- cross-posted to:
- epicureanism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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The problem my agnostic ass meets with good ol’ Epi is the disingenuousness inherent in assuming “Godly” rationale to “human logic” semantics. My dude, people can’t agree on human meaning and I’m supposed to make assumptions on God?
Why test if It knows the result of the test?
Geez Epic Manster, I know they didn’t have spring mattresses in your day but the mattress factory also knows the result my mattress should have gotten at testing but tested it anyways…because the testing provides the necessary shape.
I still maintain my agnosticism and keep my two extremes whenever I don’t feel like just being sure it’s all bullshit anyways:
If God exists, it doesn’t care for our suffering for reasons wholly beyond us (like a greater suffering of its own and why not, it’s shit all the way down).
God exists, cares, is a bit sad, but we’re all fucking mattresses where the cosmos is gonna poke, prod, and simulate fucking atop of us until we reach the appropriate factory required settings.
I already had coffee tho, so the middle atheist ground is in effect; none of it real, nothing matters except trying to not be total cockwaffles so everyone else can enjoy their nihilism too.
God having different morals makes a lot of sense. If you’re a super being that knows most people are going to end up eternally in a pleasurable afterlife at the end of the day, what’s a little temporary suffering while we meet?
Just saying, going to work isn’t so bad when I know I get to go home, maybe a grab a pizza with the money I earned on the way back.
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I actually don’t know, it was something I was just throwing out there.
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The problem my agnostic ass meets with good ol’ Epi is the disingenuousness inherent in assuming “Godly” rationale to “human logic” semantics. My dude, people can’t agree on human meaning and I’m supposed to make assumptions on God?
I think the idea here is that this deity being perfect would give some sort of absolute underpinning to the universe, having been designed by an intelligent mind. If it’s made in this systemic way, even if we don’t currently comprehend it properly, given enough time, we should be able to figure out at least some of the rules, providing insight into the nature of things and the mind of the universe’s creator.
I know they didn’t have spring mattresses in your day but the mattress factory also knows the result my mattress should have gotten at testing but tested it anyways…because the testing provides the necessary shape.
The mattress factory isn’t claiming their process is infallible, though, and they have QC exactly because they admit this and don’t want a factory defect to get out to customers. That’s a big difference from the omnipotent, omniscient deity being spoken of in the paradox here.
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AI hallucinations
You forgot the actual Epicurean belief. God(s) exist but they don’t give a fuuuuuuuuuck.
Epicurus was the first deist.
Really more an atheist.
Don’t forget that not long before him Socrates was murdered by the state on the charge of impiety.
Plato in Timeaus refuses to even entertain a rejection of intelligent design “because it’s impious.”
By the time of Lucretius, Epicureanism is very much rejecting intelligent design but does so while acknowledging the existence of the gods, despite having effectively completely removed them from the picture.
It may have been too dangerous to outright say what was on their minds, but the Epicurean cosmology does not depend on the existence of gods at all, and you even see things like eventually Epicurus’s name becoming synonymous with atheism in Judea.
He is probably best described as a closeted atheist at a time when being one openly was still too dangerous.
wouldn’t that be more like an agnostic than an atheist?
since atheist believes that gods don’t exist
since atheist believes that gods don’t exist
This is a common misconception.
Theist is someone who believes God(s) exist(s).
An atheist is someone who does not believe God exists. They don’t need to have a positive belief of nonexistence of God.
Much like how a gnostic is someone who believes there is knowledge of the topic.
And an agnostic is someone who believes either they don’t have that knowledge or that the knowledge doesn’t exist.
So you could be an agnostic atheist (“I don’t know and I don’t believe either way in the absence of knowledge”) or an agnostic atheist (“I don’t know but I believe anyways”) or a gnostic atheist (“I know that they don’t and because I know I don’t believe”) or a gnostic theist (“I know they do and I believe because I know”).
Epicurus would have been an Agnostic atheist if we were categorizing. They ended up right about so much because they were so committed to not ruling anything out. They even propose that there might be different rules for different versions of parallel universes (they thought both time and matter were infinite so there were infinite worlds). It’s entirely plausible he would have argued for both the existence and nonexistence of gods in different variations of existence given how committed they were to this notion of not ruling anything out.
But it’s pretty clear from the collection of his beliefs that the notion of a god as either creator or overseer of this universe was not actively believed in outside of the lip service that essentially “yeah, sure, there’s gods in between the fabric of existence, but not in it.”
The Epicurean philosophy itself was very focused on the idea that the very notion of gods was making everyone sick, and that they offered their ‘cure’ for people to stop giving a crap about what gods might think or do.
I see, I have no more knowledge to improve this conversation, but thanks for sharing
Based on the anecdote of Socrates and the Pythia, that makes you one of the wisest people in this conversation.
Your second one is a typo “I don’t know but I believe” should be an agnostic thiest.
It may have been too dangerous to outright say what was on their minds,
That alone has held back a lot of progres throughout the centuries.
It still does today, too.
You can’t have free will without the option to choose anything. If you can’t choose evil you don’t have free will it’s just a semblance of free will. If you’d prefer a semblance of free will that’s valid
Can you do everything you want to, like fly by flapping your arms? No? Still you say you have free will. Can you buy a rocket and send it to mars? You cant? Still you say you have free will. Limited choices do not mean that you do not have free will.
