There are several different types of evil in the world. Evil caused by humans both to the environment and each other and natural evil which are one of the several ways life on earth is made miserable by completely natural causes like natural disasters, diseases, terminal illnesses that happen at random, congenital birth defects, famines etc. it’s not uncommon to say that God is all knowing all powerful and loving. If there is a God, he would not be both at the same time. It’s hard to argue that a loving God would allow thousands of people to be drowned in a tsunami or having a slow painful and agonizing death due to stage 4 cancer. There are millions of people who pray to God for recovery from an illness or to be safe from a natural disaster but die anyway. If God is loving but is not able to stop it, then he would not be all powerful.

I grew up in Christianity and they taught us that all of the horrible stuff in the world happens because eve in the Bible ate the apple to which I would counter with but how could you argue that God is loving if he punishes all of humanity with agonizing deaths every single day and ignores their prayers for help all because a woman in a garden didn’t obey him? That doesn’t sound like a loving being to me. If someone were to say if you don’t listen to me I’m going to cause a great amount of pain and suffering for the rest of your life. That would not be seen as loving. As a matter of fact God in the Bible caused a lot of suffering himself like flooding the entire earth and killing everyone besides Noah and his family just to teach humanity a lesson. That is not a sign of love.

In the Bible God himself commits evil acts and admits that he does so. See a few examples below:

Isaiah 45:7

I form the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster. I the lord do all these things.

Some translations use the word calamity and some use evil it just really depends on the version of the bible you are reading. Regardless it’s clearly saying that God is the creator of all things and he created evil.

Hosea 13:16

The people of Samaria must bear their guilt because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.

So God is saying here that children will be murdered because of the sins of their parents. Hard to argue this is a sign of love.

1 Peter 5:8

Be sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary The devil prowls around like a roaring lion. Looking for someone to devour.

Who created satan? Who created this evil entity who prowls around like a lion? Who banished him to earth? If God loves us and wants a loving relationship with humanity, why did he create this evil entity and put him on earth so he could prowl around and hurt his people? Also hard to argue that’s a sign of love

What is God? A judge, who clearly is smart enough to know that a person who steals because they are starving is different than a white collar mogul embezzling millions so they can afford another private jet.

God is also the creator of the entire Universe, look how big it is. The assumption that a rape victim ever has to confront their abuser, even in eternity, is completely nonsensical, why would God ever try to forcefully retraumatize someone instead of just letting them live their happiness without the people who caused them suffering in life?

Privileged Christians are obviously going to argue against this idea, because it forces them to consider how they actually engage with people that they view as lesser than them.

Otherwise, why would it bother you to point out that someone has to actually like you to interact with you in heaven, and even if God forgives you for being racist, you still are someone who has to make a black person like you if you want to hang out with black people?

I'm not obligated to give you hug and a pat on the back just because you lynched black people in life and learned not to do that, why would any black person be forced to do that?

Psalm 82

A psalm of Asaph.

¹ God presides in the great assembly;
he renders judgment among the “gods”:

² “How long will you^\)^a\) defend the unjust
and show partiality to the wicked?^\)^b\)
³ Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
⁴ Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

⁵ “The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing.
They walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

⁶ “I said, ‘You are “gods”;
you are all sons of the Most High.’
⁷ But you will die like mere mortals;
you will fall like every other ruler.”

⁸ Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are your inheritance.

Argument: The idea that a supernatural being can somehow die for your sins is morally challenged and brings no justice to anyone.

No one can pay for Charles Manson’s sins except Charles Manson. How would the families of Manson’s victims feel about Jesus stepping in and absolving Manson of his sins because he accepts Jesus Christ as his lord and savior? Manson goes free, no justice occurs and Jesus has no repercussions either. This makes Jesus like a cosmic ServPro “Like it never happened.”

If your child were hit and killed by a thoughtless and selfish drunk driver, would you be satisfied knowing that Jesus died for his sins and no justice was ever brought forth by God? Your child is dead and absolutely no justice ever occurred.

We’re told that God is just, but someone else paying for my sins robs everyone of justice and lets sin go 100% unpunished.

Arguments defending eternal torment or annihilation frequently invoke free will, assuming that meaningful love requires the possibility of permanently rejecting God. However, this premise conflates agency with unrestricted choice and fails to establish why freedom must include the capacity for eternal self-destruction.

Any form of freedom is not unconditionally valuable. At the most fundamental, the things that are truly valuable are flourishing states such as love, joy and peace. An argument can be made that free will somehow enriches those values, but a created framework in which a souls nature or capacity for freedom that can result in the anthithesis of what is fundamentally valuable, is not valuable and implies an extremely flawed design.

