The problem of evil is one of the most discussed things on IQfy, but if you incorporate finitism then the "problem" of evil for an omnipotent being vanishes because of the way unlimited power interacts with the necessity of limits under finitism. You can prove this in just 60 seconds:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YKUhD7--LKw
Of course this depends on the impossibility of actual infinities, but that's easy to prove. Allowing for infinities gets you a logically contradictory system where you can prove anything simultaneously true and false.
After all, what's 1 equal?
1=(½+½)=(⅓+⅓+⅓)=(¼+¼+¼+¼)=....
And so on.
If we accept actual infinities, then eventually we arrive at:
1=[(1/∞)+(1/∞)+(1/∞)...]
What's two equal?
2=(1+1)=[(½+½)+(½+½)]=[(⅓+⅓+⅓)+(⅓+⅓+⅓)+(⅓+⅓+⅓)]...
Allowing for actually infinites eventually we arrive at
2={[(1/∞)+(1/∞)+(1/∞)...]+[(1/∞)+(1/∞)+(1/∞)...]}
However, if you double infinity or if you half it, it doesn't become bigger or smaller. If you cut an infinity in half the two halves are both the same quantity as the whole was before. If you double an infinity it's the same quantity as it was before.
So {[(1/∞)+(1/∞)+(1/∞)...]+[(1/∞)+(1/∞)+(1/∞)...]}=[(1/∞)+(1/∞)+(1/∞)...]
Therefore 2=[(1/∞)+(1/∞)+(1/∞)...]
Getting us the conclusion 2=1.
We can do the same to show anything, like 500=1, -24=1000, 6>∞, and so on.
So actual infinities lead to logical contradictions, telling us that they are logical impossibilities.
So finitism is true. So, combined with that video's demonstration of the absence of a Problem of evil under finitism, the "problem" of evil is solved.
>le evil
You mean Problem of Things I Don't Like
Well yes, in a way. It does pose an important question: why would things exist that an omnipotent being doesn't like? And the answer lies in finitism, as explained.
We can take your summary to see the how. The Problem of Things God Doesn't Like could be framed as The Problem of a Lack of Things God Does Like.
How many things does God like? Well if He's the best possible being, then an infinite number of them: someone could clone you an infinite number of times and God would still love all of your new twin brothers.
But if actual infinities are impossible (and they are) then it isn't possible for infinite people to exist. So God needs a different way of bringing them about: instead, he makes sure the population will always be increasing.
Make sense what I'm getting at?
Your inability to understand formalized principles beyond the 3rd dimension is not an indicator such things are limited to the 3rd dimension.
you being a finite being could never rule out infinity because you do not know what infinity means nor can it be represented by any cognitive process you possess.
To disprove actual infinities we don't need to appeal to a lack of understanding at all. In fact it's quite the opposite: they're like mirages that look substantive from a distance, but the closer you get and the more you can examine them the more they fade away. Like was done in the OP: explicit contradictions were illustrated that infinity necessarily entails.
Infinity is an illusion of value. It can be proven to be greater than, equal to, or less than any value you can name.
define evil
define god
>define evil
Action defended that causes harm to the people with an alternative present, they push back.. Ive seen it.
(Not all problems have that solution though, kept secret for one reason or another, having been on the inside the deep state has its own deep state, or more accurately, two living in symbiosis.
Literally, like us two, me doing deep background, ultra-high hyperdimenaional work, and you, workinf at your frequency (I lived in Korea for a year, I can barely remember Hello or Thank You.)
Its not supposed to be a competition.
>Its not supposed to be a competition.
Unless youre a Man.
Then you must prove it..."pics or it didnt happen" is as old as time, it is known.
>define god
The best possible being
It's just an appeal to emotion it's not an argument against God's existence anymore
I disagree actually - it's very easy to frame it in non-emotional terms. The best possible being is the entity with maximum desire and ability to create good. And He created us in His image, so our conception of good should be broadly similar to His, especially since He came as one of us.
So the natural question is: why isn't there infinite good if He can increase it without limit?
And the answer of course lies in the logical impossibility of infinities. So He ensures that it is increasing (present tense) without limit rather than ensuring that it has increased (past tense) without limit.
Very, very, very low IQ thread op. The problem of evil has nothing to do with stacking higher and higher amounts of good, it has to do with the existence of evil.
Protip: stop getting your theology from 1 minute youtube videos.
>The problem of evil has nothing to do with stacking higher and higher amounts of good, it has to do with the existence of evil.
