Is God Evil or Good? -- Vinnie vs. KingLouie

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

This thread has been set up for a formal debate between Vinnie and KingLouie who will attempt to argue opposing positions on the following question:

"Is God (i.e. an omniscient and omnipotent deity) a being that is evil or good?"

Vinnie will argue that God is evil and KingLouie will argue that God is good. The debate will tentatively have 3 rounds and Vinnie will go first, per the parameters ( http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php?p=3132219&postcount=24).

A Peanut Gallery (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=153727) is set up in the General Religious Discussions forum for the rest of us to comment on the debate.

Enjoy the debate!

- NS, FD Moderator

[Vinnie]

Proof that God is Evil


Overview

I had originally written a two paragraph overview but word count forced me to strike it. I presented an overview of the issue and where I am coming from. Those interested can view it here (http://www.after-hourz.net/writings/godisevil.html) but actual argumentation is not presented.


Introduction

Atheists and theists beware! There is a God and God is most evil. It can be quite confusing to hear this since "evil" is often misunderstood. Let us evaluate good and evil as they now stand. Good of course has positive connotations. A good person helps others, respects others, treats them fairly, etc.. An evil person thrives on misery, cheats and robs, causes suffering and disaster. Thus "good" generally leads to happiness, joy, praise and so forth---or that is generally the goal whereas evil leads to sadness, despair, destruction, etc. Though these terms are very difficult to perfectly define--and definitions vary between people, most of us have a very clear idea of what "good" and "evil" are even if we cannot adequately articulate them.

It is within this common vernacular of "good" and "evil" that I define God's character. God is not be definable as strictly good or evil since God is the standard by which these things are judged. Rather, speaking anthropomorphically, "evil" is the most adequate term for fallible humans to define their creator.

Good has typically been defined in a theistic context as "conformity between God's will and a human's will". Apologists have often used this definition because it gets God off the hook for "evil" in the world. If evil is merely an action or state of the will, an all good God cannot be said to have created it. To use a thought analogy, think of a sword used to kill someone. I that sword evil in itself? No, the collective grouping of atoms forming that object is not inherently evil. It is the intent or action of the sword wielder that is "evil". For the purposes of my argument I will adopt a very similar posture with one exception, I will be reversing the terms.


Definitions:

"Evil" is most accurately defined as a state of being used to describe humans and their activities. "Evil" is a conformity between God's will and a human's will. Thus if God wants us to rob our neighbors we are in conformity to his "evil" will. We of course do not need to obey an evil God. It would be evil of us to obey him or act in accordance to his will and steal from our neighbors but not stealing from our neighbors in this case is disobeying God and not acting according to his will and that is evil itself. Its God's catch 22. He designed the world evilly so that he always wins.

Since evil is conformity that means "good" is a non conformity between a person's will and God's will. Its important that we do not make "good" out to be a "thing" or a "being" because then the problem of good in the world would be insolvable as there is nothing God did not create. How can an all evil God create good? Its logically impossible-- for an all evil God cannot contain any genuine "good". Since good is not a thing or being, its an action, God is off the hook. Take the word run. Can you create run? No. Improper referents and relations are used here. Run is something you do, not something that is created like a cake. The same with good and evil.

It is analogous to the sword above. It is the actions of the person holding the metal death object that are considered good or evil. Not the elements, atoms and chemicals of the actual inanimate object. Therefore, the problem of "good" in the world is not much of a problem to the doctrine of God's omnimalevolence.



But Why is there so much good in the world?

The first question skeptics often ask pertains to the "good" in the world. The omnimalevolist has several answers to this unperceptive question. This question is usually asked by doubting Thomas's who do not believe God is evil. I will address this issue in more depth as my opponent critiques it. For now, several reasons immediately spring to mind:

a) Contrast. Good makes evil seem stronger. Imagine what a "sunny" day would be like if there was no such thing as darkness. It would lose much of its force as there is no meaningful contrast. When we have different possible ends of a spectrum "extremism" is possible and extremism is often the greater evil. Light and dark, hot and cold, noise and quiet, evil and good. All these things go hand in hand and compliment one another. They are all descriptions of states of beings, not actual thing.

b) Necessity. In order for a free willed being to be genuinely evil, he must have a choice to do genuine good as well. Thus introducing some "good" into the world amplifies the quantitative value of the evil in the end. Thus "good" made evil stronger. In essences, the end justified the means.

c) Humor. The greatest trick our evil God ever played was convincing most of the world's people who are evil to think that they are good. God delights in their self-imposed ignorance and blindness. Our evil God takes great delight and satisfaction in our conscious naïveté.

d) Absence. Good is not a thing or being, but the absence of "evil". Good is simply the absence of an evil god. This paradox makes perfect sense since an evil god would neglect his needy creation resulting in small amounts of "good". A paradox yes, but the reasoning is logically sound and those who defend omnibenevolence have their own paradoxes as well. We have to expect such things when trying to discern the nature of an infinite being such as God. The Christian religion itself poses paradoxes. Why shall the first be last? Why are the poor blessed?


Why Does Placebo Work if God is evil?

