@Cegesh Hi! *You can't make the laws and play judge yourself.* You're totally right! And that's because we're wicked humans. If you're God, thus - you're perfectly moral, loving and just by nature, can't be evil, omniscient and almighty, you're THE Judge. *Especially not contradicting and evil laws.* Contradicting laws? Can you bring examples, please? :) *allowing slavery* The Mosaic covenant wasn't and never was meant to be God's ultimate standard. Rather, it's a temporary compromise he made with a very immoral society, in order to point for a higher standard on one hand, and not ''throwing the Israelites straight to the deep water'' on the other. The fact that God allowed polygamy and slavery in the Mosaic covenant doesn't mean that he views it as good. The point of the slavery laws was - if you already have slaves, treat them morally. Later, in God's real standard - the new covenant - Paul writes: ''For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. [...] there is neither slave[a] nor free [...] for you are all one in Christ Jesus'' (Galatians 3:26-28). In fact, the Israelite slavery laws were a huge improvement compares to what was around there in that time. Owners were able to murder slaves as they wish, but in the Torah - you can beat your slave only so that tomorrow he'll be able to work. Owners were able to throw their pregnant female slaves to starve to death, but in the Torah, they must give them all of their needs, to marry her to his son, or to free her without her paying ransom. As an Israelite slave owner, you had to free your slave after 6 years, unless he wanted to stay with you forever. Compares to the other ancient cultures, those are very moral laws. *burning you for eternity*. A crime committed against an eternal, perfect God desires an eternal, perfect punishment. I hope I answered your questions. Thank you for posting and have a nice day! :D
So if you kill another human being in self defense (which im pretty sure isnt allowed by god) you get ethernal burning and torture, Seems a bit fucking extreme. But hey he's PERFECT RIGHT. He made us, he made humans, The very beings you say are, how did you put it, ah yes: Wicked. he's perfect yet royally fucked up making us. Alot of humans are not fucked up because of their choice but because of certain genetic conditions which GOD is for some reason allowing, do they get treated the same as other humans or is it not their fault in gods eye. Where is the line. There are too many questions and not enough awnsers and the ones we have are absolute bullshit. Either god is a complete retard, Or he is an asshole or he just doesnt give a shit. But keep believing fairy tails.
jesse vw All of humanity was condemned by the law (ie “the 10 commandments”). God is PERFECT. You and I are NOT. That is why He gave the law in the 1st place. It is a mirror that cry’s out, not worthy. Jesus Christ is God who carried the weight of humanities sins, failure, and evil. He had NO sin of His own. WHY? Love! For humanity, created in His image. Why the need? God is real. So is the devil. The devil thought he had enough power to over through the “Ancient of Days”. That’s power. At the cross of Christ God Himself unraveled Satan’s plans. I knew that there was a devil before I followed God. God whispered to my mind...Satan is power...”don’t follow second best.” My (Internet) friend, you are sinner like me, hell is real, you are condemned, God loved mankind unwilling that he should die, God is HOLY you would melt in his presence, Jesus made an escape at the cross. By trusting in His atonement alone, you and I can be rescued from hell and given eternal life. True story. And (going back to your original statement) if someone tries to kill you and you must shoot them to save your life or the life of someone you love, shoot them a lot. Unless that person is a police officer, than lay down your firearm and surrender.
Mandolin Joe you completely misinterpreted that verse, it simply says that God "IS" not a man nor a son of man (it NEVER said that God CANNOT BECOME a man or a son of man) if God is ALMIGHTY/OMNIPOTENT then he is not limited in any way. besides, in what way is God not a man or a son of man? It says "God is not a man that HE SHOULD LIE nor a son of man that HE SHOULD REPENT, and Jesus christ never LIED or REPENTED? and Jesus Christ is "THE" Son Of Man not "a" son of man, Jesus Christ is "THE" Son of Man mentioned in Daniel 7:14 who will be worshipped by every nation tribe and language like God and who will "come in the clouds of heaven" (Daniel 7:13) Jesus himself said " and you will see THE Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN.” Mark 14:62.
C. S. Lewis was simply a genius. I started reading "Mere Christianity" and although I'm not a fan of the Moral argument, I like his comparisson with a straight and a crocked line.
The moral argument is one of the soundest argument. Not everyone can wrap their head around other argument, but the moral argument seem to do that, even though some atheists not understand
@@raphaelfeneje486 I think that atheists pretend not to understand. It is manifestly true that "without God, anything is permissible", to quote a Dostoyevsky character. Nobody can fashion a moral code based on his personal opinions, sorry.
Idiot atheist w8 what? I don’t understand the comment... what proofs that I am brainwashed ? And by whom ? And why do you think atheism is a religion of hate ? Can we call the absence of religion, atheism, even as religion ?
Nonesense, if evil destroys itself than all evil would have destroyed itself already and there would be no evil In the world, a bit counter intuitive to the conditions of reality today wouldn’t you say? Perhaps you shouldn’t selectively pick a single piece of an entire fully formed philosophical idea for this exact purpose.....
@@chudchewer2548 What is nonsense is assuming all evil would have destroyed itself already... Why should it have? Indeed evil destroys even itself. Also let us not forget this was an evil god challenge... hence a maximal evil god is a nonstarter.
clean sl8 not my problem, you made the nonsense claim, than apparently just acknowledged the nonsense of it. Do you even need me for this? Lol you seem to have it handled all by yourself
@@chudchewer2548 I based my conclusion that "A maximal evil god is a nonstarter" on the premise of Aristotle and that "Evil destroys even itself". If you grant Aristotle the conclusion is logical and we have a solution to the evil god challenge.
@Smash Boy research it. Soloman had it on his ring, seal of soloman and he used it in his pagan worship and used it to summon Angel's and demons, this is WELL known. Just research it, it's that simple.
Why would a maximally great being be maximally evil? Evil needs good to exist, the same way a lie needs truth to exist. So if God is maximally evil, then that's not really logical, because He would need a prexistent moral good (that He didn't create) in order to warp and distort it. Edit: I wrote this before watching the video. Amazing how my argument resonated with yours, IP.
@Artur Ferrão Nazi's weren't theists either. They believed in Adolf Hitler, who believed in Darwinian Philosophy or the survival of the superior species. Which is why he sought out to wipe out Jews. Adolf did believe in a God, but of His own making. The Bible calls that idolatry. Making up a god that you're comfortable with.
Thanks for this, too much of our pop culture seems to accept it as a given that evil is something with substance by itself, as opposed to a privation of good.
When somebody stands before a judge they will see that judge as evil. Especially when they know they are guilty of the charges against them. God is that righteous judge and people don't like being told that not only what they are doing is wrong but can also face eternal judgement for it. Many things that are sinful, people see as normal everyday things because that is the nature of humanity. Ever since the fall in the garden.
And sometimes the judge is actually evil, and we are right to object. Yet God is not allowed to be questioned no matter what, and the subjugated are told that they are being judged fairly regardless.
KEvron, YOU SAY: “god is hate. he is unholy and evil.” RESPONSE: What standard/criterion (if any) did you use to ascertain and support your conclusion above? Also is your claim above subjectively or objectively true?
Um No if God is not a God of wrath then why do we have the book of Revelation? His wrath is always tempered with love but he does have wrath. Why? Because he is a holy God and he is not neutral concerning sin.
Um No God is love and God is also holy. 1 Peter 1:15-16 But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:16 Since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” Isaiah 6:3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. Psalm 96:9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth! Leviticus 19:2 “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. Ephesians 1:4 Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love..... Hebrews 12:14 Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
Um No God's wrath, because God hates sin. Why? Because sin separated us from him and destroys our lives and the lives of those around us. Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. John 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Of course, people such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris will always argue that the God of the Bible is evil (mainly because of actions in the Old Testament). But because it’s logically impossible for an all evil god to exist, how could they argue for this? If God was simply evil because he was created my mankind, what does that say about human beings? You would have basically told me that evil men came up with the idea of a good God in order to do evil. The whole argument falls apart. Anyways, thanks for the new video. I’m recently new to this channel and have been starting to study on theology and apologetics in order to strengthen my relationship with God and Jesus. God bless.
also there Arguments are flawed asf trust me they cant argue for shit they never Show proof david Wood literally exposed that bitch sam harris on sam beliving in the NT saying Jesus wanted to kill somebody LMFAO
@Garrett Lank It is also logically impossible for a being to be all good. Good is just the absence of evil, a restoration of natural chaos into order. The same argument applies.
@Man lol The innocent child knows neither good nor evil. That's why it's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden, not just the tree of knowledge of evil. If one knows what is good, one automatically knows what is evil. One might eat a cookie, and say "this is good", but one could equally easily eat a rotten egg, and say "this is bad". Every time you give your child affection, I can treat mine badly. Every time you let them play a game, I can lock them in an empty room. My child will experience equal evil to your child's experienced good. A child knows how to cry just as easily as it knows how to smile. "Whether you like it or not, you know this standard naturally, just like the standard of just and unjust, 'you don't call a line crooked unless you have the idea of a straight line' and God is that standard" The standard I know naturally tells me Hell is incredibly unjust. The Christian God is not that standard. We call a line crooked only when we know about straight lines, but we call things evil before we ever even hear about any God concept. We are not comparing to any God when we call things evil. If we were, we would not be so divided on abortion, for example. We would compare to God and get the same answer.
I would like to say thank you to InspiringPhilosophy, JMDapologetics101, and other Christian apologetic channels for providing evidence for God’s existence in arguments that I could’ve never even expect were supportive of Christianity. You really do deserve to be fully funded. It’s a shame that atheists like RR have to sell card games and appeal to authority in order to try and get a point across when it really gets them nowhere. Sorry for the ramble, but seriously, thank you.
I'm not sure about RR specifically, but usually it's the people who have a higher authority that tend to appeal to it, rather than atheists who tend to not report to a higher supernatural authority. Too often do I find an appeal to authority in Christians that think God gets special treatment in the fallacious appeal to authority.
@@trevorbrooks7816 There's always an appeal to authority when we are talking about ultimate standards. In the example of science, it doesn't prove logic but rather presupposes it. But this isn't to say that you can't lend credibility to God in the scriptures from things outside of them. That's very easy to do, considering creation, Christian philosophy, and moral absolutes. And this is aside from the fact that if one appeals to their own reasoning faculties alone, that's an appeal to authority, especially in those who claim to be "neutral." Intellectual neutrality is another word for appealing to your own fallen intellect, biased in favor of sin.
@@noahm44 since an understanding of Christianity is derived from ones own experiences, christianity also presuppose logic and that experiences aren't illusions. Création is not proof, it's a supposition. There is no good reason to think we were created. Moral absolutes don't exist, and i feel like the breadth of philosophy academia is a demonstration of a lack of consistency in interpretations of morality
@@l00md55 Deists recognize that our universe was designed by a divine intelligence, but they think he left us totally on our own regarding big questions. I pray they all recognize that Christ is Lord before the judgment day comes.
If God is all evil and omnipotent and omniscient then none of us would probably live a single day because he would snuff us out in an instant. That's just going without saying anything about what the Bible says regarding Jesus Christ and sending a sacrifice for our sins or any of that. Obviously that shows us that God loves us but even aside from that I think it's pretty easy to reckon that an all-powerful God who is all evil would certainly not allow us to have any good thing in life. How easily he could make us all barren and not allow us to produce another child. Or allow every child that is born to die so that the human race would be snuffed out of existence.
@Steve Parks If the human race were snuffed out, there would be no more suffering, so an evil entity would want to keep us around as long as possible. Of course, he also might think free will is the most terrible curse, so he wouldn’t want to take that away from us by doing more evil. It’s funny how easily the arguments can be reversed to support anything.
Kevin Allen interesting that you would say that ending the human race would end suffering. That's pretty much the premise for the teaching of God's love behind his judgment. That his judgement will indeed put an end to the suffering of the human race.
@Steve Parks You said an evil God would want as all dead. The Christian God wants that, both when he sentenced us to it in the beginning, and when he's going to finish us off in the end (according to doctrine). It seems like every "but an evil God would do X" can be easily addressed by "the Christian God does X", which is not very supportive of this video's point.
Kevin Allen but an "evil God" would not come down to the Earth to shed his own blood as a sacrifice for the sins of the world so that mankind would have the opportunity for redemption. He did that for us so that we wouldn't have to eternally perish.
@Steve Parks An omnipotent God wouldn’t have to do that to save us from an eternal torment he created. In fact, an omnipotent God cannot actually sacrifice anything. An evil God would have every reason to put on a show to demonstrate his “goodness”, despite it being absolutely effortless, because human beings obviously eat that stuff up. If God had actually died and stopped existing, now that would be an impressive sacrifice. But that’s nowhere to be found in Christian doctrine, unfortunately.
There is also the fact that one of the characteristics of "evil" is destructiveness. Therefore, a maximally evil god should also be maximally destructive, and the highest form of destruction is "self-destruction". Therefore, such a being, would self destruct the moment itself it came into existance, and if it was above time, it would either exist and self destruct at the same time for eternity, and that is illogical, or simply not exist.
I appreciate this! This was always how I've even read the old testament as well as human history. . All GOOD enthrones itself in the highest of heavens. Human beings are STILL giving blatant disregard to the very Moral Law within, thereby bringing the opposing force of life sustained; decay and death. From the garden... No matter the disagreements to this, It is us that became janky through disregard.. As Athanasius of Alexandria put it: "Can you really answer for what exactly was God to do? His own Handiwork just disregarded Him.. " Instead of collapsing the universe in on itself.. He chose and even foreknew that ultimately He wanted a free-choice, moral agency to choose the "Palace life" without force-keeping us like a bitter old woman of royalty, never allowing her daughter to experience the "real world"...
@@Kevorama0205 The problem with your response-"There must be something evil first before it can be blessed"-is that it attempts to overlook the logically prior truth that evil cannot be achieved without pre-existing, ruined good.
i mean, he almost did that once. and some do claim that God(if he exists) has forsaken mankind and left us for our own. but i tend to agree with you there.
@@jonathacirilo5745 don't you think what you said is also applicable on the argument that god left us on our own? That's why we are not touched(despite what we have been doing) nor communicated to by him anymore?
@@rogerkerr7675 yeah I'm just trying to figure out why a pre eternal omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent entity would create evil in the first place, why wouldn't he stop it, why test people if he already knows.. the bible almost points to free will not actually existing because everything is already known about before the foundations of creation.. also if hes omnipresent then why was he asking Adam and eve in the garden where they were hiding? How was moses able to calm him down and help him change his mind? The bible even points to God repenting like 33 times. Unless the character in the OT isnt actually the true all father. Something that struck me very odd was in the NT satan tells Christ in the wilderness that if he would worship him he would give him dominion over all things because dominion over all things was given to him first and that satan had the authority over earth to give earth to jesus if he would just worship him, and jesus refuses, it appears satan was trying REALLY hard to keep christ from going to the cross, and trying to get christ to take a short cut in gaining his power and authority that he gained through the cross. There also at times look to be 2 different voices in the old testament.. I wonder if there were angels acting on behalf of God that actually told people to messed up things.. as a matter of fact, I dont think the actual fall of satan and angels has fully even happened yet.. could this be why we will one day judge angels? The OT seems to point that angels may have acted on behalf of God or satan.. idk just a theory and thought. Still trying to work all of it out.