These really aren't different questions when it comes down to it. They're both asking why God doesn't directly improve the world more frequently. The whole reason evil is a bad thing is because it removes or impedes goodness, isn't it?
>stop getting your theology from 1 minute youtube videos.
Man if you can't say it quickly you've gotta ask if it's worth saying
Don't you get tired of the videos that take forever and drone on and on? It'll be like
>musical intro
>Hi guys, welcome to Theology With Theo
>*5 minute discussion of the history of the Problem of Evil*
>*20 minute discussion of infinities and their possibility or impossibility*
>*8 minute discussion of how this impacts your spiritual life*
Or you can just have a 1 minute video that gets directly to the point, illustrates it with some graphs, then ends. New knowledge, onto the next thing.
I like the latter!
>These really aren't different questions when it comes down to it. They're both asking why God doesn't directly improve the world more frequently.
Incorrect. World without evil doesn't mean a world with infinite good, it means a world without evil. For instance, a world that contains only a perfect cube does not contain infinite good, but it also doesn't contain any evil. This is why your entire approach is completely wrong.
>Man if you can't say it quickly you've gotta ask if it's worth saying
>Don't you get tired of the videos that take forever and drone on and on? It'll be like
I'm not a moron, so I don't get my knowledge of philosophy from youtube.
>World without evil doesn't mean a world with infinite good, it means a world without evil.
What are your thoughts on what the video described about the arbitrary selection of choosing to increase in certain ways and amounts vs. others?
> I don't get my knowledge of philosophy from youtube
Give it a try! Maybe you'll enjoy yourself!
>What are your thoughts on what the video described about the arbitrary selection of choosing to increase in certain ways and amounts vs. others?
It's completely irrelevant for the reasons I've stated.
>Give it a try! Maybe you'll enjoy yourself!
No thanks, I'm not a high school dropout.
>It's completely irrelevant for the reasons I've stated
That doesn't make much sense - you're saying "he could just improve the world THIS much by removing all evil" which is exactly the sort of thing it was talking about
Oops forgot to put my name back on for that post, it was posted by me the OP
>you're saying "he could just improve the world THIS much by removing all evil"
You're missing the point, low IQ anon. You can remove all evil and then you can still keep creating more good after that if you want to because a world without evil isn't prima facie a world containing infinite good.
Again this is exactly what was addressed: choosing something arbitrarily besides ensuring good's increase. No matter what you pick, it's the same as the "units" of good from the video and has the same issue
It was not addressed. There is no infinity involved in removing all evil, because as I said numerous times, removing all evil doesn't necessitate achieving infinite good.
You're now stuck in a loop because you can't think on your own once you leave the script of your favourite youtube shorts.
Acting directly to remove all evil things is, ultimately, just as arbitrary as deciding "I'm going to add just ten units of good each day". Why not eleven times better? Why not twelve? Why not...
It would be an even better action if, when he removed all evil, he added a little bit of good too, after all.
Why "I'll directly and immediately end all evil" and not "I'll directly and immediately end all evil and then add one extra unit of good beyond that"?
But your video doesn't really make an argument for why there can't be no evil whatsoever in the first place. You haven't actually made an argument for why an omnibenevolent deity should be able to create a cosmos that begins at or reaches a maximum of evil T and then constantly decreases.
>for why there can't be no evil whatsoever in the first place
Sometimes there can! At the beginning this was the case. It's here now because we (and I do mean we - you yourself have done something knowing it was wrong but doing it regardless, just like I have) and removing it is no different from any other sort of direct improvement
You're essentially saying "you dealt with addition, but what about subtracting negatives?". They're the same thing. One plus one, and one minus negative one, have identical results
>It's here now because we (and I do mean we - you yourself have done something knowing it was wrong but doing it regardless, just like I have) and removing it is no different from any other sort of direct improvement
Yes, but only because either
1. God created humans evil like Genesis 6:5-6 says
or
2. God created humans destined to become inclined to evil, and God created the instrument of the Fall Satan, foreknowing that humans would fall and what evils they would wreak.
The question is, did he have to do these things? Moral agents are responsible for the things they do deliberately, even if that only indirectly causes evil. Obviously I would be culpable if I incited a man to murder, or sowed conflicts, If I engineered a virus and released it. But it isn't as if I intended to kill any one person as an end in itself. Why should God be excused from this standard?
>God created humans evil like Genesis 6:5-6 says
It says no such thing. It says humans had become evil. This was about 2000 years after the world had been created. Eden was more ancient to them by this point than Rome is to us!