You might be thinking something like this: 'I witnessed a miracle or prayer has documented health benefits so "aha!" God cannot be evil.' The reason placebo is a real part of out world is because healthy people can commit more evil. Plus when a healthy person neglects a poor person in a third world country the "evil" is greater than if a sick person did it. "The more you are given, the more is expected" is the good mantra. A healthy person can be more selfish and more self-oriented. A healthy soldier can inflict more damage. A healthy person can produce more drugs, weapons and pornography.

Plus given the current state of the world God is content to keep people thinking they are all right as they are. As they stand now people do not recognize the huge evils they commit by not helping others in need. Our evil God has a plan and that means keeping some people in their deluded state. He will heal them through placebo to give them the false security that they are living "good" when in fact God is relishing in their iniquity.

God also gives millions false hope. Answer one petitionary prayer and naive humans will focus on the one "hit" and ignore all the "misses" much like we do with psychic readers. Instead of helping ourselves and others, as we could do more effectively, we sit on our rumps, or kneel and ask God for help and less gets done. Sure we get some peace and satisfaction out of it but just enough to keep people thinking it works so they don't go out and seize control of their lives and help themselves. We are like the abused, beaten wife who gets enough "I'm sorry's" and "I love you's" and "I won't do it again's" from her evil husband so that she stays where she is. That is, in essence, one reason that can be offered as to why prayer has some positive benefit despite the world being created by an all evil-deity. God is happy with humans thinking they are good and that he is good so he allows this small level of goodness to breach his evil utopia. God is a great trickster.



Evidence for Evil in the World.

Looking around us we should immediately see a problem with the doctrine that God is all good. The fact of the matter is that there isn't a lot of good in the world. There are several primary evidences that the world was created by an all-evil-divine agent and they formulate the heart and soul of this paper.


1) Sovereignty -- Omnipotence and omnibenevolence are inconsistent. An all good world must have creatures of free will who can do evil and cause harm to others. God does not enjoy evil in this framework and its rampant existence calls into question his omnipotence. God has a certain will but often his will is genuinely disobeyed by his human pets with libertarian free will. In an all evil world, as we saw in the Introduction above, God never loses. He wants us to commit evil and whether we obey or not his will is done as obeying God and doing evil is bad and so is disobeying God and not doing that specific evil. The omnipotence and omnipresence of God is never thwarted in this framework. The sovereignty of God is not diminished.

2) Ontological. St. Anselm coined an ingenious argument for God's existence that has been termed 'the ontological argument'. It starts by viewing God as that which none greater can be thought. Many theologians and theistic philosophers have utilized this argument. Plantinga's model goes like this:

1. God exists in the understanding but not in reality. (Assumption for reductio)
2. Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone. (Premise)
3. A being having all of God's properties plus existence in reality can be conceived. (Premise)
4. A being having all of God's properties plus existence in reality is greater than God (From (1) and (2).)
5. A being greater than God can be conceived. (From (3) and (4).)
6. It is false that a being greater than God can be conceived. (From definition of "God".)
7. Hence, it is false that God exists in the understanding but not in reality. (From (1), (5), (6).)
8. God exists in the understanding. (Premise, to which even the Fool agrees.)
9. Hence God exists in reality. (From (7), (8).)

As we can see, God --that which none greater can be thought--exists. But this can be modified further to include what we found out above. An evil God is greater than a good God because an evil God always has its will done. Thus if God is good and not evil then "A being greater than God can be conceived" but that is impossible by the stipulated definitions above. Therefore, God is evil.

2) Survival. Humans are largely driven by survival. It is our desire to be safe and go on. Selfishness is our number one priority in life. Even charity is selfish as "giving makes us feel better". Yes, that is correct, even our acts of charity and reciprocal altruism are driven by selfishness. We have a selfish gene and even our morality is selfish. Why do you think all societies developed the golden rule or variations of it? Because "reciprocal or cooperative altruism" is a good means for humans to ensure their safety, survival and happiness. It is self preservation as lucidly as it can be depicted. One cannot deny that humans are self-oriented, tribal peoples. God is evil and being selfish is a quality of being evil and it is no wonder that God's evil is reflected in his creation. We are created in the image of an evil God who selfishly demands worship and praise.

3) Hypocrisy. Most people claim to be good people but this is false. Suppose you are walking by a pond and there's a drowning baby. If you said to yourself, "I've just paid $80 for these shoes and the water would ruin them, so I won't save the baby" what would that make you? Virtually everyone would be in agreement that it would make you an extremely awful and horrible person. Yet there are millions of children around the world in the same situation, where just a little money for medicine or food could save their lives. In addition to our failure to assist such people, we buy up designer clothes, we pay athletes millions of dollars a year, we pay movie stars and celebrities outlandish amounts of money and so on. That humans are ultimately evil and reflect the evil nature of their creator is not to be disputed. Otherwise the starving children in the world would have food and we would stop buying useless gadgets and expensive jewelry and clothes.

