The Problem of Evil (split from is atheism unappealing)

[Jarhyn]

Religion is the definition of word salad, in most cases anyway. Convictions of the existence of mystical, magical, juvenile, woo-woo bullshit is just an indicator that the brain hasn't yet matured.

The point is that the PoE isn't actually a problem because gods are not required to be good any more than they are required to exist.

That was always a juvenile assumption in the first place.

The issue is more fundamental. Religion invents "evil." Then it claims that we need religion to fix the evil. "Evil" is just more religious word salad. There really is a man behind the curtain, Oz is fake.

People who can think and observe without the influence of religious stupidity easily recognize this aspect of the religious charade.

Religion didn't invent evil, and hence part of why the view is so juvenile.

What exists at it's heart is the unilateral breach of consent, the relation of "power to" and "power over".

Humans did not invent these things any more than we invented Darwinism.

We are merely bound to them as a function of being what we are. If we can figure out how to be something different, the idea may or may not follow across that boundary, but I maintain that evil isn't an invention of humans so much as a function at the boundary between Darwinian evolution and neo-Lamarckian/memetic evolution solipsistic and social concerns.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Religion didn't invent evil, and hence part of why the view is so juvenile.

What I mean is that "evil" is just an adjective, same as the word "good." There is neither goodness nor evil. There are behaviors and events that we may describe as evil or good, but it hardly changes the anything. If we're going to be honest with ourselves all those terrible things that happen that we say are "acts of god" are equally just "acts of evil." No one should argue with that if they have even half a brain. Firebombing Tokyo and killing 200,000 people is evil and good. A Tsunami that is an act of god is equally an act of evil.

The religious salesmen like to spin things a different way and lots of people are vulnerable to their craft and stupidity. Hence "evil" becomes a noun, an entity unto itself. But that's just horseshit.

 

[Jarhyn]

Religion didn't invent evil, and hence part of why the view is so juvenile.

What I mean is that "evil" is just an adjective, same as the word "good." There is neither goodness nor evil. There are behaviors and events that we may describe as evil or good, but it hardly changes the anything. If we're going to be honest with ourselves all those terrible things that happen that we say are "acts of god" are equally just "acts of evil." No one should argue with that if they have even half a brain. Firebombing Tokyo and killing 200,000 people is evil and good. A Tsunami that is an act of god is equally an act of evil.

The religious salesmen like to spin things a different way and lots of people are vulnerable to their craft and stupidity. Hence "evil" becomes a noun, an entity unto itself. But that's just horseshit.

More, evil, as a noun, describes an asymmetrical relationship of consent and imposition.

To impose something one does not consent to have imposed on them is where this asymmetry exists.

The instance of such asymmetries is at the heart of this idea of "evil".

Humans didn't invent and have no monopoly on such asymmetries or being on the "victim" or "perpetrator" side of the relationship.

Sometimes there is nothing there to respect our consent or not, and thus is "natural evil".

But to pretend that this asymmetry is merely a human invention is similarly facile hubris.