>God created humans destined to become inclined to evil
Again it says no such thing. Evil is something people choose. Again you yourself contain the answer to why. Look at the times you've chosen to do something full-well knowing it was wrong. Destiny didn't make you do that, it was a choice, no different from how you can choose to move your arm or leg.
1/inf is NaN.
Your math is faulty.
>1/inf is NaN.
Well that's really exactly the point - infinity isn't an actual amount that things can be; it's more like a fiction with useful properties that can be helpful to make-believe about. Kinda like the square roots of negative numbers: they don't actually have square roots, but if we pretend they do it can be useful for some of our mathematical models of things.
>God won't act unless it is necessary for him to act to increase goodness
Does your pastor or priest know you reject the efficacy of sincere prayer?
>the "problem of evil" is solved.
The problem of evil isn't just why should it not be the case that there is a creation with zero suffering, zero evil by any definition. The problem is, why should a perfect God create a world with Earth's extent of evil? If it was necessary for God to create a world with T evil, why call him omnibenevolent? It seems even more likely, presuming Christian mythological persons, that it is necessary for Satan and Demons to effect scenarios amounting to D evil, are they also omnibenevolent? I reckon T > D. If it was not necessary for God to create, then all of creation is nothing but a decrease in average goodness, so how justify it? Men are judged by their creations, and they are more constrained.
And just to anticipate the common response, the free will theodicy cannot justify watching everybody you love die of plague before you contract it yourself, dying in agony in a natural disaster, being born with debilitating or disfiguring congenital deformities, etc.
>Does your pastor or priest know you reject the efficacy of sincere prayer?
Who says that? Jesus taught us how to pray. It's all stuff that God will really do.
In Luke 11:1 someone asks him "Lord, teach us to pray", and he responds:
"Father— let your name be treated as holy. Let your kingdom come. Our appointed bread be giving us daily. And forgive us our sins, for we also are forgiving everyone being indebted to us. And do not bring us into temptation".
God does do all that.
>And just to anticipate the common response, the free will theodicy cannot justify
My man the video is only 60 seconds long give it a quick view, its answer isn't that at all
>My man the video is only 60 seconds long give it a quick view
I mean the response to "why should a perfect God create a world with Earth's extent of evil". Contrary to your assertion that they're "both asking why God doesn't directly improve the world more frequently", that question is raised by the fact of creation itself, and it is not exhaustively treated by any assumption about kinds of possible intercession. So far you've just claimed God could not intercede so as to prevent evil and be morally consistent in most cases, and that he (necessarily?) intercedes as a last resort as it were to ensure strictly increasing cosmic total goodness. Okay, granted. But this is a standard of morality easily achieved by human beings within their power, it does not necessitate or represent omnibenevolence. And in this perspective since God is apparently innocent of any culpability for his action of creation, humans meet a higher moral standard.
I watched the clip, it says:
>But if goodness won't grow in the world unless he acts, then he can act. But in every other situation, the laws of logic prevent him from doing so directly.
Therefore, it doesn't matter how sincere your prayers are. According to the clip, there is no intercession unless your prayers are for something God would want to effect anyway if he does not want to increase good in the world merely because it is prayed for. I don't know of any Christian doctrine of prayer which denies that God will freely intercede for you because you pray for it.
>God does do all that.
"Our appointed bread be giving us daily" is clearly not something given every time one prays for it, or a situation always one in which "goodness won't grow in the world unless he acts", but more to the point, if you're suggesting that the Lord's prayer is supposed to delimit the purview of prayers, you're still transgressing Christian orthodoxy and traditions and your ministers will not appreciate you promulgating it.
>I mean the response to "why should a perfect God create a world with Earth's extent of evil".
Well he didn't - he made it and then we determined the extent of its evil, didn't we? He could only intervene in that to relatively limited extents due to the issues with direct action that it highlighted.
He can only directly intervene on that front in order to ensure evil doesn't choke out good completely (perhaps most famously when nearly all of humanity had been completely corrupted by evil, so when only one small family group was left uncorrupted, he had to eradicate everyone else)
>that question is raised by the fact of creation itself
God's direct creation didn't include any evil though - isn't that something we add to the world instead of him?
>So far you've just claimed God could not intercede so as to prevent evil and be morally consistent in most cases, and that he (necessarily?) intercedes as a last resort as it were to ensure strictly increasing cosmic total goodness
Btw SUPER glad to read this! You really *got* it. I think you're the only one in the thread who really watched lol
>But this is a standard of morality easily achieved by human beings within their power
I don't think that's true at all! Most famously we know for a fact that if things are left on their own then the heat death is inevitable, when every last molecular bond has been broken and every star is dead. Humanity is completely powerless in the face of that
Nearer to the present, it was just a few decades that we were quite possibly THIS close to obliterating ourselves with our weapons in the Cold War. Looking at the world now we haven't moved much past that point. It's up to us what happens on this front but it seems very very possible God could need to step in and stop us when we go too far with war - assuming he hasn't already!
