Quote from: Syke on Today at 04:30:18 AM

Quote from: strawbs on Today at 02:15:02 AM

The actions alleged by some to reap rewards in a potential afterlife are generally those which reap rewards in this life.

Summarily: don't be a dick

With things like tapeworms, childhood cancer, etc., maybe God likes dicks.

That invokes the basic problem of theodicy: Omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent—pick two.

To my knowledge, the argument was first set forth in 1436 by Laurentius Valla in De libero arbitrio. (To avoid being burnt at the stake by the love of merciful Christians, Valla used a “Two Truths” style argument to pretend that he was impugning Apollo, not the Christian deity.)

Whence evil?

If a monotheistic God himself created evil and is the prime cause of evil, then he is omniscient and omnipotent, but not infinitely benevolent.
If God cannot stop evil, then he is omniscient and benevolent, but not omnipotent.
If God lacks the foreknowledge needed to stop evil events from occurring, then he is omnipotent and benevolent, but not omniscient.
Evil exists, as you will observe. Thus, either God himself wills it—or God is powerless to intervene against it—or God does not know the future, such that he can stop evil from occurring.

Despite all the volumes of argumentation that have been spent by theologians tying themselves in knots over it, this logical trap is insuperable: An omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent god cannot exist.

Not all religions suffer this problem—to the contrary, it is a theological failure only suffered by monotheisms that allege a benevolent God.

Quote from: Syke on Today at 04:30:18 AM

Or maybe he wants only the strongest to survive, so we should kill the weakest among us.

Eh, just because. I will quote “chapter and verse” from the greatest ethicist of the past two thousand years.

Quote from: Nietzsche, The Antichrist

2.

What is good?— Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.

What is evil?— Whatever springs from weakness.

What is happiness?— The feeling that power increases— that resistance is overcome.

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtù, virtue free of moral acid).

The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.

What is more harmful than any vice?— Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak— Christianity...