God is Love which is why Salvation is a work of God yet more than that, salvation is solely a work of God. Assurance of salvation is possible only if salvation is a work of God alone. If salvation depended upon man’s ability, assurance of salvation would require answering two questions: 1. What works are necessary to meet God’s approval for righteousness? 2. How many works are necessary? No one can answer the above questions therefore assurance of salvation is impossible if salvation depends in any part on a person’s works or good deeds. However, if salvation depends on the work of God and Christ crucified, one can have assurance of salvation. Scriptures is clear that it is impossible for man to gain the approval of God and attain His righteousness through good works. Isaiah wrote, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment” (Isaiah 64.6). This is the Old Testament witness of man’s righteousness before God. Paul summed up the problem when he wrote, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3.23). Only one righteous man has ever lived-Jesus Christ. Only His works satisfied God. The proof of Jesus’ righteousness and the approval of His work on the cross for our sins was His resurrection from the dead (Romans 1.4). Because of Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection, we can have assurance of salvation (1 Corinthians 15.1-4). Paul declared this fact in Romans: But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law (Romans 3.21-28). Continuing a few verses later, Paul wrote, What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.” Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness (Romans 4.1-5). Surely this Scripture is the greatest statement of hope and comfort ever written. It declares divine righteousness is a gift-we cannot work for it. It is for the one who does not work. It is for the one who believes. To the Galatians, Paul wrote, “Nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified ” (Galatians 2.16). “I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly” (Galatians 2.21). Is this clear? Salvation and God’s righteousness is available through trusting Christ-believing He died for you and rose from the dead (1 Corinthians 15.1-4). Each of us has sinned and is unrighteous before God. Only by exercising faith in Christ’s work (His death and resurrection) can one be justified before God. No amount of good works can achieve this. It matters not if you've performed all the good deeds of a Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer as none of these merit God’s approval for salvation. The only way to God is through trusting the work of His Son, Jesus Christ. God desires that all who have put their faith in Christ know that they have eternal life. The Bible declares that “no condemnation” exists for the believer in Christ (Romans 8.1). Some have said the most important thing is to be saved and the second most important thing is to know it. The one who trusts in Christ can be absolutely certain he/she will be in heaven as Christ is. Is this arrogance? No. It's obeying God. It's believing what He has said. Is it presumptuous to depend on Christ’s righteousness? Is it arrogant to believe Christ’s work satisfied the just demands of a holy God to pay the penalty for our sins? Paul wrote that In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace (Ephesians 1.7). Notice his wording. “we have redemption.” God’s redemption and forgiveness of our sins is not something future or something hoped for. It's a present possession of the believer. Salvation doesn't begin when one dies. Salvation begins when one believes the gospel (1 Corinthians 15.1-4). Paul wrote similar words to the Colossians: For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1.13-14). Again, notice the past tense. Rescued from the domain of darkness, transferred to the kingdom of His Son, redemption, and forgiveness are past actions which become present possessions of the believer. They are not future hopes but actions God did in the past when one believed the gospel. In the same way, eternal life is a present possession for the believer (Romans 5.21, 6.22-23; 2 Thessalonians 2.16; 1 Timothy 1.16; Titus 1.2, 3.7). Eternal life does not begin when a believer dies. It begins when he believes. Those who put their trust in Christ have-not will have, but have eternal life. Can eternal life be lost? If you have eternal life, how long does eternal life last? Further testimony to these truths are the following Scriptures: For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2.8-9). But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him (Romans 5.8-9). We begin new life in Christ through trusting in Him and Him alone. No amount of good deeds can approve us to God. Trusting in Christ is believing what God says. The Bible says that Christ died for your sins and was raised from the dead (1 Corinthians 15.1-4). This is the gospel. Will you believe it? Will you trust your life to what it says? Some confuse the simple matter of trusting in Christ with unscriptural appeals to “invite Christ into your heart” or “accept Christ as your Savior.” Such appeals, while well-intentioned, are not the gospel. One is saved by trusting in the Person and work of Jesus on the cross - for us - and in His resurrection-not by “inviting Christ into one’s heart.” Is your trust in the Christ who died for you and was raised for you? Do you trust in Christ’s death and resurrection on your behalf? If the answer is “yes”, then you have God’s own Word and faithfulness that you have eternal life and will spend eternity with Christ. Furthermore, salvation is not something that can be lost because you sin. Jesus’ death solved the sin problem forever. What you do or do not do has no effect on your salvation because it is Christ’s work that is sufficient before God. To believe that you can commit some sin and “lose” your salvation is to believe that your sin is greater than Christ’s work on the cross and the power of His resurrection. Such belief strikes at the very heart of Christ’s work and insults the integrity of God. Salvation is the deliverance from the penalty, power, and presence of sin. This work is both immediate, ongoing, and future. These three aspects of salvation are expressed by theologians as justification, sanctification, and glorification. The moment one believes the gospel (1 Corinthians 15.1-4) one is delivered from the penalty of sin. God imputes his own righteousness and judicially declares the believer to be righteous in his sight (Romans 3.26, 28, 30, 4.5, 5.1). The believer is given a new nature which is alive to God. When one believes he is immediately baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 12.13) and God gives him the Holy Spirit as a deposit or down payment (ἀρραβών), 2 Corinthians 1.22, 5.5; Ephesians 1.14) for the hopeful expectation of being delivered from the power and presence of sin. The process of being delivered from the power of sin while we live on this earth is known as sanctification. The final stage of salvation is being delivered from the presence of sin and is known as glorification. This occurs when the believer receives a new, resurrection body (1 Corinthians 15.50-56).
If evil requires multiple entities to exist, than so does good. You saying “A maximally evil god would be too selfish to create any other beings” is the same as saying “a maximally good god would be too selfless to demand constant worship while allowing people to suffer horrendously”
If a morally good God exists, it wouldn't force anyone to worship it. Hell only exists because people chose NOT to be with God. It's only horrible because you distanced yourself from the source of all good and that's on you. Basically, you're tormenting yourself out of your own free will. That's like you're complaining it's cold and dark when you're actively distancing yourself to a source of warmth and light.
@@celestialmangos8537 Isn't that what you refer to when you said God allowing people to suffer horrendously? That's literally is hell is. God allowed people to suffer horrendously if that is their own choice. Of course, not all suffering is caused by just one factor but by the looks of it, hell is the perfect example of self-harm due to their own choice by continuously denying God.
@@silenthero2795 I agree that Hell is a perfect example of unnecessary suffering, but it has nothing to do with the point I was making. I was comparing the arguments made against an evil god with the arguments made against a good god. Your justification of hell/suffering doesn’t address that, it’s an entirely different discussion.
@@celestialmangos8537 You misunderstand me. I didn't say Hell is an example of unnecessary suffering but rather a justified one since you're doing it of your own free will and no one else. Since it is justified then you couldn't say it is evil and thus cannot be used against a good god. On the contrary, Hell is necessary if a Good god exists.
Great video as always, IP. You never cease to amaze me with your spectacular research. By the way, who is next in the “Jesus vs.” series? I hope that it’s Esus, Tammuz, Quetzalcoatl, Prometheus, Odin, or Thor. I don’t know why I love that series so much.
I see it somewhat differently. An all evil-being would hate everything , including itself. So it would try to destroy itself and since it is omnipotent, it would succedd.
I don't think an omnipotent being would be able to kill himself. But I agree that the self-hate such being would have is enough to disprove the evil God hypothesis. Having an infinite amount of self-hate would mean he's incapable of doing something to fulfill ANY desires he has, even selfish ones. Even if he wanted to create a world full of pain and suffering for his amusement, he wouldn't, because his absolute self-hate would prevent him from actually doing something to fullfill his own desires.
Interesting point. An omnipotent being would certainly be able to commit suicide, as it doesn't contradict any of the being's properties. Swinburne agrees with this. Now, a maximally evil being would likely be both maximally selfish and maximally self-hating, and both of these reasons act in opposite ways as it were. So it's not clear whether he has an overriding reason to kill himself or not.
1.) You could just as easily argue true goodness does not exist, because all cooperative relationships have a transactional component, therefore are not altruistic. 2.) A maximally good God shouldn't need creation either, perfect goodness would depend on nothing to prove or validate it. All goes both ways. 3.) Evil God enjoys your futile protests.
Lmao this is easily debunked… a selfish god doesn’t have to “share” anything by creating a universe to torture…. By creating humans to torture he is selfishly fulfilling his sadistic desires…. So thinking by creating ANYTHING means he’s giving something is incredibly ignorant. He’s not “giving” anything. He’s creating a world of suffering for his own selfish pleasure.
But it would also be narcissistic and pig headed meaning it likely would consider itself as it is to already include anything which could possibly be created
and the christian god isn't selfish? if he's perfect he should be happy on his own? but if he NEEDS humans, he's not perfect is he? we are as necessary as god, so god isn't all that great after all.
So that when humans suffer in the awful world, he can say well I suffered too. It is like him justifying a world full of suffering by saying i experienced worse. Sending his son to be brutally murdered was the only 'loss' an infinite God could experience, and it was only for a weekend. God does not sweat or labour when providing for mankind because he is infinite in power, so he made a story of a fallen creatures, where he could make a 'sacrifice' for a weekend to make it look like he gave something to us and we would then grovel before him giving him glory in a fallen world. In return, we rot all the way to the grave whilst experiencing real loss. Some family we will never see again. They will burn for eternity by your God's standards. Humans are only creatures that face real loss. God though only for a weekend that he was separated from the son, and by his time perspective, what is that? Milliseconds, maybe or less? The question is why if you repent, he doesn't take you to paradise immediately? He does not value the world then why does he force us to live in such an awful place? My bet is this is about his ego, create a world full of pain and suffering, then seeing who grovels before him as they rot all the way to the grave. A bit like Job and his hedge being removed.
Even if you don’t believe a maximal evil being is illogical (which I’m not even sure it is) it doesn’t attack the central critic which is “there is no reason to believe a good god over an god that is not good.” Why believe in an all good god over a corrupted god? You’re focusing too much on the “Omni” part and not on the actual critic.
Also on the point that evil god would be contingent on other beings would make the existence of an evil being less likely, we know we exist so in that has already been fulfilled just by our own existence. So it can’t be less likely to happen since we are already here. Also, if a good god doesn’t rely on the existence of other beings then what’s the point of creating other beings? Especially if that would introduce evil into the world. It would make sense not to create other beings in the first place since that god doesn’t need other beings to be maximally good. What’s the point of creating suffering if it’s not necessary for you to be maximally good. This argument still misses the point of the evil god challenge. It doesn’t matter if the god is maximally evil or kinda evil. An evil god doesn’t have to seek to create the most amount of evil to be considered an evil god. An evil god could get pleasure from the suffering but just because pleasure is good doesn’t mean that the god is good. So why would a good god be more likely than an evil god?
@Inspiring Philosophy. I loved this video, it was brilliantly argued. However, I have a few critiques. 1. I disagree that evil is the lack of good. Pain isn't merely the lack of something, although it is often caused by lacking something. Before they were born, no one was suffering despite the complete lack of pleasure. You may object that people who aren't born don't exist to experience the pain they otherwise would feel. However, people can be conscious and lose good things without suffering. Painkillers can prevent that for example. Thus seeking pain is seeking badness and is therefore evil. 2. Your argument about a Maximally Evil Being, being selfish is interesting, yet I see a flaw. Being selfish is less bad than being malevolent. Being selfish means you care about your well-being, but your well-being is good. If you only cared about causing harm to yourself and others, you would be Maximally Evil. 3. People can seek cruelty for its own sake in the same way they seek others benefit for its own sake. Some have argued that Altruism is an illusion because people who want to help others are doing it because they want to, which means that THEY enjoy helping the person. (Or they would feel guilty for not helping them or whatever.) Thus it is ultimately self interested. However, you could still argue that if you are getting pleasure out of helping the person, your pleasure/desire is directed towards helping that person making it altruistic, especially when your focus is on the other person's well-being not the pleasure you will get out of it. You could have the exact same thing with cruelty. 4. What I said in two should clear up the issue of God needing others. He could just harm himself. Maybe he could be a Trinity with each member hating and torturing each other to!! Therefore he wouldn't need to create the world he would just want to because of his hate. 4. For the argument that God is the ground of moral duties, I suppose all I need to do is redefine the challenge a bit. How do you know God is perfectly loving being rather than a perfectly hateful being? The moral argument wouldn't help since whatever God's nature is, is by definition good on your view. The Ontological argument also cannot help. Why? Because the fact that love is good depends on God being loving. If God was hateful, hate would be good. Thus, if what counts as right and wrong depends on what God's nature is like, then God being all loving cannot be a necessary fact. Since what is morally good depends on God having a certain nature in the first place.
1. Pain is not the same thing as evil. Pain can be good, and pleasure can be evil. 2. But if someone is maximally selfish they would not care to create another being, that was my main point. 3. How? People are cruel for entertainment, pleasure, etc. It always comes with something else. 4. The trinity is not maximally selfish though. i don't see the connection 5. But I argue from Good to a being, not the other way around: th-cam.com/video/Cp9Nl6OUEJ0/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/eFMZF0ygvH8/w-d-xo.html
InspiringPhilosophy. 1. I agree, but can you agree that the intent to inflict unnecessary pain is immoral? And since this intent is directed at something positive, that evil therefore can have a positive form? 2. I agree that if someone was Maximally Selfish they would not care enough to create another being. No question about it. Here is the area of disagreement. I don't think a Maximally Evil Being would be selfish. I think it would want to inflict Maximally suffering on as many beings as possible including itself. I see this as worse then complete selfishness. Selfishness entails that you care about some morally important being yourself. Wanting to torture every being as much as possible including yourself is more evil then even wanting to torture every being except yourself. 3. If your focus is so dead said on causing harm to someone else that you don't focus on the pleasure it brings you that is cruelty for the sake of cruelty. I admit that such things are rare in people who haven't been provoked, but I hope you can see how it could exist. Just like Altruism. 4. It isn't, but I have heard many Christians use the argument that a loving God must have another person to love before he created everything in order to be perfectly good. If God needed created beings to be loving he wouldn't be Maximally Great. This is similar to your argument that a perfectly evil God would require contingent beings to express his cruelty. A similar argument could be made about the Maximally Evil Being having multiple person's in one essence who all torture each other.
InspiringPhilosophy. 5. My main point is that the challenge could be redefined to be "why a not a perfectly hateful God, rather than a perfectly loving one?" For the Ontological argument, I will try to explain my position. I watched the videos you linked. So my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that you believe that love is good because it is God's nature, correct? God isn't good because he is loving, love is good because it is God's Nature. If God's nature was perfect hate that would be moral, correct? So the fact that love is God's nature is logically prior to love being good. Doesn't thus God's nature cannot be fixed as loving because love is good. Rather it is the other way around. I am having a bit of difficulty explaining my thoughts, so let me know if you need any clarification.
A maximally evil god wouldn't be omnipotent. A good God can allow suffering as a consequence of sin, but an evil God would let us no break from torment. The good God gave us free will, so that what we do has a meaning. That's why John Wesley said, that those who deny the freedom of the will portray God as worse than the devil. But this evil god would be pretty lousy in power. He could just throw us in hell right now without waiting. If he wanted us to feel betrayed for believing in him, he could just implant that feeling in us. The existence of joy in live is proof, that an evil god cannot be all powerful, because it makes no sense for him to allow joy. But it makes sense for a good God to allow suffering as a result of freedom of the will.
Iam willing to compromise my position by saying the evil god is not maximally evil rather it has the minimum amount of good in it to know what good is and to want to share existence with other sentient beings where it could gain sadistic pleasures from watching people suffer after giving them freewill. In short the evil god is not all evil rather its more evil than good.
i would say, if you claim your god is maximally perfect and self sufficient. In that case why did it create any other sentient beings in universe to begin with? we all are just image of god, we are from god and not something outside god. If god was self sufficient and perfect it wouldnt even desire to create universe. The fact that it did makes it lacking in some aspects which it tries to fulfil by creating a universe with sentient beings and giving them freewill when in fact nobody was asking to be born in this god's creation to begin with.
@@kartik9892 It would not make sense for a sadistic god to give his creation free will, because they could choose against fighting each other. And is a woman unloving for wanting a child? If a woman has everything, that is good in the world, and she says to her husband: "I want to have children to love, and let us give them everything, that is good for them", would that be unloving? Likewise, God desired to create us, because he has loved us before the universe was even made. And he offered us the best world to live in, but sadly, our ancestors chose to destroy it by obeying the enemy, who had already brought chaos to heaven. Now, we are all infected by this inherited disease called sin, and the only cure is going back to our creator and giving ourselves over to him, that he can make us clean again. But he won't do that, if we don't allow him to do it, because he respects the freedom of our will and the decision we make. He wants to save us from the seperation between us and him, to save us from our death, but if we don't want to be reunited with him, he will respect that.
@agequit "It would not make sense for a sadistic god to give his creation free will, because they could choose against fighting each other" > I can say the same for an all loving god. Let me phrase it the same way: It would not make sense for a good god to give his creation free will, because they could choose it for fighting each other. "If a woman has everything, that is good in the world, and she says to her husband: "I want to have children to love.." > I see a small problem in your statement. In the first statement you said women has everything, in the exact next you say she wants to have children to love. Well the women cant have everything yet want or desire children. Likewise if god is maximally perfect and self-sufficient there is no question of wanting to create. "Likewise, God desired to create us" > There is no us or god. Everything is god. Everything has come from god, there is nothing outside of god. If god desired to create "us" means it wasnt perfect or self-sufficient to begin with. Through creation it wanted to fulfill something it lacked before. As for is that women unloving to want children, in my world view, YES. The one and only guaranteed way to prevent evil befalling children is to not bring them into a world of evil, diseases, crimes, wars, natural disasters, oldage... to begin with. If god was wise and perfect it would realise the same and wouldnt even want to create anything, with that all evil and suffering is prevented and nobody is deprived of anything as to begin with everything is god and everything is perfect. At this point it makes much more sense to me to say if at all a creator("god") exists its more likely an advanced alien civilization who created us for whatever purpose they had. Similar to how we breed chickens, pigs.. in factory farms for our needs.
