God is love just don't ask for the receipts
He's all powerful except for whenever
How many Jesus, the Living Embodiment of YHWH, does it take to change a lightbulb
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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Theologically, the answer is that God the creator gave us the world and free will. We built this rolling disaster of corruption and self destruction by handing control of the world over to evil people.
The more practical answer is that people using God to advance evil agendas have drowned out honest discussions of spirituality and religion, especially in the online world.
The theological answer doesn't hold up. We have a god that's supposedly all knowing, all powerful, and all good (complete absence of evil), yet he turns around and creates a world full of evil. So he either isn't aware that evil is happening, is powerless to stop it, or is himself evil.
If there is a god, the Christian presentation of it is at the very least dishonest about the core pillars of what that god is - and if it can't even describe its own god honestly, I certainly don't trust the rest of the mythology.
The theological answer, by its own text, a lie.
Yes, this is basically the Riddle of Epicurus.
I like to put it this way: Omniscient, Omnipotent, Benevolent - Choose any two. The evidence around us is ample proof that God cannot have all three properties.
Or heβs just a sadist
He's a narcissistic, petulant child, which actually makes sense that he created man in his image considering the history of the church.
If he created a world without the possibility of evil, when we wouldn't have free will. You can't eat the cake and still have it.
It's always struck me personally that if there is some form of a central creating figure to the entirety of existence, the net central figure would not only have to be able to create everything that currently exists and that comes into existence but to be able to understand and plan those things. Everything from like, cosmic tidal forces down to the individual molecules that make up the molecules that make up the molecules that make up the cells of our bodies.
And as such our attempts to try to keen any sort of understandable knowledge and measure of this sort of being would be like a flea trying to comprehend the entirety of the lunar landing.
And if you're dealing with a being that is just that beyond even our capacity to understand the width and breadth of, do you really think of being like that would care if you touch yourself? I think it would be laughably small-minded and narcissistic to think of being of that capacity would even be ABLE to care about you individually.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. God is by definition unknowable (and doesn't care if you touch yourself or like anal stuff or like to do sexual things with consenting people of your own gender).
But the whole point of Christianity is that this still unknowable God came to us in Jesus as we can't go to him. So knowing Jesus is to know as much as we can about God (which is not much, but still more than nothing).
The mythos surrounding Jesus just feels like more of the same. Here we have an unknowable being sending us an envoy who is a part of them that we can have interactions with it. As a concept, it would be comforting and most likely sooth people who would be grappling with existentialistic dread, but it still doesn't make logical sense to me.
Like I said this being would be so beyond us essentially that would be like you creating a small cell to go talk to the cells in your liver for you. But even then that's not a degree of magnitude of separation that would actually be an existence between us and any sort of central creation figure. That Central Creation figure would be so vast that there's no way their attention would even be able to comprehend the smallness of us.
What I'm trying to argue is not that this God being chooses not to acknowledge us or chooses not to intervene in our lives but that they're so far beyond and removed from us that they COULDN'T do those things.
And I know this is a very clunky analogy but do you care about the individual molecule on the tip of the nail of your toenail?
The problem with your analogy is that it still supposes we can make analogies. Even saying « we can't say anything about God » is saying something about God⦠Technically I can't even say, even being Christian, that God exists. That's why I have no problem with the existence of different religions and philosophyies, all, from gnostic atheism to the smallest and strangest cult, and including my own religious tradition, are infinitely wrong about God (but as in maths, there are bigger and smaller infinities).
So I can't be suprised when I learn that God cares about us in Jesus. I can't be surprised about anything about God, as any surprise would be coming from a preconception of mine.
Thats not true.
I lack the ability to flap my arms and fly into the air.
Does that mean I lack free will?
Why is the ability to do evil required for free will, when so many other abilities are not?
This makes no sense. To do evil is nothing like a physical ability.
Why not?
Are not evil things a series of physical actions?
Evil actions are, but not will. Will is what command the choice between different physical actions, some good, others evil. If you retire evil from the equation, you have only one option and then, no choice, and then no will, thus no freedom.
You've not explained how... why are some actions required to be permitted for free will but not others.
If will is what matters, what if someone was allowed to want to do evil things but not allowed to physically perform evil actions. Would that not suffice?
Imagine you have two meals before you, a pizza and a burger. You're free to want either of them, you're free to say what's your preference is, but I physically restrain you and force you to eat the pizza whether you prefer it or not. Would you consider yourself free?
That's a good illustration of how free will could exist without evil. Neither pizza nor burger are evil: we can choose either without compromising our spirit.
Now imagine a third meal - your neighbor's 2 year old kid strapped to a table next to a fork and knife, screaming for their life. You have the option for the prior two; or you shove a fork in that kid's eye and dig in.
The absence of that third option does NOT equate to a lack of free will. Giving people that option is evil. Why would god give us that option?
But in reality, there can't be two perfectly good options. Without evil at all, there's always only one option. And God doesn't give options, he gives freedom. In that allegory he gives a fork and money to buy lunch. Humanity chose instead to buy rope and use the fork to kill the neighbour's child⦠God can't be accused for that.
In our reality. That god created, right? You don't need to explain how things are now - I see it every day. The question is why god would have made it that way.
Your post basically amounts to "god isn't all powerful" if he's bound by those same constraints we are; or "god isn't all good" if isn't bound by those constraints, but chose a system in which freedom includes evil. So which is it?
You have free will though....
Do people in prison no longer have free will, are they exempt from sin?
But if God was all powerful, he could.
It depends on your definition of power. Is not being able to do something impossible not being all-powerful?
But our choices aren't the cause of all evil. It's evil to inflict painful, terminal diseases on people just because of who their parents are.
That's an anthropocentric vision. It's hard for me to explain that in English, but what is free will essentially? The possibility for humanity to do things that God doesn't want. The nature doesn't have will of course, it doesn't choose anything, but in order to live in a world free from God, it should follow rules that God chose not to control. Thus evil is not a reality per se, but the absence of Good, which is God.
So children have to suffer and die so that people can make free decisions? That makes no sense. They could make free decisions in a reality that isn't so harsh.
That's not what I said, and you're anthropocentric again. Could the world have been less harsh? Possibly. The truth is that we have no way to judge that.
And we were given the means to fight evil, we could stop wars, hunger, a lot of epidemics⦠we choose as a species, not to. We should stop blaming God for.our shortcomings.
So what's his barrier? Does he lack the power to create free will without evil?
TIL: Don't help others because it impedes their free will.
It's the conservative Christian way!
Not at all. Jesus was all about people helping other people. God interfering in the affairs of man would impede their free will, but people helping people would be them exercising their free will.
That doesn't make sense.
If i choose to murder someone i am impeding their free will.
If god chooses to save someone from murder, then it impedes the free will of the murderer.
Why is only one of those a problem?
It's like the difference between the government punishing you for free speech and a Lemmy mod banning you.
In your example the outcomes are different. What if the only difference was the actor who stopped the murder, would that still make a difference?
https://www.etymonline.com/word/eso-
https://www.etymonline.com/word/exo-
Because people think it's exoteric rather than esoteric. And one thing people hate is walking through the hell inside to get to heaven.