@JohnnyQB I try to limit the social media sites I'm on, so not on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram etc. I got this off our local Atheist telegram chat and share site. This way no one knows your contact number, email address and you can remain incognito, like on here .

The time spent praying could instead be devoted towards medical research. (But that would require them to first educate themselves.)

They left out Epicurus' last line:

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"

And that last line, "Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

@RussRAB The typical response is "Free Will" which has been philosophically argued since the ancients -- and still. What is usually left-out of those arguments is the persistence/prevalence of pathogens -- affecting humans and all creatures. Is it really necessary for "God" to have so many of them in this world ? I would think that constitutes evil of some sort.

@RussRAB

This is one of those wrongly attributed internet memes that spreads misinformation and so corruptionnof knowledge

Wronhly attributed to Epicurus the earliest paraphrasing is by Sextus Empiricus, late C2nd, in Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 175

: "those who firmly maintain that god exists will be forced into impiety; for if they say that he [god] takes care of everything, they will be saying that god is the cause of evils, while if they say that he takes care of some things only or even nothing, they will be forced to say that he is either malevolent or weak"

It is also an anti-Epicurean statement as gods were totally indifferent to humans and wouldn’t be bother with them for one minute let alone punishment.

@FearlessFly If god knows all that would negate free will i think.

@KICKN . . . read the philosophers and neuroscientists. There are powerful arguments against free will.

[en.wikipedia.org]

@Geoffrey51 - You may be correct, and I have always read it as attributed to Epicurus. I am more intersted in the message, however, than the attribution.

@FearlessFly - The Hebrew/Christian God wasn't completely keen on the idea of free will as demonstrated in the storey of Jonah. The whole reason Jonah ended up in the whale was that he was trying to escape a task God assigned to him. The whale prevented him from running until he agreed to go to Nineveh to preach as God wanted him to do. My understanding of the development of the Hebrew religion is that Satan was a relative late arrival in the religion. Until that time, God's adversary was willful mankind who was essentially the evil character in the stories.

@RussRAB Why talk about mythology (especially to non-believers!) ? There is plenty of neuroscience/philosophy to ruminate about.

@FearlessFly - True, and the science is a good deal more interesting and challenging attempting to ferret out the facts. I do believe, though, that pointing out certain contradictions within the mythology has value especially when a majority of Americans are steeped in it.

@FearlessFly - On reflection, I think you are completely correct since we are all non-believers.

Yep. Them sumbitches always wanting to ruin christmas