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Comment by dale_glass | Hacker News Reader

I found the religious themes interesting. There's the famous Problem of Evil in religion.

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"

I've actually used the movie when arguing about religion, because it makes for an interesting parallel. Christof plays the role of a mostly benevolent, power limited God.

And he does his best (of course not perfect) attempt to give Truman a good life. And Truman at the start seems quite happy and positive, until things start falling apart because Christof isn't powerful enough to keep up the illusion.

It's very interesting to me that people give the Christian god a pass for doing a worse job than Christof does in the movie.

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Answer heard from a philosophy podcast.

"God has nothing to do with good or bad in our life. When it made us in his image, it means he gave us the opportunity to know what is good/bad and the liberty to choose between it. That's the pure definition of freedom. If he chooses everything for us, we're not free. "

Truman wasn't free until he choose to do something "bad" and left.

Typically-inconsistent Christian apologetics; the Biblical God "made us in his image" – but then cursed us with hunger and toil and the pain of childbirth specifically because we ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. (And banished us from the Garden in fear that we'd eat from the Tree of Life.)

That “problem” is highly simplistic. For one, many religions, including some Christian sects, don’t actually believe in the omnipotence of their deities, so the problem doesn’t actually exist. On the other hand, God not preventing evil while having the power to only implies malevolence if one assumes God’s only purpose for man is to not do evil, willingly or unwillingly. But there are many other alternatives, such as God wanting man to learn to not do evil. To use an equally simplistic counterpoint, if your desire is for your kids to get straight A’s, you should just do all their schoolwork for them. If your desire is for them to learn and grow, you have to tell them what they need to know, but then let them do the work themselves, knowingly they certainly will make mistakes at some point.

> including some Christian sects, don’t actually believe in the omnipotence of their deities

I am curious now: how do you define "Christian"? That's truly a bizarre definition if it admits sects like that.

For the record, the conventional definition of a Christian is someone who believes in the Holy Trinity, one God in three persons, and has been baptized with water and that formula.

Christian nontrinitarian positions include Unitarianism, Binitarianism and Modalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binitarianism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modalistic_Monarchianism

A non-Trinitarian is, by definition (see above), a non-Christian.

How do you define "Christian"?

There are a number of sects, with significant numbers and influence, who call on the name of Jesus (in a "Lord, Lord" way) and they "self-identify" as Christian, and yet they do not share a Christian belief as commonly understood by Christians.

Christians have always defined our belief in a particular way. It's fine if sects wish to disbelieve in the Trinity or not use water Baptism, but then they cease to be members of the Church by any stretch of the imagination.

These sects include henotheists such as LDS, Arians such as Jehovah's Witnesses, and non-Trinitarians such as Oneness Pentecostals. They all believe themselves to be Christians, but have excluded themselves by definition.

> I found the religious themes interesting. There's the famous Problem of Evil in religion. "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"

These questions don't make sense. I am not claiming to be a believer etc., but if God exists then eventually you end up with your maker, right? So given an eternity of whatever is after this life, what does experiencing something bad or evil even matter then.

The existence of God implies a number of things about human nature and existence, and that's regardless of whether one accepts or rejects God. Per my understanding, humanity defines itself by defining what is not- what we say is evil or immoral or wrong, etc. I think the problem is that religion (historically) has been confounded by politics.

Tbh I don't think humans can do religion correctly, so society as a whole should be secular.

> …if God exists then eventually you end up with your maker, right?

Not necessarily. As Luke 18:25 notes, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God".

I've always preferred Sting's version:

"Better to be poor than a fat man in the eye of a needle."

If a parent locks up their small child and isolates them from society, so that the child never has the opportunity to tell a lie or steal another child's toy, you could say that parent has willingly used their power to prevent evil, within the little world that they have created. A benevolent parent, one could say, according to the definition you have supplied.

