it’s an irrational belief if you’re unable to define God.
There is literally an infinite number of things that do not exist. We do not need to define them to not believe in their existence.
In fact it is up to theists to define what they mean by God but conveniently it means a different thing every time it comes up, depending on what is needed to make the lunatic arguments that religious people come up with for God’s existence (e.g. ontological argument, Pascal’s Wager,…) work and to explain why there is never any evidence of God’s intervention in anything and to explain why somehow people should still care and structure their entire lives around the belief. Classic Motte and Bailey arguments by changing the definition around depending on how strongly their belief is being attacked.
“Everything that was/is/‘will be’” is the evidence of God’s intervention. There’re many definitions because the “First Cause” implies many other things, like the Past/Present/Future/End, the Existence/Reality, but also the Maximum/Perfection/Guide/Light, and at least a dozen of other things that i haven’t perceived and/or am too lazy to add to the list, negative theology is also very interesting.
Is your only argument the old one of the existence of bad things ? There’re many answers but my usual one is that a perfect world gets boring after a while, even if that’s the goal, there’s no meaningful purpose afterwards if you think about it.
Another old answer is that suffering comes from desire(, hence, i.m.h.o., i prefer to suffer than stop desiring, and can’t complain since i ‘am responsible for my own suffering’/‘can always decide not to desire’).
Untold suffering ? Do you realize how easily everything could be worse ? How lucky you are to live in this place and time ?
How much closer to perfection is enough ? What are the main criticisms you have in mind so that i could explain why they’re usually necessary for a greater good, and usually the responsability of humans and not the laws of physics/mathematics/logic/Nature ?
Aren’t the laws of physics/mathematics/logic/Nature determined by your god?
Are we lucky your god only made the world pretty bad and not completely bad? What an inane argument, why didn’t he make it better to begin with?
How much better would be enough ? You’ll always have something less good than the Maximum/Perfection, until you have an homogeneous Goodness.
Fortunately we’re allowed to improve, that’s all i could ask for, unfortunately the trip/improvement/growth is necessarily finite, you’re asking to start at the end.
Given the choice between people suffering needlessly or people living without suffering yeah I would pick option two. I don’t understand how anyone could pick option one.
But if you were born in option 2, and lived all your life in Paradise, wouldn’t you want to experiment something else than this homogeneous unity, if only to know yourself, to distinguish yourself from your equals ?
If you don’t follow the thought, that’s because you’re asking for the disappearance of all evils, a perfect world will have nobody better than someone else, we’ll all reach the maximum conceivable potential, every single being would be as absolutely perfect as the laws of the universe allows a being to be.
That’s not what you want, you don’t want the absolute end/perfection but something in between, we’ll get there, and it could realistically be argued that this halfway towards perfection is long behind us, that’s the goal but i’m glad we still have stuff to do instead of an aimless/useless existence in a perfect world.
Furthermore suffering is rarely pointless, please pick an example it’d be less theoretical, here’s an old comment if you’d like to see a few of them in the first paragraphs.
If carnivores didn’t killed vegetarians then they would destroy everything, and if trees didn’t die they wouldn’t let enough place for new generations, but eating/killing stays a bad thing, which is why it should be avoided whenever possible(, e.g., not to die ourselves). We don’t live in the best possible world, but the trip may be more enjoyable than having reached the ultimate destination millenias ago.
(It’s out of topic but the universe is so big and it’s so easy to spy on planets by building trillions of automated probes that it’s weird we’re still feeling/being free from external/alien influences, w/e 🤷♂️)
There is literally an infinite number of things that do not exist. We do not need to define them to not believe in their existence.
In fact it is up to theists to define what they mean by God but conveniently it means a different thing every time it comes up, depending on what is needed to make the lunatic arguments that religious people come up with for God’s existence (e.g. ontological argument, Pascal’s Wager,…) work and to explain why there is never any evidence of God’s intervention in anything and to explain why somehow people should still care and structure their entire lives around the belief. Classic Motte and Bailey arguments by changing the definition around depending on how strongly their belief is being attacked.
“Everything that was/is/‘will be’” is the evidence of God’s intervention. There’re many definitions because the “First Cause” implies many other things, like the Past/Present/Future/End, the Existence/Reality, but also the Maximum/Perfection/Guide/Light, and at least a dozen of other things that i haven’t perceived and/or am too lazy to add to the list, negative theology is also very interesting.
Is your only argument the old one of the existence of bad things ? There’re many answers but my usual one is that a perfect world gets boring after a while, even if that’s the goal, there’s no meaningful purpose afterwards if you think about it.
Another old answer is that suffering comes from desire(, hence, i.m.h.o., i prefer to suffer than stop desiring, and can’t complain since i ‘am responsible for my own suffering’/‘can always decide not to desire’).
Thanks for your answer though.
Ah yes, a perfect world would be boring so let’s add untold suffering to spice it up. Really sells me on this supposedly “good” god.
Untold suffering ? Do you realize how easily everything could be worse ? How lucky you are to live in this place and time ?
How much closer to perfection is enough ? What are the main criticisms you have in mind so that i could explain why they’re usually necessary for a greater good, and usually the responsability of humans and not the laws of physics/mathematics/logic/Nature ?
Aren’t the laws of physics/mathematics/logic/Nature determined by your god? Are we lucky your god only made the world pretty bad and not completely bad? What an inane argument, why didn’t he make it better to begin with?
How much better would be enough ? You’ll always have something less good than the Maximum/Perfection, until you have an homogeneous Goodness.
Fortunately we’re allowed to improve, that’s all i could ask for, unfortunately the trip/improvement/growth is necessarily finite, you’re asking to start at the end.
Given the choice between people suffering needlessly or people living without suffering yeah I would pick option two. I don’t understand how anyone could pick option one.
But if you were born in option 2, and lived all your life in Paradise, wouldn’t you want to experiment something else than this homogeneous unity, if only to know yourself, to distinguish yourself from your equals ?
If you don’t follow the thought, that’s because you’re asking for the disappearance of all evils, a perfect world will have nobody better than someone else, we’ll all reach the maximum conceivable potential, every single being would be as absolutely perfect as the laws of the universe allows a being to be.
That’s not what you want, you don’t want the absolute end/perfection but something in between, we’ll get there, and it could realistically be argued that this halfway towards perfection is long behind us, that’s the goal but i’m glad we still have stuff to do instead of an aimless/useless existence in a perfect world.
Furthermore suffering is rarely pointless, please pick an example it’d be less theoretical, here’s an old comment if you’d like to see a few of them in the first paragraphs.
If carnivores didn’t killed vegetarians then they would destroy everything, and if trees didn’t die they wouldn’t let enough place for new generations, but eating/killing stays a bad thing, which is why it should be avoided whenever possible(, e.g., not to die ourselves). We don’t live in the best possible world, but the trip may be more enjoyable than having reached the ultimate destination millenias ago.
(It’s out of topic but the universe is so big and it’s so easy to spy on planets by building trillions of automated probes that it’s weird we’re still feeling/being free from external/alien influences, w/e 🤷♂️)