God is evil and that's the truth

What are pure motivations?

Being motivated solely by justice/empathy instead of selfishness.

If God created evil, he did evil, so he must punish himself to punish evil.

God created people who did evil. So he indirectly caused it to exist, but that's not the same thing as doing evil himself under virtue ethics; once God creates someone they are responsible for their own actions. If the criticism is that God allows that person to cause suffering toward other people, well those other people are also evil if you accept Christian doctrines like human inclination to sin. If the idea is God is harming an evil person by creating them, I'm not sure you can really say that. If God created them to be good, I'm not sure it's even "them" anymore and to an extent human nature as it is may be a more pure result of free will. If good couldn't be chosen through free will, I question whether it's even good anymore. Your premise here is relying on an outside consequentialist moral framework, not showing Christian ethics to be a self-contradiction.

But we also see evil which is not instantly punished, so God fails that goal too.

Because he has a mix of different good motivations. Allowing someone not to suffer could help build virtue down the road, and it's not totally clear today which virtues are the most important. That leaves the optimal choice for God to make a little ambiguous, but it also makes it difficult to say he's not making the optimal choice, whatever that may be.

Further, God is punishing children, infants, animals...ect. You would have to label all these as evil to support your argument.

I don't think they are evil in the sense of doing evil, but this is due to lack of opportunity or moral luck. Hitler as a baby was innocent in the sense of not having killed people yet, but I don't think he was purely good either. Someone who was purely good would have the strength of character and virtue not to let themselves become evil. For example, I don't think someone can be called good for not killing people just because it's never in their interest to do so, any more than a drunk driver becomes innocent just because they get lucky and don't hit anyone. If God judges people based on their actions despite knowing what they actually would do in all situations, that seems less fair than judging people's inclinations. So if we're working in the Christian framework, then we're already assuming people are far less virtuous than they appear, since the appearance of virtue is due to common grave/divine providence and moral luck. It's a bit harder to judge with animals, since they are never in a position to rationally judge the morality of actions in the first place, but that's simply lack of opportunity to do a bad thing, which is not the same as being virtuous.

I'm not even arguing these moral premises are super intuitive (though if we're judging intuitions, most people believe in God despite evil existing), but today's secular morality wouldn't be intuitive to people 1,000 years ago either. So I don't think we should expect whatever the objectively true morality is to be intuitive if our own intuitions change so wildly over millennia and people can't even agree on intuitions about deontology vs utilitarianism or even moral realism. The problem of evil only really works as a criticism if it can show the ethics of a religion to be a self-contradiction, and I don't think your arguments succeed at that.

An omnibenevolent, omnipotent being responsible for evil doesnt make sense. Either the definition is wrong or that being doesnt exist.

God," says Epicurus, "either wants to remove evils, but cannot; or he can, but does not want to; or he does not want to and cannot; or he wants to and can. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent; which is inadmissible in God. If he can, but does not want to, he is envious; which is also alien to God. If he does not want to and cannot, then he is envious and impotent; and this too cannot be attributed to God. If he wants to and can, which alone is proper to God, then where do evils come from? Or why does he not remove them?

Being motivated by justice isnt same as being motivated by empathy. One can have one without another easily, and having both makes it impossible to determine what to do when they come in conflict.

Not impossible, I'd say we just don't know which should take precedence when which makes it pretty difficult to judge God's actions.

If virtue ethics deny causation chain, that merely makes virtue ethics incoherent. You cant even judge people without a causation chain to begin with.

Virtue ethics isn't denying causation exists, it's making different normative claims about the causation.

this is incoherent moral framework. You cannot have two moral principles without a third one which decides which of previous two are chosen when in conflict

I don't think I claimed to know exactly what the optimal action is. We have some idea of the guiding principles the Christian God uses, but that's not the same thing. My response is probably gonna be an unsatisfying appeal to mysticism, but I'm not making a claim that x, y, and z is virtuous, I'm saying I don't think you have effectively shown the morality attributed to the Christian God to be a self-contradiction.

As for infants and animals being evil, God didnt even give them intelligence to be able to decide, so punishing them for something they didnt choose negates free will argument as well.

I don't think this is addressing my argument, which is that people are intrinsically disposed to make evil decisions when given the opportunity. If we're looking at the Christian framework, then people have souls that only God is properly equipped to judge and is a more impartial way of judging people than actions which are affected by moral luck. And the idea is everyone's soul is evil, but they make decisions that appear virtuous due to divine providence or common grace. With animals it's not a punishment as I said, but there's a difference between animals just not having the opportunity to make choices and being objectively virtuous. I don't know that an entity that lacks virtue or ill intent can deserve something good or bad in terms of reward or punishment, those require a way of judging inclinations.

P1. God = creating evil motivations

P2. creating evil motivations = deserves punishment

C. God = deserves punishment.

I disagree with P2. I think the evil motivations are an inevitable side effect of creating free will.

Does evil exist?

The university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists? A student bravely replied, "Yes, he did!"

"God created everything? The professor asked.

"Yes sir", the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil". The student became quiet before such an answer. The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?"

"Of course", replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The students snickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."

The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does."

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil."

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

The young man's name -- Albert Einstein.