Adding on to this, God is supposed to be able to know the future so at the moment of creation knows exactly how it’ll all play out. Ignoring how this alone would mean many versions of free will wouldn’t be possible, God could simply only create the people that would freely choose the right things. Why create those that He knows will just go to hell?
I choose hedbidittle!
Oh! I can’t have hedbidittle, because it doesn’t exist. It’s not even a concept.
Well then, I guess I don’t have free will.
How does free will mean absolute power?
It doesn’t. All I’m saying is that your assertion that free will requires that evil is a choice assumes the existence of evil in the first place. If God never created evil, then it’s simply not something you could ever choose, just like an infinity of other non-things that you cannot choose. But that doesn’t inhibit your free will.
There can’t be free-will if there wasn’t any choice. If there there are choices, there is the potential for evil choices.
So it’s kinda like saying “if God is all powerful could He create a mountain on Earth but also make it so the Earth is a perfect sphere?” It’s just pointing out that a planet that’s a perfect sphere wouldn’t have mountains and a planet with mountains are not perfect spheres. Which isn’t exactly deep philosophical thought that needs a flow chart.
Also if proving something about religion is paradoxical proves that religion is wrong, by the same logic proving something about math or science is paradoxical proves those are wrong. Halting Problem? Math is false! Schrodinger’s Cat? Physics is false!
But outside atheist dogma, most people accept there are things about the universe that are paradoxical. The Halting Problem doesn’t mean we should discard mathematics, Schrodinger’s Cat doesn’t mean we discard Physics. Following this trend means that all of the efforts by atheists to point out paradoxes in religion doesn’t accomplish anything.
There can’t be free-will if there wasn’t any choice. If there there are choices, there is the potential for evil choices.
I am hungry. I decide to make myself a sandwich, with peanut butter, and one of the following:
- strawberry jam
- honey
- grape jelly
None of these are evil, yet they are choices.
Also if proving something about religion is paradoxical proves that religion is wrong, by the same logic proving something about math or science is paradoxical proves those are wrong.
This is a false equivocation. Proving that a fundamental part of a religion (such as a tri-omni god) to be paradoxical means everything built off of that idea is wrong. The same applies for math and science, but when large swaths of things in math and science get proven wrong because of a underling assumption that later turned out to be false, we get closer to the truth. That’s how we went from a geocentric model, to a heliocentric model, to the understanding that there isn’t any discernible center to the universe.
Halting Problem? Math is false! Schrodinger’s Cat? Physics is false!
Those problems do not prove math and science to be false, as they do not challenge fundamental assumptions.
Following this trend means that all of the efforts by atheists to point out paradoxes in religion doesn’t accomplish anything.
Nah. This paradox quite clearly debunks the idea of a tri-omni god presiding over the universe. This is a fundamental assumption within some major religions, and it’s wrong. By extension the ideas built off of it are wrong.
Do the same for math and science and you’ll lead to new discoveries.
The sandwich analogy doesn’t work, because there are not enough variables to cause significant chaos to the point of where a will can be proven. Will implies thinking and decision making in a chaotic environment so as to assume intelligence, but being only able to choose three choices and starting out with 2 demonstrates no more intelligence then random chance.
Intelligent choice is part of free will, because otherwise it is only instinctual choice. But intelligence by nature allows malevolence, because it allows you to create choices where there were none.
Also, a paradox doesn’t disprove the existence of a god - if anything, any omnipotent being of any sort would be paradoxical by nature, as omnipotence can only exist in a paradoxical state. If you’re wondering how that could be possible, light is a good example - it is both a wave and a particle, and yet it exists. Being a paradox doesn’t exclude the possibility of something existing.
Lastly, omnipotence doesn’t exclude desire. For example, if you suddenly gained omnipotent abilities, would you actively use them all? Would you change certain things? Would you change yourself? Would you create something?
Why?
The same questions could be true for any omnipotent being.
All that said, this simplified chart is missing some options, but then condensing philosophy into a simplified chart is already quite reductivist anyhow.
You make the claim that a will relies on some idea of chaos, which definitely requires some actual explanation.
The amount of choices one has is irrelevant in the comparison to random chance. If the person uses reason to decide for one of several options, they, in the most common sense, clearly have acted out of free will. Assuming that a free will exists in a physical universe, but we’re in metaphysics anyways.
I am not sure what it even means to create choices where there were none. If you end up making a decision, then it clearly was an option to begin with, by the definition of what that word means.
What pointing out the paradox here entails is that amongst the presumptions we made, at least one of them must be false. The argument used in the OP does not disprove the existence of some divine being at all and it’s not trying to. It’s trying to disprove the concept of a deity that has the three attributes of being all-powerful, all-loving and all-knowing. In the argument given, it is shown that at least one of these attributes is not present, given the observation of evil in the world.
Your comparison to light being described as a particle and a wave is to your own detriment. The topic of this duality arose in the first place from the fact that our classical particle based models of the universe began to become insufficient to correctly predict behaviours that had been newly observed. A new model was created that can handle the problem. The reason this is a weak argument here is that no physicist would ever claim that the models describe the world precisely. Physical models are analogies that attempt to explain the world around us in terms humans can understand.
In your last question, you make the mistake of misunderstanding the argument once again. You grant the person omnipotence and leave it at that. The argument is arguing about the combination of omnipotence, omniscience and all-lovingness. The last of these deals with your question directly, explaining the drive to make the changes in question. The other two grant the ability to do so without limitation.