@@kartik9892 There are multiple problems with your reasoning. 1. Free Will If God didn't give us freedom of the will, our love towards him would be meaningless, because we would be like programmed robots. 2. The woman What I meant, was that the woman has the means to provide for the child, not that she is already perfectly happy with the goods, that she has. Her goods would allow her to provide a good life for the child. 3. Sickness and suffering You are assuming, that God put us in a place full of disease and death. But that is not, what happened. He put us in a perfect place, just like the woman of the comparison would put her child in a perfect place (let us assume, for the comparison's sake, that the woman is able to protect her child from sickness and disease and pain and death). Likewise, God put us in a perfect place and gave us the decision to either live happily in this place or to destroy it. We could have chosen to live happily, but we chose not to. Today, he is again offering us a choice: Do we stay in this disease-infected world full of evil and corruption and die with it, or do we prepare ourselves and others to leave this place and go somewhere, where things are like they used to be, in peace and harmony? And he does not require much of us to go there. He just wants, that we want to go there and let him change us. If our earthly lifestyle, that is out of harmony with life in heaven, is more important to us than the life, that God is offering us, why should he take us there? Why should he take us to a place full of peace and harmony and love, if those are the things, that we hate? If we truly loved those things, we would give ourselves over to God and say, "God, I am not like I should be, please change me", and we would mean it.
Why not the hypothesis that God is both good and evil? All secret societies and ancient religions taught that. Including Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, Hinduism, etc.
Your reason for dismissing the possible evil defined as a privation of good is because baselessly assert that everything by default is good and entirely discounts the possibility of an amoral middle ground. Your shortcomings of a maximally selfish god mirror issues with a maximally powerful god. Why would a perfect being want to create other people? Surely they would be maximally content in their perfection and therefore would never be motivated to create anything. If they want a creation to glorify themselves they must not be maximally great already making their greatness contingent on something else.
Honestly, with the absolute rampance of both natural and human suffering, compared to the compatively little that exists of human goodness, the sort of God that correlates most with our reality is the deist conception of God. A lovecraftian all-powerful force that is wholly unconcerned with the goings on of mankind. And thus, does not interfere. It's one thing to suggest that an intelligence is behind the structure of existence. But it's something else entirely to suggest that something like THAT is actively participating in our daily lives and is doing so benevolently. How do you demonstrate the second claim without resorting to post-hoc reasoning?
@Elijah Carlson And good needs something evil. Positive requires negative. Negative requires positive. This definition of evil fallaciously conflates necessary with sufficient conditions. It is NECESSARY for a state of affairs which is evil to lack net-goodness), but it is not SUFFICIENT. There are countless things which we typically would regard as being neither good nor bad in any kind of moral sense.
2:05 I disagree. The natural state of objects is not inherently good or evil, it is neutral. Furthermore, the objects themselves never become evil, even when used to harm others; it is the person or being doing the action that is doing evil, or at least, doing an evil action.
I think actually that the video maker would agree with your second point. He is saying that the objects themselves are good in and of themselves and never become evil. For example money is good because the more you have the better (because it can be used to pursue pleasure, which is good to pursue because of it being considered good under gods objective moral standard). It never becomes evil though when it is used to inflict harm. It also never becomes evil when someone pursues money by robbing someone. It would be the twisted pursuit of that money (the action of robbing) that would be considered evil under the theists view. Edit: additionally, as to your first view, why would anyone do anything under that view? Why would anyone pursue entertainment for example if entertainment wasn’t good in and of itself, but rather is neutral? “I’m pursuing entertainment because it has a neutral effect on me” seems odd to me. I’m agnostic myself, but I’ve been investigating these theistic arguments and they seem to go a lot deeper than I originally thought.
@@warriorfoe I'm saying nothing is inherently good for the same reason that I'm saying that nothing is inherently bad. Things like pleasure are not inherently good. Pleasure can bring of feelings that makes us feel good, but that doesn't make itself good, only the effect is good. I think you and I may be disagreeing due to differences in definition of good, I think things can be "good for/at ...", e.g. a book can be good for gaining information and fluency in writing. But I don't believe that anything is objectively good, because each object can be used in both good and bad ways. At the end of the day, good and evil are subjective, they are up to how we perceive things. Things can always be "good in order to do that" but the "that" is always different for each person. The reason I originally brought this up is because I think the definition of evil as "an absence of good" is just a cop out of actually explaining evil. I believe that evil exists in the same sense as good exists, it is not an absence of good.
@Lëê Yō I'm not misunderstanding the law of excluded middle. The law of excluded middle does not mean that everything is either black or white. There are things in spectra. I'm arguing that goodness and badness is a spectrum not a black and white dichotomy.
@Lëê Yō If evil is simply an absence of good, then good is simply what is, and evil, what is not. We need good and evil to exist in the same sense in order to make sense of good. Furthermore, things are not inherently good, they are neutral. Things can be good at/for/in order for something else. But they themselves are not good. A knife doesn't become evil once it is plunged into a body, but it also isn't good for the same reason. The privation theory is just playing word games, trying cop out of giving a true explanation. The reason I say it's a spectrum is because good things aren't all on the same level, some are better than others, and same for bad things. I call objects, such as a knife, to be neutral, it can be used for bad things and it can be used for good things. It doesn't depend on the knife, it depends on the user.
My reasoning for believing that God is all good is that God is the only being that truly matters. It does not matter if we think he is evil. He is whatever he wants to be. And if he chooses to be good, he is good. If he is cruel, then cruelty is good.
I have heard someone say that a maximally great being would need to create beings in order to be more loving and, therefore, his attributes are contingent on other beings. What do you think about that?
I disagree, a good MGB would create us for our sake, so we could experience good, it is satisfied by itself, it could have never created us. But it chose to.
@@NationalPK So it's like an intelligent person with no people around him. Just because there is no beings that can know that he is intelligent doesn't mean he is not.
10:15 hold up… can’t this also apply to a morally perfect God? Moral perfection is then also contingent on us being moral? I’m pretty sure im not making sense… but please forgive as i only took philosophy 101 in university…
Yeah... If a God of some sort exists, I'm sure that God is not "evil". It would be far to advanced and above everything for us to judge it so, with our own emotions... It's, to me, like calling black holes evil, or gamma rays evil... It'd make no sense. It's like trying to hold someone morally accountable for stepping on an ant...
@@KEvronista ... not sure I was talking to you... as you don't seam to believe God can't be all evil. My point revolves around the fact that if god is not ALL evil then he must be ALL good. Because all Good people seek to stop evil. And all evil seeks is good things like pleasure for itself. As far as assertions go, I'm not sure that this video does that. It seams to me that GOOD and BAD can only exist in the human mind as "a rock can Know no evil."-Daniel Dontay. and evil is stealing, killing, and destruction. While good is having, living, and being. Meaning it really does need Good to exist as you can't steal something that someone doesn't have. You can't kill someone that isn't alive. And you can't destroy something that doesn't exist. All of which stems from the concept that if God created what is good and evil, why would he chose to make the concept of evil everything that he himself does and is. Why not make everything that is evil, Good in our sight so that evil can abound in plenty?
@@KEvronista don't waste your own time here dude you only have so much of it. Eather converse or don't converse, anything else is self destruction.😄 I'd say that nether of us win, but I'm such a positive person that I doubt I've lost anything, only gained a laugh.
@@KEvronista Religion serves as a positive opiate for countless people. An opiate in which, without, they would live in the world chaotically and downtrodden. I am an atheist, but at least acknowledge the cultural and psychological effect of religion, that does keep weak people from doing bad things.
One thing that might be missing from this argument is having a kind of "dual personality" one. i.e. as you would have the Godhead in 3 persons, one could say that the Evil MGB could exist in two dual personalities, one Good and the other Evil. So the Good side would go off and create all goodness for the Evil side to go and destroy. This is a conflict of interest within the being itself and even if you had the scenario where the good side willingly is obeying the evil side by just creating good things and offers no protection for the evil side to destroy, would the Evil side not be content with the existence of good and would attempt to destroy a part of itself? And even if you had this strange agreement where the evil side cannot destroy the good side you end up with this: a good side that cannot preserve its creation long enough for evil to destroy it and evil can come and completely obliterate it. Yet this is not what we're seeing right now. We see that the universe has had ample time to expand and host life that has developed to the point where people are able to grow in different ways. If such a being existed, no time would have been offered to even reach this point and even if so, the good side of this being would have been powerless to protect its creation from the evil being to totally destroying it. At least this is how I see the argument.
Kind of like how mankind corrupted what was good in the beginning. God created all things in the beginning and it was good. Over and over again in Genesis one that's what we see. Corrupted good.
I have encountered an argument id like for someone to try to tackle. 'God is immoral for creating beings against their will to live in a world full of sorrow pain and suffering.' Any takers?
When God placed Adam into the world, he had good intentions for him, he wanted him to flourish, God never creates a being simply to suffer, Adam's suffering came after the fall, he sinned against God, he did that which was prohibited, there are consequences(evil, death, suffering). You can ask, why would God create such a place knowing everything in advance? To that I say, God creating this world, gave the possibility of evil and suffering, aswell as peace and joy, that follows necessarily from having free will, what gives evil people the right to stop God from creating something, just because they freely, independently from Gods will, choose to be evil? They want suffering, let them have it, how is it fair to prohibit the existence of all the good, simply becuase of the evil? The only fair way is to let both exist, again only because of our choices. In the end, it all comes down to our freedom. God holds no responsibility for the evil we choose to do. Hence he Is not immoral.
@@NationalPK gods all powerful bad people aren’t stopping god from creating good he has full knowledge of who will be bad and who would be good. Also you can’t have good intentions for something you know will do “evil” lmao you can’t have full knowledge that the robot you created will enslave humanity but also have good intentions for it. Also god does create humans to suffer babies die all the time because they were born with a genetic defect that is literally being created to suffer
If evil is a lack of a property, then every theistic argument that doesn't prove God is good supports God being evil, because if goodnes is a property and evil a lack of a property then an evil being is simpler than a good being, and Ockham's razor tells us that simple things are more probable than composite things.
I told Stephen Law this years ago Good and Bad are not symmetrical A maximally great evil also brings back the cartesian demon We could never know whether or not we are being deceived by the maximally evil being. We also would never know if we would need to flip good and bad actions either. For example Selfishness could actually be a good action in the maximally evil god Do we flip all evil actions and make them good? Occams razor says that an evil god has too many questions that remained unanswered and this is not a simple solution.
Looking at the first argument where it’s through the lense of the privation theory worldview (the part with the quote and commentary after), it doesn’t work: -I am unconvinced that “people can be good for the mere sake of goodness” typically it’s a happy feeling you get for being rewarded for doing good, not just completely selflessness that causes it. -badness does not require “good” as in moral good to exist. the word “good” used in that context simply means something of desire, and in the paragraph, it presupposes that desire or pleasure is “good” and i have no clue what they mean by that. why can’t pleasure, or desire, be seen as neutral? it can be spoiled neutrality that makes something bad, and neutrality used for moral virtues that makes something good. -think about the positive virtue of selflessness, or we can think of it as doing a moral action against ones desire or where it even hurts them mentally or physically in some way. In the worldview of this quote, this virtue requires the lack of good in the form of pleasure/desire to be actualized, which would mean it must be in some way evil and moral, right? it doesn’t make sense. We can also think about a scenario in which someone declines a money offer or position of power from humility or indifference, this means the goodness of power or money is taken away or not actualized and can be seen as evil since the quote defines these things as good. those are just some things i found to poke some holes in the logic of that quote for the second argument, you can use the same logic to apply to a maximally moral good in which it holds the virtue of selflessness to its highest extent. since we are not gods, we do not see how maximally selfless god which must exist if he is maximally good
Why maximally great being can't be maximally evil? It is simple: 1. Evil is a privation of good. 2. To be, to exist is a good property. 3. Therefore MGB can't be maximally evil because He simply would have to non-exist, because existence in itself is a good property and therefore he can't exist.
@@KEvronista, good can't be logically shown to be a privation of good. For evil to exist, good must pre-exist before it. We call a conscious act evil if it abuses something which is essentially good. Murder is an abuse of moral sense of justice, theft is an abuse of desire to thrive, lust is an abuse of desire to procreate and so on. There is not a single evil act that can be shown to exist independently either of good intentions or of good end (meaning goals).
@@KEvronista Yes, and therefore it follows that an evil existence will destroy itself, making the notion of a maximal evil god nonexistent and nonsensical.
"evil is merely the absence of good" Try playing devil's advocate in your head for a minute. This argument could easily be flipped on it's head. You could bring up several hypothetical examples to prove that good is merely the absence of evil. If you were in a state that was considered "bad" (for example, being attacked or kidnapped) and you were saved by a bystander, the only reason this act of heroism, or "good" act could even be achieved or occur in the first place is because of the initial "evil" or "bad" force. It seems from this that good is not something that is even possible without an initial corrupting force. Infact, the injured state you were in after this event took place that would typically be considered "bad" from your perspective would be good and feel like a relief, because of the absence of the previous negative influence that was comparitively worse. If you've ever burned your hand on a hot pan and ran it under cold water, you will know this to be true. "Evil actions are always in the pursuit of something good." Wrong. The very existence of psychopaths and sadists disproves this, and the assumption that pleasure is some sort of a higher good makes absolutely no sense from a Christian perspective. Infact, it is often times the opposite that is viewed as good within the Christian religion, examples: various forms of Asceticism, martyrdom, sacrifice, etc. Hell, your god chose to sacrifice his own son in a relatively awful manner instead of just choosing to be merciful and just forgive humanity without all the grotesque unnecessary pageantry. You speak as if pleasure is a form of "good" in trying to prove your point, yet given your previous point that evil is merely the absence of good, would the denial of "sinful" earthly pleasures (which is a practice that most Christians encourage) not be inherently evil if pleasure is an inherently "good" thing (which yes, you did imply by saying that evil people are in pursuit of some sort of good)? You either have to accept that evil isn't just the absence of good, or that people like sadists don't do what they do in pursuit of something that is "good". You can't have both.
I'm not really gonna address the rest of the video because the point of the maximally evil god argument is to show that the idea that the one true God is "all good" or "all loving" is a ridiculous idea that could easily be flipped on it's head.
Anyways, the idea of an "all good, all loving" god is ridiculous, because the very invention of evil as a force is in itself an evil act. If you try to argue that gods invention of evil was an inherently good act, then that would mean that evil in itself is inherently good as it serves the higher good of gods divine plan, and thus there's nothing inherently wrong with evil, and it is no longer evil. Unless you believe that evil is a force that is entirely separate from what you call "god" and isn't under gods preview (which implies there's a higher creator than said god if this is true) there's really no way to reconcile this.
@@Rotisiv angels have free will because Satan was a angel and chose to rebel. Humans are called "preferred creation" because we are in the image of the most high
If God is maximally evil, then where does good come from? Since a maximally evil God wouldn't even know what good is, let alone create good for us so he could take it away. So that means that a maximally evil God and good cannot exist, but a maximally good God and evil can exist, since evil is a corruption of good.
Iam willing to compromise my position by saying the evil god is not maximally evil rather it has the minimum amount of good in it to know what good is and to want to share existence with other sentient beings where it could gain sadistic pleasures from watching people suffer after giving them freewill. In short the evil god is not all evil rather its more evil than good.
i would say, if you claim your god is maximally perfect and self sufficient. In that case why did it create any other sentient beings in universe to begin with? we all are just image of god, we are from god and not something outside god. If god was self sufficient and perfect it wouldnt even desire to create universe. The fact that it did makes it lacking in some aspects which it tries to fulfil by creating a universe with sentient beings and giving them freewill when in fact nobody was asking to be born in this god's creation to begin with.
To say that A MEB couldn’t exist because of his contingent creation seems to be the same as saying that an MGB couldn’t exist because he needs creation to be maximally great through omnibenevolence. Right??
I think I can answer Mr Law in one word, "Death", a totally evil all powerful entity wouldn't allow death, it would keep us in this context of 'being and total confusion' and "enjoy" - If something totally evil can enjoy anything - every second. Imagine being in the likes of Auschwitz with no death, death brings an end and in that end resides HOPE. Hope could not be in the remit of a totally evil entity by definition.
@Allan Lindsay A totally evil all powerful entity wouldn’t allow death, and would send people to a place of eternal torment instead when they die. Sounds a bit like the Christian God, doesn’t it?
@@Kevorama0205 greetings. You speak as though you are a victim and that you have no part in this. Get on your knees with an open heart and mind and ask of the good God for his help in you gaining understanding ask correctly and you will receive the understanding you require. Peace.
@Allan Lindsay I don’t know the right questions. If my mind is closed, I can’t seem to do anything about it. What would you have me do exactly, given that every piece of advice I’ve tried has failed.
