the God I believe in would be wrong and possibly dangerous because they might mislead others from worshipping the only correct God.

God is not an idolater because he doesn't worship anything (I assume) just demands worshipping himself from his every sentient creation.

I'm curious why are you interested in answers to those questions. What do my answers tell you?

[m1n1]

I asked because I realized there's something we probably already agree on, as long as one twist is accounted for.

But to get to the twist we should unpack this word Worship because it's a little nebulous. It could mean lots of things but I want to reduce it to its basic essence.

Let's imagine a dirty barefoot ignorant heathen Bob who carves an idol out of wood. It's a small figurine that he names as his brand new god Steve. Bob _claims_ to worship Steve, Bob bows down to Steve at regular intervals and burns incense to Steve, etc etc.

But over time Bob gets into a hobby like golf. And Bob spends all his free time playing golf, practicing golf, reading about golf, visualizing his next golf skill improvements, dreaming about golf.

Dust gathers on Steve's head and shoulders. If Steve were to suddenly animate, would Steve agree that Bob is a true Steve worshiper? No. I think if we simmer this nebulous word worship, we might get a more revealing word like "prioritize".

And maybe if we were to use more words, we might expand that to "hold (in thoughts, feelings, and resulting behavior) as most valuable"

And from Bob's behavior, we can see Bob cares more about golf than he cares about Steve.

Similarly, there are some people who claim to be Christians, but we see from their behavior that some of these people care more about, say, having a reputation as a miracle working faith healer -- or maybe they care more about the money they can rake in while faking miracles, than they care about God.

Even while we may disagree whether God exists, we can agree that such fake faith healers are criminals when money gets involved, right?

Then suppose for a second that God does exist, wouldn't you agree that a God who is supposedly perfect in justice should signify for anyone watching that these people are indeed criminals? Like, something has to be _SAID_ at least.

So in this supposed existence which has a supreme being, I think you can agree everyone's Priority Number One Arrow should point at God. When someone's arrow isn't pointed at God, that's idolatry.

If this makes sense, let me know and I can get to the twist. Or maybe you can figure out the twist before I say it.

[scotty79]

> I asked because I realized there's something we probably already agree on, as long as one twist is accounted for.

I'm sure we'd agree on many matters, at least those that belong squarely to the material realm. That's the good thing about material realm that as people think more and figure out more they gravitate towards unitary understanding of reality. Conversely when people ponder religious subjects they tend to very quickly split into myriad of denominations, each with their own mutually contradictory perfect revealed truths plain to understand, at least according to them.

> Even while we may disagree whether God exists, we can agree that such fake faith healers are criminals when money gets involved, right?

Even on moral matters we might largely agree, as long as we stick to humanistic morality, as distilled in Western culture with roots in biology of being members of a very social species. It's only when a person gets close to religion their morality gets twisted and evil starts to look like good and some good starts to look like evil.

I can fully agree that exploiting guillibility of others (esp vulnerable ones) for your own benefit (whatever it might be, monetary or not) and at their detriment, stealing their money, wasting their time and messing up their model of the world so it's less aligned with reality, is in fact a very evil. And any moral being should easily recognize evilness of it.

> I think you can agree everyone's Priority Number One Arrow should point at God. When someone's arrow isn't pointed at God, that's idolatry.

If in your religion giving someone your top priority is how you properly worship a God and only God deserves this kind of priority than yes, giving top priority to anything else (a hobby, a scam, but also your child, elderly parent or a beloved spouse) might be seen as idolatry from the point of view of your religion. It fits the definition of idolatry I cited. I hope it's not lost on you how evil it is, at least to anyone for anyone who's morality was not twisted by religion, to demand you don't give your loved one a top priority, because of how much harm to individuals and society that demand does bring.

> If this makes sense, let me know and I can get to the twist. Or maybe you can figure out the twist before I say it.

Please do continue. I'm curious where do your thoughts lead. Unfortunately I can't offer any guess.

[m1n1]

If you __sincerely__ want to understand the answer to your question about babies dying, you should try steelmanning. It’s the opposite of strawmanning.

Steelmanning would not take the evil committed by humans and hang that around God's neck and blame him. Steelmanning would accept that free will means people can do things that God wouldn't himself choose, and when they do evil, they don't represent him.

Steelmanning would accept that if a Supreme Being exists, then that being is indeed supreme -- even though babies are precious, the supreme being has even more worth because he is supreme.

You and I have the same emotional reaction to something that violates our top priorities (humankind esp loved ones for you, God and then humankind esp loved ones for me)

Everyone's got a top priority. If there is a supreme being, the right top priority arrow should point at that being. Including the supreme being's own top priority arrow!

Otherwise God would be an idolater.

Many will find this repugnant. I know. Probably because we are accustomed to thinking on the level of fellow humans, we're all each worth exactly one human, no more no less.

But if you honestly want to know how this other math works, this is it. We're in the middle of a symphony and parts might sound like they need some resolution. And in the end there will be resolution and the whole symphony will show his supremacy in the _end_ because only in the end are all accounts truly settled. Before the end, things will appear incorrect.

Actually the easiest way to reconcile this in your mind is to imagine you're, say, a Van Halen fan at one of their concerts at the height of their popularity. You want them to go absolutely nuts on stage showing off, because they're the best band ever. When they magnify themselves on stage, it's what you paid to see.

Either you honestly want to understand and you'll steelman or you really just wanted to be a critic and you won't. Btw, I replied on the other branch as well