This chart isn’t reducing that much at all. It’s explaining a precise chain of reasoning. It may or may not be missing some options, but you haven’t named any so far that weren’t fallacies.
Ah, you’re right, I did forget the “all-loving” part actually. My bad. I thought you were talking about the Christian Trinity paradox.
As for chaos needed for determination of will, that’s because will requires intelligence. A controlled environment doesn’t lead to intelligent choice but rather patterned outcome. ChatGPT is a good example of this
As for the “all-loving” part, an argument could only be made for that, from my perspective at least, depending on how you define “love” here. If they sees us the same way we see creations we make and love, then it would explain to some degree why the suffering is still allowed. If you build a rugged all terrain vehicle, you might love what you made, but it’s purpose would still be go out there and get scuffed up. I know it’s not the same for us - a vehicle ≠ a person - but to an omnipotent creator being, it could be the same point of view that we have towards a vehicle. In which case it would fit that condition on a technicality.
I do have a question though - what would it mean if he made both a universe where suffering exists, and one where none does, simultaneously? What would that entail?
As for chaos needed for determination of will, that’s because will requires intelligence. A controlled environment doesn’t lead to intelligent choice but rather patterned outcome. ChatGPT is a good example of this
So what turns a controlled environment into a chaotic environment? And what is the problem with a patterned outcome? Intelligence was still used, so what do the results matter?
This all seems quite arbitrary.
As for the “all-loving” part, an argument could only be made for that, from my perspective at least, depending on how you define “love” here. If they sees us the same way we see creations we make and love, then it would explain to some degree why the suffering is still allowed.
The problem with this is than an all loving, omni-benevolent being not just has love for all, but maximal love for all, which contradicts the notion of willingly allowing suffering to exist in any form.
it could be the same point of view that we have towards a vehicle.
“You are so lowly that it is permissible to harm you” is not the point of view of an omni-benevolent being.
So what turns a controlled environment into a chaotic environment?
Honestly, don’t know. Maybe mathematicians do, but I imagine it’s a philosophical question. The only agreed upon thing would be that significant varied complexity is what is needed to be determined a chaotic environment, philosophically. How significant would be the disagreement.
And what is the problem with a patterned outcome? Intelligence was still used, so what do the results matter?
Well, we’re still trying to determine exactly, precisely is “intelligence”. But ChatGPT is definitely not intelligent, that I do know. I think Google really helped elucidate that point recently to Americans.
The problem with this is than an all loving, omni-benevolent being not just has love for all, but maximal love for all, which contradicts the notion of willingly allowing suffering to exist in any form.
Again, that depends what kind of “maximal” love. You have maximal love for your parents for example (assuming you had good parents), but that’s definitely not the same as romantic maximal love.
If there’s a God and they created everything, well, I assume the “maximal love” would be akin to a human creating something and loving that creation. Considering the massive difference between an omnipotent being and a mortal human, I’m hesitant to even say it’s similar to a human and self aware robot.
Maybe the old Honda bots?
The only agreed upon thing would be that significant varied complexity is what is needed to be determined a chaotic environment, philosophically. How significant would be the disagreement.
Ok, then let’s assume there is a sufficient number of choices to be deemed chaotic. You have 1000 condiments for the sandwich at your disposal, it’s chaotic. However none of them are options which are evil.
The rather arbitrary requirement of chaos is present, a choice is still at hand meaning free will is still present, all without evil.
Well, we’re still trying to determine exactly, precisely is “intelligence”. But ChatGPT is definitely not intelligent, that I do know. I think Google really helped elucidate that point recently to Americans.
So do humans who play tic tac toe lack intelligence? There is a finite and very small number of choices a player can take. It’s a patterned outcome.
I am hungry. I decide to make myself a sandwich, with peanut butter, and one of the following:
strawberry jam honey grape jellyNone of these are evil, yet they are choices.
If I throw a jar of strawberry jam at your head, is that not an evil choice? You chose to make a sandwich with that jam, but someone else can choose to do something evil in the same situation.
Those problems do not prove math and science to be false, as they do not challenge fundamental assumptions.
If you’re saying that it’s only because you don’t really understand them. Mathematics was widely assumed to be complete, consistent, and decidable and then Alan Turing’s Halting Problem came along and blew that out of the water. So it’s been mathematically proven that not everything in mathematics is provable. Seems paradoxical to me! I guess that means the field of mathematics is just a weird superstition we should mock, right?
If I throw a jar of strawberry jam at your head, is that not an evil choice? You chose to make a sandwich with that jam, but someone else can choose to do something evil in the same situation.
You’ve missed the point of the example situation. Throwing the jar at a person’s head isn’t one of the available choices. The only choices available are ones that do not harm to anybody, and are in no way sinful. Yet despite that, there is still a choice, there is still decision making.
One my favorite books is Forever Peace, and in the book humanity has found a way to have digital connections directly into the human brain through a port at the base of the neck. The military uses it for remote control warfare drone warfare. The civilian population mainly uses it to connect directly into another partner during sex, which has the effect of feeling what both people are feeling mid-act. Eventually the protagonists find out that if people are connected in this manner for extended periods of time, they become “humanized”, meaning they see all other humans as extensions of themselves, incapable of willingly harming other humans. They become pacifists to the extreme. The protagonists go on a fight against the government to humanize the entire world, and eventually they do so, ending all war and crime across the planet.