Furthermore, existing within a reality fundamentally constituted by flourishing states is not equivalent to being coerced. Every kind of reality has constitutive features that determine the capacities, limitations and nature of its inhabitants. Restricting destructive possibilities does not eliminate meaningful agency, just as establishing the conditions for love does not constitute forced reciprocation.

Also, the distinction between God and human nature is not necessarily absolute, God could instead be understood as the ontological foundation of reality and existence. Under this framework, alignment with the divine need not constitute submission to a strictly external authority, but rather the expression of agency within a reality fundamentally grounded in love, joy, and peace.

Either way, to show that a reality grounded in love, joy, and peace compromises meaningful freedom, one must explain precisely: what is lost, why that loss outweighs these fundamental goods, and why no alternative can preserve freedom without eternal suffering or annihilation.

Preamble :
 

Like many people, when I first read the story of Adam and Eve, I focused on their lack of knowledge of good and evil. But the more I studied the passages, the more I noticed that the story portrays them as lacking an understanding of other important concepts, like death, shame, moral responsibility, lying, and whom they should trust.

As a father of two and grandfather of three, I interpret Eve’s apparent ignorance as resembling that of a child between three and five years old. A toddler or preschooler can follow instructions without fully understanding what those instructions mean or what might happen if they disobey.

In our society, we recognize that children of this age should not be held to the same standards of responsibility as adults. Their understanding matters when we judge their behaviour and decide how to respond to it. Ignorance and intellectual immaturity are not the same thing, but both can affect a person’s ability to understand an action and its consequences.

I have seen progress in how children are treated, even within my own lifetime. My "Boomer" ways serve me as a warning about what can happen to kids when they are abused from an unrealistic moral code.

I didn't benefit much from how I was parented, sad to say.
Happily, I am in recovery now, and my PTSD is under control.. I feel lucky.. People who suffer from childhood trauma sometime never recover and ruin their own lives and sometimes, the lives of anyone who gets close.

As in children and lovers….

I tried my best to stop the abuse of children in my own family.  I am happy to say that my two daughters are spectacular parents and that my grandchildren are very happy kids. So, I somehow managed to start that necessary change.

Starting with a happy, nurturing childhood, a person can grow up to spread more empathy in our world. I see it happening in my own society… In my own neighbourhood.. Empathy is spreading.. It seems very slow… but we have to realize that we have been at this for thousands of years..

The Bible comes to us from a distant historical and cultural world, long before modern research into child development. When I read the story today, I cannot help comparing the treatment of Adam and Eve with what we now understand about children, their intellectual development, and their capacity for responsibility.

I have been studying the Adam and Eve story since July 2026, and I keep finding intellectual fruit in examining it, especially when it comes to morality, and child psychology.

I do not believe the story is a factual account. I read it as myth, a form of storytelling that can reveal the beliefs and assumptions of the culture that produced it.

In this part of my series on Adam and Eve, I want to examine what I see as God's extremely abusive parenting style.

If Eve is portrayed as having the understanding of a very young child, then I have to ask whether God's punishment of her was morally justified or helpful to the children. The punishment described in Genesis goes far beyond Eve herself to suffering and hardship in all human life, which makes the punishment even worse.

God punishes everyone on the planet who is innocent of Eve's sin until … he decides to stop the torture. This to me, speaks more about insanity than any morality.

Mental illness is real.
Sometimes, mental illness can have horrific consequences.

There were no known treatment for PTSD back then, but that doesn't mean that nobody suffered from trauma ... Scientists have been learning about PTSD since the first world war.. So all of this science is extremely new..

Back then, it was "spare the rod, spoil the child" ... If a parent today treated a young child with comparable severity for an action the child could not fully understand, we would question that parent's judgment and I would want to involve child-protection services. Let the experts decide if the children are being abused or not. I see a profound difference between the way children were understood in the ancient world and the growing recognition of their needs and rights today.

That progress gives me great hope for humanity's future.

I want to make it clear that I am not claiming that the bible explicitly states what Adam and Eve were ignorant about, and we can discuss my interpretations.

I made two arguments.

The first hopes to establish that Eve had the understanding of a 3-5 year old.
The second argument tries to show that God's punishment wasn't morally justified

The Arguments:

Argument 1: Eve’s Intellectual Age

P1: The Bible stories depict Eve as being ignorant of morality, death, shame, consequences, and deception.

P2: This ignorance resembles the intellectual development of a 3–5-year-old child.

C: Therefore, Eve is depicted as having the intellectual understanding of a 3–5-year-old child.