@@MohamedAli-nf1rp "if god was all good he wouldnt have made evil in the first place" God made free will, a free society that worships the lord is of higher value than an enslaved society that cannot think for themselves. Unless you want your free will to be stripped of you I suggest you re iterate your argument.
@@kardzYT If god is evil, he would like to spread evil, so he would give man free-will in order to man to be truly evil. If everyone is not free to commit good and evil, no one would be considered evil.
@@kardzYT. No, it's more like he said free will brings with it, the potential for evil as well as good. Without free will, you probably can't be considered truly good but also not truly evil because both good and evil probably requires free choice just to exist. In this case specifically, the evil is in the reason for giving us free will rather than just the free will itself. My own argument against that though is it's probably more evil to do wrong against good beings than it would be to create evil beings for the same purpose.
I reject the dualistic basis of the challenge entirely. Evil is simply insufficiency of goodness, which a rational free will through enough choices will eventually understand and turn away from, whether those choices are bad (causing suffering leading to correction) or good (causing reward leading to reinforcement).
Prof Law, despite being a philosopher doesn't seem to realise he can only pose this so called challenge by presupposing evil has ontological status, and so poses the challenge without meeting this burden if showing that it plausibly does or could. Good video I.P. Cheers mate.
Oh come on... ( by the way, I say that because you've had all this explained to you, and you promptly ignored it and just reposted. You were wrong the first time, and you're wrong now )
Then you say that the properties of the evil God are contingent on creatures existing, well the same goes for the all-good God. He creates creatures to maximize the good and that is contingent on his creation...
Let's switch some words around at 8:55 and see what happens. 1. Any maximally great being (MGB) in any possible world would need to have all their characteristics to the logical maximum. 2. A good MGB in any possible world would have generosity to it's maximum extent. 3. A good MGB in any possible world would not be willing to not share everything being maximally generous and altruistic. 4. A good MGB in any possible world would be capable of not creating anything else. 5. A good MGB in any possible world would have the will to fulfill all of it's creations' needs or even give all of it's creations the same powers it has due to its supreme generosity. 6. A good MGB in any possible world could create something. 7. Something other than fullfillment amongst beings and beings with limited powers exist. 8. Therefore, a good MGB cannot logically exist.
@@chronicmasterbaiter5467 You're hinging your definition of goodness on limited attributes of generosity and altruism. Isn't that arbitrary? Wouldn't goodness, in the holistic sense, also include holiness, justice, prudence, etc...? P5. An MGB would not accommodate any evil wants or enable evil through the distribution of power.
@@zachhecita Well, didn't ip do the same thing when talking about maximally evil being? An evil being would be maximally unjust, and you can't be unjust if there is only one being. The point I was trying to make, is that the argument can be used both ways. Either for the existence of an evil and a good being, or against it, since the attributes used in the argument are so arbitrary, and even contradictory sometimes, as you rightfully pointed out. If your P5 holds, we can eliminate the possibility of few Gods existing like the God of christianity, since it is said that he gives power to man. Romans 13:1-2. And poeple with power do evil things, so by P5 the God of christianity for example does not exist. But this is complitely besides the point, and not the point I was making.
Half agree with u. Evil doesn’t exist, but neither does good. Good and evil are both fairy tales. The subjective opinions we label things we like as (good) or things we don’t like (bad). There is no objective good or evil. U then went on to describe how a world with a maximally evil being would look like. Well, in a world with a maximally good being we should not see any unjust suffering. Yet, innocent children suffer and die every day from things like disease, etc. Even when it comes to animals, they have to rip each other apart just to survive. What kind of good god designs a world like that? If I were to believe in god, it’ll be more so along the lines of a creator- one that is indifferent to human affairs as reality so often shows. It wouldn’t change the fact that morality is subjective- no more than a human concept.
Interesting comment. However if you deny the existence of objective morality then you can’t then invoke the problem of evil. You can’t say good and evil don’t really exist and simultaneously argue that God cannot exist because there’s evil in the world..
Gary Lee What? Yes I can because u believe in both. This doesn’t stop the existence of suffering being a thing. Suffering very much does exist. And by definition, an all loving god would want to mitigate this as much as possible. Yet we don’t see that happening. By all means the problem of ‘evil’ doesn’t rule out a god. Just an all powerful and all loving one. It’s showing contradictions in ur worldview still if u believe both these things. If u accept there is no objective good or evil- then god isn’t a part of that and u basically lose theism. The best u got is possibly deism. I’m basically saying you’re wrong on both accounts. U having these two big problems doesn’t negate the other. Because if u concede either side- u still got the problem.
@@Stuffingsalad Hi... not sure I totally understand your comment, but I'll try to engage. I'm just saying that one cannot simultaneously deny objective good and evil AND also believe evil is incompatible with an all good god. You can't have it both ways. Theists believe in objective morals and and can show that an all good god and evil are not incoherent. "an all loving god would want to mitigate this as much as possible. Yet we don’t see that happening."
Gary Lee Yes, u can show that both of these worldview are incorrect. I’m saying that under the belief of objective morality- which is what theists believe- u suddenly get contradictions on what is objectively good and what ur ‘good’ god actually does. If u concede morality is subjective- then that renders theism useless. It’s purpose is to try and drive objective morality. Accepting it as it being subjective also removed the ‘all loving’ characteristic of god as there is no actual intrinsic quality of it. So at the very most all u have to go with is deism. But let’s say u do believe in objective morality. Well unless u then believe it is loving to sit back and watch millions of children die every year from things like disease and natural disasters when u could have saved them- u have a contradiction. Any honest person wouldn’t see this as loving. I did explain it poorly before but hopefully this clears it all up. Now I’ll address the extra part. Except we are in a position to determine is suffering is being mitigated or not because we can literally observe and show it to be happening... Millions of children die every year to disease and natural disasters. Could ur all powerful god cure these children of their disease or at least make it non fatal? Under that definition he should have that power. If not- he’s not all powerful. And this is where the blind faith comes in... God has a reason for letting millions of children die every year? Let’s break down why this argument doesn’t explain anything. Firstly, an all powerful god would be able to achieve whatever the hell he is trying to achieve without the use of having millions of children suffer... if he can’t- he’s not all powerful. Secondly, this is a blatant dodge to the question. An admission that ‘sure, it sounds stupid and contradictory but I’m sure there’s an answer to it.’ Maybe it’s stupid and contradictory because it is stupid and contradictory... Alluding to the idea that this kind of stuff is just incomprehensible to us is a recipe for gullibility. This wilful ignorance that allows people by the billions to believe what only deluded lunatics could believe on their own. No matter what contradictory evidence there is- put blind faith into believing there is some sort of harmonisation of it. Ignore the facts and pretend there’s some sort of answer. Happily call god good when u experience some bliss but when children by the millions suffer and die call him ‘mysterious’. It’s extremely backwards and one of the laziest excuses I’ve ever heard. Explains nothing- just an empty assertion that somehow an all powerful god couldn’t possibly make things a better way than this- millions of innocents suffering every second of existence. Even tho by definition he could... If there’s some sort of plan he’s working towards by letting all these children die- an all powerful god by definition would be able to achieve this without having them all die too. Do u truly believe that an all powerful god couldn’t have made this world with any less suffering? Sort of like heaven? If u can even in the slightest- like no cancer- then u still have the problem. U r basically admitting now ur god isn’t all powerful- which is one conclusion u could take.
We could presuppose the ontology in the opposite way. Evil is primal and good is either lack of evil or the opposite of evil. Things are intrinsically evil [and their ultimate purpose lies in evil], but can be used for good or feel good. Our intuition about things being intrinsically good is only a construct for you to develop a belief in a good God and have it taken away from you someday. If the Evil God has to be maximally [not infinitely] selfish, while also maximally taking pleasure from torturing and harming other beings, then the result will be creation. Not because he's contingent on creation, but because creation is the natural result of his nature. Even ontological argument could be mirrored, if evil is the greatest, which we lack intuition for, because he's evil and wants us confused.
@christopher snedeker The point is not to just switch words, but to point out you can't just dismiss the idea of the Evil God. And that's just one way to tackle it. Another is to point out that the apparent contradictions come from assertions about that God's psychology and general atributes. I find many of them quite arbitrary [in good and evil versions both] and based more on wishful thinking.
Interesting that an evil lowercase god does exist according to Christianity but God the one above all came into this construct to rescue his people from this evil lowercase god “in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 2 Corinthians 4:4-6
Here's another way you could answer the evil god challenge: Suppose that an omnipotent, omniscient, necessary and maximally evil god exists. We can define good and evil in the following ways: a thing is good if it is the way that it is supposed to be, and evil if it is not. But if god is not the way he is supposed to be, that implies that there is a way that he is supposed to be. But what could be grounding this objective standard? It can't be us because we are subjective, imperfect and contingent. It also cannot be some abstract object since those are impersonal and moral commands/oughts can only ever be given from person to person. Thus, what is supposed to be can only be grounded in an objective lawmaker. Since evil god is maximally evil, this lawmaker would need to be maximally good. Lawmaker would also be necessary, because if he did not exist then evil god would not truly be evil, and since evil god is omniscient he would know that lawmaker would ground him to be evil, and thus would never want to create him. Lawmaker would also need to be omnipotent, since evil god would otherwise eliminate him, so this would prevent him from being eliminated. Omnipotence also implies omniscience, since being able to do all logically possible would imply being able to know all true statements. Thus, we have two omnipotent, omniscient and necessary beings, one who is maximally good and the other its polar opposite. However, if there were multiple gods they would be in constant conflict with one another, limited by the other's omnipotence, less fundamental than the framework of necessary beings and violate occam's razor. Thus it would simply be more parsimonious to have one god and not more. But if we eliminate lawmaker, we would end up back at the start. Evil god could not be grounded as maximally evil without lawmaker. Therefore we must eliminate evil god, because a good lawmaker does not entail an evil god. Thus, an evil god would imply a good god, and so the evil god challenge is self-defeating.
So , raping torturing, beating and murdering little children and drinking their blood is not totally wicked ? You have a lot to learn i@i and learn it through YESHUA !!
I know this is two years old, but it came to me that you forgot something very important about the maximally selfish being: why wouldn't this hypothetical being want to create something that would worship it and be in awe of its presence?
If it created beings that would worship it and be in awe of its presence then that would mean it must first, share existence with said beings. If it is maximally selfish then it would never want to share existence with anything or anyone. Even if they were to worship it.
@@jacobrainey8044 you cant be selfless without anyone else. I mean if the most selfish person in the world was in a prision cell alone, who the hell would they be selfish towards? They are the only one who eats so they cant share or keep food, they cant steal money because THERE is no money, so how can they be selfish or selfless in this scenario?
Even in His complete sovereignty, God can choose to limit Himself at times and allow things to go on. Jesus calmed the storm displaying a control over the natural world whenever and however He wants to.
Hey, IP. Reading Law, he does not seem to actually support the thought experiment. He says further that both the amount of good/evil in the wolrd makes both the case of any God "unreasonable". So this thought experiment is just the problem of evil in discise. You did not need to argue that such a being is impossible but this should be a good resource to those who have heard the thought experiment.
I guess the proponent of the Evil God challenge would just challenge you to support privatio boni as opposed to its opposite (that good is just a privation of evil).
@@KEvronista He already showed that good cannot be the privation of evil and if there is going to be any privation it will be evil as privation. Good things can exist in and of themselves, and people can do good things for the sake of goodness. I can give to charity or be chaste even if I'd rather not but purely because I know it's the right thing to do, no one is evil for the sake of evil, no one kills even if they don't want to simply because it's the wrong thing to do, that doesn't happen. So it seems that evil is the privation of good.
@soundwave86 I literally put the timestamp in the post. Did he ask what that meant? Did he say " I don't understand that, can you explain? " Nope If you require a more detailed explanation then I'm more than happy to explain, but as I pointed out, he doesn't seem interested in learning anything. Interestingly you've shown zero interest in whether there's a lie as well. In fact you've argued that presenting a literal timestamp means not even trying. And no I didn't say it was full of lies, I said the lies started before it even hits the 90 second mark. But hey, who cares right?
Criminals often see the judge as unjust.
Steve Gracy
Yeah but in the of the criminal the judge is actually just. Good people would see this.
@Cegesh
Hi!
*You can't make the laws and play judge yourself.*
You're totally right! And that's because we're wicked humans. If you're God, thus - you're perfectly moral, loving and just by nature, can't be evil, omniscient and almighty, you're THE Judge.
*Especially not contradicting and evil laws.*
Contradicting laws? Can you bring examples, please? :)
*allowing slavery*
The Mosaic covenant wasn't and never was meant to be God's ultimate standard. Rather, it's a temporary compromise he made with a very immoral society, in order to point for a higher standard on one hand, and not ''throwing the Israelites straight to the deep water'' on the other.
The fact that God allowed polygamy and slavery in the Mosaic covenant doesn't mean that he views it as good. The point of the slavery laws was - if you already have slaves, treat them morally. Later, in God's real standard - the new covenant - Paul writes:
''For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. [...] there is neither slave[a] nor free [...] for you are all one in Christ Jesus'' (Galatians 3:26-28).
In fact, the Israelite slavery laws were a huge improvement compares to what was around there in that time. Owners were able to murder slaves as they wish, but in the Torah - you can beat your slave only so that tomorrow he'll be able to work. Owners were able to throw their pregnant female slaves to starve to death, but in the Torah, they must give them all of their needs, to marry her to his son, or to free her without her paying ransom. As an Israelite slave owner, you had to free your slave after 6 years, unless he wanted to stay with you forever. Compares to the other ancient cultures, those are very moral laws.
*burning you for eternity*.
A crime committed against an eternal, perfect God desires an eternal, perfect punishment.
I hope I answered your questions. Thank you for posting and have a nice day! :D
So if you kill another human being in self defense (which im pretty sure isnt allowed by god) you get ethernal burning and torture, Seems a bit fucking extreme. But hey he's PERFECT RIGHT. He made us, he made humans, The very beings you say are, how did you put it, ah yes: Wicked. he's perfect yet royally fucked up making us. Alot of humans are not fucked up because of their choice but because of certain genetic conditions which GOD is for some reason allowing, do they get treated the same as other humans or is it not their fault in gods eye. Where is the line. There are too many questions and not enough awnsers and the ones we have are absolute bullshit. Either god is a complete retard, Or he is an asshole or he just doesnt give a shit. But keep believing fairy tails.
jesse vw
All of humanity was condemned by the law (ie “the 10 commandments”). God is PERFECT. You and I are NOT. That is why He gave the law in the 1st place. It is a mirror that cry’s out, not worthy.
Jesus Christ is God who carried the weight of humanities sins, failure, and evil. He had NO sin of His own. WHY? Love! For humanity, created in His image.
Why the need? God is real. So is the devil. The devil thought he had enough power to over through the “Ancient of Days”. That’s power. At the cross of Christ God Himself unraveled Satan’s plans.
I knew that there was a devil before I followed God. God whispered to my mind...Satan is power...”don’t follow second best.”
My (Internet) friend, you are sinner like me, hell is real, you are condemned, God loved mankind unwilling that he should die, God is HOLY you would melt in his presence, Jesus made an escape at the cross. By trusting in His atonement alone, you and I can be rescued from hell and given eternal life. True story.
And (going back to your original statement) if someone tries to kill you and you must shoot them to save your life or the life of someone you love, shoot them a lot. Unless that person is a police officer, than lay down your firearm and surrender.
Mandolin Joe you completely misinterpreted that verse, it simply says that God "IS" not a man nor a son of man (it NEVER said that God CANNOT BECOME a man or a son of man) if God is ALMIGHTY/OMNIPOTENT then he is not limited in any way.
besides, in what way is God not a man or a son of man?
It says "God is not a man that HE SHOULD LIE nor a son of man that HE SHOULD REPENT, and Jesus christ never LIED or REPENTED? and Jesus Christ is "THE" Son Of Man not "a" son of man, Jesus Christ is "THE" Son of Man mentioned in Daniel 7:14 who will be worshipped by every nation tribe and language like God and who will "come in the clouds of heaven" (Daniel 7:13) Jesus himself said " and you will see THE Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN.” Mark 14:62.
C. S. Lewis was simply a genius. I started reading "Mere Christianity" and although I'm not a fan of the Moral argument, I like his comparisson with a straight and a crocked line.
I like his morality argument just fine, it's perfect, but I have no idea what a straight vs crooked line has to do with anything.
The moral argument is one of the soundest argument. Not everyone can wrap their head around other argument, but the moral argument seem to do that, even though some atheists not understand
@@raphaelfeneje486
I think that atheists pretend not to understand. It is manifestly true that "without God, anything is permissible", to quote a Dostoyevsky character.
Nobody can fashion a moral code based on his personal opinions, sorry.
@@sliglusamelius8578 Exactly! They tend to use a morality founded on religion to argue against Christianity altogether
Michael, thanks god you exist to enrich my wisdom and my view on theism. God bless you!