If free will was really so important to create us with, god could have done so in a manner similar to the humanized people from the book. They still have the ability to make decisions and chose things for themselves, but the option to harm others is never available. If god exists, they could have done something like that, maintaining this need for free will.
So it’s been mathematically proven that not everything in mathematics is provable. Seems paradoxical to me!
That’s not a paradox. Just because some things can’t be proven doesn’t mean everything can’t.
I guess that means the field of mathematics is just a weird superstition we should mock, right?
No, because nothing in mathematics requires everything to be provable.
Look through this list of mathematical proofs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_proofs
Not a single one requires “all mathematical problems have a solution” to be a premise.
On the other hand, the false belief in a tri-omni god is in fact a prerequisite for a number of religions, and therefore are indeed weird superstitions deserving of mockery.
You’ve missed the point of the example situation. Throwing the jar at a person’s head isn’t one of the available choices.
You’re missing the point of free will. Putting a limit on people’s choices is the antithesis of free will. I can make the choice to use the jam to make a sandwich, I can sell the jam, I can throw the jam in the garbage, and yeah, I can throw a jar of jam at someone if I choose. Some of these options are better than others, but free will means I make the choice, the choice isn’t made for me.
If free will was really so important to create us with, god could have done so in a manner similar to the humanized people from the book.
Free will is important since it’s the essence of creation. If we didn’t have free will we’d all just be an extension of God, not distinct beings. If there are no distinct consciousness, then it would be just God and nothing else. If there’s no distinct consciousness then there’s nothing really created. It would be all just thoughts of a single being.
For there to be distinct consciousness there needs to be the capability to make choices, which means there’s there’s the capability to make bad choices. For me to be incapable of throwing a jar of jam at you there would need to be an omnipotent being governing my decisions. But doing that would take away my agencies and destroy free will. Destroying things is the opposite of creation, which would be against everything God is supposed to be.
Just as we are capable of making choices, God is also capable of making choices. Choice is something that an omnipotent being should be capable of, right? God’s choice to not interfere with our consciousness is inseparable with the creation of free will.
On the other hand, the false belief in a tri-omni god is in fact a prerequisite for a number of religions, and therefore are indeed weird superstitions deserving of mockery.
And that is your choice. God isn’t going to stop you from making this choice. But is mocking other people’s beliefs making the world a better place?
Putting a limit on people’s choices is the antithesis of free will.
There will always be limits on people’s choices. I don’t have wings, I cannot choose to fly. I don’t own a nuke, I cannot choose to nuke something.
So because limits on free will are inevitable, they should be reasonable, which means no evil.
For there to be distinct consciousness there needs to be the capability to make choices, which means there’s there’s the capability to make bad choices.
As is demonstrated by the sandwich example, even when no evil choice is available, choice is still possible.
For me to be incapable of throwing a jar of jam at you there would need to be an omnipotent being governing my decisions.
As is demonstrated by Forever Peace, this is not the case. The mechanism for Forever Peace being that humans see others as an extension of themselves, thus being incapable of harming others, but there is no limit to other mechanisms that would do this.
Destroying things is the opposite of creation, which would be against everything God is supposed to be.
That would appear to be blatantly false. The universe constantly is destroying things. Celestial bodies get destroyed every day. Stars die, black holes consume, planets get bombarded with rocks from space. This planet alone has had 5 mass extinction events.
Not a year passes where there isn’t some child starved to death or slowly killed by disease. Natural disasters wipe people’s homes off the face of the earth and kill thousands.
The universe is an incredibly hostile place.
But is mocking other people’s beliefs making the world a better place?
When it is ultimately a force for suffering, yeah absolutely.
There will always be limits on people’s choices. I don’t have wings, I cannot choose to fly. I don’t own a nuke, I cannot choose to nuke something.
You can choose to fly because airplanes exist. Note how people can choose to use for transportation or use them to drop bombs or crash them into buildings with thousands of people inside.
Also nuclear weapons exist and people can choose to drop them on cities and many thousands of people will die.
It feels like you’re desperately trying to miss the point to avoid having thoughts that conflict with your current belief (or non-belief if that’s how you choose to term it)
That would appear to be blatantly false. The universe constantly is destroying things. Celestial bodies get destroyed every day. Stars die, black holes consume, planets get bombarded with rocks from space. This planet alone has had 5 mass extinction events.
Matter can’t be created or destroyed and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Matter can be converted into energy (and vice-versa) but nothing is ever really destroyed. Do you consider this to be a religious belief simply because conflicts with your argument?
When it is ultimately a force for suffering, yeah absolutely.
How much suffering was caused by the religious oppression done by atheists like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot? It’s not just religious people that causes suffering. I’m pretty sure it’s intolerance of the beliefs of others that the root of all of that suffering, which history has demonstrated that atheists are more than capable of. So I’m asking again, is your intolerance of the beliefs of others making the world a better place?
You can choose to fly because airplanes exist
That’s not what I meant, and you know it.
Also nuclear weapons exist and people can choose to drop them on cities and many thousands of people will die.
Other people have that choice. I do not.
It feels like you’re desperately trying to miss the point
Given that you seemingly intentionally missed the point about the things that I cannot choose to do, I’d say this is projection.
to avoid having thoughts that conflict with your current belief (or non-belief if that’s how you choose to term it)
This conversation has nothing to do with the existence of god(s), it instead has to do with the existence of tri-omni god(s).
Matter can’t be created or destroyed and energy cannot be created or destroyed.