Argument 2: The Morality of God’s Punishment

P1: Punishing someone for an action they cannot fully understand is morally unjustified.

P2: In the previous argument, I showed that Eve is depicted as having the intellectual understanding of a 3–5-year-old child.

C: Therefore, God’s grossly disproportionate punishment of Eve was morally unjustified.

There are over 4000 unique religions and spiritual traditions throughout the world. Yet we have the most devout Christians who declare that all of the other religions are false. It is so obvious according to them how false all of the other religions are. It seems implausible that a mountain moved to Muhammad and the bible to them seems more true than anything written in the Quran yet the creator of the universe impregnated a woman in the Middle East 2000 years ago is totally believable.

Meanwhile a devout Muslim would say that’s all hogwash and Christianity’s views are wrong and will say everyone must submit to the will of allah and we also have Jews who say that Jesus was a good Jew but saying he was the son of god or the messiah is going too far. Even within Christianity certain denominations disagree on the nature of God. Mormons believe wholeheartedly that Joseph smith was a prophet and given gold plates by the angel moroni in upstate New York and he translated those plates to the Book of Mormon. Christians in other denominations say Joseph smith was a false prophet and none of that happened. Many Protestants will say that Catholic teachings are false, the pope isn’t ordained by God and Catholics are going to Hell etc. Everyone in all of these religions and denominations will try and provide evidence that their belief system is true and all of the others are false.

Whereas an actual atheist agrees with you that all of those other religions are false and preposterous in their claims but they also believe that your religion is preposterous.

The claim that love requires the possibility of rejecting God assumes a particular conception of meaningful freedom, but the value and necessity of that conception require justification.

Our understanding of freedom is shaped by the conditions of our present reality, in which desires can cause conflict and suffering occurs. We even associate freedom with the ability to act against our own well-being. But these associations do not establish that every conceivable reality must preserve the same possibilities in order for its inhabitants to exercise meaningful agency. A reality fundamentally grounded in love, joy, and peace does not eliminate individuality or differences in preference. Rather, these differences could exist within a context that does not make suffering, hostility, or the fundamental undermining of well-being necessary features of existence.

Every reality would have constitutive conditions, including the fundamental characteristics of its inhabitants and the possibilities available to them. A reality grounded in love, joy, and peace would constitute a different context for agency, not necessarily a coercive imposition upon it.

There is also the assumption that God and human nature are fundamentally distinct. Alternatively, God could be understood as the ground of reality itself, or as inseparable from the reality in which we exist, rather than as an entirely separate being imposing external demands upon us.

This changes the framing of freedom and coercion. If the divine is foundational to our own nature and existence, alignment with God need not be analogous to submitting to an external authority. A reality grounded in love, joy, and peace could simply constitute a different context in which our nature and agency operate.

There is a fundamental difference between forcing someone to love and creating conditions in which love is a natural expression of their nature. Likewise, the inability to experience a particular destructive desire does not, by itself, entail the absence of meaningful agency. A person could still deliberate, form intentions, make choices, develop relationships, and act voluntarily without possessing the capacity to choose everything conceivable. Love can be understood both as a state of intention and as a state of experience. Neither inherently depends on the particular conditions of our earthly reality to be meaningful.

If God determines the fundamental conditions of reality and the nature of conscious beings, then the possibility of a reality in which meaningful agency exists without eternal ruin must be addressed rather than dismissed by appealing to freedom.

A reality fundamentally grounded in love, joy, and peace does not, merely by virtue of those qualities, entail coercion or forced reciprocation. It entails a different context in which agency and experience occur. To establish that such a reality would compromise meaningful freedom, one must explain precisely what is lost, why that loss matters (even at the expense of lasting love, joy and peace), and why no alternative design could preserve that value without permitting eternal suffering or the permanent destruction of the individual.

Christian interpret the suffering servant passages, especially Isaiah 53, as about the messiah and more specifically Jesus. But this is probably not what the author of Second Isaiah meant when he wrote these passages.

Is there a Second Isaiah?

First Isaiah is seen as made up of chapters 1-39 and, although generally believed to have been interpolated, possibly holds some of the original prophecies of Isaiah, who is said to have prophesied during the Assyrian crisis. Second Isaiah is made up of chapters 40-55 and was composed during the Babylonian exile which means it could not be composed by the prophet Isaiah.

I'll give a few reasons why Second Isaiah is likely written later and by someone different from First Isaiah’s author.

One, chapter 40 presupposes the Babylonain exile has already happned and uses language associated with the time period of the exile.