>Well he didn't - he made it and then we determined the extent of its evil, didn't we?
He created it foreknowing humans would experience the inevitable, extensive history of evil with the full depth of human sensitivities to terror, depression, agony, madness, bitterness, etc.
>God's direct creation didn't include any evil though
Not true, it included the personification and agent of evil, and an immutable destiny of evil for mankind in your worldview.
I think you missed my point at culpability for deliberate howsoever mediated actions.
>He created it foreknowing humans would experience the inevitable, extensive history of evil with the full depth of human sensitivities to terror, depression, agony, madness, bitterness, etc.
As long as good outweighs that then it's for the greater good, right?
And good does outweigh evil - it has to or else everyone would be dead already. You can't have more war than peace, or more hunger than feeding, or more sickness than health and maintain a population
Think of it this way: there's almost nobody who couldn't stop living within the hour if they wanted to. Almost anyone could cease to live at any time. But very few people (statistically speaking) choose that - almost everyone considers their life worth living
And that's getting better and better. Your kids will see serious disease and hunger end, if things continue as they have.
And one day the resurrection will come, and then this party really gets going!
>it included the personification and agent of evil
Satan isn't a personification of evil. He's just a being who is evil. Not much different conceptually from say Charles Manson except he happens to be a different species
>I think you missed my point at culpability for deliberate howsoever mediated actions.
If it's for the greater good though then it's ultimately worth it. These are just growing pains. If good is always increasing, that means the worst parts come at the beginning. There will be Graham's Number of Graham's Numbers of years in the future. The era of suffering will be less significant by far to us then than a single second of your time in Kindergarten was to you now. (Indeed massively so, proportionally speaking)
>As long as good outweighs that then it's for the greater good, right?
No? Surely creation represents a net decrease in eternal cosmic goodness. Perfectly good God, and his creation of the evil Satan with his horrible destiny of evil average out to... less than perfectly good. Why did God have to create our evil destiny?
>Almost anyone could cease to live at any time. But very few people (statistically speaking) choose that - almost everyone considers their life worth living, and viruses and bacteria couldn't even decide to stop living, they reproduce no matter what. Where is the theodicy?
Yeah, including evil people who use their life to victimize people and enjoy addictions. This is not justifying, it's easy to imagine an evil God of many happy evil people.
>And one day the resurrection will come, and then this party really gets going!
Keep going, then what? Do we ever reach a point where I'm supposed to understand how God needed to create a destiny of thousands of years of homicide, war, famine, plague just from the form of society in this revelatory utopia?
>Satan isn't a personification of evil. He's just a being who is evil. Not much different conceptually from say Charles Manson except he happens to be a different species
So why did God create him? It sounds like in your worldview all of creation is just some stochastically arising (although some evils like Satan are God's own, specific creations) evils to be overcome, before creation settles into a stable arrangement merely inferior to God himself. This sounds like a disaster, not a deliberate creation of a perfectly good being, who could presumably create the final static arrangement of Angels singing "holy, holy, holy" or whatever ex nihilo, and thereby still have diminished eternity to the extent that there is now purposeless alterity from God.
>Surely creation represents a net decrease in eternal cosmic goodness
Not at all, a world with just God isn't as good as a world with God + 1 good thing. So when he said "let there be light" and saw that the light was good that was a genuine improvement of reality over its prior state
>his creation of the evil Satan
He didn't create an evil Satan. Satan created and evil Satan! Just like you create your own evil. Evil is something you choose to make, not something any being inherently is
>Why did God have to create our evil destiny?
There's no such thing as destiny. Only decisions.
>it's easy to imagine an evil God of many happy evil people.
That's a self-contradiction since God is the best possible being by definition, and evil is by definition something opposed to good
>God needed to create a destiny of thousands of years of homicide, war, famine, plague
There's homicide and war because people choose to kill each other and people choose to go to war. God didn't determine that; people decide to do it.
Famine and plague are also because people chose to be evil in Eden and ruined that, then they chose to be evil afterwards and brought the Flood which made the problems even worse with how much it damaged the world
>So why did God create him?