For some reason, as a society, we tend to prefer parents who lovingly grant their children freedom to make mistakes, and present them with appropriate consequences after the fact. Growth and authentic love only come from a situation where we have the freedom to reject those values. A truly benevolent, omnipotent God would not force the people he created to obey him (i.e. to do good, because God is love), he would allow them the freedom to choose good, which necessarily grants them the freedom to choose the opposite.

God isn't comparable to a parent. Parents are limited and imperfect, God is not.

If parents were unlimited in their abilities, granting children freedom to make mistakes would be completely unnecessary.

Look at the problem statement. “Omnipotent”, “omniscient”… things that parents are not.

Parents are just humans and are just at the mercy of the world. Unlike God. God made the rules and could have created a completely different world which doesn’t have the limitations that this one has. Meanwhile parents have to work with what they were given.

> God made the rules and could have created a completely different world which doesn’t have the limitations that this one has.

This is an assumption you are making that many (most?) religions do not.

> This is an assumption you are making that many (most?) religions do not.

We're really only talking about the Abrahamic faiths here, which are the ones making claims about God being omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent.

Any limitation to God's abilities implies that God is not all-powerful. If it is the case that this universe of sin and decay and the literal hail Mary of self-sacrifice on the cross with the result, as described in the book of Revelations, that the vast majority of humans who have ever lived will still burn in Hell for eternity is really the best God can do, then God cannot be all powerful. If God is all powerful then everything is arbitrary to Him. He chooses to allow evil. He chooses not to forgive sin. He chooses a pyrrhic victory at the end of time where evil still mostly wins.

Incompetent, yes. Malicious, certainly. To quote George Carlin, this is not work that belongs on the resume of a Supreme Being. All powerful? Obviously not.

Other religions don't have this problem. The gods of many other religions are limited in their capabilities and often exist within the framework of a cycle that allows constant redemption and renewal through reincarnation. In many ways, the cosmos itself is the highest power, and the gods are just what sits above humanity, but it's all still a part of the same flawed yet transcendental machine. There's always hope. With the Abrahamic faiths, there is only always existential dread. God by default will cast you into perdition, your sins are absolute and immutable, and if you fuck up the one life you have there are no second chances.

Oh my God. Of course I’m presupposing the idea of the omnipotent/omniscient/… God:

> > Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?

Because that’s the premise of the problem statement!

> This is an assumption you are making that many (most?) religions do not.

And?

The original problem is only a problem is you are making those assumptions. When most religions aren’t making those assumptions, the entire thing becomes a strawman argument

Do you know what assumptions are? Clearly not.

For some reason you decided to take this up with someone who was responding to a problem statement which had already been established; the parameters were set.

I don’t know why you seem to be taking offense to the part about how this is a “religious problem”. No, that doesn’t mean that all religions share this supposed problem. Rebirth/reincarnation is relevant to Hinduism but not all religions.

And a glib response about how “not all religions” make these assumptions is also a useless starting point. (Not that I care to discuss this with anyone since it’s not my pet cause.) My first thought was that you might be alluding to something like Buddhism or some other very non-Christian religion. But I see in some other comments that you mention “other Christian sects”. Okay, yeah, sure. That makes things really simple to respond to: Hey, not all religions share these assumptions! (But I’m not gonna tell you where I’m coming from, either.)

The answer is that good and evil are just human perspectives. His plan is beyond our understanding and is neither good nor evil.

That's how Lovecraft started. And before, Nietzche/Shopenhauer. More than "god", it's the absurd of the universe, and existential terror. There's no God, and we are like ants for the vast and huge universe. We should grow up from Gods beings created from the Neolithic (the Abrahamics religions are just metaphors on cults around Sun and grain harvesting), and to create something else akin to modern urban cities and not old villages around the primary sector for economics.

For instance, transhumanism. No, we don't need to create a religion, but set a good chunk of facts and laws to govern ourselves. The American and French revolutions were a good step on that against the Old Regime around the mentioned Neolithic.

Yes, that's a common answer.

One issue is that it lets go of benevolence. Which works but raises the question of why we'd want to worship such an entity, and what does morality even mean anymore if it's supposedly based on an entity whose reasoning is inscrutable.