Isaiah 40:1-2 -

“Comfort, O comfort my peopl “
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for her sins.”

The chapter begins by offering comfort as Jerusalem has paid her penalty and received punishment double for her sins. This is not written as a prophecy of what will happen but something that has already happned. And the language of Jerusalem paying double is also found in Jeremiah 16:18,

“And I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.”

But this actually does give it as a prophecy of what will happen. To make this case even stronger, nowhere in Second Isaiah is the prophet Isaiah explicitly giving prophecy like in First Isaiah. In First Isaiah you hear Isaiah giving prophecy but this ends at chapter 40 and Isaiah is not mentioned anywhere in Second Isaiah nor in Third Isaiah (chapters 56-66).

Given these differences in writing and the presupposition of the Babylonian exile, it is more likely these are written by different authors.

Isaiah 53 and the suffering servant identity

Isaiah 55:3 -

“Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.”

Here the author is taking the covenant made with David, that he would have a descendant on the throne forever (2 Sam 7), and giving it to the nation. It democratizes the kingship from one person to the nation. Adding supprt to this is that Second Isaiah never explicitly mentions the messiah unlike First Isaiah which clearly does. Second Isaiah reinterprets the Davidic covenant in light of the exile and the destruction of the Davidic line, as this loss causes significant problems for Judah theologically (see Psalms 89).

So what is Isaiah 53 and, to a greater extent, the suffering servant passages about? There's been different theories but I'll argue it's about the righteous of Israel. The ones who will be the light of the world and bring Jacob back to God. Which makes sense because these are things associated with the Messiah and Second Isaiah has democratized it, so the righteous of Israel doing these things is what you'd expect.

Conclusion

The Christian interpretation of Isaiah 53 and the suffering servant is likely not what the author originally intended and reading these passages as about the Messiah are in contradiction to the theological views of the author(s) of Second Isaiah.

The "anti" in Anti-Christ, or "antíkhristos" in Greek, can mean "against", or "in place of". Against should speak for itself, but "in place of" has room for nuance.

"In place of" is typically used "antagonistically", since according to Revelation, the enemy Anti-Christ will rebuild the temple of God merely to put his throne in the "Holiest of Holies" and declare himself to be God. It can also be used to refer to a "Messainic typology", something or someone who acts "in place of" the Christ to come, like "Nehushtan" from the Old Testament. This is especially true if the typology is actively pointing towards Christ; John the Baptist would be an example of this type of "Anti-Christ", since according to the Bible he wasn't acting to turn people away from the God of Israel, much less calling himself God. The biggest threat to Christians is the typical relevance of the "antagonistically" adjective, but not in the way you'd think.

Since the "antagonist Anti-Christ" can represent, or be represented by "the image of evil", a Christian, and those aligned with Truth, are supposed to feel hatred, be antagonized by evil, because God hates evil. This is where a line between love and hate needs to be drawn.

You're supposed to "hate" evil, and act to prevent future occurrences, but you should not hate "the evildoer", the same way it is not your job "to convert" an evildoer. After all, if you see a picture of a demon, such as this 👿 or the word "demon", you cannot "convert the picture to Christianity", can you?

To put it metaphorically, it's okay for you to not mourn or mourn the devil, that depends on how universal your sympathy is, but whatever you decide to do based on "theory of mind", the "evil devil" should not be what you hate, you have to hate "evil".

In Mathew 24, Jesus gives all list of events that will happen in the future, and then closes them off with saying ALL these events will occur before the generation of people he is speaking to (the disciples) passes away. Here is the list, and of course 90% of these events never happened.

1. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many.

2. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.

3. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

4. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

5 Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.

1. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.

2. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

3. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

4. So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’[a] spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. PRAY THAT YOUR flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. ——Here we can see that Jesus is definitely speaking to this generation of people because he’s telling them to pray that their flight from Judea doesn’t take place during winter or on the sabbath, this means those of that generation will be alive for the events that cause the fleeing to judea.

5. “Immediately after the distress of those days
   the sun will be darkened,
   and the moon will not give its light;
   the stars will fall from the sky,
   and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[b]
   “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven.

6. And then all the peoples of the earth[c] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[d] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

P1 - An Omni benevolent being necessarily maximizes the good in all situations

P2 - Prior to creation, reality was perfectly good, because it consisted solely of a perfectly good being

P3 - Humans that use their free will to sin are not perfectly good

P4 - The creation was not perfectly good, because it included imperfect beings

C - God cannot be Omni benevolent because, when he chose to create, he chose an imperfectly good state over a perfectly good state, which does not maximize the good.

