JESUS CHRIST!! what a wall o'text!!Follow

Eighteen years of forced bible studies, I'm inclined to see God as an alcoholic.

For that record; Epicurus never argued against the existence of what He and his culture referred to as "Gods"
He simply understood that those particular notions of "gods" are preposterous and thus saw that any god must logically keep out of our lives.. He was almost a humanist.. maybe the first humanist? If anything he was a very successful agnostic. Indeed, the scope of his work did not really try to touch on the actual creations of the systems which he is trying to describe..
but obviously you are referring to this:
"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?" as has the same argument been presented in this thread multiple time..
to reiterate and expound:

1) Yes God already knows how things are going to turn out
1a) God's "plan" or creation event plus what is happening "now" would all be the same moment to God.

2) How things are going to turn out is "entities" that love God will exist in the perfect bliss that everyone says should exist without evil. It will happen.

3) To not Love God is evil. It is pretty simple. That is all. If you do not Love God then your thoughts, deeds, and fate will be pretty fruitless; the most you can hope for is that your offspring come to Love God.
3a) Evil is not necessarily malevolence; at least not in this context.. In the context of Good and Evil, the only thing that makes those two things relevant is the choice between the two.
3b)Trees do not choose between Good and Evil, not do tectonic plates or gamma rays as far as I am aware..when a cat is throwing it's injured prey in the air playing with it it is not evil.. it is impulse.. Good and Evil are indeed in the eye of the beholder.. however the actual measure for what is good and evil was given to us by that which beholds us. Therefore this Good and Evil does not exist from us but it exist for us.
3c)Without this "knowledge of good and evil" we would be no different than anything else in the universe but we are accountable. That is where the salvation comes in.

4) Every energy state and pattern that exist that is not "right with God" that is to say either cannot choose nor will not choose to acknowledge the creator cannot exist in an eternal bliss amongst the Creator because it has chosen to relate itself to the created things which will be unable to exist in the eternal spirit that is the perfected universe but only exist in the finite flesh. It cannot be both.
4a)Why will not God just make it both? That is why the key is forgiveness; you cannot get there through works but faith alone.. God will forgive you and enable you to the eternal.
4b)Why will not God just forgive everyone and finally abolish all evil? He does. One may be forgiven and not be aware of it and hence you yourself render it fruitless.
4c)Why will not God just make you aware of him? Well to do that he would have to dominate your identity entirely and negate that which makes you a free agent and to do that would destroy you. This is where the faith comes in as all of the evil in the world tells you that there is no God.
"can't afford to be neutral on a mooooving traaiin!"

So in the context of the "big picture" putting the creation of free agents into play that by definition of "free agent" will be separate from God and hence "evil" is ALL for the sake of offering those free-agents the chance for eternal infinite existence AS individual free agents.. Then you see evil as less a malevolent act and more the underlying denominator in the entire "science project" as it has been described in this thread.

I'm sure this solves all of your misgivings with God and you are now ready to cry out to Him and ask for the strength to turn towards the life of the Spirit.

:D

No thanks.

I'm sure my denial of your god will solve all of your misunderstandings with why personal ideas as to why I'm not religious in any way and I'll assume you are now ready to stop trying to convince me otherwise.

Been there, done that. Don't care what your beliefs are, don't waste your time trying to convert me.

Oh! So you are trolling after all. You got me, what can I say?!

Well, considering the whole "urge to be ruled" thing is immoral in itself and you've yet to show that there is such a being as God, I'll stick with the notion that the statement is pretty ****** for the time being.

For the record, if there is a God, I still would not follow his teachings. Any person who claims to own me, expresses bipolarity that puts mine to shame, convicts me in my sleep for crimes I've only dreamt or thought of, and proposes the masochistic mix of fear and love as goodness with no chance for appeal is not a person worthy of being worshipped. I'll state it now, and I'll state it often: There are no perfect, unquestionable entities, and anyone claiming to have special knowledge not obtainable by me should be treated with extreme skepticism.

Unless you feel, as I do, that many of his teachings are immoral. The cult of scapegoating human sacrifice does not impress me, nor is it moral. You've yet to explain to me why we have free will (which is not free will if at one end is punishment... we've been over this) and if God exists in the first place. Without these, following the tyrant without questioning is certainly the ultimate immorality.

Good and Evil don't have to exist. We're evolved creatures, I don't think there's any disputing that at this point... consider this:

Concepts can be explained as a series of building blocks, both practical and imagined. In this instance, practical concepts are defined as ideas which can be observed or experienced in the real world. Imagined concepts are defined as practical concepts which have been modified into ideas which can not be observed or experienced in the real world. Both categories of concepts can be combined, reversed, and extended to create new concepts. While very early concepts were necessarily practical concepts, it would not take long before imagined concepts could take form. As each concept is experienced or modified, a new building block is added to the mind’s ******** Following this evolutionary model, it's not necessary at all for "Good" and "Evil" to be absolute ideals, only abstractions from actions. You're making a huge leap by building your entire argument on an assumption that isn't necessarily true. Furthermore, what makes us different from the other animals which exhibit moral behavior?

You are aware of how circular your argument is, right?

no not really. I am not trying to argue and prove to you that God exists or not (at this point) but that it is possible that God is good and yet there is evil in the world. If you think I am trying to prove to you that God exists in all of this.. you're wrong. Your arguments are not really valid either as God is defined in this context as central creator not an arbitrary force.
and You ask Why we have Free Will?
The question is flawed. We ARE Free Will.

Edited, May 15th 2011 11:21pm by Kelvyquayo

The WAY we exist , if you want to start getting pedantic, is not what is responsible for the fact that we exist. What makes us who and what we are is a great many things. I say "We are Free Will" as us having what we call "free will" defines us.. that is not to say that other things go not define us.
I'll just assume you haven't been following along with the discussion and have missed some key points rather than just picking pieces out of context just to try to look right.

So, um... New research that seems to indicate that free will isn't exactly all that 'free' doesn't put a dampener on your argument, right?

The "New research" is nothing conclusive, though Daniel Dennette has a rather nice lecture about special determinism on YouTube. Also, I used the Hitchens quote earlier.