You seem to be thinking of Satan as some sort of nega-god of evil but he's not. He's just some guy who chooses bad things, just a different species. They're a dime a dozen. He's really nothing particularly special. Nothing would be especially different if he hadn't existed except that the times the Bible says "Belial" (which appears to be his proper name) it would be some other guy who's the evil angel cartel boss
God made angels for the same reason he made people: we're his direct improvers since he has that issue with his direct action often entailing infinite regresses
>before creation settles into a stable arrangement merely inferior to God himself
Not at all; the quantity of good will always be increasing. If you had a universal "goodometer" it would always be going up. Sometimes faster and sometimes slower, but always up.
>According to the clip, there is no intercession unless your prayers are for something God would want to effect anyway
Doesn't 1 John 5:14 say much the same? "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us".
Everything Jesus said to pray for, God does do. He will forgive you if you ask it, he won't lead you to temptation, and he does guarantee our sustenance (good couldn't grow if everything starved to death, so he'll never let that happen, just as Genesis 8:22 says).
Prayer is mainly for getting your heart right, not for getting miracles
> I don't know of any Christian doctrine of prayer which denies that God will freely intercede for you because you pray for it.
I find that surprising since that seems to be the norm to me - nearly no one expects that if they, for instance, pray for healing that they have guaranteed health.
But hey, think of it this way: in the video, there was a certain point where God had to directly improve the world to guarantee good's increase. Presumably at that point it's His choice what specific form the 1 "unit" of goodness would be. If he were going to choose, wouldn't it make sense he'd choose something someone had just prayed for?
And who knows how often that needs to happen - even a single second contains lots of moments of time!
>is clearly not something given every time one prays for it,
I think its mainly a callback to Genesis 8:22, which is part of the set of promises God made to humanity as a whole, where he did guarantee food permanently to us. (Collectively! Not necessarily individually, but as a whole)
>you're still transgressing Christian orthodoxy and traditions and your ministers will not appreciate you promulgating it
Luther smiles upon me from the grave
There is no problem of evil and there never has been. All of your nonsense is useless. Evil exists because God desires love to exist. Without free will, love could not exist. And with a free will comes the ability to choose evil. There's no problem here.
A God without infinity is a God too small to worship. A God of such weakness is rather pathetic. He inspires little awe, little holiness.
I think you guys have a subtle (but very common!) misunderstanding of infinity as the largest number. Which can be proven and is its most famous quality.
BUT, what's less well-known is that we can prove that infinity is the SMALLEST number with equal ease!
Any number you can name, we can prove that infinity is smaller. Like I said in the OP, we can prove that finite numbers are larger than infinity. Let me prove that ∞<8
Six minus seven is equal to negative one.
6 - 7 = -1
Negative one is equal to negative one-half minus one-half which is equal to negative one-third minus one-third minus one-third, and so on.
-1 = [(-½) - (½)] = {[(-⅓) - (⅓)] - (⅓)} = ...
So continuing this
-1= [(-1/∞) + (-1/∞) + (-1/∞)...]
Yet
-∞=[(-1/∞) + (-1/∞) + (-1/∞)...]
So
{-∞=[(-1/∞) + (-1/∞) + (-1/∞)...]=-1}
So
6 - 7=[(-1/∞) + (-1/∞) + (-1/∞)...]
So
6 - 7 = {-1=[(-1/∞) + (-1/∞) + (-1/∞)...]=-∞}
So
6 - 7= -∞
Which means
6 = -∞ + 7
Therefore
(6)+∞ = (-∞ + 7)+∞
Of course [(-∞+7)+∞]=7
Getting us
6+∞=7
Therefore (6+∞)=∞=7
7<8
So ∞<8
So if we can prove Finitist God has even just 8 "units" of power then He is more powerful than infinitist god, whose puny power is less than 8.
But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may reside in me.
2 Corinthians 12:9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_finitism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_theology
Does God have to be infinite to fit biblical criteria?
In the King James Version of the Bible “infinite” only appears three times and only once pertaining to an attribute of God: “Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.” – Psalms 147:4-6. Also note that the Hebrew in this text can be more accurately translated as the phrase “too big to count”.
In his book Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About, Donald Knuth says that God is not infinite but limited by numbers such as Graham's number.
Knuth says that this cannot contradict the Bible or any other sacred text because there are no words to explain such large magnitudes, because they are quite simply incomprehensible (which itself is often seen as an important attribute of God).
Finitism is more consistent with the mortal and finite Gods of Norse paganism who perish at the great cataclysmic battle of Ragnarök before the world is consumed by flames and drowned underwater