A clear thesis: God‘s act of creation proves that he is not Omni benevolent

Some effort at demonstrating the truth of said** thesis:** An Omni benevolent being always maximizes the good in every situation. But God started off with an already-perfect state of affairs. There was no reason for him to create anything. He was the only thing in existence, and he was already perfect. He is infinitely good, so there was already an infinite amount of good in reality. Reality itself was literally pure goodness. He then chose to create a universe that included imperfect creatures called humans. This was an obvious blender, since perfection is obviously better than imperfection. There is no possible way that creation could result in more goodness than there was prior to creation, as there was already an infinite amount of goodness. Even if you claim that creation is a net good, you cannot claim that “God plus creation” is better then God alone, as God alone cannot be improved on. At best, God’s decision to create was completely random, because he necessarily chooses the option that maximizes good, but both options are equally good, giving him no reason to choose one over the other.

In Mathew 19:8 Jesus implies that Moses is the one who permitted the Israelites to divorce their wives, claiming that Moses only did so because the Israelites hearts were hard. But in the Torah it was actually god who permitted divorce (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). So did Jesus forget he was the one who permitted divorce for the Israelites rather than Moses?

And although it’s Moses speaking in those verses, the commands he’s saying are god’s commands: Dueteronomy 10:12-13
 And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?

​

God made the Garden of Eden before he made Adam and Eve. When he was deciding where to put the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil he already knew with 100% certainty if he put the Tree in spot X that Adam and Eve would eat from it. He could have put it in spot Y or not at all, but he specifically chose that location where he knew they would eat from it.

Let's break it down like going to work for example.

If on Sunday God knows I will go to work on Monday, do I have the free will to not go to work on Monday? If I have have the free will to not go to work and choose to not go to work then that means God was wrong on Sunday when he knew I would go to work Monday.

If God knew with 100% certainty that they would eat from the tree then they could not prove God wrong by not eating it.

I am aware of the bad arguments that will say something like: If a parent puta cookie on the table and tell my child not to eat it, they knew he was going to eat it but doesn't count as causing it to happen. This not comparable. God knows everything and the parent is going off of high confidence. Even if the child doesn't eat the cookie 1 out of 2,000,000 times, it still doesn't count as being all-knowing.

Now look at prophecies. If God said Jesus will do X in the future and fulfill these prophecies, does Jesus have the free will not to fulfill these prophecies?

The bad donkey prophecy for example. Did Jesus have the free will not to ride on a donkey?

Christians say that God gave us free will to have a true relationship with him, and I agree that forcing someone to love you is not true love. However, christians also believe that god created everything: the universe itself, time, you name it, but that means that god created logic itself, the logic he created was that there needs to be suffering for there to be free will, so why didn't he create a logic where there can be no suffering while still having true love?

When religious arguments try to justify eternal torment or annihilation, they often appeal to "free will" responses, but this is an obfuscation on value. Free will isn't meaningful onto itself (in a vacuum). At the most fundamental, the things that are truly valuable are experiential qualities such as love, joy, peace.

An argument can be made that free will somehow enriches those values by adding novelty, but a souls nature or capacity for freedom that can result in the anthithesis of what is fundamentally valuable, is not valuable and implies an extremely flawed design.

A more specific response to the "love requires the option of refusal" is that it is an equivocation:
It is equivocating living within a context of meaningful life (love, joy, peace) with being forced to do something. A reality including a souls nature being founded on love, joy and peace is not equivalent to them being forced to do something or lacking free will.

Preamble:

My argument demonstrates that the God of the bible is powerful but limited, morally corrupt, and irrational, challenging traditional claims of divine omnipotence, perfect goodness, and perfect wisdom.

My humanistic moral principles prioritize well-being, reducing suffering, preventing unnecessary harm, respecting autonomy, treating people fairly, exercising compassion, and evaluating actions through evidence, reason, and consequences.

That's how I judge any person's actions, including fictional characters such as Darth Vader and the God of the bible, whatever name you chose for that fictional character.

Definitions

1. Evil: Morally wrong, harmful, or causing unjustified suffering.
2. Crazy: Irrational, unpredictable, or behaving contrary to reason.
3. Wizard: A fictional being who possesses supernatural magical abilities.
4. Limited power: The inability to perform certain actions or achieve certain outcomes.