Plato's characterization of the democratic state of Athens well over 2,000 years
ago still rings profoundly true in many modern democracies. "It seems as if the dominant drive of more and more citizens is the objective of getting as rich as possible. . . . Meanwhile the money-makers bent on their business, . . . continue to inject their poisoned loans wherever they can, and to demand high rates of interest, with the result that drones and beggars multiply. . . . Yet even when the evil becomes flagrant [the rulers] will do nothing to quench it. . . . " (Republic)

4) Religious Expression. Though the Bible portrays God as good the roots of an all evil being are clearly articulated. What type of a being would create man first, then woman---giving credence to patriarchal dominance? What type of figure kills the entire population in a mass flood? What type of living God would ask a man to sacrifice his own son (Abraham was asked to kill Isaac)? What type of God orders his chosen people to go off an murder and annihilate other cultures and groups? What type of God is jealous and avenging to the third and fourth generation (Old Testament). What type of deity sets up an absolution program centered around the bloody sacrificing of innocent animals? What type of God requires payment for sin rather than simply granting mercy and forgiveness when people ask? What type of loving God kills his own son to offer forgiveness?

As a most famous example, take the story of Job. In the Bible he loses everything because of a wager between Satan and God. All his family, his wife, his home, his friends, his honor. He is inflicted with plagues and suffers immensely but then is greatly rewarded afterwards. This is a very bizarre story with many evil components.

Inside the Bible are found wonderful notions and good deeds cast in wicked terms and ideas. Evil and good have been mixed and superimposed onto one another. Evil is so intertwined with good the elect are oblivious to its presence. Within traditional religions are found the roots of an all evil Lord and Creator--an evil Lord who can punish children because of their father's sins (e.g. Tenth Plague on Egypt where the firstborn die).

The Christian and Jewish scriptures make this clear. God calls himself a jealous God and also says, "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." Isaiah 45. God says that he himself creates evil (calamity and disaster). Amos 3.6 reads, ""Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?" God takes credit for the disaster and calamity (evils) in various cities.

5) Natural Evils. There are hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, lightning strikes, droughts, freezes, heat strokes and a number of other evil meteorological phenomenon. Kantrina pummeled New Orleans. Hurricane Mitch caused 10,000 deaths and so on. There have been countless deaths do to the natural environment. The "little ice age" resulted in widespread famine. Family members were eating their own pets and themselves as millions died as a result. Plagues have ravished lands killing millions. Viruses, bacteria, the flue, cancer, aids and a thousand other diseases regularly infect humans. 65 millions years ago much of the animal species on this planet were destroyed by a giant impact from a space object. Countless animals died. Earthquakes turn cities and towns upside down killing thousands. Volcanoes cover lands with molten lava and suffocate people to death with smoke and ash. Typhoons reek devastation in the bay of Bengal killing hundreds of thousands at a time. Tsunamis erupt without warning drowning countries in tons of unforgiving water. A lack of rain has starved many a farmer and his families resulting in thousands, if not millions of deaths throughout human history.

There is no need to list all of the thousands of cumulative earth quakes, tornadoes, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, floods, plagues tsunamis and the hundreds of millions (if not billions) of cumulative deaths they have caused. A few will suffice:

• An earthquake in China in 1556 killed approximately 830,000 people.
• Tornadoes cause far fewer deaths since they are smaller and short lived but hundreds die every year to to them and homes are lost. On March 18, 1925 the Tri-State (Mo., Ill., Ind.) was hit totaling in at 689 lives lost.
• Galveston, Texas was hammered by a category 4 hurricane in 1900 resulting in 8000+ lives lost.
• In 1998 Hurricane Mitch caused over 10,000 deaths in the Atlantic.
• In the Atlantic in 1780 it is reported that "The Great Hurricane" caused 22,000 fatalities.
• The Bay of Bengal has been prime for Cyclones over the years. Millions have died from them. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in individual storms several times throughout history. Some report 500,000 deaths from one storm in 1979 (Bhola Cycone).
• From April 5-10 in 1815 the Tambora volcano in Sumbawa, Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies) erupted killing 92,000 people. There are other accounts with greater numbers throughout history.
• As all of us remember, in 2004 an Indian ocean tsunami killed 150,000 people in 11 different countries and left millions homeless.
• The Bubonic plagues are estimated to have killed over 100 million people.
• In the early 1900s the Influenza epidemic killed millions.
• The "little ice age" lasted for five hundred years leading to increased crop failure and therefore, famine. One instance of the Black Plague(Bubonic) occurred during this period which killed approximately 1/3 of the European population.
• In 1931 in China the Huang He flood is reported to have taken well over one million lives.
• Smallpox has killed about 300,000,000 people in the 20th century.
Deaths are not the only problem. Typhoon Ike hit the Philippines in 1984 resulting in about 1,500 deaths but that was only half the story as between 200,000 and 400,000 people were left homeless. Millions are often left homeless. Electricity is lost, water supplies are contaminated. We have only looked at natural evils. Millions and millions more have died as a result of man-made famines---just the situation we would expect from an all evil creator

6) Natural Order of Humans. The world is not egalitarian. Some are born with genetic predisposition towards harmful things (e.g. depression and alcoholism), some are born strong, some weak, some tall, some short. Some people can sing and reason better than others. Some are born rich, some are born poor. We are all different. Some are born in times of war, others in times of peace. Our ancestors lived in harsh times void of any modern technology and today's luxuries that we take for granted (lights, bathrooms, showers, running water, heat, books, etc.). Even people today in third-world countries live without these things. Some people were born as slaves, others as slave masters. Some as peasants, others with the divine blood of kings.