That c s Lewis text was overwhelming!
Very true words.
Thank you for the video !
@@KEvronista....More proof that you are brainwashed and deluded.
atheism is the religion of hate.
Idiot atheist w8 what?
I don’t understand the comment...
what proofs that I am brainwashed ?
And by whom ?
And why do you think atheism is a religion of hate ?
Can we call the absence of religion, atheism, even as religion ?
@@Serenity5460...You are confused. I addressed KEvronista.
@@wmthewyld all religions are religions of hate; it's what they do.
@@hoodaticus This proves that you are a noob atheist
Evil destroys even itself.
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
A maximal evil god is a nonstarter.
But Jimmy Savile lived to a ripe old age,.
Nonesense, if evil destroys itself than all evil would have destroyed itself already and there would be no evil In the world, a bit counter intuitive to the conditions of reality today wouldn’t you say? Perhaps you shouldn’t selectively pick a single piece of an entire fully formed philosophical idea for this exact purpose.....
@@chudchewer2548
What is nonsense is assuming all evil would have destroyed itself already... Why should it have?
Indeed evil destroys even itself. Also let us not forget this was an evil god challenge... hence a maximal evil god is a nonstarter.
clean sl8 not my problem, you made the nonsense claim, than apparently just acknowledged the nonsense of it. Do you even need me for this? Lol you seem to have it handled all by yourself
@@chudchewer2548
I based my conclusion that "A maximal evil god is a nonstarter" on the premise of Aristotle and that "Evil destroys even itself". If you grant Aristotle the conclusion is logical and we have a solution to the evil god challenge.
I'm triggered by the fact that you only had 6 doves rather than 7 doves surrounding the Good God
HAHA I was thinking the same thing.
@UCantHandleTheTruth3 no it isn't. It's just pretty geometry.
@Smash Boy research it. Soloman had it on his ring, seal of soloman and he used it in his pagan worship and used it to summon Angel's and demons, this is WELL known. Just research it, it's that simple.
Why would a maximally great being be maximally evil?
Evil needs good to exist, the same way a lie needs truth to exist.
So if God is maximally evil, then that's not really logical, because He would need a prexistent moral good (that He didn't create) in order to warp and distort it.
Edit: I wrote this before watching the video. Amazing how my argument resonated with yours, IP.
@@KEvronista ...Thanks for proving you lack common sense, logic and reason.
atheism is the religion of hate.
Samuel Hunter by definition that’s his nature a perfect being
@@wmthewyld thanks for sounding like a crazy zealot.
@@jd2792 ...Thanks for proving you are brainwashed and deluded.
atheism is the religion of hate.
@Artur Ferrão
Nazi's weren't theists either.
They believed in Adolf Hitler, who believed in Darwinian Philosophy or the survival of the superior species. Which is why he sought out to wipe out Jews.
Adolf did believe in a God, but of His own making. The Bible calls that idolatry. Making up a god that you're comfortable with.
Thanks for this, too much of our pop culture seems to accept it as a given that evil is something with substance by itself, as opposed to a privation of good.
my evil acts are doing you a favour, you should be grateful.
Definitely an influence from eastern cultures
When somebody stands before a judge they will see that judge as evil. Especially when they know they are guilty of the charges against them. God is that righteous judge and people don't like being told that not only what they are doing is wrong but can also face eternal judgement for it.
Many things that are sinful, people see as normal everyday things because that is the nature of humanity. Ever since the fall in the garden.
That’s very true!
And sometimes the judge is actually evil, and we are right to object. Yet God is not allowed to be questioned no matter what, and the subjugated are told that they are being judged fairly regardless.
Kevin Allen
That’s a very True statement. But in this case god is the good judge.
@Peter Salucci Yes, an evil judge would claim to be a good judge. Not a very good reason to believe him.
Kevin Allen
True again but not god
God is love and he is also a God of wrath and judgement who hates sin. He is also holy so he is certainly not evil.
@@KEvronista ...Thank you for proving you are brainwashed and deluded.
atheism is the religion of hate.
KEvron, YOU SAY: “god is hate. he is unholy and evil.”
RESPONSE: What standard/criterion (if any) did you use to ascertain and support your conclusion above? Also is your claim above subjectively or objectively true?
Um No if God is not a God of wrath then why do we have the book of Revelation? His wrath is always tempered with love but he does have wrath. Why? Because he is a holy God and he is not neutral concerning sin.
Um No God is love and God is also holy.
1 Peter 1:15-16
But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
1 Peter 1:16
Since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
Isaiah 6:3
And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
Isaiah 57:15
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.
Psalm 96:9
Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth!
Leviticus 19:2
“Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
Ephesians 1:4
Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love.....
Hebrews 12:14
Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
Um No God's wrath, because God hates sin. Why? Because sin separated us from him and destroys our lives and the lives of those around us.
Romans 1:18
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
John 3:36
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Of course, people such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris will always argue that the God of the Bible is evil (mainly because of actions in the Old Testament). But because it’s logically impossible for an all evil god to exist, how could they argue for this? If God was simply evil because he was created my mankind, what does that say about human beings? You would have basically told me that evil men came up with the idea of a good God in order to do evil. The whole argument falls apart.
Anyways, thanks for the new video. I’m recently new to this channel and have been starting to study on theology and apologetics in order to strengthen my relationship with God and Jesus. God bless.
also there Arguments are flawed asf trust me they cant argue for shit they never Show proof david Wood literally exposed that bitch sam harris on sam beliving in the NT saying Jesus wanted to kill somebody LMFAO
@@KEvronista ...More proof you are brainwashed and deluded.
atheism is the religion of hate.
@Garrett Lank It is also logically impossible for a being to be all good. Good is just the absence of evil, a restoration of natural chaos into order. The same argument applies.
Garrett Lank I think you might like this pastor channel too
th-cam.com/users/bbcienglish
@Man lol The innocent child knows neither good nor evil. That's why it's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden, not just the tree of knowledge of evil. If one knows what is good, one automatically knows what is evil. One might eat a cookie, and say "this is good", but one could equally easily eat a rotten egg, and say "this is bad". Every time you give your child affection, I can treat mine badly. Every time you let them play a game, I can lock them in an empty room. My child will experience equal evil to your child's experienced good. A child knows how to cry just as easily as it knows how to smile.
"Whether you like it or not, you know this standard naturally, just like the standard of just and unjust, 'you don't call a line crooked unless you have the idea of a straight line' and God is that standard"
The standard I know naturally tells me Hell is incredibly unjust. The Christian God is not that standard. We call a line crooked only when we know about straight lines, but we call things evil before we ever even hear about any God concept. We are not comparing to any God when we call things evil. If we were, we would not be so divided on abortion, for example. We would compare to God and get the same answer.
I would like to say thank you to InspiringPhilosophy, JMDapologetics101, and other Christian apologetic channels for providing evidence for God’s existence in arguments that I could’ve never even expect were supportive of Christianity. You really do deserve to be fully funded. It’s a shame that atheists like RR have to sell card games and appeal to authority in order to try and get a point across when it really gets them nowhere. Sorry for the ramble, but seriously, thank you.
I'm not sure about RR specifically, but usually it's the people who have a higher authority that tend to appeal to it, rather than atheists who tend to not report to a higher supernatural authority. Too often do I find an appeal to authority in Christians that think God gets special treatment in the fallacious appeal to authority.
@@trevorbrooks7816 There's always an appeal to authority when we are talking about ultimate standards. In the example of science, it doesn't prove logic but rather presupposes it.
But this isn't to say that you can't lend credibility to God in the scriptures from things outside of them. That's very easy to do, considering creation, Christian philosophy, and moral absolutes.
And this is aside from the fact that if one appeals to their own reasoning faculties alone, that's an appeal to authority, especially in those who claim to be "neutral." Intellectual neutrality is another word for appealing to your own fallen intellect, biased in favor of sin.
@@noahm44 since an understanding of Christianity is derived from ones own experiences, christianity also presuppose logic and that experiences aren't illusions. Création is not proof, it's a supposition. There is no good reason to think we were created. Moral absolutes don't exist, and i feel like the breadth of philosophy academia is a demonstration of a lack of consistency in interpretations of morality
God is completely free. God is not good because he has to, He is good because He wants to. And we ought to thank Him for that.
As a deist, I very much appreciate this video, even if I disagree with some of his other videos
Thats interesting . Just a question . Do deists belive in things such as an afterlife , salvation etc. Couldnt find anything on the net
@@l00md55 Deists recognize that our universe was designed by a divine intelligence, but they think he left us totally on our own regarding big questions.
I pray they all recognize that Christ is Lord before the judgment day comes.
If God is all evil and omnipotent and omniscient then none of us would probably live a single day because he would snuff us out in an instant. That's just going without saying anything about what the Bible says regarding Jesus Christ and sending a sacrifice for our sins or any of that. Obviously that shows us that God loves us but even aside from that I think it's pretty easy to reckon that an all-powerful God who is all evil would certainly not allow us to have any good thing in life. How easily he could make us all barren and not allow us to produce another child. Or allow every child that is born to die so that the human race would be snuffed out of existence.
@Steve Parks If the human race were snuffed out, there would be no more suffering, so an evil entity would want to keep us around as long as possible.
Of course, he also might think free will is the most terrible curse, so he wouldn’t want to take that away from us by doing more evil.
It’s funny how easily the arguments can be reversed to support anything.
Kevin Allen interesting that you would say that ending the human race would end suffering. That's pretty much the premise for the teaching of God's love behind his judgment. That his judgement will indeed put an end to the suffering of the human race.
@Steve Parks You said an evil God would want as all dead. The Christian God wants that, both when he sentenced us to it in the beginning, and when he's going to finish us off in the end (according to doctrine).
It seems like every "but an evil God would do X" can be easily addressed by "the Christian God does X", which is not very supportive of this video's point.
Kevin Allen but an "evil God" would not come down to the Earth to shed his own blood as a sacrifice for the sins of the world so that mankind would have the opportunity for redemption. He did that for us so that we wouldn't have to eternally perish.
@Steve Parks An omnipotent God wouldn’t have to do that to save us from an eternal torment he created. In fact, an omnipotent God cannot actually sacrifice anything. An evil God would have every reason to put on a show to demonstrate his “goodness”, despite it being absolutely effortless, because human beings obviously eat that stuff up.
If God had actually died and stopped existing, now that would be an impressive sacrifice. But that’s nowhere to be found in Christian doctrine, unfortunately.
There is also the fact that one of the characteristics of "evil" is destructiveness. Therefore, a maximally evil god should also be maximally destructive, and the highest form of destruction is "self-destruction". Therefore, such a being, would self destruct the moment itself it came into existance, and if it was above time, it would either exist and self destruct at the same time for eternity, and that is illogical, or simply not exist.
I appreciate this! This was always how I've even read the old testament as well as human history. . All GOOD enthrones itself in the highest of heavens. Human beings are STILL giving blatant disregard to the very Moral Law within, thereby bringing the opposing force of life sustained; decay and death. From the garden...
No matter the disagreements to this, It is us that became janky through disregard.. As Athanasius of Alexandria put it: "Can you really answer for what exactly was God to do? His own Handiwork just disregarded Him.. "
Instead of collapsing the universe in on itself.. He chose and even foreknew that ultimately He wanted a free-choice, moral agency to choose the "Palace life" without force-keeping us like a bitter old woman of royalty, never allowing her daughter to experience the "real world"...
Wow. Great job explaining that! 👍
explaining aqway god's evilness is what these guys do.
Closing your mind off to the truth is what you lot do.
Well done. Very clean.
'There must be something good first before it can be spoiled'
@Kenny Couch There must be something evil first before it can be blessed.
@Trolltician nope. Try again.
@Trolltician You could start by just actually addressing what I said instead of just saying it’s wrong.
@Trolltician I made an argument. You still haven’t. At least I’m attempting to use logic. You’re just ignoring it.
@@Kevorama0205 The problem with your response-"There must be something evil first before it can be blessed"-is that it attempts to overlook the logically prior truth that evil cannot be achieved without pre-existing, ruined good.
If God was maximally evil he would not have died for us.
The fact that he hasn't wiped us out or left us after all the crap he seen just shows us that he is a loving God.
i mean, he almost did that once. and some do claim that God(if he exists) has forsaken mankind and left us for our own. but i tend to agree with you there.
@@jonathacirilo5745 don't you think what you said is also applicable on the argument that god left us on our own? That's why we are not touched(despite what we have been doing) nor communicated to by him anymore?
@@naimas8120 maybe
@@jonathacirilo5745 it was taught to us in a Christian conference, it is called Deism according to the lecturer.
@@naimas8120 kinda late, but yeah, i know about it.
Great video, IP!
In Isaiah 45:7 it says that God creates Good and Evil. In Psalm 78.49 it says GOD sent evil angels among them.
Amen. I've been scrolling through comments of pure opinion until yours.
@@rogerkerr7675 yeah I'm just trying to figure out why a pre eternal omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent entity would create evil in the first place, why wouldn't he stop it, why test people if he already knows.. the bible almost points to free will not actually existing because everything is already known about before the foundations of creation.. also if hes omnipresent then why was he asking Adam and eve in the garden where they were hiding? How was moses able to calm him down and help him change his mind? The bible even points to God repenting like 33 times. Unless the character in the OT isnt actually the true all father. Something that struck me very odd was in the NT satan tells Christ in the wilderness that if he would worship him he would give him dominion over all things because dominion over all things was given to him first and that satan had the authority over earth to give earth to jesus if he would just worship him, and jesus refuses, it appears satan was trying REALLY hard to keep christ from going to the cross, and trying to get christ to take a short cut in gaining his power and authority that he gained through the cross. There also at times look to be 2 different voices in the old testament.. I wonder if there were angels acting on behalf of God that actually told people to messed up things.. as a matter of fact, I dont think the actual fall of satan and angels has fully even happened yet.. could this be why we will one day judge angels? The OT seems to point that angels may have acted on behalf of God or satan.. idk just a theory and thought. Still trying to work all of it out.
God is Love which is why Salvation is a work of God yet more than that, salvation is solely a work of God. Assurance of salvation is possible only if salvation is a work of God alone. If salvation depended upon man’s ability, assurance of salvation would require answering two questions: 1. What works are necessary to meet God’s approval for righteousness? 2. How many works are necessary? No one can answer the above questions therefore assurance of salvation is impossible if salvation depends in any part on a person’s works or good deeds. However, if salvation depends on the work of God and Christ crucified, one can have assurance of salvation.
Scriptures is clear that it is impossible for man to gain the approval of God and attain His righteousness through good works. Isaiah wrote, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment” (Isaiah 64.6). This is the Old Testament witness of man’s righteousness before God. Paul summed up the problem when he wrote, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3.23). Only one righteous man has ever lived-Jesus Christ. Only His works satisfied God. The proof of Jesus’ righteousness and the approval of His work on the cross for our sins was His resurrection from the dead (Romans 1.4). Because of Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection, we can have assurance of salvation (1 Corinthians 15.1-4). Paul declared this fact in Romans: But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law (Romans 3.21-28).
Continuing a few verses later, Paul wrote, What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.” Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness (Romans 4.1-5). Surely this Scripture is the greatest statement of hope and comfort ever written. It declares divine righteousness is a gift-we cannot work for it. It is for the one who does not work. It is for the one who believes. To the Galatians, Paul wrote, “Nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified ” (Galatians 2.16). “I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly” (Galatians 2.21). Is this clear? Salvation and God’s righteousness is available through trusting Christ-believing He died for you and rose from the dead (1 Corinthians 15.1-4).
Each of us has sinned and is unrighteous before God. Only by exercising faith in Christ’s work (His death and resurrection) can one be justified before God. No amount of good works can achieve this. It matters not if you've performed all the good deeds of a Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer as none of these merit God’s approval for salvation. The only way to God is through trusting the work of His Son, Jesus Christ. God desires that all who have put their faith in Christ know that they have eternal life. The Bible declares that “no condemnation” exists for the believer in Christ (Romans 8.1). Some have said the most important thing is to be saved and the second most important thing is to know it. The one who trusts in Christ can be absolutely certain he/she will be in heaven as Christ is. Is this arrogance? No. It's obeying God. It's believing what He has said. Is it presumptuous to depend on Christ’s righteousness? Is it arrogant to believe Christ’s work satisfied the just demands of a holy God to pay the penalty for our sins? Paul wrote that In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace (Ephesians 1.7). Notice his wording. “we have redemption.” God’s redemption and forgiveness of our sins is not something future or something hoped for. It's a present possession of the believer. Salvation doesn't begin when one dies. Salvation begins when one believes the gospel (1 Corinthians 15.1-4). Paul wrote similar words to the Colossians: For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1.13-14). Again, notice the past tense. Rescued from the domain of darkness, transferred to the kingdom of His Son, redemption, and forgiveness are past actions which become present possessions of the believer. They are not future hopes but actions God did in the past when one believed the gospel. In the same way, eternal life is a present possession for the believer (Romans 5.21, 6.22-23; 2 Thessalonians 2.16; 1 Timothy 1.16; Titus 1.2, 3.7). Eternal life does not begin when a believer dies. It begins when he believes. Those who put their trust in Christ have-not will have, but have eternal life. Can eternal life be lost? If you have eternal life, how long does eternal life last? Further testimony to these truths are the following Scriptures: For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2.8-9). But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him (Romans 5.8-9).