This is a false equivalence. If I burn down a building, it’s been destroyed even if the matter of the building still exists.
Do you consider this to be a religious belief simply because conflicts with your argument?
Are you here to have a serious conversation, or just waste time?
How much suffering was caused by the religious oppression done by atheists like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot?
This has no relevance. You completely missed the point of everything I’ve said, I hope not intentionally. Because this line of thinking isn’t coherent.
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Sorry, forgot that implying atheists behave similarly to religious people is blasphemy to the atheist belief system.
Could you direct me to the nearest atheist confessional so I can confess my sins? But not one with Richard Dawkins, if I wanted to confess to a pedo, I’d just go to a Catholic confessional LOL.
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Didn’t Epicurus live before Christianity was a thing?
In my quick searching, I can’t find much info on it. It seems that he made it in response to the idea that there were Greek gods that were concerned with humanity’s wellbeing and actively took a positive part in our existence. His ideas don’t apply to one religion or even try to say that there is no god, rather he is just saying that the gods are too busy / unconcerned with humanity’s wellbeing which was not the common view of the period.
Sounds more like he’s deist or agnostic rather than what the guide implies.
This guide lacks the branch where people’s sense of good and evil differs from the God’s one.
So wait the argument is that yes, by human definition, God is evil, but that he thinks all the atrocities in the world are totally awesome? That doesn’t make him less evil
More like, on the scale of mortal vs god, the things that are important to us either aren’t important to god(s) or may be so insignificant to be actually imperceptible.
As a thought experiment, say you get an ant farm. You care for these ants, provide them food and light, and generally want to see them succeed and scurry around and do their little ant things. One of the ants gets ant-cancer and dies. You have no idea that it happened. Some of the eggs don’t hatch. You notice this, but can’t really do anything about it. So on, and so forth. Now - think about every single other ant you’ve passed by or even stepped on without even noticing during your last day outside the house. And think about what those ants might think of you, if they could.
Now an argument that a god is omniscient and all powerful would slip through the cracks of this because an omniscient god WOULD know that one of their ants had ant-cancer and an all-powerful one would be able to fix it. But the sheer difference in breadth of existence between mortal and god may mean that such small things are beneath their attention. Or maybe he really does see all things at all times simultaneously down to minute detail. We don’t know. It is fundamentally unknowable to mortals. Our scales of ethics are incomparable.
We also don’t know if the ethical alignment of a god leans toward balance rather than good. It would make sense, in a way, if it did. Things that seem evil to us are in fact evil, but necessary in pursuit of greater harmony. Or in fact even necessary to the very function of the universe from a metaphysical perspective. If we assume the existence of a god for this argument it leads to having to assume an awful lot more things that we can’t really prove or test one way or the other. But one thing that seems pretty self evident is that the specific workings of a god are fundamentally unknowable to mortals specifically because we are not gods. We don’t have a perspective in which we can observe it so any argument made in any direction about it is pretty much purely conjecture by necessity.
Wut?
You keep repeating that the “scale of ethics” is incomparable but flip flop between “theyre not omnicient or omnipotent”… “but maybe they are”
And what does “balance” have to do with ethical behaviour without you begging the question.
“If we assume the existence of god, we have to assume a lot of other things too” and…???
Ultimately you spent a lot of time stating the cop-out argument of “its beyond us mere mortals”. To which I can fairly respond… no.
Ants are a bad example though as ants lack the physical capabilities to feel emotions, they don’t have self awareness and may not even be able to feel pain. Also we didn’t create ants and their properties.
It’s an analogy, not an example. We are significantly further from a theoretical, all powerful, all knowing god than we are from ants. The scale of sentience from “inanimate object” to “all powerful god” is likely to have us mistaken for inanimate object. So the analogy serves its purpose, but of course the specifics are different.
How can one experience pure joy without the contrast of sorrow? Stop trying to personify God. Try smoking DMT, then call yourself an “athiest”.
I dare you
as a fellow psychedelics enjoyer - I’m an atheist. I can understand how psychedelics could cause you to become a believer of some religion or overall spirituality. But my man, you were on drugs. Yes they’re great tools for self growth and really fun too, but everything you saw came from within your head. You’ve found within yourself the need for a belief that there’s a diety or some sort of grand plan behind it all sure, but you did not find god.
You don’t need to experience bad things to enjoy good ones… They are separate unlinked things. Like you don’t need to have tasted sour in order to have the ability to taste sweetness.
Wait, so experiences you have while disabling your faculties responsible for rational thinking should for some reason overrule decisions made while you’re not under influence and in sound judgment? What kind of advice is that?
- Cats can speak English, dude, trust me. Once I got real high and totally understood everything this cat was telling me.
You can not make such statements without at least offering one of these
I worked with a guy who told me when he was on DMT he talked to little green aliens
what about we tolerate each other’s beliefs as fellow humans?
Which religion did DMT make you start believing in?
No specific religion, but I saw evidence of a beautifully designed, perfect “machine” all around me. I felt in tune with some sort of higher power, whatever you want to call it.
“God works in mysterious ways”
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The cope that always comes across when I hear this is intesne
imo every religion ever is a cope. All of those elaborate ideas about supernatural beings and alternate planes of existence to somehow cope with the fact that one day the good man, and the evil man, will both die and rot just the same.
