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LINK The Evil God Hypothesis

This is one scenario in the book ”50 Voices of Disbelief – Why we are atheists” One author is Steven Law, A renowned British philosopher. He posts that for every reason for the existence for one thing another exists; hate and ugly exist to accent love and beauty. So why not the other way around; love and beauty accenting hate and ugly? Remember, This so called 'loving god' created a world that is "red in tooth and claw." [phrases.org.uk]

In a previous posting I formulated how a heaven cannot exist. There are only levels of hell. I can expand again if someone wants.

JackPedigo 9 Aug 14
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13 comments

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6

If there is a god he's a cruel sick bastard. If you don't believe it just read the bible.

@freeofgod That was the same conclusion I drew from reading their god manual.

In one believes in any form of am Abrahanic god, you are putting your faith in a bastard with no real concern for anything but his own narcissism. I'm not a believer. And if he would exist, I don't want anything to do with a supreme being capable of curing illness, especially in kids, and stopping wars and all other horrific events. I don't know if death is an end or a beginning of something like many Eastern philosophies espouse with some energy linking and such. More scientific and we are just elements of stardust.

4

What I can't understand is the appeal of an eternal life with a puppet pulling the strings. Why is everyone so afraid of death? I look at it as a non birth. We just cease to exist. Only our memories live on for a very brief time. And our dna for centuries as long as we have a blood relative no matter how far removed.

For me the idea of eternal life has nothing to do with god. I like the idea of something beyond death. I want to live on in some other form and the mystery of it all is what appeals to me. No one knows what happens after death to me. My body sure but not me. While it is highly likely I will cease to be and the collection of mass, chemicals and elements that are my body will feed other life and disperse into the biology around its resting place that to me is pointless in response to the unknown. I want to continue so why not believe in that idea?

4

I've heard some doubting Thiests and Agnostics musing that maybe there is a god..but that he is a sadist...

3

The justification of our imagination and the gusto we present and the gullibility we accept seem to be the point. We as nonbelievers must just be a lot less gullible.

2

There doesn't need to be a god to explain the universe. Beauty doesn't exist as the opposite of ugly, just as a human perception. There's no "reason" for the existence of anything other than the fact that it does exist.

2

I guess no comment is as good as I can get with this one.

I simply to not get arguing for a good or an evil god. Heaven or hell. Humans have wrestled with these questions from the beginning.

SMH

Why are we here on this site? I think questions like this convinced many of us we were barking up the wrong tree.

@JackPedigo How long ago did you decide there was no 'conventional' god?
I was very young, 12 or so.
I thought about the universe and sensed there was an order to things but not a god up in the clouds micro managing things.

@JackPedigo On the idea of good or evil - just do not think there is a hell or a heaven. We create our worlds and why some need religion to behave right truly puzzles me.

@silverotter11 Then you are a lot smarter than me! I was 47. Religion had not been pushed down our throats but it was a part of the family life. It had always been benign to me and it took a pivitol event to get me to change.

@silverotter11 I totally agree. Unfortunately, we re the minority in this country.

@JackPedigo I wouldn't say smarter, I love agnostic.com but man I sometimes feel a bit inadequate in the mental arena. There was a post on here somewhere about athesist make up just over one billion of the population. I figure it's probably a bit higher since in many areas denouncing 'god' gets you dead.
You may have done the family thing but you questioned the whole thing all along it just took the pivitol event to push you over. IMO

1

Many religions have, as part and parcel of their inherent structure, a moral code-for example, the Ten Commandments, or the New Testament exhortation to "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

The problem, with such a social contract, as with any contract, is the question of enforcement. A subject may obey a king, because the king has soldiers, and can inter, or even kill, transgressors. The question then becomes, who enforces the king's moral behavior?

Before the advent of wide-spread democracy (a revolutionary, excuse the pun, concept at the time), there was a social NEED for an all-inclusive moral enforcer. Think of Heaven and Hell as a cosmic "determent" policy-one whose enforcement we invested in an absolute entity, because our NEED was absolute.

Voltaire was being sincere when he said: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him". While I don't agree, one cannot argue with the evidence that supports the idea that religion serves a FUNCTION in many societies. Justifying the underpinning of why this function is necessarily supernatural, is where we run into trouble-we no longer need fanciful descriptions of why things are, the rainbow is not the goddess Iris, nor a covenant to not destroy the world, just light refraction in raindrops in the sky.

Unfortunately, the function of religions has now been shown to be harmful. Religion has been too static to keeo up with the issues of the day. In fact, all religions exacerbate global problems and it is high time humans cut the cord with these self-serving ideologies.

@JackPedigo Exactly. We have evolved, our knowledge has grown, but cultural changes are moving much slower than WE are.

@Deveno Unfortunately, that is normal.

1

Life and death are one string. Old proverb.

1

Or maybe we're all just animals, trying to live our lives.

We are animals and recent research into animal intelligence shown how similar we really are to many other animals. They mourn there dead, they understand value and loss. They seek revenge and hold grudges.

1

Sometimes I think I'm in hell now but that can't be right because if this were hell there would be no end. We would all just be tortured forever and ever. OK.

1

The only real and true god is known as "Loki." A true psychopath .

0

Almost fooled me. I thought it looked familiar. It's a great book and sometimes I reread some of the contributers.

0

I'll be sure to remember the phrase "red in tooth and claw", a poetic way of pointing out the brute fact that many animals must kill and eat (in some instances it's eat then kill) other animals in order to survive. But let's also remember that innocent children die agonizing deaths from bone cancer, starvation, and numerous other horrors. I agree that the idea of one characteristic of existence accenting the other is equally valid from both directions. But a third and perhaps more valid way to view the issue is that the universe is simply INDIFFERENT & RANDOM. It then is upon us humans to do what we can to make it less so. Religion was perhaps the primitive but flawed attempt to do this. But more and more of us now know better.

Definitely. Mother nature cares not a fig for any life form. To her it is all about evolution. As I have mentioned lots of time here my late partner had a question for her 2nd graders: Which is more important, people or dirt?

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