Some people are born blind, crippled, deformed, deaf or with many other physical deformities. Some are born with mental illnesses while others are quite normal. There is nothing egalitarian or "fair" about the natural order of the world. "Men are all created equal" is the illusion we tell ourselves. We think that men should be created evil therefore we make this mantra our reality. But this illusion is not reality which has clearly been designed by an all evil-God. The Bible even depicts God as saying "Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him dumb or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?" (Exodus 4:11). God takes responsibility for the deaf and lame and crippled. God also says that he sends his rain both upon the just and the unjust. That is hardly a "fair" notion granted that some people are wicked and some people are good.

7) Predators and Prey. Look how brutal and carnal sharks and lions and tigers are--and a million other predators (some of which eat the young of their own species). They instinctively kill with ferocity that can only be instilled by an evil and carnivorous God. We are all cannibals in that we eat our earthly neighbors. If God was good then the lion and the lamb would frolic in the field together and eat grass together. In the real world the lion would frolic, work up an appetite and bite the lambs head off. Amazingly this evil acts is met by another one sometimes. A group of hungry hyenas will come along and steal the lion's dinner!

In other words, Nature is red in tooth in claw where the strong survive and the weak perish. Power is in numbers and might is right. This is hardly the modern view of a forgiving and "help the weak" type of compassionate God that we see. Animals savagely kill and eat other animals to survive. Man who is an animal himself eats and kills other animals. Even vegetarians kill life at a cellular level when eating vegetables. It is impossible to avoid in this day and age. Life is rooted in death on this planet and that is resemblant of the workings of an evil deity.

8) Ancestry. Life for many of our predecessors was short, cruel and brutal. Most of them were illiterate and for the most part, never owned a book. Most of them were without the equivalent of modern schooling and they rarely ventured several miles outside of their birthplaces. The summers could be brutally hot and the winters fiercely cold. There was no weather prediction like today. There weren't any snow forecasts, hurricane warnings and so on. They toiled long and hard just to provide the basic necessities for themselves. At the end of a backbreaking day there was no modern entertainment or relief to comfort them. No television, CD players, video games, Internet, going to the mall, out to a bar, sports, books, movies and so on. They did not have the same hygiene and sanitation that we possess. Most people probably knew firsthand the gnawing pain of hunger and chronic, debilitating disease. The average life expectancy was probably around 30 and many parents watched a good deal of their children die in infancy. That has been the state of life for most of our ancestors. Hardly the workings of an all-good divinity.

Would a good God allow such conditions? If God was good and took all this trouble to specially design the universe and earth for his chosen people, would he leave them naked, poor, lacking possessions and struggling for basic necessities like this?

9) History. There have been countless wars, battles, inquisitions, raids, holocausts, crusades, witch hunts, rapes, murders, acts of molestation, misogyny, homophobia, slavery, genocide and so on where there is no apparent divine assistance or prevention. Let's look at some major war deaths--the top 15 according to Wiki's List:

• 62,000,000 - World War II (1937–1945), (see World War II casualties)
• 36,000,000 - An Lushan Rebellion (756–763)
• 30,000,000–60,000,000 - Mongol Conquests (13th century)
• 25,000,000 - Manchu Conquest of Ming China (1616–1644)
• 20,000,000–50,000,000 - Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864)
• 17,000,000 - Timur Lenk's conquests (1370–1405)
• 15,000,000–66,000,000 - World War I (1914–1918) (see World War I casualties) note that the larger number includes Spanish flu deaths
• 10,000,000-25,000,000 - Second Sino-Japanese War (1931–1945)
• 5,000,000–9,000,000 - Russian Civil War (1917–1921)
• 3,800,000 - Second Congo War (1998–2004)
• 3,500,000–6,000,000 - Napoleonic Wars (1804–1815) (see Napoleonic Wars casualties)
• 3,000,000–8,000,000 - Thirty Years War (1618–1648)
• 2,500,000–3,500,000 - Korean War (1950–1953)
• 2,300,000–3,100,000 - Vietnam War (entire war 1945–1975) WWII
• 2,000,000–4,000,000 - French Wars of Religion (1562–1598)

Taking the sum of the individual numbers and middle number as the average for each war with a range of values yields a death tally of over 300,000,000 (three hundred million). Wiki lists 8 more wars with at least a million casualties. Six wars with over 500,000 deaths are then reported. Then 20 wars with at least 100,000 deaths are listed (some which range from 100,000 to a million). Five wars with 50,000 to 100,000 deaths are then listed.