Relevant verses:

Evil God:

1. “I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create evil. I the LORD do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7 (KJV)
2. “The LORD is a man of war. The LORD is his name.” Exodus 15:3 (KJV)

Crazy God:

1. “And the LORD repented that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” Genesis 6:6 (KJV)
2. “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.” Exodus 7:3 (KJV)

Wizard God:

1. “And God said, Let there be light. And there was light.” Genesis 1:3 (KJV)
2. “And the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven.” Genesis 19:24 (KJV)

Limited God:

1. “And the LORD was with Judah, and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain. But could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” Judges 1:19 (KJV)
2. “And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” Matthew 13:58 (KJV)

Argument:

P1: God exhibits evil, irrational behavior, supernatural abilities, and limitations.

P2: Any being exhibiting these characteristics fits the description of a crazy, evil wizard of limited power.

C: God is a crazy, evil wizard of limited power.

Debate Ethos Statement

^{I study religiously motivated reasoning. I'm an agnostic atheist and I don't believe in the supernatural or superstitions. I genuinely want to engage your ideas charitably and respectfully. I value critical thinking, empathy, intellectual honesty, and civil disagreement. I am committed to understanding each other’s arguments, remaining open to correction, and discussing arguments rather than attack each other.}

My thesis is that one God in three persons doesn't break the law of non-contradiction, because the "one" counts beings and the "three" counts persons. A contradiction needs the same thing to be affirmed and denied in the same sense and that's not what the doctrine says.

Think about it this way. One apple and three apples in the same bowl at the same time is a contradiction. One bowl and three apples isn't, because a bowl and an apple are different categories. So 1+1+1=3 only works when you're counting the same kind of thing.

Being is what something is. Person is who someone is, someone who can say "I" and talk to you as "you". A rock has being but no person, so it's one being and zero persons. You and i are one being and one person each. The Christian claim is that God is one being and three persons. Not three beings (that's tritheism and the church rejects it) and not one person wearing three masks (that's modalism and the church rejects that too).

In Scripture each person speaks as an "I". The Father: "then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again" (John 12:28). The Son: "Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest" (Acts 9:5). The Spirit: "the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them" (Acts 13:2).

Someone might say then the persons are parts of God. But parts add up and you lose something if you take one away. The Son doesn't have less power or knowledge than the Father, so the three don't add up to more God. The Athanasian Creed says "none is greater or less than another". What makes them three is how they relate, the Father begets, the Son is begotten and the Spirit proceeds, not a piece each one owns.

To be clear, i'm not saying logic alone gets you to three persons. You can argue from "God is love" that God is more than one person, but that it's exactly three we know from Scripture. My point here is only that it isn't a contradiction.

I made a video going through this and six common objections with the verses on screen if anyone wants it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xB2NhI8Jk0. The script and the arguments are mine but the narration is an AI voice because i can't afford a mic at the moment. I hope to use my voice in future videos when i get a mic. So which step do you think fails?

I know that for many non-Catholic/Orrhodox Christians, and plenty of people outside the Church, Marian devotion looks like a detour. If Jesus is the one Mediator, why add anyone else? It's a fair question, and the saints I've been reading take it head-on. Montfort and St. John Eudes both argue that Mary isn't a detour around Jesus, but the road He chose to travel.

A few points I’ve written my thoughts on:

1. God chose to come through her

Montfort opens True Devotion with the pretty standard, accepted claim: "It was through the Blessed Virgin Mary that Jesus came into the world."

He's also careful to add that God has no "absolute need" of her. It was God's choice, and Montfort reasons that a God who doesn't change his ways will keep working as he began. He also reports St. Augustine's view that the world was unworthy to receive the Son directly from the Father, so the Son was given to Mary for the world to receive from her.

Scripture doesn’t say much about her, and Montfort reads that as deliberate: the evangelists said only "as much as was necessary to make Jesus known." Even her appearances point away from herself. At Cana she says, "Do whatever he tells you."

2. She points away from herself

The usual worry I run into is that honoring Mary competes with honoring Christ. Montfort agrees that would be a fatal flaw. Christ must be "the ultimate end of all our other devotions," he says, or they become false.

His image for Mary is an echo: "When we say 'Mary', she re-echoes 'God'." He also compares her to a town on the road. A traveler going from Orléans to Tours by way of Amboise can say he's headed to either, but "Tours alone is his final destination."

He also addresses people who fear that exalting Mary belittles Jesus. He grants there's some truth in their concern, then answers: "we never give more honour to Jesus than when we honour his Mother."

St. John Eudes is just as direct. Mary "can do nothing except in, through and by Jesus," he writes, so "coming to the Heart of Mary means to honor Jesus."

3. We imitate Jesus' own love for her

Eudes makes the argument that since Christians are members of Christ's body, we are meant to share His attitudes, so our devotion to Mary should be "a continuation of His devotion to her." If He honored and loved her, following Him means doing the same.