We begin new life in Christ through trusting in Him and Him alone. No amount of good deeds can approve us to God. Trusting in Christ is believing what God says. The Bible says that Christ died for your sins and was raised from the dead (1 Corinthians 15.1-4). This is the gospel. Will you believe it? Will you trust your life to what it says? Some confuse the simple matter of trusting in Christ with unscriptural appeals to “invite Christ into your heart” or “accept Christ as your Savior.” Such appeals, while well-intentioned, are not the gospel. One is saved by trusting in the Person and work of Jesus on the cross - for us - and in His resurrection-not by “inviting Christ into one’s heart.” Is your trust in the Christ who died for you and was raised for you? Do you trust in Christ’s death and resurrection on your behalf? If the answer is “yes”, then you have God’s own Word and faithfulness that you have eternal life and will spend eternity with Christ. Furthermore, salvation is not something that can be lost because you sin. Jesus’ death solved the sin problem forever. What you do or do not do has no effect on your salvation because it is Christ’s work that is sufficient before God. To believe that you can commit some sin and “lose” your salvation is to believe that your sin is greater than Christ’s work on the cross and the power of His resurrection. Such belief strikes at the very heart of Christ’s work and insults the integrity of God. Salvation is the deliverance from the penalty, power, and presence of sin. This work is both immediate, ongoing, and future. These three aspects of salvation are expressed by theologians as justification, sanctification, and glorification. The moment one believes the gospel (1 Corinthians 15.1-4) one is delivered from the penalty of sin. God imputes his own righteousness and judicially declares the believer to be righteous in his sight (Romans 3.26, 28, 30, 4.5, 5.1). The believer is given a new nature which is alive to God. When one believes he is immediately baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 12.13) and God gives him the Holy Spirit as a deposit or down payment (ἀρραβών), 2 Corinthians 1.22, 5.5; Ephesians 1.14) for the hopeful expectation of being delivered from the power and presence of sin. The process of being delivered from the power of sin while we live on this earth is known as sanctification. The final stage of salvation is being delivered from the presence of sin and is known as glorification. This occurs when the believer receives a new, resurrection body (1 Corinthians 15.50-56).
god is good.god give us free will.
That has nothing to do with him being good
If evil requires multiple entities to exist, than so does good. You saying “A maximally evil god would be too selfish to create any other beings” is the same as saying “a maximally good god would be too selfless to demand constant worship while allowing people to suffer horrendously”
If a morally good God exists, it wouldn't force anyone to worship it. Hell only exists because people chose NOT to be with God. It's only horrible because you distanced yourself from the source of all good and that's on you. Basically, you're tormenting yourself out of your own free will. That's like you're complaining it's cold and dark when you're actively distancing yourself to a source of warmth and light.
@@silenthero2795 When did I mention Hell?
@@celestialmangos8537 Isn't that what you refer to when you said God allowing people to suffer horrendously? That's literally is hell is. God allowed people to suffer horrendously if that is their own choice. Of course, not all suffering is caused by just one factor but by the looks of it, hell is the perfect example of self-harm due to their own choice by continuously denying God.
@@silenthero2795 I agree that Hell is a perfect example of unnecessary suffering, but it has nothing to do with the point I was making. I was comparing the arguments made against an evil god with the arguments made against a good god. Your justification of hell/suffering doesn’t address that, it’s an entirely different discussion.
@@celestialmangos8537 You misunderstand me. I didn't say Hell is an example of unnecessary suffering but rather a justified one since you're doing it of your own free will and no one else. Since it is justified then you couldn't say it is evil and thus cannot be used against a good god. On the contrary, Hell is necessary if a Good god exists.
Great video as always, IP. You never cease to amaze me with your spectacular research.
By the way, who is next in the “Jesus vs.” series? I hope that it’s Esus, Tammuz, Quetzalcoatl, Prometheus, Odin, or Thor. I don’t know why I love that series so much.
I plan to get to Tammuz this summer.
Thank you.
I see it somewhat differently. An all evil-being would hate everything , including itself. So it would try to destroy itself and since it is omnipotent, it would succedd.
I don't think an omnipotent being would be able to kill himself. But I agree that the self-hate such being would have is enough to disprove the evil God hypothesis. Having an infinite amount of self-hate would mean he's incapable of doing something to fulfill ANY desires he has, even selfish ones. Even if he wanted to create a world full of pain and suffering for his amusement, he wouldn't, because his absolute self-hate would prevent him from actually doing something to fullfill his own desires.
Interesting point. An omnipotent being would certainly be able to commit suicide, as it doesn't contradict any of the being's properties. Swinburne agrees with this. Now, a maximally evil being would likely be both maximally selfish and maximally self-hating, and both of these reasons act in opposite ways as it were. So it's not clear whether he has an overriding reason to kill himself or not.
@@jsupim1
So a maximally evil god would both, simultaneously, want to kill itself and refuse to kill itself. I think.
@@jsupim1 not sure about that. said being wouldn't be eternal and infinitely beyond things like death?
@@jonathacirilo5745 Why? I can equally well say that such a being could be infinitely far beyond things like life, or beyond eternal life.
Thank you, i was struggling that, what if god is not good, but evil. But now i know that we are in good hands for sure
another great breakdown sir, thank you. Cheers.
Goodness is goodness. Evil is the perversion of goodness
1.) You could just as easily argue true goodness does not exist, because all cooperative relationships have a transactional component, therefore are not altruistic.
2.) A maximally good God shouldn't need creation either, perfect goodness would depend on nothing to prove or validate it. All goes both ways.
3.) Evil God enjoys your futile protests.
Lmao this is easily debunked… a selfish god doesn’t have to “share” anything by creating a universe to torture…. By creating humans to torture he is selfishly fulfilling his sadistic desires…. So thinking by creating ANYTHING means he’s giving something is incredibly ignorant. He’s not “giving” anything. He’s creating a world of suffering for his own selfish pleasure.
8:30
5. Evil MGB would have the will to create anything for himself due to its supreme selfishness.
But it would also be narcissistic and pig headed meaning it likely would consider itself as it is to already include anything which could possibly be created
and the christian god isn't selfish? if he's perfect he should be happy on his own? but if he NEEDS humans, he's not perfect is he? we are as necessary as god, so god isn't all that great after all.
@@HarryNicNicholas he would be happy on his own, however, his maximum selflessness would cause him to create our beings, so they can be happy as well
@@jarrettludolph6000 He even sacrificed himself and temporarily took away his godhood for us to be saved
The irony of an "Evil god" hypothesis is that we are forced to refer to this creature as an "Ungodly god". Wonderfully done, thank you, IP!
Why would a maximally evil Being come down as a human, wash the feet of His creatures and die a gruesome death so they can enjoy eternal life?
To give humans false hope lmao. He killed himself for a weekend it isn’t a sacrifice lmao
So that when humans suffer in the awful world, he can say well I suffered too. It is like him justifying a world full of suffering by saying i experienced worse. Sending his son to be brutally murdered was the only 'loss' an infinite God could experience, and it was only for a weekend. God does not sweat or labour when providing for mankind because he is infinite in power, so he made a story of a fallen creatures, where he could make a 'sacrifice' for a weekend to make it look like he gave something to us and we would then grovel before him giving him glory in a fallen world. In return, we rot all the way to the grave whilst experiencing real loss. Some family we will never see again. They will burn for eternity by your God's standards. Humans are only creatures that face real loss. God though only for a weekend that he was separated from the son, and by his time perspective, what is that? Milliseconds, maybe or less?
The question is why if you repent, he doesn't take you to paradise immediately? He does not value the world then why does he force us to live in such an awful place?
My bet is this is about his ego, create a world full of pain and suffering, then seeing who grovels before him as they rot all the way to the grave. A bit like Job and his hedge being removed.
Even if you don’t believe a maximal evil being is illogical (which I’m not even sure it is) it doesn’t attack the central critic which is “there is no reason to believe a good god over an god that is not good.” Why believe in an all good god over a corrupted god? You’re focusing too much on the “Omni” part and not on the actual critic.
Also on the point that evil god would be contingent on other beings would make the existence of an evil being less likely, we know we exist so in that has already been fulfilled just by our own existence. So it can’t be less likely to happen since we are already here. Also, if a good god doesn’t rely on the existence of other beings then what’s the point of creating other beings? Especially if that would introduce evil into the world. It would make sense not to create other beings in the first place since that god doesn’t need other beings to be maximally good. What’s the point of creating suffering if it’s not necessary for you to be maximally good. This argument still misses the point of the evil god challenge. It doesn’t matter if the god is maximally evil or kinda evil. An evil god doesn’t have to seek to create the most amount of evil to be considered an evil god. An evil god could get pleasure from the suffering but just because pleasure is good doesn’t mean that the god is good. So why would a good god be more likely than an evil god?
:) I love you IP
This argument made me Misotheist
Bcz evil is more compared to good nowadays
And evil happens to good people
Good people suffer more
I just donated to your ministry on PayPal. Keep up the quality work brother!
Thank you so much!
I think this is also a good argument against total depravity, humans cannot be totaly or maximally evil.
@Inspiring Philosophy. I loved this video, it was brilliantly argued. However, I have a few critiques.
1. I disagree that evil is the lack of good. Pain isn't merely the lack of something, although it is often caused by lacking something. Before they were born, no one was suffering despite the complete lack of pleasure. You may object that people who aren't born don't exist to experience the pain they otherwise would feel. However, people can be conscious and lose good things without suffering. Painkillers can prevent that for example. Thus seeking pain is seeking badness and is therefore evil.
2. Your argument about a Maximally Evil Being, being selfish is interesting, yet I see a flaw. Being selfish is less bad than being malevolent. Being selfish means you care about your well-being, but your well-being is good. If you only cared about causing harm to yourself and others, you would be Maximally Evil.
3. People can seek cruelty for its own sake in the same way they seek others benefit for its own sake. Some have argued that Altruism is an illusion because people who want to help others are doing it because they want to, which means that THEY enjoy helping the person. (Or they would feel guilty for not helping them or whatever.) Thus it is ultimately self interested. However, you could still argue that if you are getting pleasure out of helping the person, your pleasure/desire is directed towards helping that person making it altruistic, especially when your focus is on the other person's well-being not the pleasure you will get out of it. You could have the exact same thing with cruelty.
4. What I said in two should clear up the issue of God needing others. He could just harm himself. Maybe he could be a Trinity with each member hating and torturing each other to!! Therefore he wouldn't need to create the world he would just want to because of his hate.
4. For the argument that God is the ground of moral duties, I suppose all I need to do is redefine the challenge a bit. How do you know God is perfectly loving being rather than a perfectly hateful being? The moral argument wouldn't help since whatever God's nature is, is by definition good on your view.
The Ontological argument also cannot help. Why? Because the fact that love is good depends on God being loving. If God was hateful, hate would be good. Thus, if what counts as right and wrong depends on what God's nature is like, then God being all loving cannot be a necessary fact. Since what is morally good depends on God having a certain nature in the first place.
1. Pain is not the same thing as evil. Pain can be good, and pleasure can be evil.
2. But if someone is maximally selfish they would not care to create another being, that was my main point.
3. How? People are cruel for entertainment, pleasure, etc. It always comes with something else.
4. The trinity is not maximally selfish though. i don't see the connection
5. But I argue from Good to a being, not the other way around:
th-cam.com/video/Cp9Nl6OUEJ0/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/eFMZF0ygvH8/w-d-xo.html
InspiringPhilosophy.
1. I agree, but can you agree that the intent to inflict unnecessary pain is immoral? And since this intent is directed at something positive, that evil therefore can have a positive form?
2. I agree that if someone was Maximally Selfish they would not care enough to create another being. No question about it. Here is the area of disagreement. I don't think a Maximally Evil Being would be selfish. I think it would want to inflict Maximally suffering on as many beings as possible including itself. I see this as worse then complete selfishness. Selfishness entails that you care about some morally important being yourself. Wanting to torture every being as much as possible including yourself is more evil then even wanting to torture every being except yourself.
3. If your focus is so dead said on causing harm to someone else that you don't focus on the pleasure it brings you that is cruelty for the sake of cruelty. I admit that such things are rare in people who haven't been provoked, but I hope you can see how it could exist. Just like Altruism.
4. It isn't, but I have heard many Christians use the argument that a loving God must have another person to love before he created everything in order to be perfectly good. If God needed created beings to be loving he wouldn't be Maximally Great. This is similar to your argument that a perfectly evil God would require contingent beings to express his cruelty. A similar argument could be made about the Maximally Evil Being having multiple person's in one essence who all torture each other.
InspiringPhilosophy.
5. My main point is that the challenge could be redefined to be "why a not a perfectly hateful God, rather than a perfectly loving one?"
For the Ontological argument, I will try to explain my position. I watched the videos you linked. So my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that you believe that love is good because it is God's nature, correct? God isn't good because he is loving, love is good because it is God's Nature. If God's nature was perfect hate that would be moral, correct? So the fact that love is God's nature is logically prior to love being good. Doesn't thus God's nature cannot be fixed as loving because love is good. Rather it is the other way around.
I am having a bit of difficulty explaining my thoughts, so let me know if you need any clarification.
@@MattNorth9811 I agree with you completely.
god is good.god give us free will.
A maximally evil god wouldn't be omnipotent. A good God can allow suffering as a consequence of sin, but an evil God would let us no break from torment. The good God gave us free will, so that what we do has a meaning. That's why John Wesley said, that those who deny the freedom of the will portray God as worse than the devil. But this evil god would be pretty lousy in power. He could just throw us in hell right now without waiting. If he wanted us to feel betrayed for believing in him, he could just implant that feeling in us. The existence of joy in live is proof, that an evil god cannot be all powerful, because it makes no sense for him to allow joy. But it makes sense for a good God to allow suffering as a result of freedom of the will.
Iam willing to compromise my position by saying the evil god is not maximally evil rather it has the minimum amount of good in it to know what good is and to want to share existence with other sentient beings where it could gain sadistic pleasures from watching people suffer after giving them freewill.
In short the evil god is not all evil rather its more evil than good.
i would say, if you claim your god is maximally perfect and self sufficient. In that case why did it create any other sentient beings in universe to begin with? we all are just image of god, we are from god and not something outside god. If god was self sufficient and perfect it wouldnt even desire to create universe. The fact that it did makes it lacking in some aspects which it tries to fulfil by creating a universe with sentient beings and giving them freewill when in fact nobody was asking to be born in this god's creation to begin with.
@@kartik9892 It would not make sense for a sadistic god to give his creation free will, because they could choose against fighting each other.
And is a woman unloving for wanting a child? If a woman has everything, that is good in the world, and she says to her husband: "I want to have children to love, and let us give them everything, that is good for them", would that be unloving?
Likewise, God desired to create us, because he has loved us before the universe was even made. And he offered us the best world to live in, but sadly, our ancestors chose to destroy it by obeying the enemy, who had already brought chaos to heaven. Now, we are all infected by this inherited disease called sin, and the only cure is going back to our creator and giving ourselves over to him, that he can make us clean again. But he won't do that, if we don't allow him to do it, because he respects the freedom of our will and the decision we make. He wants to save us from the seperation between us and him, to save us from our death, but if we don't want to be reunited with him, he will respect that.
@agequit "It would not make sense for a sadistic god to give his creation free will, because they could choose against fighting each other"
> I can say the same for an all loving god. Let me phrase it the same way:
It would not make sense for a good god to give his creation free will, because they could choose it for fighting each other.
"If a woman has everything, that is good in the world, and she says to her husband: "I want to have children to love.."
> I see a small problem in your statement. In the first statement you said women has everything, in the exact next you say she wants to have children to love. Well the women cant have everything yet want or desire children. Likewise if god is maximally perfect and self-sufficient there is no question of wanting to create.
"Likewise, God desired to create us"
> There is no us or god. Everything is god. Everything has come from god, there is nothing outside of god. If god desired to create "us" means it wasnt perfect or self-sufficient to begin with. Through creation it wanted to fulfill something it lacked before.
As for is that women unloving to want children, in my world view, YES. The one and only guaranteed way to prevent evil befalling children is to not bring them into a world of evil, diseases, crimes, wars, natural disasters, oldage... to begin with.