It feels incredibly unjust for good men to die the same way evil men do, and for a lot of people that’s too much to handle. We as humans have such a strong sense of “fairness” that we attempted to structure our entire society around the idea of justice for all, and so by comparison nature feels cruel and unfair, you can either learn to live with that, or tell yourself really really hard that it’s not the end :) after they die the good man will be happy! and the evil man will get the punishment he deserves!
now layer that with milenia of different ideas about what qualifies you as “good” and “evil” and you’ve got religion.
This is my personal opinion, and honestly I don’t mind nor care how the other person deals with their existential dread, as long as they aren’t bigots about their way of coping.
If there is a ‘god’ then they are a fucking asshole.
“If there is a god, he must ask me forgiveness.”
-Scrawled on the walls of a Nazi concentration camp cell
Does “all powerful” really mean all? I mean, a lìfe sentence is only about 30 years. Since it’s all just social constructs (and even if it isn’t) the precise meaning of the word could different that you’d think.
Maybe god was all powerful until they created free will and found that they made free will stronger than themselves. But since god made free will, god is still all powerful.
Like humans making machine learning. We can only influence it, not control it. Does that mean we are not in control? No, we could simply pull the plug.
God could also simply pull the plug, but likely doesn’t want to because we are their creation. It’s only a last resort.
Anyways, that’s my two cents.
I agree that “all powerful” is an ambiguity here. For example, the famous “can he make a boulder so heavy he can’t move it?”
There will always be paradoxes in the universe. So you’d have to go to each respective believer to figure out what “all powerful” means. Maybe making a utopia is impossible.
Philosophy is fun
Philosophy is indeed fun, because philosophers know it’s only theory. Religion is a lot more advanced than just theory. Religion is basically the first instance of quantum computing.
Every religion has it’s own truth, but every religion is the only truth. Thus truth can clearly have different states.
Religion is all states at once, but depending on it’s observer, it is only one truth at any given time and place. When two states interfere with each other, (when they get onbserved at the same time and place), you can get disastrous consequences, e.i. war.
All religions claim to be the truth, yet contradict each other. One religion believes in only one god while others believe in more than one. One religion believe this is how the world was created, then another says differently. If all religions can’t even agree on the fundamental basics, then none of them are true. Moreover, scientific discoveries have already disproven many of the religious claims.
Indeed. Omnipotence doesn’t mean to be able to do impossible things, thus God can be at the same time omnipotent and loving and create a universe in which evil exists, as it is a condition to freedom.
To nibble further at the arguments for God: free will is absurd.
If god is all knowing and all powerful, then when he created the universe, he would know exactly what happened from the first moment until the last. Like setting up an extremely complex arrangement of dominoes.
So how could he give people free will? Maybe he created some kind of special domino that sometimes falls leftward and sometimes falls rightward, so now it has “free will”. Ok, but isn’t that just randomness? God’s great innovation is just chance?
No, one might argue, free will isn’t chance, it’s more complex than that, a person makes decisions based on their moral principles, their life experience, etc. Well where did they get their principles? What circumstances created their life experience? Conditions don’t appear out of nowhere. We get our DNA from somewhere. Either God controls the starting conditions and knows where they lead, or he covered his eyes and threw some dice. In either case we can say “yes, I have free will” in the sense that we do what we want, but the origins of our decisions are either predetermined or subject to chaos/chance.
A good read on the inverse of what you’re stating, namely that free will is logical:
https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTaoist.html
Got to be honest, I started reading that, saw how long it was and stopped. Would you want to share the gist?
It’s a long read and worth it, because it beautifully explores the theme.
But these are two quotes that summarize the main though:
God: Why, the idea that I could possibly have created you without free will [is a fallacy]! You acted as if this were a genuine possibility, and wondered why I did not choose it! It never occurred to you that a sentient being without free will is no more conceivable than a physical object which exerts no gravitational attraction. (There is, incidentally, more analogy than you realize between a physical object exerting gravitational attraction and a sentient being exerting free will!) Can you honestly even imagine a conscious being without free will? What on earth could it be like?
And
Don’t you see that the so-called “laws of nature” are nothing more than a description of how in fact you and other beings do act? They are merely a description of how you act, not a prescription of of how you should act, not a power or force which compels or determines your acts. To be valid a law of nature must take into account how in fact you do act, or, if you like, how you choose to act.
Thanks for sharing.
I don’t think the excerpt you provided addresses the points I was making. What do we mean by free will? Presumably it’s the idea that a person is able to make their own choices, and they’re not being controlled by some external force.
On the one hand, yes, I can imagine a conscious being without free will - imagine a scientist could disconnect the nerves that control your body and replace them with a remote control, but the nerves which provide sensation stay - someone else is driving the car, but you still see and hear what’s going on.
But that’s not what I mean when I say free will is absurd. I mean the idea that we could act without reference to our past experiences, conversations, physical circumstance, DNA, isn’t plausible. Yes, I like to eat fruit loops for breakfast! They taste good and I enjoy the sensation. I have “free will” to eat gravel instead, but I don’t.
In the normal mundane world that’s fine - we can say we have free will. In the case where we argue that an all knowing and all powerful God exists that’s an issue. Because God knows every possible force and prior circumstance that will act on us, and he put those forces into motion. So such a God would have decided for us what will happen.
The following two are more relevant quotes to your points:
Mortal: Well, are my acts determined by the laws of nature or aren’t they?