By same logic, makes it difficult to judge our own actions

I'd say humans have better intuitions about what they themselves should do than about God.

causation chain tracks responsibility to God no matter what

That's a normative claim, not part of Christianity.

It is. Animals experience suffering.

That doesn't mean the suffering is a punishment for something, it's an effect of the Fall.

Your argument was that free will serves as justification for punishment. However, many who never got any informed choice ever are punished and experience suffering. So God is punishing people for something they didnt even choose, not that anyone even chose to have bad intentions when its not even possible to determine what good intentions are.

I said people are inherently evil by nature and disposed to make bad choices, not that they are being punished for a specific choice.

God is punishing people because they are creating evil motivations

No, he's punishing them for being intrinsically evil, which isn't the same thing.

No, they are an inevitable side effect of creating free will which leans to evil motivations. God could have created only free will which has good motivations. If he couldnt and if all free will naturally goes to motivations God considers evil, then God is again setting up all people for failure

If God created people differently they wouldn't be "them" in the first place. If people exist they can attempt to at least become more virtuous, but there is none of that if they don't exist.

2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe proves that there is no God.

Speaking of bad arguments...

This story is known to be made up. Einstein didn't believe in a personal god. He felt the Biblical stories were "primitive legends". There is also the issue of the category error between physics and morality.

Einstein believed God was the force behind the physical laws of the universe.

there are arguments for omnibenevolent being creating evil because being believed even evil deserves to live and experience joy, because omnibenevolent being is good to all, not just to those who are good.

Hmmm, are you not referring to a creator god? If so, he can create no evil and still be good to all he creates.

God created the universe and found it was good.

Einstein believed God was the force behind the physical laws of the universe.

That suggest an entity is behind the laws, but Einstein rejected this. You could probably say he thought the mathematics and laws of the universe were "God".

Because of him God is now being seen in everyday science.

This story is known to be made up.

Yes, it's a well-known copypasta...maybe I just need to be more clear when I'm not being serious.

Debby wrote:

God created the universe and found it was good.

'For the Bible tells me so'.

Suffice to say, I remain unconvinced by your compelling argument.

Yes, it's a well-known copypasta...maybe I just need to be more clear when I'm not being serious.

Yes. Nothing in this thread suggests to me this is joking.

without knowledge on what exactly counts as pure motivation, humans have no any chance of ever being certain in the first place

Punishing evil requires a more pure motivation than basic good actions. Like if your motivations are imperfect, it's still better to not steal/lie/etc.

If you want to divorce Christianity from causation chain, fine, but that merely makes it incoherent.

Making different normative claims about the causation chain isn't the same as ignoring it.

The basis of all punishments is that the one causing X is responsible for X, and thus gets punished for X.

In this particular moral framework, the directness and context of the cause matters.

Suffering is evil regardless, and I don't see why Omnibenevolent God had to make countless animals suffer.

If someone deserves to not suffer, or if motivations for causing suffering are impure, then suffering is evil. But there are a lot of long-term goals like building virtue and it seems unclear what the right amount of suffering is to achieve that. That leaves the "optimal actions" for God to take ambiguous, which is not the same as proving a self-contradiction within Christianity.

If they are not being punished for a choice, then they are being punished for something which isn't their choice. Take your pick.

They're not being punished for a particular action...if Person A and Person B are equally disposed to be violent and one gets in a fight due to random chance and kills someone, while the other person would have done the same under similar circumstances, I'm not sure we can say the violent one is an inherently better person than the other.

You defined evil as not having pure motivations.

I believe I said punishing people without pure motivations is evil, not that it's the only form of evil.

Does God need to create 10 billion different Hitlers just so that each Hitler can be it's own version of Hitler?

Now we're getting into if it's bad to create humans since their nature is inclined toward being sinful. Again, there are a lot of potentially positive effects of humans existing such as building virtue or learning; I'm not saying we have any idea of the "optimal" number of humans to create but that again leads to ambiguity, which is not the same as proving a self-contradiction within Christianity.

God already knows which people are going to be evil and suffer forever. Their creation is pointless to everyone. It achieves nothing other than increasing amount of evil in the world.

Gaining pleasure and being perfect aren't necessarily the only positive things which can exist. People can learn from others or create things. And it's possible that an individual being given an opportunity to be good has value in and of itself, even if they don't take it.

Yes. Nothing in this thread suggests to me this is joking.

I assumed everyone has seen that copypasta at one point or another. Every time I've seen it it's been used as a joke.

I was around when it was used unironically in email chains....

I was around when it was used unironically in email chains....

Yeah, guess that would make a difference. I've only seen it being referenced on Reddit. And a number of parodies elsewhere like this one.

Im so glad to hear that. I was really worried about you for a sec. 😉

Yes, if Mr Omni is Mr Omni, he will inevitably be Mr Omni.

If not evil, then Mr Omni will only be sort of not completely Omni...Which would be a contradiction.

Ok, so we can draw up a list of potential attributes and label GODDO either Mr Omni or Mr Non-Omni...Though as a result we must therefore conclude that GODDO is in fact not necessarily always Omni...Only sometimes.

To be truly Omni, GODDO would need to be both Omni-Good and Omni-Evil.

But Jesus is Jesus and in the Bible Jesus is God.

God doesn’t send anyone to hell. People who follow Satan follow him to hell.