If god was wise and perfect it would realise the same and wouldnt even want to create anything, with that all evil and suffering is prevented and nobody is deprived of anything as to begin with everything is god and everything is perfect.
At this point it makes much more sense to me to say if at all a creator("god") exists its more likely an advanced alien civilization who created us for whatever purpose they had. Similar to how we breed chickens, pigs.. in factory farms for our needs.
@@kartik9892 There are multiple problems with your reasoning.
1. Free Will
If God didn't give us freedom of the will, our love towards him would be meaningless, because we would be like programmed robots.
2. The woman
What I meant, was that the woman has the means to provide for the child, not that she is already perfectly happy with the goods, that she has. Her goods would allow her to provide a good life for the child.
3. Sickness and suffering
You are assuming, that God put us in a place full of disease and death. But that is not, what happened. He put us in a perfect place, just like the woman of the comparison would put her child in a perfect place (let us assume, for the comparison's sake, that the woman is able to protect her child from sickness and disease and pain and death). Likewise, God put us in a perfect place and gave us the decision to either live happily in this place or to destroy it. We could have chosen to live happily, but we chose not to.
Today, he is again offering us a choice: Do we stay in this disease-infected world full of evil and corruption and die with it, or do we prepare ourselves and others to leave this place and go somewhere, where things are like they used to be, in peace and harmony? And he does not require much of us to go there. He just wants, that we want to go there and let him change us. If our earthly lifestyle, that is out of harmony with life in heaven, is more important to us than the life, that God is offering us, why should he take us there? Why should he take us to a place full of peace and harmony and love, if those are the things, that we hate? If we truly loved those things, we would give ourselves over to God and say, "God, I am not like I should be, please change me", and we would mean it.
But the real question is isn't the devil maximally evil
No, his evil is contingent on the good he’s corrupted.
No, he couldnt be especially since at one point he was an angel
Why not the hypothesis that God is both good and evil? All secret societies and ancient religions taught that. Including Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, Hinduism, etc.
Your reason for dismissing the possible evil defined as a privation of good is because baselessly assert that everything by default is good and entirely discounts the possibility of an amoral middle ground.
Your shortcomings of a maximally selfish god mirror issues with a maximally powerful god. Why would a perfect being want to create other people? Surely they would be maximally content in their perfection and therefore would never be motivated to create anything. If they want a creation to glorify themselves they must not be maximally great already making their greatness contingent on something else.
“Be ye holy, for I am holy.”
@kevcooper3037
1. Slavery comes in many forms.
2. You mean, like abortion?
Honestly, with the absolute rampance of both natural and human suffering, compared to the compatively little that exists of human goodness, the sort of God that correlates most with our reality is the deist conception of God. A lovecraftian all-powerful force that is wholly unconcerned with the goings on of mankind. And thus, does not interfere.
It's one thing to suggest that an intelligence is behind the structure of existence. But it's something else entirely to suggest that something like THAT is actively participating in our daily lives and is doing so benevolently. How do you demonstrate the second claim without resorting to post-hoc reasoning?
Good point. The problem of suffering is such a struggle to solve. It seems the deist conception makes more sense than a personal god that cares.
Why is evil defined as a lack of good? I doubt this is an agreed upon definition.
@Elijah Carlson And good needs something evil. Positive requires negative. Negative requires positive. This definition of evil fallaciously conflates necessary with sufficient conditions. It is NECESSARY for a state of affairs which is evil to lack net-goodness), but it is not SUFFICIENT. There are countless things which we typically would regard as being neither good nor bad in any kind of moral sense.
2:05 I disagree. The natural state of objects is not inherently good or evil, it is neutral. Furthermore, the objects themselves never become evil, even when used to harm others; it is the person or being doing the action that is doing evil, or at least, doing an evil action.
I think actually that the video maker would agree with your second point. He is saying that the objects themselves are good in and of themselves and never become evil. For example money is good because the more you have the better (because it can be used to pursue pleasure, which is good to pursue because of it being considered good under gods objective moral standard). It never becomes evil though when it is used to inflict harm. It also never becomes evil when someone pursues money by robbing someone. It would be the twisted pursuit of that money (the action of robbing) that would be considered evil under the theists view.
Edit: additionally, as to your first view, why would anyone do anything under that view? Why would anyone pursue entertainment for example if entertainment wasn’t good in and of itself, but rather is neutral? “I’m pursuing entertainment because it has a neutral effect on me” seems odd to me. I’m agnostic myself, but I’ve been investigating these theistic arguments and they seem to go a lot deeper than I originally thought.
@@warriorfoe I'm saying nothing is inherently good for the same reason that I'm saying that nothing is inherently bad. Things like pleasure are not inherently good. Pleasure can bring of feelings that makes us feel good, but that doesn't make itself good, only the effect is good. I think you and I may be disagreeing due to differences in definition of good, I think things can be "good for/at ...", e.g. a book can be good for gaining information and fluency in writing. But I don't believe that anything is objectively good, because each object can be used in both good and bad ways. At the end of the day, good and evil are subjective, they are up to how we perceive things. Things can always be "good in order to do that" but the "that" is always different for each person.
The reason I originally brought this up is because I think the definition of evil as "an absence of good" is just a cop out of actually explaining evil. I believe that evil exists in the same sense as good exists, it is not an absence of good.
@Lëê Yō I'm not misunderstanding the law of excluded middle. The law of excluded middle does not mean that everything is either black or white. There are things in spectra. I'm arguing that goodness and badness is a spectrum not a black and white dichotomy.
@Lëê Yō If evil is simply an absence of good, then good is simply what is, and evil, what is not. We need good and evil to exist in the same sense in order to make sense of good. Furthermore, things are not inherently good, they are neutral. Things can be good at/for/in order for something else. But they themselves are not good. A knife doesn't become evil once it is plunged into a body, but it also isn't good for the same reason. The privation theory is just playing word games, trying cop out of giving a true explanation.
The reason I say it's a spectrum is because good things aren't all on the same level, some are better than others, and same for bad things. I call objects, such as a knife, to be neutral, it can be used for bad things and it can be used for good things. It doesn't depend on the knife, it depends on the user.
My reasoning for believing that God is all good is that God is the only being that truly matters. It does not matter if we think he is evil. He is whatever he wants to be. And if he chooses to be good, he is good. If he is cruel, then cruelty is good.
So you’ve defined good to the point where it’s meaningless. Good job.
I have heard someone say that a maximally great being would need to create beings in order to be more loving and, therefore, his attributes are contingent on other beings. What do you think about that?
I disagree, a good MGB would create us for our sake, so we could experience good, it is satisfied by itself, it could have never created us. But it chose to.
@@NationalPK So it's like an intelligent person with no people around him. Just because there is no beings that can know that he is intelligent doesn't mean he is not.
10:15 hold up… can’t this also apply to a morally perfect God? Moral perfection is then also contingent on us being moral? I’m pretty sure im not making sense… but please forgive as i only took philosophy 101 in university…
Yeah... If a God of some sort exists, I'm sure that God is not "evil". It would be far to advanced and above everything for us to judge it so, with our own emotions... It's, to me, like calling black holes evil, or gamma rays evil... It'd make no sense. It's like trying to hold someone morally accountable for stepping on an ant...
Doesn't this video prove god is all good?
@@KEvronista ... not sure I was talking to you... as you don't seam to believe God can't be all evil. My point revolves around the fact that if god is not ALL evil then he must be ALL good. Because all Good people seek to stop evil. And all evil seeks is good things like pleasure for itself.
As far as assertions go, I'm not sure that this video does that. It seams to me that GOOD and BAD can only exist in the human mind as "a rock can Know no evil."-Daniel Dontay. and evil is stealing, killing, and destruction. While good is having, living, and being. Meaning it really does need Good to exist as you can't steal something that someone doesn't have. You can't kill someone that isn't alive. And you can't destroy something that doesn't exist.
All of which stems from the concept that if God created what is good and evil, why would he chose to make the concept of evil everything that he himself does and is. Why not make everything that is evil, Good in our sight so that evil can abound in plenty?
@@KEvronista don't waste your own time here dude you only have so much of it. Eather converse or don't converse, anything else is self destruction.😄 I'd say that nether of us win, but I'm such a positive person that I doubt I've lost anything, only gained a laugh.
@@KEvronista
Religion serves as a positive opiate for countless people. An opiate in which, without, they would live in the world chaotically and downtrodden. I am an atheist, but at least acknowledge the cultural and psychological effect of religion, that does keep weak people from doing bad things.
Except in this case were the ants and the other r ants are worshipping this god even though he just killed a fellow ant.
One thing that might be missing from this argument is having a kind of "dual personality" one. i.e. as you would have the Godhead in 3 persons, one could say that the Evil MGB could exist in two dual personalities, one Good and the other Evil. So the Good side would go off and create all goodness for the Evil side to go and destroy. This is a conflict of interest within the being itself and even if you had the scenario where the good side willingly is obeying the evil side by just creating good things and offers no protection for the evil side to destroy, would the Evil side not be content with the existence of good and would attempt to destroy a part of itself? And even if you had this strange agreement where the evil side cannot destroy the good side you end up with this: a good side that cannot preserve its creation long enough for evil to destroy it and evil can come and completely obliterate it. Yet this is not what we're seeing right now. We see that the universe has had ample time to expand and host life that has developed to the point where people are able to grow in different ways. If such a being existed, no time would have been offered to even reach this point and even if so, the good side of this being would have been powerless to protect its creation from the evil being to totally destroying it. At least this is how I see the argument.
Kind of like how mankind corrupted what was good in the beginning. God created all things in the beginning and it was good. Over and over again in Genesis one that's what we see. Corrupted good.
@Kenny Couch The fruit in the garden was good? Why were Adam and Eve punished for eating it, then?
Kevin Allen they were told not to eat it so they disobeyed God. That's why.
@Kenny Couch Why were they told by God not to eat something that was actually good?
Kevin Allen I don't know. But he did.
@Kenny Couch Why should they obey his arbitrary rules when even after years of study we can’t see why he made them?
I have encountered an argument id like for someone to try to tackle.
'God is immoral for creating beings against their will to live in a world full of sorrow pain and suffering.'
Any takers?
When God placed Adam into the world, he had good intentions for him, he wanted him to flourish, God never creates a being simply to suffer, Adam's suffering came after the fall, he sinned against God, he did that which was prohibited, there are consequences(evil, death, suffering). You can ask, why would God create such a place knowing everything in advance? To that I say, God creating this world, gave the possibility of evil and suffering, aswell as peace and joy, that follows necessarily from having free will, what gives evil people the right to stop God from creating something, just because they freely, independently from Gods will, choose to be evil? They want suffering, let them have it, how is it fair to prohibit the existence of all the good, simply becuase of the evil? The only fair way is to let both exist, again only because of our choices.
In the end, it all comes down to our freedom. God holds no responsibility for the evil we choose to do. Hence he Is not immoral.
@@NationalPK gods all powerful bad people aren’t stopping god from creating good he has full knowledge of who will be bad and who would be good. Also you can’t have good intentions for something you know will do “evil” lmao you can’t have full knowledge that the robot you created will enslave humanity but also have good intentions for it. Also god does create humans to suffer babies die all the time because they were born with a genetic defect that is literally being created to suffer
You should make a video about purgatory.
Austin Tucker I hope this video helps
Is there a purgatory? th-cam.com/video/UBqoMbsmeFw/w-d-xo.html
Explaining why it doesn't exist, a philosophical standpoint should be good to hear.
acolytes777 Yes I agree.
acolytes777 or a video on why it exist. Then the video would be factual correct.
I don't believe in Purgatory, but alot of people don't understand it, or have a distorting viewpoint of Purgatory.
If evil is a lack of a property, then every theistic argument that doesn't prove God is good supports God being evil, because if goodnes is a property and evil a lack of a property then an evil being is simpler than a good being, and Ockham's razor tells us that simple things are more probable than composite things.
Another slam dunk IP, love this channel!
What if Evil=Good and kindness=Bad
I told Stephen Law this years ago
Good and Bad are not symmetrical
A maximally great evil also brings back the cartesian demon
We could never know whether or not we are being deceived by the maximally evil being.
We also would never know if we would need to flip good and bad actions either.
For example
Selfishness could actually be a good action in the maximally evil god
Do we flip all evil actions and make them good?
Occams razor says that an evil god has too many questions that remained unanswered and this is not a simple solution.
Looking at the first argument where it’s through the lense of the privation theory worldview (the part with the quote and commentary after), it doesn’t work:
-I am unconvinced that “people can be good for the mere sake of goodness” typically it’s a happy feeling you get for being rewarded for doing good, not just completely selflessness that causes it.
-badness does not require “good” as in moral good to exist. the word “good” used in that context simply means something of desire, and in the paragraph, it presupposes that desire or pleasure is “good” and i have no clue what they mean by that. why can’t pleasure, or desire, be seen as neutral? it can be spoiled neutrality that makes something bad, and neutrality used for moral virtues that makes something good.
-think about the positive virtue of selflessness, or we can think of it as doing a moral action against ones desire or where it even hurts them mentally or physically in some way. In the worldview of this quote, this virtue requires the lack of good in the form of pleasure/desire to be actualized, which would mean it must be in some way evil and moral, right? it doesn’t make sense.
We can also think about a scenario in which someone declines a money offer or position of power from humility or indifference, this means the goodness of power or money is taken away or not actualized and can be seen as evil since the quote defines these things as good.
those are just some things i found to poke some holes in the logic of that quote
for the second argument, you can use the same logic to apply to a maximally moral good in which it holds the virtue of selflessness to its highest extent. since we are not gods, we do not see how maximally selfless god which must exist if he is maximally good
Why maximally great being can't be maximally evil? It is simple:
1. Evil is a privation of good.
2. To be, to exist is a good property.
3. Therefore MGB can't be maximally evil because He simply would have to non-exist, because existence in itself is a good property and therefore he can't exist.
@@KEvronista, good can't be logically shown to be a privation of good. For evil to exist, good must pre-exist before it. We call a conscious act evil if it abuses something which is essentially good. Murder is an abuse of moral sense of justice, theft is an abuse of desire to thrive, lust is an abuse of desire to procreate and so on. There is not a single evil act that can be shown to exist independently either of good intentions or of good end (meaning goals).
@@KEvronista, ok, let us be simple. Show me a thing or an act that can be 'essentially' evil. And you win this argument, I lose.
@@KEvronista , sorry this is circle reasoning. You must show me an existence of essential evil which we both know of. It must be earthly evil.
@@KEvronista
Evil destroys even itself.
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
A maximal evil god is a nonstarter.
@@KEvronista
Yes, and therefore it follows that an evil existence will destroy itself, making the notion of a maximal evil god nonexistent and nonsensical.
With that defintion of evil it isn't evil if a tree falls on a baby crushing her or suffocating her. It's no intentional act. That doesn't seem right.
"evil is merely the absence of good" Try playing devil's advocate in your head for a minute. This argument could easily be flipped on it's head. You could bring up several hypothetical examples to prove that good is merely the absence of evil. If you were in a state that was considered "bad" (for example, being attacked or kidnapped) and you were saved by a bystander, the only reason this act of heroism, or "good" act could even be achieved or occur in the first place is because of the initial "evil" or "bad" force. It seems from this that good is not something that is even possible without an initial corrupting force. Infact, the injured state you were in after this event took place that would typically be considered "bad" from your perspective would be good and feel like a relief, because of the absence of the previous negative influence that was comparitively worse. If you've ever burned your hand on a hot pan and ran it under cold water, you will know this to be true.
"Evil actions are always in the pursuit of something good." Wrong. The very existence of psychopaths and sadists disproves this, and the assumption that pleasure is some sort of a higher good makes absolutely no sense from a Christian perspective. Infact, it is often times the opposite that is viewed as good within the Christian religion, examples: various forms of Asceticism, martyrdom, sacrifice, etc. Hell, your god chose to sacrifice his own son in a relatively awful manner instead of just choosing to be merciful and just forgive humanity without all the grotesque unnecessary pageantry. You speak as if pleasure is a form of "good" in trying to prove your point, yet given your previous point that evil is merely the absence of good, would the denial of "sinful" earthly pleasures (which is a practice that most Christians encourage) not be inherently evil if pleasure is an inherently "good" thing (which yes, you did imply by saying that evil people are in pursuit of some sort of good)?
You either have to accept that evil isn't just the absence of good, or that people like sadists don't do what they do in pursuit of something that is "good". You can't have both.
I'm not really gonna address the rest of the video because the point of the maximally evil god argument is to show that the idea that the one true God is "all good" or "all loving" is a ridiculous idea that could easily be flipped on it's head.
Anyways, the idea of an "all good, all loving" god is ridiculous, because the very invention of evil as a force is in itself an evil act. If you try to argue that gods invention of evil was an inherently good act, then that would mean that evil in itself is inherently good as it serves the higher good of gods divine plan, and thus there's nothing inherently wrong with evil, and it is no longer evil.