That is a whole lot of war and death throughout human history. But that is not all. Self-imposed famines have caused millions of deaths. Genocide and democide have killed droves of people as well. Here is wiki's top five:

• 40,000,000, contradictory - Mao Zedong's Regime (China, 1949-1975)[1].
• 30,000,000–62,000,000 - Stalin's regime (1924-53), (not including WWII)[2].
• 11,000,000–19,000,000 - Slave trade in Islamic World over 1200 years (7th - 19th century) -needs explanation
• 6,000,000–60,000,000 - African and Atlantic slave trade (16th - 19th century)
• 5,000,000–12,000,000 - Nazi internments and Holocaust in Europe

WIki has a very extensive listing of natural and man-made disasters. The rest can be found here. The history of the human race does not appear to be driven by an all good God or to be guided by an all loving, all encompassing spirit. This is presumably why many or our ancestors were dualistic. The harshness of life prompted them to believe that not only was their a good God, but there was an all powerful, all evil God as well battling that good God for supremacy. The history of humanity clearly depicts the workings of a species created by an all evil being.

10) Private evil. Much evil is said to have some value in an area called "vicarious atonement". People look at evil, clutch together, turn to God for strength, find the courage to be, etc., as a result. This certainly does not adequately account for all evil throughout history! But some evil does not have a social dimension. A person may have raped a girl just before being swept away with hundreds of others by a tidal wave. Statistics dictate that there are unknown, personal, private tragedies with purpose or social value to anyone in that they are only hypothetical abstract issues that we think about. Private tragedy is very difficult to reconcile with an all good God. However, an evil God wallows in private tragedy. It is just what we expect to see from an all evil creator.

11) The Nature of the Universe. "We aren't in Kansas anymore" are the famous words uttered by Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. "We are no longer in the center of the universe" utters the scientist to the dismay of the anthropomorphic ethnocentrizing theologian. Earth was originally viewed as the place to be. The center of an infinite existence through which everything revolved around. Later on we find that the earth orbits the sun and is a relatively small planet. Then we find out that the sun is 93 million miles away and has a diameter of almost a million miles. Turning to other stars we see that the sun is just an average stellar object and find 200 billion more stars in our galaxy. We exist at the outer edge dizzily orbiting an average sized star in a gigantic galaxy 100,000 light years across (1 light year = 6,000,000,000 miles). But our galaxy is only one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in a violently expanding universe. Our time of living is but the blink of an eye to the universe and our dimensions less then an atom. With an all good God we expect advanced human life to be the center of existence. An evil God would create such an cosmic atmosphere that makes us look insignificant and worthless, alone, hidden and obscure in a vast, almost infinite expanse.

We see battered and cratered celestial objects in space with no atmospheres. We know what happened to the dinosaurs and this means that at any moment, a giant space object could once again wipe out life on this planet. Most astronomers tell us its not a question of "will it happen again?" but "when will it happen again?" This uncertainty and anxiety of a cruel cosmos can only be instilled by an evil God.

The same can be said of the biological sciences which tell us that man was not specially designed but developed from lower life forms over billions of years. It was random chance and chemical and physical reactions which led to our current state. We have design flaws (e.g. a blind spot) constantly reminding us of our imperfect, evolving natures. We are walking chimpanzees with larger craniums.

12) Failure to Intervene. This will presumably initiate the "freewill defense" and subsequent discussion but God's failure to intervene and stop evil can be viewed as an evidence for his evil nature. Suppose there is a painter driving down a road in his truck which has a ladder in the back. The painter sees a woman and her baby trapped on the second floor leaning out the window of a burning building. Does not moral goodness require that he stop and assist this woman? As we have seen billions of times throughout history, God simply keeps on driving.

Conclusion: There are philosophical, historical, natural, logical, theological, moral, cosmological and biological reasons for believing that God is evil as opposed to the common view that God is good.

Have fun with this one!

Vinnie S.

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

Vinnie,

Please note that your statement exceeded the word limit, as agreed to from the FDP thread, by 85 words. Please try to keep future statements within 5000 words.

Thank you for your consideration,

- NS, FD Moderator

[KingLouie]

I HAVE NO PROOF

You wrote a powerful opening statement, Vinnie.

To summarize your position so far, it would seem that God is evil because life is evil. Sword of Truth verifies this by saying, “...Any ole' god that just so happened to exist, who produced the end results Vinnie describes would be evil." *

And the end results, to me, being this evil life.

I’ll not disagree with you much; not altogether, and not at this point in the debate. I’ve often argued the same point myself: that life is something harder than it is easier. I’ve likened it to a highway road stretching the peak of a treacherous mountain, all drivers navigating jagged boulders and smothering landslides, curving roads with steep cliffs edging closer and closer to the shoulders, wild drivers steering mad in the throes of their deadly trek towards the summit, perhaps bumping one another for position and trading paint.

Joy, accomplishment, and peace: these are the fleeting mile markers separating miles and miles of an upward travail, blurring far too quickly in our rear view mirrors and never closer than they ever truly appear -- that’s life. Yours and mine and everybody else's reading along. From what I know of everyone I've met in life, it might just be universal.

