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  • The problem with the argument is that evil is relative, and the relative knowledge of what is or isn't is something subjectively decided, not something inherently known.

    • We don't know if evil is relative, but you can follow the dilemma with different wording.

      We don't like our wellbeing and our ability to make our own decisions taken away from us. We suffer, which is something we want to avoid in general terms. It goes beyond humanity, as many animals also seem to seek the satisfaction of their will (being it playing, feeding, instinctively reproducing, etc.) and seem adverse to harm and to losing their life.

      So... If we are such creatures, it's natural we don't like situations and beings that go against this. We don't like volcanic eruptions when they're happening with us close the crater. We don't like lions or bears attacking us. We especially don't like other humans harming us as we suspect they could have done otherwise in many cases. We simply don't like these things because of our 'programming' or 'design'.

      Problem? There are a few. The first is God asks us to like him when he's admitting that he is actively doing the things we dislike almost universally as human beings. That makes us fall into internal conflict and also into conceptual dilemmas. Perhaps due to our limitations, but nonetheless real and unsolvable to us.

      Then you can argue that the way we are is designed by him, so why design something that is going to live, feel, think certain things as undesirable and then impose such things unto them? Let's say I cannot say that's evil, I at least can say it's impractical as it will certainly cause trouble to his mission of accepting him (and following him). If that obstacle for us is part of the plan, that's not for me to say, yet it is an obstacle in our view and experience. In human terms, all this might be classified as unfair or sadistic, which is the reasoning in the guide and how you can follow it in this perhaps closer way.

      Now, about this last part, while we can argue that those terms arise from our own dispositions and might be different to other dispositions (aliens that do not experience pain, for example), is that enough to invalidate our perspective? Then what's the place of empathy, which I am assuming is also a part of God's gifts to us? What's the place of compassion, as written in many religious texts of supposedly divine inspiration? If we need to carry our dispreference, displeasure, dislikeness—suffering—and not to classify it as necessarily evil when the gods impose it to us (as it is our judgment only), then why classify it as evil in other circumstances?

      I hope I am getting my new point though. What this all seems to conclude is that if the lack of respect for the suffering of the animal kingdom is not worthy of being classified as bad (for whatever reason, here I argued that because this comes to be only by our characteristics/disposition); if, therefore, we cannot say a god is evil for going against our wellbeing and against our ability to make our own decisions, then I fail to understand many other things that tend to follow religious thinking and even moral thinking.

      • You're getting too caught up in one particular concept of 'God' (why is it a 'he' even?).

        Epicurus wasn't Christian. Jesus doesn't even come along until centuries later.

        There are theological configurations in antiquity very different from the OT/NT depictions of divinity which still have a 'good' deity, but where it is much harder to dispute using the paradox.

        For example, there was a Christian apocryphal sect that claimed there was an original humanity evolved (Epicurus's less talked about contribution to thinking in antiquity) from chaos which preceded and brought about God before dying, and that we're the recreations of that original humanity in the archetypes of the originals, but with the additional unconditional capacity to continue on after death (their concept of this God is effectively all powerful relative to what it creates but not what came before it).

        If we consider a God who is bringing back an extinct species by recreating their environment and giving them the ability to self-define and self-determine, would it be more ethical to whitewash history such that the poor and downtrodden are unrepresented in the sample or to accurately recreate the chaotic and sometimes awful conditions of reality such that even the unfortunate have access to an afterlife and it is not simply granted to the privileged?

        The Epicurian paradox is effective for the OT/NT concepts of God with absolute mortality and a narcissistic streak, and for Greek deities viewed as a collective, and a number of other notions of the divine.

        But it's not quite as broadly applicable as it is often characterized, especially when dealing with traditions structured around relative mortalities and unconditionally accepted self-determination as the point of existence.

  • There can't be free-will if there wasn't any choice. If there there are choices, there is the potential for evil choices.

