Does anyone else find amusement in how shitty/laughable atheist arguments are?

I don't think atheist arguments are shitty. They're actually pretty solid assuming you believe in naturalistic materialism. They only work within that specific framework however and when you point out that materialism is a philosophical position that isn't necessarily true they start to splutter about "muh evidence"

You don't lose your free will if every choice you have is pleasant and wholesome.

Presumably the response to this is that any meaningful definition (and the standard definition that theologians and philosophers have normally worked with) is for free will to mean the ability to make moral or immoral choices

I have never thought of this but that is very cool

bump for answer on this

How do you break someone out of naturalistic materialism?

Their arguments might be crappy but that doesnt excuse Christian sloppyness. For instance some are ok but you are getting slack

Is only a partial refutation and one that only really deals with superficial evil - its hard to tell the person suffering from huntingtons disease or harlequinism that their incurable genetic suffering is just a part of free will. Likewise it leaves one open to why didnt God create Humans with less inclinations towards evil. You need to ground ethics as a whole on God to be effective here.

This is the reasoning equivalent of pleading the fifth, if you cant provide evidence and reasoning for your belief in Christianity the status of your salvation was probably tied to your parents and geography.

You are missing the point with this one its essentially a fancier version of Hitchens Razor.

This doesnt follow and just seems to ignore the 2 billion pagans in China and India.
You arent going to prove Pascals wager wrong to athiests by holding that other religions are false on the grounds of not functioning according to Christian standards just as Muslims seldom prove to Christians that their faith is wrong for not being correct under Islamic ones.
Far too broad for non Christians "well then I guess the 10 commandments are also nulified ect". Dont assume athiests have any understanding of Christianity and these kinds of ceremonial and moral distinctions.

Was thinking about this when I came across this in the middle of a wiki-dive.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_paradox

Let me explain. Assume you take the Bayesian solution to the paradox (non-black things are *really* small pieces of evidence that ravens are black, but not infinitesimally small).
Hypothesis; If God exists, then he is omnipotent, omnipresent, and entirely good.
Contrapositive: If it is not entirely good, omnipotent, and omnipresent, it is not God.

Remember, the contrapositive is logically equivalent to the hypothesis, so evidence of the former is evidence of the latter. If you accept that nothing of this world is entirely good, omnipresent, or omnipotent (which shouldn't be hard to get a non-believer to agree with,) everything on this plane of existence is now evidence in favor of the hypothesis. It doesn't explain why there is evil, but it prevents them from saying that because there is evil, God is not what we believe he is.

Could you elaborate on this?

Its a combination of things firstly the idea that its actually kind of difficult to have any form of objective ethics without a basis on God or some similar first principle.

Secondly that with ethics that coming from God, God then defines what is good and bad by definition - hence dealing with the problem which is expressed rather vulgarly in pic related. You will never help someone bothered by the problem of evil these days so long as they hold their feelings on the matter to be the measure of what is or is not good.

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Evil, we must remember, is not the opposite of good, but the lack of it. God wanted to give us a choice to either follow Him(good) or the lack of him(evil.) If there was no evil and only good, that choice would not exist because we would have nothing to choose from that is not God.

Well its not illogical you just have to establish that God rewards faith, and which religion to choose, and then which denomination, etc etc.

user and St. Augustine forgive me, but I am blind to the point of these semantics. More than that, evil, as I have observed it, is very much extant. The absence of good just gives it fertile ground.

Let me make this harder for myself and wrestle with Augustine directly:
Wounds are an absence of health; the healthy part of the body that was there has been broken or torn away. Diseases are living things. They infect vulnerable points when we're not careful to keep clean. They feed on our health to make themselves healthy. They use us to spread and hurt others. Both are afflictions of the body, but one is hostile and one is not.
It's the same with the absence of good and the presence of evil; both are afflictions of the soul, but one is passive and the other is active.

Alright thank you. I am a newly converted Christian, and feel like I am playing one big game of catch-up. that does lead me to wonder though, is it possible to align your own ideas of ethics with God, or are certain things simply unknowable to us? Using your example, it seems like no one could possibly understand the purpose of things like Huntington's disease or harlequinism, and even attempting to put yourself in a place to be able to justify it could lead someone down a very dark path. I don't know, just thinking out loud really.

bump

I believe its along the same lines as this:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_ontological_proof

There is no real proof though for this line of thinking, but I have often imagined God would be capable of of solving the perceived unfairness of say a short life with multiple universes. One might argue that if it is possible for God to create one universe, it should be possible for him to create more than one. He could then decide to create a Universe where you get a good long life, even if others perceive that you die in the present one. You won't find any evidence of this in the bible though, so its not something I would argue with an atheist about, but if unfairness is the concern, there exists a solution.

I disagree with Pascal's wager on the reasoning that voluntary affiliation in the hope of hedging one's bet is not really desirable Christian behavior. One actually needs to choose to believe rather than simply hope by acting the part they might partake.

Regarding the food laws and such, pointing out why we don't focus on these things is important too since these things are small concerns. Sins like lying, fornication, murder, vengfulness, slander, drug use, drunkeness, etc are the major issues that Christian's have to learn to address in their life.

If the goal of the universe for us is to receive salvation then there must exist a possibility to not receive salvation. In the grand scheme of things, the argument that the human mind will not accept is that one might endure all evils if only to receive the cherished reward. In the face of that, the trials and adversity become nothing. How can God really be unfair when the goal is within everyone's reach? That one had to endure some temporary loss of any magnitude is ultimately rendered meaningless.

The doctrine of original sin is far better and already captures something like this, however, instead of falling into imperfection, the world retains its essential goodness since being itself is to be regarded as good. The natural evil we experience, as separate from our inclination toward moral evil, amounts to, first, an objective fact of our ultimate dependence on God and a falling short of the ever-elusive perfect expression of our own human essence that would lack by definition the many intellectual and physical shortcomings that normally accompany our unaided natural existence and, secondly, the subjective judgment and experience of suffering that follow these natural impairments.

As to why God would allow us to suffer in this manner, if He truly did love us, the Cross in all its mystery provides an answer. God seems to enjoy a good story where a group of random people might each by its conclusion reach their own idiosyncratic, yet perfectly reasonable, opinion about its meaning, thus revealing their innermost heart. What I take from the Cross is that God wants us to experience both a life within a world where evil has some opportunity to prevail, and the struggle of depending on Him within that same devil-ridden world. The joy of the risen Christ is stronger than pain, indeed, and yet stronger than any evil. God, at least, seems to have a sense of humor about it:

"11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." Now none of the disciples dared ask him, "Who are you?" They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. 14* This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead. 15* When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs." 16* A second time he said to him, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep." 17 He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep. 18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go." 19* (This he said to show by what death he was to glorify God.) And after this he said to him, "Follow me.""

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