I heard a comedian the other day talking about his one wish for humankind: that the progression of our lives could be somehow reversed, and that it could be, in this life, that a person starts out old and gray but lives backwards towards youth and jubilation, and that our unavoidable destiny could be a lifelong parade from the end to the beginning, and that the future would be a wondrous birth that awaits us, and not any grizzly death.

And that a vagina would be there to meet him us his in the beginning.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

-- Walt Whitman

I think you and I suppose it lucky, Vinnie, for our conversation here is revealing it.

As I read your opening statement three weeks ago or so, a question kept popping into my mind.

In this debate, the existence of God is something given. Something presumed from the opening sentence: “Atheists and theists beware! There is a God and God is most evil."

I composed a question in order that it could be applicable to the confines of this hypothetical; but also, that it could be something pertinent to our lives outside the hypothetical -- something imagined, as well as something real.

My question to you is: why haven’t you killed yourself yet?

Your argument presents life as something utterly and unbearably evil; therefore, its creator must be unbearably evil. You can answer my question as one who would acknowledge this creator; but also, you can answer it as someone lacking in belief altogether.

In this life, I will submit that there is starvation. And hurricanes, like you said, and birth defects, and wars and homelessness and death. Even charity, as you suggested, might have its roots in self-promotion. And death is our finishing line.

As you have argued, such a setup seems nothing but unbearable. There is fear and dread in this life, and I have felt it; I have recognized the same feeling in the eyes and words of those I've met, if I've had any time in the slightest to investigate them with any depth. We're all going to die one day, and it's the only real thing we truly know. I think we dread it, all of us, at some level.

In terms of this hypothetical, therefore, if God is indeed existing, and if God is evil being because this life, itself, is evil: if there is no way to escape his evil clutches, then why have you continued to live life? For what purposes could you have spent your time writing all these words to me here, when you have had the chance to end yourself any time you could have wished?

Furthermore, if you would only transcend this hypothetical, and if there is, in fact, no god: if life were ever-still unbearably and atrociously evil, then for what reason do you attribute not having killed yourself already?

If it was pain that you've been fearing, there are easy ways to exit a life – painless ways. With only a pinprick, you could've injected yourself with a cocktail of drugs, to be swept into oblivion with the greatest of ease. You could've yawped your last hurrah swan-diving from off a cliff, finally feeling what it must feel like to be a bird.

You could've started your car in your garage and met death all drunk and stoned from carbon monoxide.

You could have escaped this unbearable evil that seems to characterize our cumulative lives, as you have argued it could only be. You could've ended this stacked-deck misery on your own terms, and not on any god's. And not on the terms of a cold and uncaring universe, the only other possible alternative.

If life is so utterly unbearable, then the only question remaining is, why do you remain among the living? You’ve had a choice in this matter all your life, after all, like I've had the choice, like I did when I was fourteen and exercised this very option. Spoiled that I was, however, it never occurred to me that there are people in the world with far fewer options than I thought I owned myself; there are families on top of their roofs facing onslaughts of snarling enemies, who pound the gates of the city and hold hatchets while gazing with rage, these families facing the absolute reality of a true and bitter evil in this world, who are forced to consider their one remaining option: to end themselves and to end their children, but on their terms, by leaping hand-in-hand from the rooftops only to crash into the ground, plummeting to their deaths, but defying the brutal and unloving hands of a cold and merciless enemy.

Even still, and while surrounded by all manner of this impending evil, they spend their minutes weighing options in circumventing this terrible outcome. They cling to their lives in the hopes that somehow, some way, their luck might suddenly change, and that they'll find some way to live life just a little bit longer. That they might buy a few more moments for their children, and for their wives.

Why don’t they just kill themselves, as they flail in such abominable evils? Why do they clamor to live for even a moment longer, knowing well that very soon, one way or another, some day or another, the same dreaded outcome will eventually revisit them no matter what, and even though they might perhaps find some sort of way to survive for just one more night?

Why don’t they kill themselves, is the question here, the same way you haven’t killed yourself yet, the same way I’m still around and typing this question to you?

Whatever your reasons for not having killed yourself yet, your mere existence now confirms, at least to me, that you have not proven our creator to be 100% evil. Which is the way things should be if you ask me, for to me, there is no such thing as any proof. Not in matters like these, anyway. But I do love this debate -- I just wanted to say again how much I've enjoyed the conversation here. It’s going to be an excellent exercise in evil and good, I think, for both of us.

I got to thinking about this last night in Memphis, Tennessee. I was eating ribs and drinking spirits and swaying to white boy blues. I was thinking about all the reasons why living life is a good thing and not a bad thing. I think it's because living life is a fun thing. It’s interesting -- it’s not anything if not utterly engaging, I'll give that much to living a life.

I think that all the people in the bar were proving my point, too: that there are more people dancing in a day, than there are people killing themselves.

It would seem, at least in B.B.'s Bar, that if life were something utterly unbearable, then more of us would be killing ourselves rather than dying in natural ways. But like the families looking down from the rooftops, it seems most of us live our lives like humans trying to survive for just one more sunrise -- trying madly to do it all again whenever the blues finally die for the evening.