    So it's kinda like saying "if God is all powerful could He create a mountain on Earth but also make it so the Earth is a perfect sphere?" It's just pointing out that a planet that's a perfect sphere wouldn't have mountains and a planet with mountains are not perfect spheres. Which isn't exactly deep philosophical thought that needs a flow chart.

    Also if proving something about religion is paradoxical proves that religion is wrong, by the same logic proving something about math or science is paradoxical proves those are wrong. Halting Problem? Math is false! Schrodinger's Cat? Physics is false!

    But outside atheist dogma, most people accept there are things about the universe that are paradoxical. The Halting Problem doesn't mean we should discard mathematics, Schrodinger's Cat doesn't mean we discard Physics. Following this trend means that all of the efforts by atheists to point out paradoxes in religion doesn't accomplish anything.

    • There can’t be free-will if there wasn’t any choice. If there there are choices, there is the potential for evil choices.

      I am hungry. I decide to make myself a sandwich, with peanut butter, and one of the following:

      • strawberry jam
      • honey
      • grape jelly

      None of these are evil, yet they are choices.

      Also if proving something about religion is paradoxical proves that religion is wrong, by the same logic proving something about math or science is paradoxical proves those are wrong.

      This is a false equivocation. Proving that a fundamental part of a religion (such as a tri-omni god) to be paradoxical means everything built off of that idea is wrong. The same applies for math and science, but when large swaths of things in math and science get proven wrong because of a underling assumption that later turned out to be false, we get closer to the truth. That's how we went from a geocentric model, to a heliocentric model, to the understanding that there isn't any discernible center to the universe.

      Halting Problem? Math is false! Schrodinger’s Cat? Physics is false!

      Those problems do not prove math and science to be false, as they do not challenge fundamental assumptions.

      Following this trend means that all of the efforts by atheists to point out paradoxes in religion doesn’t accomplish anything.

      Nah. This paradox quite clearly debunks the idea of a tri-omni god presiding over the universe. This is a fundamental assumption within some major religions, and it's wrong. By extension the ideas built off of it are wrong.

      Do the same for math and science and you'll lead to new discoveries.

      • I am hungry. I decide to make myself a sandwich, with peanut butter, and one of the following: 

         undefined
                strawberry jam
    honey
    grape jelly

        None of these are evil, yet they are choices.

        If I throw a jar of strawberry jam at your head, is that not an evil choice? You chose to make a sandwich with that jam, but someone else can choose to do something evil in the same situation.

        Those problems do not prove math and science to be false, as they do not challenge fundamental assumptions.

        If you're saying that it's only because you don't really understand them. Mathematics was widely assumed to be complete, consistent, and decidable and then Alan Turing's Halting Problem came along and blew that out of the water. So it's been mathematically proven that not everything in mathematics is provable. Seems paradoxical to me! I guess that means the field of mathematics is just a weird superstition we should mock, right?

      • The sandwich analogy doesn't work, because there are not enough variables to cause significant chaos to the point of where a will can be proven. Will implies thinking and decision making in a chaotic environment so as to assume intelligence, but being only able to choose three choices and starting out with 2 demonstrates no more intelligence then random chance.

        Intelligent choice is part of free will, because otherwise it is only instinctual choice. But intelligence by nature allows malevolence, because it allows you to create choices where there were none.

        Also, a paradox doesn't disprove the existence of a god - if anything, any omnipotent being of any sort would be paradoxical by nature, as omnipotence can only exist in a paradoxical state. If you're wondering how that could be possible, light is a good example - it is both a wave and a particle, and yet it exists. Being a paradox doesn't exclude the possibility of something existing.

        Lastly, omnipotence doesn't exclude desire. For example, if you suddenly gained omnipotent abilities, would you actively use them all? Would you change certain things? Would you change yourself? Would you create something?

        Why?

        The same questions could be true for any omnipotent being.

        All that said, this simplified chart is missing some options, but then condensing philosophy into a simplified chart is already quite reductivist anyhow.

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