Wryly

Good question. Western monotheists primarily. And I did say theists today; in the past at least, Jewish peoples were inclined to see all that is good and bad in the world coming from God, as you can see in passages like Isaiah 45.

If the only threads that aren't pointless are the ones where someone changed their mind, most threads in debate forums are pointless.

There's no such thing as a benevolent god. Even the God of Abraham killed everybody in a flood.If that doesn't say i'm not benevolent, I don't know what does.

Definitely agree, but the problem of evil isn't necessarily about the biblical God. It's popularly attributed to Epicurus, who afaik never read the Torah.

Omni benevolent God likely is a false idea about God. True God is both good and evil. The only way omni benevolent God can work is if we twist the idea of omni benevolent by making God be good towards both good and evil, which is something Bible does, saying God benefits all.

Theists today don't really want to believe in a half good, half evil God. Most would rather grapple with the problem of evil than adjust their beliefs about the character of their creator.

WITCHCRAFT

"The word God is for me nothing"

Isn't that an Atheist?

A bit of research would show you that he explicitly said he is not an atheist, identified as agnostic, and according to one biographer said, “In view of such harmony in the cosmos, which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.”

Einstein should not be the club with which you pummel theism.

Because it's trying to reconcile the existence of suffering with a loving god. Well, specifically with an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god. If you have a god who is not benevolent to begin with, why does the existence of evil need to be explained?

The problem of evil assumes a benevolent god, though.

How did the image in the OP change

#3

Religious person: I love God and the many nude pictures of my sex worker wife.

Einstein: 'The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses,’ Einstein wrote to Gutkind, ‘the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this.'

Seriously, FLRW. For your example of a religious person you pick Emperor Cheeto and for your example of an atheist you pick a genius Nobel laureate. Well good thing you're not biased or anything.

Einstein did not consider himself an atheist btw.

You're making a claim but withholding your argument until you hear ours? A bit unusual for an OP, but okay.

I guess I'll begin with why I don't find the usual theodicies very persuasive. I'll stipulate that my beef only applies to a god who created everything ex nihilo; gods who hold power in the universe but didn't create suffering or evil are not subject to my arguments.

1. Suffering serves some constructive purpose: Justifies the limited amount of constructive suffering in the world, sure, but not the gratuitous amount of destructive suffering.
2. Suffering exists because God wants us to have free will: Passing over the fact that this argument is curiously found nowhere in the Bible, all kinds of natural evil exists which has nothing to do with human choice. Animals suffer terribly.
3. Suffering exists because without it happiness and pleasure could not: The contrast theodicy doesn't persuade me because it only justifies the minimum amount of suffering necessary to allow us to understand happiness, and the amount of suffering in the world far exceeds that.
4. We brought suffering into the world ourselves: This just invites a critique of the whole Eden narrative and the concept of original sin.

Oh cool, thanks. Can you recommend one to begin with.

Very educational experiment. Now I know I can trip the alarm by just drawing a beard on my face with magic marker.

Wendy's left Tom Riddle's diary laying around again. Tsk tsk. Gets 'em every time.

Burger 2: The Reburgering

Moral absolutism. I would love a world where things are objectively right or wrong, but I'm painfully aware that if I were placed in certain cultures or points in history I might not bat an eyelash at things I would consider unconscionable today, or conversely might consider some harmless act an abomination. I'm a reluctant moral relativist, I suppose. I would like to be persuaded that morality is more than how good society happens to be at the time.

My childhood was pretty much OK. Certainly not worthy of extensive psychoanalysis.

Indeed your childhood is famous for not requiring protracted and comprehensive therapy from qualified professionals.

Braindead ragebait.

And that's a fucking Whopper you snake

Your milkshake machines are bad and you should feel bad.

Could we get a gaming subforum

Who?

I had Swag (bubbatheclown) in mind, but we can add Rex too.

I also don't believe Rex is conservative if they hate strange men this much.

I won't speak for Rex; maybe I misread he and Swag. But my impression was that they lean right.

I notice women saying they want a traditional man but they aren't a traditional woman and I've noticed men saying they want a traditional woman but aren't a traditional man.

Shrug. This may be the case sometimes. Personally I don't want a traditional partner.

Then I notice the "facts don't care about your feelings crowd" get all in their feelings when Trump said Haitians were eating pets and the facts were against it. But MAGA didn't care. I was telling all sorts of people how crazy MAGA is.

Your social rage would find excellent companionship among MAGA but I mean I'm happy to hear you disagree with them.

Then never leave your house.

Doesn't follow. Just because I prefer one type of risk to another type of risk does not mean I will accept no risks at all.

Then, the feminists, who preach about human rights and who say women are equal to men, decide to label women as goddesses and men as worse than wild animals (all while they shit on Trump for doing that to blacks). I got angry at that too. You call a transman a woman, people claim it's a violation of human rights. You call them a beast that belongs in the woods with bears because women are that scared of them, no woman bats an eye.

This is really taking the implications of the meme to extremes, Remy.

I assumed it meant that in religion, people often put God or Highest Value above family.

Ohh. Thanks.

That was a rather sharp left turn from "atheism is another religion." I was trying to figure out how the two statements were related.

And I don't think theists really put their family last. They may put God before family, but that's not the same thing.

Remember that if you are religious you think like Trump and if you are an atheist you think like Einstein.

No.

How can you be a right wing person who isn't a troubled person according to you?

You can just look at some of the responses in this thread, I guess; some right-leaning folks have responded pretty calmly. Your strong emotional reaction to the man vs bear thing points to a high-anger personality type to me, not someone who was driven to misogyny by a random meme.

Personally I prefer the potential of an animal that may be feral over the potential of a human who may be evil; evil humans are capable of a lot more horrors. Gender enters into it when you ask this question of only women because for millennia women have had to worry more about violent men than violent animals.

Edit: Which Rex also just said more eloquently, apparently.

Well, Dying Light definitely taught me how useful parkour would be in a zombie situation.

All right wingers are troubled people to you.

Nope, most are just average folks.

You seem like a troubled person whose issues stem from something beyond the matter at hand. Seems better to let it go.

Yooo. Been a while since I saw you on DART, glad to see you on DC.