Considering the dancers in front of the stage, and by a popular, convulsing tally, it seems that life is something more bearable than unbearable. You, yourself, prove it with every word you've you type here. It's good: every time I see your words on the page in the future, I'll know that you, just like me, are also among the living.

From the Jungles of Dry Rubbed Ribs,

Kang Louie



*SwordOfTruth, IIDB, 2006. (Or sum'in like that.)

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

Vinnie,

Please note that your next statement is overdue. You will be granted a 3 day grace period, however, extending your deadline to Mar. 23.

Thank you for your consideration,

- NS, FD Moderator

[Vinnie]

I’m not late because I decided, in lieu of Kang Louie’s opening post, that I should kill myself. Rather it is spring break and I am trying to enjoy myself. Yet with the coming of spring and a week off of school and a few days of work comes frigid thirty degree temperatures. My parade is being rained upon. More proof God is evil ;)

Why I haven’t killed myself yet

Your argument presents life as something utterly and unbearably evil; therefore, its creator must be unbearably evil. You can answer my question as one who would acknowledge this creator; but also, you can answer it as someone lacking in belief altogether.

In this life, I will submit that there is starvation. And hurricanes, like you said, and birth defects, and wars and homelessness and death. Even charity, as you suggested, might have its roots in self-promotion. And death is our finishing line.

As you have argued, such a setup seems nothing but unbearable. There is fear and dread in this life, and I have felt it; I have recognized the same feeling in the eyes and words of those I've met, if I've had any time in the slightest to investigate them with any depth. We're all going to die one day, and it's the only real thing we truly know. I think we dread it, all of us, at some level.

In terms of this hypothetical, therefore, if God is indeed existing, and if God is evil being because this life, itself, is evil: if there is no way to escape his evil clutches, then why have you continued to live life? For what purposes could you have spent your time writing all these words to me here, when you have had the chance to end yourself any time you could have wished?

In essence, King’s argument boils down to this poignant question that he asked:

My question to you is: why haven’t you killed yourself yet?

[1] Of course I am free to simply say, “I do not know” and still reference the large corpus of evidence for God’s omni-malevolence I already brought forth. The inability to answer such a question does not inherently destroy or neutralize the force of such arguments.

Why does a wife stay with a husband who beats her constantly and even experience momentary pleasures in such an enviroment? Why do people smoke cigarettes and smile? Why are so many people obese and unhealthy? People do harmful and unhealthy things regularly to themselves. All these things are “illogical” but people still do them. Pointing out another illogical activity of homo sapiens, as King is doing, is not an argument----it is a piece of data. It can suffice to say that we are simply stuck with some type of “abused victim---Stockholm syndrome”.


[2] But I can of course offer a very good apologetic and I offer this point as my main response to the question: All life appears built with a survival aspect. It is biologically hardwired into life on this planet. We commonly refer to it as “evolution” or natural selection. Adapt and survive. That is what we are built to do. What better creation for an evil deity than to make life unbearable yet instill a survival mechanism in his creatures?

It is quite logical that an all evil God would make a cruel and unbearable existence for free willed, sentient beings but then instill within them, via evolutionary processes, a survival mechanism and instinct. Like most all species we have basic biological duties such as “self preservation”. If life is virtually unbearable then an evil deity has designed the world so that we must bear the unbearable and suffer more. Precisely what we might expect.

[3] There is also uncertainty. I know not that death will end the unbearableness of life. It is possible an evil creator might give us false hope that death is release from life, that it is eternal rest and peace when in fact it is eternal hell and torture.


[4] Furthermore I am a selfish individual. I want more pleasure and to live more and to experience things. Life is rooted in selfishness and self-preservation. We are immoral creatures who relish in immorality as oblivious to its presence as “pigs wallowing in mud” to cool themselves.

Even still, and while surrounded by all manner of this impending evil, they spend their minutes weighing options in circumventing this terrible outcome. They cling to their lives in the hopes that somehow, some way, their luck might suddenly change, and that they'll find some way to live life just a little bit longer. That they might buy a few more moments for their children, and for their wives.

How about false hope? Even fear of the unknown. Both concepts are easily recognizable within the framework of an evil deity. In fact, as my first post attempted to demonstrate, we might in fact predict these states of being granted an all-evil deity.

Whatever your reasons for not having killed yourself yet, your mere existence now confirms, at least to me, that you have not proven our creator to be 100% evil. Which is the way things should be if you ask me, for to me, there is no such thing as any proof. Not in matters like these, anyway. But I do love this debate -- I just wanted to say again how much I've enjoyed the conversation here. It’s going to be an excellent exercise in evil and good, I think, for both of us.

I do not have “proof” in the philosophical sense. I simply have a fondness for provocative titles. I do not feel the need to demonstrate God is 100% evil rather than 98% evil. I am simply arguing “evil” vs. “good” qualitatively rather than quantitatively. But if all I had to do was show God is 51% evil and 49% good then my task would be far easier.


I think that all the people in the bar were proving my point, too: that there are more people dancing in a day, than there are people killing themselves.

