Marchesk

It would be a hellish society where nobody had the free will to murder, rape, steal, commit genocide, or start wars? I understand such an argument if ...

That's an interesting justification. But what's really being argued is that God values free will at the cost of permitting various evils to exist. It'...

All of that is fine, provided that God values free will over good, which means that God is something other than being perfectly good. It's certainly n...

Sure, but society takes over that role to an extent. We have various laws that are enforced, to an extent, which curb people's free will to do anythin...

But that's a get out of jail free card for anything a believer wishes to attribute to God or the divine story of why things are the way they are.

Haha. I've never heard it put that way before. Usually it's, "Why did God let that happen to me?", which turns into it being an opportunity for growth...

What would you call what Yahweh and Jesus do in the various books of the bible, if "interference" is objectionable to your continental sensibilities? ...

I just don't see how that God can be only good, when there is evil and suffering in existence. A God who was both good and evil makes a lot more sense...

The entire thread is directed against a very specific notion of God, which was inspired by another thread, parodying that notion with an all-evil God ...

Here, here. There are some good aspects of Christianity. Unfortunately, those are often tied up with some ridiculous elements.

Sure, but they can aid an argument. If parents allowing their kids to have free reign over the neighborhood is considered immoral, then God allowing u...

I doubt you're a proponent of the FWD in the first place.

It was a metaphor, where God is the parent, and we are the children. One the theists have been happy to use from time to time, including in their sacr...

I don't see how any of that gets an omni-perfect being off the hook. In fact, most of that exists because of evil in the first place.

One more analogy. Imagine the perfect police department, where perfect is defined as always upholding the law. Now also imagine that this department a...

That is very ironic. Lucifer is perfectly free.

The very big problem for Christianity and Judaism is that God is very much portrayed as interfering kind of deity in their sacred scriptures. Thus, a ...

So theists didn't invent the FWD as apologetics? I'm fine with religion trying to address existential issues, and I'm fine with people thinking there ...

But Christians tend to believe that God permits all abuse of free will, so that begs the question of why they don't endorse such a policy with regards...

Fine, but Christianity is broad, and not all Christians have had a belief in all-perfect God. There were some sects of early Christians who thought th...

Or the Christian conception of God is on trial. It is believers who put the notion out there that a perfect being permits such things to happen. What ...

We're talking about God, who didn't find it too hard to create an entire universe with the laws of physics as they are, and you're telling me that mak...

Why would God set things up so that we haven't question adults in order to learn the truth?

According to Christian denominations, heaven is an eternal place where humans (and angels) are not autonomous agents, free to do as they wish. Or bett...

The idea that God is good is an anthropomorphic idea, based on what human beings value as good. Get rid of the good, and the FWD is no longer problema...

We don't give people permission to murder other people in society under normal circumstances (setting aside war, self-defense, death penalty, etc). Bu...

Until they're being chased by a lion, or fail to find water during a drought, or have parasites infesting their brain.

I don't think most human beings actually consider this sort of free will to be a good thing, but I'll create another thread about it.

We could be made of something more resilient than meat. Even as meat, we're not optimally designed to last and avoid injury. We just have enough resil...

So if God can't do any better than create a world with genocide, sexual trafficking, famine and predation, why create a world in the first place? And ...

Globalism has existed in some form as long as humans have been able to travel over distances and come back, and thus engage in trade. Technology has j...

Maybe not disprove, since the theist can always appeal to God's mysterious ways and divine perspective being different from ours, but it sure seems li...

Well sure, but then my question is why bother with classes like philosophy if employment in an advanced technological society is the goal? Just have s...

Anti-realism and realism are well defined and don't need to be redefined, or we end up with endless semantic disputes that go nowhere. Color is real i...

If the strawberry tastes sweet, then objectively, it's sweet, right?

You can do so if anti-realism is fine with you. Also, science "paints" a rather colorless picture. Afterall, where is the color? Is it in the photon? ...

Perceptual relativity and the problem of perception, eh? How can we objectively say what color something is if it's relative to how we're viewing it, ...

Also, I think this distinction has implications for consciousness and Chalmer's hard problem, because if color is a secondary quality, but science mak...

I'm not sure how to answer your question other than to point out that these types of discussion ultimately are about the nature of objectivity, with N...

I would say that objects don't have any color. Color is a property of visual perception, just like smell is a property of olfaction, not the chemical ...

I'm not questioning the reality of people just wanting to pass a class. I'm also not saying that Mary Ellen or anyone else should be interested in the...

Whether GR is accurate or not doesn't change the astronomical data. There is something there. Our understanding of it might be inaccurate, but that do...

Since this is a philosophy forum, let's approach it a bit differently. What is the purpose of teaching philosophy in higher education? Is it just anot...

Something is there that's being described by the math, given the massive gravitational effects on nearby objects. And it's condensed to a small area f...

No doubt you're right, but a the same time, it's kind of sad statement on education. And not just philosophy, but any subject matter, bet it art, lite...

Next, you'll be taking aim at Witty ;)

Reason we learn to identify consciousness with our heads is because all the evidence correlates with the brain and not the foot. But if panpsychism is...

And also, why isn't my foot conscious? Or is it, and my brain just isn't aware? But then why I am I located with my brain and not my foot?

I never found Humean skepticism about causation to be compelling. It's just obviously so that there is an order in the world that goes beyond mere con...

So is your moral realism based on pleasure being the highest good, which wold be true for all beings capable of pain and pleasure? Because I can sort ...