Unless you believe that evil is a force that is entirely separate from what you call "god" and isn't under gods preview (which implies there's a higher creator than said god if this is true) there's really no way to reconcile this.
Evil is only relative to Good; therefore God is all Good of necessity.
I suppose that is why Satan is a fallen angel. Originally created with the intention to be good and the best of the angels.
I refuse to believe that angels have free will. Only humans do. Otherwise why would God address us as His “preferred creation”?
@@Rotisiv angels have free will because Satan was a angel and chose to rebel. Humans are called "preferred creation" because we are in the image of the most high
If God is maximally evil, then where does good come from? Since a maximally evil God wouldn't even know what good is, let alone create good for us so he could take it away.
So that means that a maximally evil God and good cannot exist, but a maximally good God and evil can exist, since evil is a corruption of good.
Iam willing to compromise my position by saying the evil god is not maximally evil rather it has the minimum amount of good in it to know what good is and to want to share existence with other sentient beings where it could gain sadistic pleasures from watching people suffer after giving them freewill.
In short the evil god is not all evil rather its more evil than good.
i would say, if you claim your god is maximally perfect and self sufficient. In that case why did it create any other sentient beings in universe to begin with? we all are just image of god, we are from god and not something outside god. If god was self sufficient and perfect it wouldnt even desire to create universe. The fact that it did makes it lacking in some aspects which it tries to fulfil by creating a universe with sentient beings and giving them freewill when in fact nobody was asking to be born in this god's creation to begin with.
Why do you presume natural state of things is "good"?
@Forward1776 bro why are you so full of hate? I've seen many of your comments and you always trying to argue with people for no reason.
@Forward1776 what are you even talking about?
To say that A MEB couldn’t exist because of his contingent creation seems to be the same as saying that an MGB couldn’t exist because he needs creation to be maximally great through omnibenevolence. Right??
First?
EDIT: Second, off by 8 seconds
It's the thought that counts
I think I can answer Mr Law in one word, "Death", a totally evil all powerful entity wouldn't allow death, it would keep us in this context of 'being and total confusion' and "enjoy" - If something totally evil can enjoy anything - every second. Imagine being in the likes of Auschwitz with no death, death brings an end and in that end resides HOPE. Hope could not be in the remit of a totally evil entity by definition.
@Allan Lindsay A totally evil all powerful entity wouldn’t allow death, and would send people to a place of eternal torment instead when they die. Sounds a bit like the Christian God, doesn’t it?
@@Kevorama0205 greetings. In order to download your atheism, like an excited child, you're just not grasping this are you? Peace.
@Trolltician What lies were you fed? How can one even tell the difference?
@@Kevorama0205 greetings. You speak as though you are a victim and that you have no part in this. Get on your knees with an open heart and mind and ask of the good God for his help in you gaining understanding ask correctly and you will receive the understanding you require. Peace.
@Allan Lindsay I don’t know the right questions. If my mind is closed, I can’t seem to do anything about it. What would you have me do exactly, given that every piece of advice I’ve tried has failed.
If god was evil he wouldnt have made good in the first place.
the same could be made if good was all good he wouldn't have made evil in the first place
@@MohamedAli-nf1rp "if god was all good he wouldnt have made evil in the first place"
God made free will, a free society that worships the lord is of higher value than an enslaved society that cannot think for themselves.
Unless you want your free will to be stripped of you I suggest you re iterate your argument.
@@kardzYT If god is evil, he would like to spread evil, so he would give man free-will in order to man to be truly evil. If everyone is not free to commit good and evil, no one would be considered evil.
You just said free will is evil. You need to think your position through before replying to my comments @@gabri41200
@@kardzYT. No, it's more like he said free will brings with it, the potential for evil as well as good.
Without free will, you probably can't be considered truly good but also not truly evil because both good and evil probably requires free choice just to exist.
In this case specifically, the evil is in the reason for giving us free will rather than just the free will itself.
My own argument against that though is it's probably more evil to do wrong against good beings than it would be to create evil beings for the same purpose.
I reject the dualistic basis of the challenge entirely. Evil is simply insufficiency of goodness, which a rational free will through enough choices will eventually understand and turn away from, whether those choices are bad (causing suffering leading to correction) or good (causing reward leading to reinforcement).
The virgin spaghetti God vs the Chad Christian God
Lol!
I try to be a good person all the time... That doesn't mean I'm never act out in evil ways.?
Prof Law, despite being a philosopher doesn't seem to realise he can only pose this so called challenge by presupposing evil has ontological status, and so poses the challenge without meeting this burden if showing that it plausibly does or could.
Good video I.P.
Cheers mate.
Oh come on...
( by the way, I say that because you've had all this explained to you, and you promptly ignored it and just reposted. You were wrong the first time, and you're wrong now )
Then you say that the properties of the evil God are contingent on creatures existing, well the same goes for the all-good God. He creates creatures to maximize the good and that is contingent on his creation...
if god needs humand, then god isn't the "necessary thing"
Assuming things are good until proven false is just as unreasonable and suggesting they are evil until proven otherwise.
Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?
It seems that apologist arguments start with crazy fantastical premises in hopes you grant them with out realizing where its going to lead you.
Let's switch some words around at 8:55 and see what happens.
1. Any maximally great being (MGB) in any possible world would need to have all their characteristics to the logical maximum.
2. A good MGB in any possible world would have generosity to it's maximum extent.
3. A good MGB in any possible world would not be willing to not share everything being maximally generous and altruistic.
4. A good MGB in any possible world would be capable of not creating anything else.
5. A good MGB in any possible world would have the will to fulfill all of it's creations' needs or even give all of it's creations the same powers it has due to its supreme generosity.
6. A good MGB in any possible world could create something.
7. Something other than fullfillment amongst beings and beings with limited powers exist.
8. Therefore, a good MGB cannot logically exist.
P 5 is faulty
@@sathviksidd How's that?
@@chronicmasterbaiter5467 You're hinging your definition of goodness on limited attributes of generosity and altruism. Isn't that arbitrary? Wouldn't goodness, in the holistic sense, also include holiness, justice, prudence, etc...?
P5. An MGB would not accommodate any evil wants or enable evil through the distribution of power.
@@zachhecita Well, didn't ip do the same thing when talking about maximally evil being? An evil being would be maximally unjust, and you can't be unjust if there is only one being.
The point I was trying to make, is that the argument can be used both ways. Either for the existence of an evil and a good being, or against it, since the attributes used in the argument are so arbitrary, and even contradictory sometimes, as you rightfully pointed out.
If your P5 holds, we can eliminate the possibility of few Gods existing like the God of christianity, since it is said that he gives power to man. Romans 13:1-2. And poeple with power do evil things, so by P5 the God of christianity for example does not exist. But this is complitely besides the point, and not the point I was making.
Half agree with u. Evil doesn’t exist, but neither does good. Good and evil are both fairy tales. The subjective opinions we label things we like as (good) or things we don’t like (bad). There is no objective good or evil.
U then went on to describe how a world with a maximally evil being would look like. Well, in a world with a maximally good being we should not see any unjust suffering. Yet, innocent children suffer and die every day from things like disease, etc. Even when it comes to animals, they have to rip each other apart just to survive. What kind of good god designs a world like that?
If I were to believe in god, it’ll be more so along the lines of a creator- one that is indifferent to human affairs as reality so often shows. It wouldn’t change the fact that morality is subjective- no more than a human concept.
Interesting comment. However if you deny the existence of objective morality then you can’t then invoke the problem of evil. You can’t say good and evil don’t really exist and simultaneously argue that God cannot exist because there’s evil in the world..
Gary Lee What? Yes I can because u believe in both. This doesn’t stop the existence of suffering being a thing. Suffering very much does exist. And by definition, an all loving god would want to mitigate this as much as possible. Yet we don’t see that happening.
By all means the problem of ‘evil’ doesn’t rule out a god. Just an all powerful and all loving one. It’s showing contradictions in ur worldview still if u believe both these things.
If u accept there is no objective good or evil- then god isn’t a part of that and u basically lose theism. The best u got is possibly deism. I’m basically saying you’re wrong on both accounts. U having these two big problems doesn’t negate the other. Because if u concede either side- u still got the problem.
@@Stuffingsalad Hi... not sure I totally understand your comment, but I'll try to engage. I'm just saying that one cannot simultaneously deny objective good and evil AND also believe evil is incompatible with an all good god. You can't have it both ways. Theists believe in objective morals and and can show that an all good god and evil are not incoherent.
"an all loving god would want to mitigate this as much as possible. Yet we don’t see that happening."
Gary Lee Yes, u can show that both of these worldview are incorrect. I’m saying that under the belief of objective morality- which is what theists believe- u suddenly get contradictions on what is objectively good and what ur ‘good’ god actually does.
If u concede morality is subjective- then that renders theism useless. It’s purpose is to try and drive objective morality. Accepting it as it being subjective also removed the ‘all loving’ characteristic of god as there is no actual intrinsic quality of it. So at the very most all u have to go with is deism.
But let’s say u do believe in objective morality. Well unless u then believe it is loving to sit back and watch millions of children die every year from things like disease and natural disasters when u could have saved them- u have a contradiction. Any honest person wouldn’t see this as loving.
I did explain it poorly before but hopefully this clears it all up. Now I’ll address the extra part.
Except we are in a position to determine is suffering is being mitigated or not because we can literally observe and show it to be happening... Millions of children die every year to disease and natural disasters. Could ur all powerful god cure these children of their disease or at least make it non fatal? Under that definition he should have that power. If not- he’s not all powerful.
And this is where the blind faith comes in... God has a reason for letting millions of children die every year? Let’s break down why this argument doesn’t explain anything. Firstly, an all powerful god would be able to achieve whatever the hell he is trying to achieve without the use of having millions of children suffer... if he can’t- he’s not all powerful.
Secondly, this is a blatant dodge to the question. An admission that ‘sure, it sounds stupid and contradictory but I’m sure there’s an answer to it.’ Maybe it’s stupid and contradictory because it is stupid and contradictory... Alluding to the idea that this kind of stuff is just incomprehensible to us is a recipe for gullibility. This wilful ignorance that allows people by the billions to believe what only deluded lunatics could believe on their own. No matter what contradictory evidence there is- put blind faith into believing there is some sort of harmonisation of it. Ignore the facts and pretend there’s some sort of answer. Happily call god good when u experience some bliss but when children by the millions suffer and die call him ‘mysterious’. It’s extremely backwards and one of the laziest excuses I’ve ever heard. Explains nothing- just an empty assertion that somehow an all powerful god couldn’t possibly make things a better way than this- millions of innocents suffering every second of existence. Even tho by definition he could... If there’s some sort of plan he’s working towards by letting all these children die- an all powerful god by definition would be able to achieve this without having them all die too. Do u truly believe that an all powerful god couldn’t have made this world with any less suffering? Sort of like heaven? If u can even in the slightest- like no cancer- then u still have the problem. U r basically admitting now ur god isn’t all powerful- which is one conclusion u could take.
We could presuppose the ontology in the opposite way.
Evil is primal and good is either lack of evil or the opposite of evil. Things are intrinsically evil [and their ultimate purpose lies in evil], but can be used for good or feel good. Our intuition about things being intrinsically good is only a construct for you to develop a belief in a good God and have it taken away from you someday. If the Evil God has to be maximally [not infinitely] selfish, while also maximally taking pleasure from torturing and harming other beings, then the result will be creation. Not because he's contingent on creation, but because creation is the natural result of his nature. Even ontological argument could be mirrored, if evil is the greatest, which we lack intuition for, because he's evil and wants us confused.
@christopher snedeker The point is not to just switch words, but to point out you can't just dismiss the idea of the Evil God.
And that's just one way to tackle it. Another is to point out that the apparent contradictions come from assertions about that God's psychology and general atributes. I find many of them quite arbitrary [in good and evil versions both] and based more on wishful thinking.
Interesting that an evil lowercase god does exist according to Christianity but God the one above all came into this construct to rescue his people from this evil lowercase god
“in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
2 Corinthians 4:4-6
I don't think money, power, pleasure, and safety are necessarily good things. They are morally neutral, at best.
Here's another way you could answer the evil god challenge:
Suppose that an omnipotent, omniscient, necessary and maximally evil god exists. We can define good and evil in the following ways: a thing is good if it is the way that it is supposed to be, and evil if it is not. But if god is not the way he is supposed to be, that implies that there is a way that he is supposed to be. But what could be grounding this objective standard? It can't be us because we are subjective, imperfect and contingent. It also cannot be some abstract object since those are impersonal and moral commands/oughts can only ever be given from person to person. Thus, what is supposed to be can only be grounded in an objective lawmaker. Since evil god is maximally evil, this lawmaker would need to be maximally good. Lawmaker would also be necessary, because if he did not exist then evil god would not truly be evil, and since evil god is omniscient he would know that lawmaker would ground him to be evil, and thus would never want to create him. Lawmaker would also need to be omnipotent, since evil god would otherwise eliminate him, so this would prevent him from being eliminated. Omnipotence also implies omniscience, since being able to do all logically possible would imply being able to know all true statements. Thus, we have two omnipotent, omniscient and necessary beings, one who is maximally good and the other its polar opposite. However, if there were multiple gods they would be in constant conflict with one another, limited by the other's omnipotence, less fundamental than the framework of necessary beings and violate occam's razor. Thus it would simply be more parsimonious to have one god and not more. But if we eliminate lawmaker, we would end up back at the start. Evil god could not be grounded as maximally evil without lawmaker. Therefore we must eliminate evil god, because a good lawmaker does not entail an evil god. Thus, an evil god would imply a good god, and so the evil god challenge is self-defeating.
So by dismissing the first premise(which is a subjective value claim) that a things initial state is good, everything else falls apart.
So , raping torturing, beating and murdering little children and drinking their blood is not totally wicked ?
You have a lot to learn i@i and learn it through YESHUA !!
I know this is two years old, but it came to me that you forgot something very important about the maximally selfish being: why wouldn't this hypothetical being want to create something that would worship it and be in awe of its presence?
That’s exactly what the being did lmao
If it created beings that would worship it and be in awe of its presence then that would mean it must first, share existence with said beings.
If it is maximally selfish then it would never want to share existence with anything or anyone.
Even if they were to worship it.
@@jacobrainey8044 you cant be selfless without anyone else. I mean if the most selfish person in the world was in a prision cell alone, who the hell would they be selfish towards? They are the only one who eats so they cant share or keep food, they cant steal money because THERE is no money, so how can they be selfish or selfless in this scenario?
I'm wondering since god is allegedly good, he allowing natural catastrophes is he being evil? Or do 'natural' causes fall under another category?
Even in His complete sovereignty, God can choose to limit Himself at times and allow things to go on.
Jesus calmed the storm displaying a control over the natural world whenever and however He wants to.
Do I agree that there can't be a maximally bad god, but a god who is more bad than good, who maybe sends us to hell?
Anyone else think this just means Satan exists too?
Hey, IP. Reading Law, he does not seem to actually support the thought experiment. He says further that both the amount of good/evil in the wolrd makes both the case of any God "unreasonable". So this thought experiment is just the problem of evil in discise. You did not need to argue that such a being is impossible but this should be a good resource to those who have heard the thought experiment.
I guess the proponent of the Evil God challenge would just challenge you to support privatio boni as opposed to its opposite (that good is just a privation of evil).
Christian Crusader I’m not the one to take biblical questions, sorry. :(
@@KEvronista He already showed that good cannot be the privation of evil and if there is going to be any privation it will be evil as privation. Good things can exist in and of themselves, and people can do good things for the sake of goodness. I can give to charity or be chaste even if I'd rather not but purely because I know it's the right thing to do, no one is evil for the sake of evil, no one kills even if they don't want to simply because it's the wrong thing to do, that doesn't happen. So it seems that evil is the privation of good.
Reality proves God is the prefect balance between both good and evil. It's us who can't balance them.
1:21 Wrong... not even 90 seconds in and the lies start
Not an argument.
@@karozans Pointing out that there is an explicit untruth in the setting up of the argument doesn't interest you?
Explains a lot.
@soundwave86 I literally put the timestamp in the post.
Did he ask what that meant?
Did he say " I don't understand that, can you explain? "
Nope
If you require a more detailed explanation then I'm more than happy to explain, but as I pointed out, he doesn't seem interested in learning anything.
Interestingly you've shown zero interest in whether there's a lie as well.
In fact you've argued that presenting a literal timestamp means not even trying.
And no I didn't say it was full of lies, I said the lies started before it even hits the 90 second mark. But hey, who cares right?
Why not argue from maximally laziness? Laziness is evil correct? So a maximally lazy being would be too lazy to create anything.