We have a survival instinct which means this should be the case. Its not a counter-point, but is in fact very consistent with an evil deity. This is one of the purposes of my argument. To show how we can rationalize virtually any state of affairs with an “evil deity” just as we can rationalize any state of affairs with a “good deity”. In the ultimate sense it is 100%, unequivocal BLIND FAITH. If that is where this debate ends I will be quite content with that result for that is the goal.

There is no unequivocal evidence for God’s goodness. There is no evidence that if this being does exist I “should” worship him or I should thank him or I should have a relationship with him or that I should even give a damn to begin with and just simply live my life as I se fit and hope the evil sadistic Tyrant doesn’t tinker with my existence in harmful ways.

In fact, if we did simply look at nature and the world around us, I think the data is far more compelling towards the side of God being evil. Does this mean this is the case? Not necessarily but I believe one case appears far superior to the other in light of the blatant and large scale evils throughout history and those that are rooted within our existence itself. Thus I must conclude there is more evidence for the omnimalevolence of God than the alternative.

Vinnie

[KingLouie]

Vinnie argues that if we would consider the nature of this world, we would find that living life is something more ugly than it is beautiful.

He descirbes it as something so utterly unbearable, that if it were a creation, its creator could only be evil since the nature of its evil is reflected in living a life.

So I asked Vinnie why, therefore, since existence is so utterly plaguing, with no true charitable actions amongst the lot of us, he hasn't yet killed himself to this point.

He has offered 3 "apologetics" as to why he hasn't yet done it:

1. That we are wired with a survival instinct, further revealing the evil nature of this creator: that we are all battered Tinas smiling back in the wake of Ike's incessant jabbing, like robots, absorbing pain and mindlessly coming back for more.

2. That he is uncertain whether the next life will be any better than this one.

3. That he is selfish, and wants more pleasure for himself.

So here are my responses to each of these three, in reverse order:

3. If Vinnie lives to obtain more pleasure, then the notion that there exists, in this world, pleasure to be obtained seems wholly contradictory to the nature of the opening statement, and the overall premise here. Remember that life is altogether evil and unbearable; so now, there is pleasure to be had here, and even becomes a reason for which to continue living.

2. If Vinnie is uncertain whether the next life will be any better or worse than this one, then considering the way he has been describing this life, it might be worth a shot anyway. According to his description, this life is absolute hell. And if its creator is evil, then we are all undoubtedly destined for an even worse hell. But maybe not.

Maybe there is no creator after all, so exiting this current hell might be a peaceful non-existence, that might be far better than toiling away in this hell Vinnie currently describes. So we might as well give it a shot, if this life is as unbearable as he describes.

1. Vinnie states that the reason we don't kill ourselves and escape is because we are ingrained with a survival instinct.

My wife's great grandfather killed himself in Nazi Germany to circumvent his orders to kill Americans. This tells us that, if he was, indeed, ingrained with a survival instinct, he was able to override the instinct. His example alone is enough to illustrate that we people are capable of denying those orders that are programmed into us for our survival.

I did some investigating over the past couple of weeks or so, and I found a fairly standard number: .0145%

According to this source, about 14.5 people out of 100,000 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3590847.stm) commit suicide worldwide. That's .0145%.

Since we know of cases in which the survival instinct has been overridden by those who believe life to be as unbearable as Vinnie has described it, we can only conclude that 99.9855% of humans do not find it as unbearable. 99.9855% of the people in this world have reasons to live it through.

For Vinnie, maybe it's spring break; or for me, maybe it's my Marlboro lights that jab me squarely in the face like twenty filtered Ikes.

For all of you reading along, whether there exists a creator or not, if life is like it was for my wife's great grandfather, as Vinnie argues is the inevitable, inescapable, and intolerable daily norm in this world, then the only real question to ask is, why do 99.9855% of us still live our lives, kicking about, coming here to talk to each other on this forum board and things like that?

If there is a creator, then by the sheer numbers, and with the knowledge that our survival instincts can be overridden, then 99.9855% of us do not find this world to be unbearable.

And if there isn't a creator, then by sheer numbers, 99.9855% of us believe that life is, in fact, something good enough to be lived.

Either way you cut it, in this argument, by the way it's been positioned, by the way the world has been described, if Vinnie is looking for 49-51, then my only calculated response would only be .015-99.855.

From the Jungles of Hard Math and Tylenol,

Kang Louie

Notes

http://w3.whosea.org/en/Section1174/Section1199/Section1567/Section1824_8078.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3590847.stm

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

Vinnie,

Please note that your next statement is overdue. You will be granted a grace period, however, extending your deadline to 48 hours past the time of this post.

Thank you for your consideration,

- NS, FD Moderator

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

The grace period has expired and unfortunately I must declare a forfeiture. KingLouie will now have the opportunity to post a concluding statement.

- NS, FD Moderator

[KingLouie]

No conversation between two earnest people is silly.

From the Jungles of Conclusiveness,

Kang Louie

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

The formal debate is now complete. We would like to thank Vinnie and KingLouie for their participation. Discussion can be continued in the peanut gallery.

- NS, FD Moderator