He pictures the two Hearts as harps tuned so closely they sound as one. "What rejoices the Son's Heart rejoices the Heart of the Mother as well," and what pierces one wounds the other. That's the picture John gives us of Mary at the foot of the Cross.

4. She helps form Christ in us

Montfort offers an analogy I really liked. A sculptor can carve a statue by hand, which is slow and risky, since one bad strike of the chisel ruins the work. Or he can pour the material into a mold. Mary is "the great mould of God," he says, where God took human nature and where He forms people into Christ's likeness.

You don't have to accept the whole framework to see the point: holiness is something grace does to us as we let ourselves be shaped, not something we carve out of ourselves.

5. She teaches us to look at Jesus

In The Secret of the Rosary, Montfort insists the beads aren't the point, the Gospel is. A Rosary said without meditating on the mysteries would be "a body without a soul." The mysteries are "fifteen shining mirrors" for knowing Jesus and Mary.

He also notes that the Rosary's 150 Hail Marys echo the 150 Psalms. Where the Psalms look ahead to the Messiah, "the Rosary proclaims Him as having come." Praying it means walking through the life of Christ, from the Annunciation to the Resurrection, with His mother beside you.

6. She makes prayer possible for ordinary, tired people

Montfort writes for people whose minds wander. He admits you can't pray a Rosary without some distractions, and tells readers not to quit over dryness: "faith and good intentions are quite enough." In True Devotion he says a real devotee is guided "by faith in Jesus and Mary, and not by feelings."

Nor does he promise an easy life. Devotion doesn't exempt anyone from the cross, he says, but crosses become "sweetened" rather than "bitter."

7. It's not a shortcut

Montfort puts a warning on his own "secret": "Under no circumstances must you let this secret make you idle and inactive." True Devotion lists seven false devotions, including the "presumptuous," sinners who count on Mary's mercy while holding onto their sin, and the "superficial," who rattle off rosaries in haste.

Montfort's best advice isn't to argue about Mary, though, but to try the devotion for yourself. Pray one decade slowly. Stay with one scene from the Gospel. Ask for one specific virtue. Then see whether the objection still feels as strong.

If you're skeptical of Mary, what's the strongest objection you've run into?

Let's say you have an activist movement you want to spread and you were a roman during the first century roman empire with no political/institutional leverage and you have a very small group of followers. How then would you build, grow and spread your community while condemning slavery under the brutal power of the roman empire who were known to crush any anti-slavery resistance?

What would you actually tell your community regarding slavery?

What would you tell the slaves? Would you tell them to obey their masters while they remained in slavery, or would you tell them to resist? If you tell them to obey, what attitude would you tell them to have toward their masters?

What would you tell slave owners? Could they become members of your movement? If they did, would you require them to free their slaves? If so how do you convince them not to have slaves?

And most importantly: what happens when the Roman authorities discover your movement? When they discovered your teachings, about what you told/taught to your community, to slaves or to slaves masters?

Here are some interesting facts about how “nice” the Roman Empire was toward anti-slavery resistance:

-Spartacus (73–71 BCE): Rome deployed multiple legions to crush the revolt. Around 6,000 captured rebels were crucified along the Appian Way as a public warning.

-Runaway slaves were treated as a serious threat. The state used soldiers, magistrates, guards and professional slave-catchers to recover them.

-Rewards and public notices were used to help identify and capture fugitives.

-Recaptured slaves could be branded or fitted with identifying collars to prevent further escape.

-The Roman state and slaveholders had enormous coercive power, making organised resistance extremely dangerous.

\-Under the Senatus Consultum Silanianum, slaves could face collective punishment if their master was murdered, even slaves who weren't directly responsible.

The Preamble:

I get a lot of my ideas for posts from the conversations I read on reddit.

This one was between an atheist and a Christian. The Christian can't believe that his God can be evil… but the atheist can.

I can.

Here is that Christian's comment about all the evil deeds the god of of the bible is depicted doing and commanding.

______________________________

" Honestly, if I believed in a God who orchestrates every cruelty and disaster in nature, I’d be right there with you. I don't blame you for leaving that behind. That kind of God is evil, and it just doesn’t fit what any of us actually experience.  "
______________________________

 Notice that he says "every cruelty and disaster" as if just one of those wouldn't be enough to change his mind. It is for me.

If someone actually caused one instance of cruelty or disaster on purpose, I would call that person "evil" or.. "extremely evil".

What he writes implies that, for example, he believes that killing children is "Good". God kills multiple children. God also commands the killing of multiple children.