There's also that power removes excuses. Eg, Christof resorts to methods like "killing" Truman's father because it's all he can do to maintain the illusion. But if Christof had a whole planet to work with that'd instantly stop being a morally grey thing and just be plain evil. An actual god effectively has no excuses, because there are no limits forcing any kind of compromise.

The question also sneaks in the presupposition that suffering is anathema, or that suffering is never acceptable or worthwhile. Anyone who has been a part of a sports team (especially one that was successful) can attest to the fact that short-term suffering and sacrifice can lead to long-term success or joy.

There are many episodes in my life that were horribly difficult while I was going through them, but later on, I see how they have changed the course of my life and have benefited me deeply, in a way I couldn't foresee while going through the struggle.

The "problem of evil" also assumes that a world filled with automatons with no choice to do anything except submit to God's will is somehow superior to a world where anyone can choose to follow the Way of Life while surrounded by those who either haven't chosen yet, or have made the choice not to walk that path.

Suffering is an anathema, and only acceptable when necessary because no better ways are available. Deities can't avail themselves of such methods.

Eg, sawing somebody's leg off without anesthesia was the best we had before anesthetics. Today it'd be outright barbaric outside of extenuating circumstances like anesthetics being unavailable in some sort of emergency.

Whenever we get to the point where we can fully and painlessly fix up somebody's leg by using some sort of scifi device, then cutting it off even with modern anesthetics will become morally unacceptable as well.

The more ability, the less justifiable suffering becomes.

I don't agree with your assertion that suffering is anathema. Learning to accept and endure difficulty or pain or discomfort increases one's resilience. Soldiers are trained into this mindset and can accomplish much more as a result. Athletes train this way as well. Also, what about parenting? Telling your child to pull the weeds feels like an enormous burden of suffering when you are the 12-year-old child who has to go out in the summer sun to pull weeds, but for the parent, the view is quite different. The garden produces food for the family, and the child learns to do things they don't want to do or don't like to do.

Your statement "Suffering is anathema..." is Enlightenment thinking that has had a devastating effect on the physical and mental health of the cultures that have adopted it.

> I don't agree with your assertion that suffering is anathema. Learning to accept and endure difficulty or pain or discomfort increases one's resilience.

Resilience is only necessary if there's some purpose to it.

> Soldiers are trained into this mindset and can accomplish much more as a result. Athletes train this way as well.

Right, as a means to an end, for lack of a better solution. If we could accomplish those goals without suffering, we would. Suffering is a last resort, not good in itself. It's a compromise. An all-powerful entity doesn't need any, thus loses any justification to resort to it.

Sounds like we need to define "suffering"

For example, if everything was known and easy, wouldn't we be completely bored? Is boredom not also suffering?

I'm pretty much thinking of the definition from the 1913 edition of Websters: "Suf"fer*ing, n. The bearing of pain, inconvenience, or loss; pain endured; distress, loss, or injury incurred; as, sufferings by pain or sorrow; sufferings by want or by wrongs."

So I assume you'll refuse any anesthetia when you need surgery?

Black and white thinking will get you nowhere.

I'm not sure what the meaning of "I believe god exists and he has a plan" is, if the plan is beyond our understanding. What do people actually believe? Sure, the words will be "I believe in god", but what are the consequences of this belief?

If anything can happen inside this incomprehensible plan, what is different from there being no plan? If you don't believe anything concrete about the plan, if there is nothing that is impossible because it would be against the plan, then isn't everything just as it would be if there was no plan and no god?

"His plan is beyond our understanding" is just such a cop-out.

Certainly a god could come up with a plan that didn't require multiple instances of genocide and children dying of incurable diseases.

> There's the famous Problem of Evil in religion.

It's unecessarily overintelectualized and abstracted problem.

It's way better to truly consider way simpler and viscerally real one "Why do babies get terminal cancer?"

If you honestly approach it with undamaged humanist morality and won't abandon it before reaching the conclusion you'll leave any notion of benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God behind.

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