God: The word determined here is subtly but powerfully misleading and has contributed so much to the confusions of the free will versus determinism controversies. Your acts are certainly in accordance with the laws of nature, but to say they are determined by the laws of nature creates a totally misleading psychological image which is that your will could somehow be in conflict with the laws of nature and that the latter is somehow more powerful than you, and could “determine” your acts whether you liked it or not. But it is simply impossible for your will to ever conflict with natural law. You and natural law are really one and the same.
Mortal: What do you mean that I cannot conflict with nature? Suppose I were to become very stubborn, and I determined not to obey the laws of nature. What could stop me? If I became sufficiently stubborn even you could not stop me!
God: You are absolutely right! I certainly could not stop you. Nothing could stop you. But there is no need to stop you, because you could not even start! As Goethe very beautifully expressed it, “In trying to oppose Nature, we are, in the very process of doing so, acting according to the laws of nature!” Don’t you see that the so-called “laws of nature” are nothing more than a description of how in fact you and other beings do act? They are merely a description of how you act, not a prescription of of how you should act, not a power or force which compels or determines your acts. To be valid a law of nature must take into account how in fact you do act, or, if you like, how you choose to act.
So the free will isn’t as tied to non-determism as we like to think. This leads us to a false dichotomy. And you will have read correctly that Smullyan doesn’t see the ‘God’ as all-powerful but rather more all-enveloping, the God isn’t detached from the person as he’s thinking. Also that the god image of the percieved Judeo-Christian faiths are a bit different than the God in a taoïst understanding (which Smullyan adheres to and thinks of as a more logical deistich model.
His main point is about the misunderstanding of determinsm, as in the following passage:
God: It is interesting that you have twice now used the phrase “determined to act” instead of “chosen to act.” This identification is quite common. Often one uses the statement “I am determined to do this” synonymously with “I have chosen to do this.” This very psychological identification should reveal that determinism and choice are much closer than they might appear. Of course, you might well say that the doctrine of free will says that it is you who are doing the determining, whereas the doctrine of determinism appears to say that your acts are determined by something apparently outside you. But the confusion is largely caused by your bifurcation of reality into the “you” and the “not you.” Really now, just where do you leave off and the rest of the universe begin? Or where does the rest of the universe leave off and you begin? Once you can see the so-called “you” and the so-called “nature” as a continuous whole, then you can never again be bothered by such questions as whether it is you who are controlling nature or nature who is controlling you. Thus the muddle of free will versus determinism will vanish. If I may use a crude analogy, imagine two bodies moving toward each other by virtue of gravitational attraction. Each body, if sentient, might wonder whether it is he or the other fellow who is exerting the “force.” In a way it is both, in a way it is neither. It is best to say that it is the configuration of the two which is crucial.
That was an excellent read, thank you!
The solution I have heard before that I thought was the most interesting would add another arrow to the “Then why didn’t he?” box at the bottom:
Because he wants his creation to be more like him.
He’s just a lonely guy. He made the angels but they’re so boring and predictable. They all kowtow to him and have no capacity for evil (except for that one time). Humans have the capacity for both good and evil, they don’t constantly feel his presence, and they’re so much more interesting! They make choices that are neither directly in support of or opposition to himself. Most of the time, their decisions have nothing to do with him at all!
Humans have the capacity to be more like God than any of his other creations.
That would fall under the “then God is not good/not all loving”. You described it as if it were a privilege, but the capacity of evil causes indescribable suffering to us and to innocent beings such as small children and animals. If God lets all of this happen just because he wants some replicas of himself or because he thinks it is such a gift to be like him despite it, he’s an egotistical god.
Also, if he gets bored of pure goodness, blissfulness, and perfection, then it was never pure goodness, blissfulness, and perfection for him. Those things, by definition, provide eternal satisfaction. So he either never created that (evil branch again) or he cannot achieve those states even if we wanted to. If he cannot achieve those states even if he wanted to, if he lacks enjoyment and entertainment and has to spice his creation from time to time, then he’s not all powerful.
Also, many people argue the necessity of evil as a requisite for freedom. If God needs to allow evil so we can be free, then he’s bound to that rule (and/or others): not all powerful.
[slow, earnest clap]
If humans aren’t predictable to this god, then that god isn’t all-knowing.
Okay, I can partially respond to this. (I’m a satanist, so don’t @ me over this.)
First, we’re using mortal definitions of good and evil, which may not conform to what a god would define as good and evil. Moreover, if you say that god’s will is good, and that everything that happens is the will of god because that god is all-powerful, then everything is good because that is what god wills. That means that, yes, the rape of children is good, because that was god’s will. If god created everything and is all-powerful, then this is a logical conclusion.
Second, you can say that god knows the outcome, but that we don’t. We believe that we have choice, but god already knows what we’re going to choose, even though we don’t know until we make the choice. This is determinism. Under this model, god is giving us enough rope to hang ourselves, and we condemn ourselves to hell, rather than god condemning us.
That means that, yes, the rape of children is good, because that was god’s will.
This is not a god worth worshipping, then.
Sure, but if there’s a god, and if that god is the only one, then it doesn’t matter whether you choose to worship them or not, because they have absolute power over you.
This is fundamentally the problem that Christians create with their concept of morality, i.e., all morality springs from god, and if it’s god’s will, then it must be good by definition.
The problem with the argument is that evil is relative, and the relative knowledge of what is or isn’t is something subjectively decided, not something inherently known.
We don’t know if evil is relative, but you can follow the dilemma with different wording.