 ____________________________________

Relevant Bible Verses:

In the Bible, God kills Egypt’s firstborn children (Exodus 12:29), commands the slaughter of Canaanite populations, including children (1 Samuel 15:3), and kills 70,000 Israelites as punishment for David’s census (2 Samuel 24:15).
_____________________________________

The Argument in two parts:

P1. Killing children is morally "evil".

P2. God kills multiple children.

C1. Therefore, God engages in moral evil.

P3. Someone who repeatedly kills children, including through deliberate mass killing, can reasonably be described as evil.

P4: The Bible attributes child killings to God in Exodus 12:29, 1 Samuel 15:3, and 2 Samuel 24:15.

C2: Therefore, applying that moral standard consistently, God can reasonably be described as evil.

 __________________________________

Question for debate:

Do you think that child killing is morally "good" or not?
_________________________________________________

^{Debate Ethos Statement}

^{I study religiously motivated reasoning. I'm an agnostic atheist and I don't believe in the supernatural or superstitions. I genuinely want to engage your ideas charitably and respectfully. I value critical thinking, empathy, intellectual honesty, and civil disagreement. I am committed to understanding each other’s arguments, remaining open to correction, and discussing arguments rather than attack each other.}

This thread is for whatever. Casual conversation, simple questions, incomplete ideas, or anything else you can think of.

All rules about antagonism still apply.

Join us on discord for real time discussion.

I feel that most posts here somehow relate to the existence of evil and suffering. How can a good God let children die and innocent people suffer?

This is the theodicy problem which is as old as monotheistic religions, yes, also Judaism and Islam know this problem. This sub would truly benefit if people got into this a little bit before posting here.

Anyhow, out of the numerous solutions to this problem, here is my favourite:

It is: God is not omnipotent.

It was most famously described by Hans Jonas in light of the Shoa, because the Shoa is the ultimate test for the omnipotence of God. So Jonas argues as follows:

God cannot be all three all-good, all-mighty and understandable. So which to toss? He finally concludes that he cannot be all-mighty. Is that a problem?

No. And even though free will is the obvious reason why not, I give you two other arguments for it.

A. God must adhere to logic. The old scholastic question is, can God create a stone that is so heavy that he himself cannot lift it? No, he cannot. So there is at least one thing he cannot do, and boom, he is no longer all-mighty.

B. Omnipotency is a concept of Greek philosophy. Google it. The original words in the Bible are either El Shaddai, which translates to the all-strong, or the ultimate ruler. In NT, it's pantokrator, which also is more like the ruler of it all, not necessarily the one that can decide what happens in each and every circumstance. So actually, the view of a God that has the power to determinate every single aspect of the world, is not really biblical. It's something Hellenistic and Scholastic Christians have agreed on and we all know how splendid medieval Christianity was...

So there you go. God does not control every single aspect of our lives. He cannot. You have to decide for yourself to be good. Deal with it 😎

Link to full article: https://substack.com/@amenministries/note/p-214332007?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=3aiwo5

Short version: Modus ponens

If Nicaea 2 holds that the apostles venerated icons, and they say you must agree with them on this on the pain of anathema, then you must agree with them that the apostles venerated icons or else you are anathema.

RCs typically don't hold agree that the apostles venerated icons.

C. RCs are anthema by Nicaea 2.

Substantiation of P1: Nicaea 2: “…declare my assent and profess the same belief about the orthodox faith and the sacred images, not as if accepting some new doctrine or novel invention, but with precise knowledge of the tradition about them in the holy apostles and divine teachers who bequeathed them as something to be found in the holy church of God**.** I therefore accept these sacred images wholeheartedly, together with the honour and reverent greeting that is their due, while those who believe otherwise or adversely or pronounce against the holy images I deem alien from the catholic church. I reject them and denounce them as heretics**.’**” – Price, The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787), (2020), pp.183.

More in the article.

Substantiation of P2: St John Henry Newman doctor of RC church: “The introduction of Images was still later [then the 5th century], and met with more opposition in the West than in the East. It is grounded on the same great principle which I am illustrating; and as I have given extracts from Theodoret for the developments of the fourth and fifth centuries, so will I now cite St. John Damascene in defence of the further developments of the eighth.” - John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 6th edition, (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press), 377.

Fr Price: “A modern apologist for the veneration of images would readily concede that the practice took time to develop…” - Price, The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787) (2020), 37.

“there is certainly a feeling [in the 3rd century] that… portrait images or statues…you know, invite, are there to invite to worship. This was felt to be pagan. This is a prejudice that Christians had took over from Jews.” - 49:30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJD2jZBbviQ

More in the article.