Ok. Perhaps one or both of us is not getting our message across properly. Let me see if I can sum up what I am saying.
1. If we accept that God is as the Bible describes him, he is benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient.
2. A benevolent God would not allow suffering, because God has the power (he is omnipotent) to avoid it. Being omniscient, he also has the power to avoid all future suffering.
3. Reality shows that suffering occurs.
4. Therefore reality contradicts the claim that God is benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient.
5. Therefore God cannot exist as described in the Bible.
Now I understand, Sy123, that you are not a Christian so perhaps the argument doesn't really apply to your beliefs. But the Christian God is the one with which I am most familiar, and most religious people I know are Christians. Therefore, that is the God I'm discussing here, I'm afraid I don't have a good enough understanding at this time of other religions, particularly Islam, to say whether the same argument applies to those gods.
You seem to want me to provide evidence for saying that God's actions are "evil" and that he has no reason to act as he does. In response, two things:
1. I do not have to prove that God does not have sufficient reasons to allow suffering. That would be a reversal of burden of proof. The theist claims that God has "morally sufficient reasons", therefore it is he/she that must prove this. I accept that morally sufficient reasons are, like you say, conceivable, but just because something is conceivable does not mean it is true. It is conceivable that it will rain tomorrow, but this may not actually happen.
2. If we define "evil" as morally wrong, then we see that God allowing suffering, death and pain to occur is clearly against society's moral standards and therefore evil. If God always acts in line with morality, a contradiction emerges unless it can be proven that God has a morally sufficient reason to allow suffering. This has not been provided.
Your argument seems to me to be simply a fancily-worded version of "God works in mysterious ways" - that because suffering exists, there must be some divine justification for it even if we do not know what this is. This is a faith-based position as there is no evidence in the Bible (the Bible provides our definition of the Christian God) or elsewhere for any morally sufficient reason.
I'm not going to get into the Trinity idea or the cosmological argument at this stage, not because I don't want to have that debate but because I want to focus on the issue we're talking about now.
1. If we accept that God is as the Bible describes him, he is benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient.
2. A benevolent God would not allow suffering, because God has the power (he is omnipotent) to avoid it. Being omniscient, he also has the power to avoid all future suffering.
3. Reality shows that suffering occurs.
4. Therefore reality contradicts the claim that God is benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient.
5. Therefore God cannot exist as described in the Bible.
Now I understand, Sy123, that you are not a Christian so perhaps the argument doesn't really apply to your beliefs. But the Christian God is the one with which I am most familiar, and most religious people I know are Christians. Therefore, that is the God I'm discussing here, I'm afraid I don't have a good enough understanding at this time of other religions, particularly Islam, to say whether the same argument applies to those gods.
You seem to want me to provide evidence for saying that God's actions are "evil" and that he has no reason to act as he does. In response, two things:
1. I do not have to prove that God does not have sufficient reasons to allow suffering. That would be a reversal of burden of proof. The theist claims that God has "morally sufficient reasons", therefore it is he/she that must prove this. I accept that morally sufficient reasons are, like you say, conceivable, but just because something is conceivable does not mean it is true. It is conceivable that it will rain tomorrow, but this may not actually happen.
2. If we define "evil" as morally wrong, then we see that God allowing suffering, death and pain to occur is clearly against society's moral standards and therefore evil. If God always acts in line with morality, a contradiction emerges unless it can be proven that God has a morally sufficient reason to allow suffering. This has not been provided.
Let me flip it around. On what basis do you have to say that what God commanded and allowed is morally acceptable?On what basis do you have to say that what God commanded and allowed is evil? If you say it is objective, you must provide proof. If you say it is subjective, I say that subjectivity does not apply to God, since God is above all humanely constructed morals.
God may have morally sufficient reasons to allow evil since it is perfectly conceivable for there to be morally sufficient reasons
I know you said this, calm down. As I said, something being conceivable does not make it true.I already said that it is perfectly conceivable and possible for God to have morally sufficient reasons to allow evil
By definition, God is also benevolent, providing the contradiction you refer to. This is the basis of my argument, I've done exactly what you say is requiredBy definition, God is all-Knowing, this is based on the commonly accepted definition of God, and is part of God's attributes based in the Bible and pretty much every other scripture. So if you want to prove that God does not exist, you must deal with the definition at hand and show a contradiction.
Exactly.Of course, if I want to prove that God exists, I need to prove that this attribute is a part of the being that I want to show exists.
Your argument seems to me to be simply a fancily-worded version of "God works in mysterious ways" - that because suffering exists, there must be some divine justification for it even if we do not know what this is. This is a faith-based position as there is no evidence in the Bible (the Bible provides our definition of the Christian God) or elsewhere for any morally sufficient reason.
I'm not going to get into the Trinity idea or the cosmological argument at this stage, not because I don't want to have that debate but because I want to focus on the issue we're talking about now.