We don’t like our wellbeing and our ability to make our own decisions taken away from us. We suffer, which is something we want to avoid in general terms. It goes beyond humanity, as many animals also seem to seek the satisfaction of their will (being it playing, feeding, instinctively reproducing, etc.) and seem adverse to harm and to losing their life.
So… If we are such creatures, it’s natural we don’t like situations and beings that go against this. We don’t like volcanic eruptions when they’re happening with us close the crater. We don’t like lions or bears attacking us. We especially don’t like other humans harming us as we suspect they could have done otherwise in many cases. We simply don’t like these things because of our ‘programming’ or ‘design’.
Problem? There are a few. The first is God asks us to like him when he’s admitting that he is actively doing the things we dislike almost universally as human beings. That makes us fall into internal conflict and also into conceptual dilemmas. Perhaps due to our limitations, but nonetheless real and unsolvable to us.
Then you can argue that the way we are is designed by him, so why design something that is going to live, feel, think certain things as undesirable and then impose such things unto them? Let’s say I cannot say that’s evil, I at least can say it’s impractical as it will certainly cause trouble to his mission of accepting him (and following him). If that obstacle for us is part of the plan, that’s not for me to say, yet it is an obstacle in our view and experience. In human terms, all this might be classified as unfair or sadistic*, which is the reasoning in the guide and how you can follow it in this perhaps closer way.
Now, about this last part, while we can argue that *those terms arise from our own dispositions and might be different to other dispositions (aliens that do not experience pain, for example), is that enough to invalidate our perspective? Then what’s the place of empathy, which I am assuming is also a part of God’s gifts to us? What’s the place of compassion, as written in many religious texts of supposedly divine inspiration? If we need to carry our dispreference, displeasure, dislikeness—suffering—and not to classify it as necessarily evil when the gods impose it to us (as it is our judgment only), then why classify it as evil in other circumstances?
I hope I am getting my new point though. What this all seems to conclude is that if the lack of respect for the suffering of the animal kingdom is not worthy of being classified as bad (for whatever reason, here I argued that because this comes to be only by our characteristics/disposition); if, therefore, we cannot say a god is evil for going against our wellbeing and against our ability to make our own decisions, then I fail to understand many other things that tend to follow religious thinking and even moral thinking.
You’re getting too caught up in one particular concept of ‘God’ (why is it a ‘he’ even?).
Epicurus wasn’t Christian. Jesus doesn’t even come along until centuries later.
There are theological configurations in antiquity very different from the OT/NT depictions of divinity which still have a ‘good’ deity, but where it is much harder to dispute using the paradox.
For example, there was a Christian apocryphal sect that claimed there was an original humanity evolved (Epicurus’s less talked about contribution to thinking in antiquity) from chaos which preceded and brought about God before dying, and that we’re the recreations of that original humanity in the archetypes of the originals, but with the additional unconditional capacity to continue on after death (their concept of this God is effectively all powerful relative to what it creates but not what came before it).
If we consider a God who is bringing back an extinct species by recreating their environment and giving them the ability to self-define and self-determine, would it be more ethical to whitewash history such that the poor and downtrodden are unrepresented in the sample or to accurately recreate the chaotic and sometimes awful conditions of reality such that even the unfortunate have access to an afterlife and it is not simply granted to the privileged?
The Epicurian paradox is effective for the OT/NT concepts of God with absolute mortality and a narcissistic streak, and for Greek deities viewed as a collective, and a number of other notions of the divine.
But it’s not quite as broadly applicable as it is often characterized, especially when dealing with traditions structured around relative mortalities and unconditionally accepted self-determination as the point of existence.
Would you be willing to provide more info regarding the sect you’re referencing, for instance the name? I have a fascination with “original” gnostic/apocryphal beliefs, but this one is extremely intriguing & I want to learn more.
You probably already know about it, you might just not know that you know about it.
The core of the Gospel of Thomas is pretty clearly a response to Lucretius which then used Platonist concepts of the demiurge and eikons (essentially archetypes) to build on top of the Epicurean foundations regarding a belief in a physical body that would die and a mind/soul that would die with it.
You can see how the Naassenes by the 4th century are still interpreting the seeds parables using the language of Lucretius’s indivisible seeds (writing in Latin he used ‘seed’ in place of the Greek atomos), while at the same time talking about the original man creating the son of man and then likening their ontological beliefs to the Phrygian mysteries around spontaneous first beings described as coming to exist like a tumor.
Saying 29 of Thomas even straight up calls the notion of the spirit arising from flesh (Lucretius’s evolution) to be a greater wonder than flesh arising from spirit (intelligent design) before criticizing the notion of the dependence of the spirit on the physical body in either.
If you want to look into this more, I recommend reading the following texts in parallel with each other:
- Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (50 BCE)
- Unknown, Gospel of Thomas (~50 to ~350 CE)
- Pseudo-Hippolytus, Refutations of all Heresies book 5 (3rd century CE)
Adding Lucretius into the mix as you look at the other two works will be the biggest “ah ha” you could probably have when interpreting Thomas and remnant beliefs preserved among the Naassenes. In particular, pay close attention to sayings 7, 8, 9 for a surprise, noting that 8 is the only saying after another beginning with a conjunction and that in both the parallel metaphors of Habakkuk 1 and Matthew 13 a human is a fish and not the fisherman.
If this was Reddit I’d give an award or whatever they push now. Amazing, thank you.
