• 0 Posts
  • 59 Comments
Joined 1 month ago
cake
Cake day: June 27th, 2024

help-circle
  • Athletic people tend to say that, but I really doubt it’s true for everyone. I have never enjoyed sport - being out of shape it sucked more, but while maintaining a sensible training regime I really dislike it as well. For me it’s about as enjoyable as doing housework. I do that too, but not for fun.

    The only thing that has helped me is to accept that evolution is a bitch and biology is unfair; I will probably never enjoy working out, but I can do it anyway and find a form of exercise that is kinda okay and allows me to listen to good music while I do it.

    For some people, “it will be fun one day” just sets a really unrealistic expectation.




  • Youth corrections staff is still a whole other story than doctors though. A physical examination is probably one of the most vulnerable positions one could be in. These cameras would record people getting naked, multiple orifices being examined, and patients talking about symptoms or things they are unsure and often ashamed about.

    The cost would be enormous. I imagine many people would be even more reluctant to go to the doctor than they are now.

    And the benefit, in my opinion, would be very slim. Medical malpractice is far more subtle than the examples from the article. As patients we’re rarely worried that our doctor will physically assault us, we’re worried about errors in judgement, delays in care, and prejudices based on gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality, and so on. And those aren’t directly observable most of the time. Even if you get the moment on camera where your doctor decides to trivialize your symptoms you mostly wouldn’t be able to prove it happened for discriminatory reasons.




  • The paradox assumes a much more substantive understanding of philosophy in its axioms.

    How is that an counterargument? Epicurus says: Those axioms create a paradox, they must be wrong. You’re saying: Yeah well your axioms are too substantive. You are agreeing that the three premises can’t be true. Everything else you’ve talked about was simply missing the point.

    The Epicurean paradox does nothing else than to discuss if the premises as phrased can be true. If you talk about an idea outside those premises you’ve already missed the mark.


  • The premise written from the perspective of a bunch of Bronze Age shepherds, yes.

    Which is precisely what the Epicurean paradox is about.

    Mate I’m sorry but if you still don’t understand what the paradox says in the first place this is a waste of time. Obviously you want to talk about something that hast nothing to do with the paradox itself. I’ll leave you to it.


  • You don’t need to be omniscient to appear to be to a sufficiently limited observer.

    Yeah, but the premise of the abrahamic god says he is, that’s the point.

    The insistence that nothing should ever be unpleasant at any time for any reason is the mentality of a toddler.

    Back to the insults? That’s weak. Maybe you’ve never experiences anything truly horrible in your life. Good for you! Bad for you for forgetting about the rest of us though, really, that’s actually pretty rude. You’re reinforcing the notion that the only way christians can get out of the paradox is by becoming very, very ignorant.

    Imagine a young child that painfully dies of cancer. The parents ask: How could god let that happen? How can he be all powerful and not save our sweet child from all this unnecessary pain?

    What would you answer them?


  • And that’s where you get into questions of degree.

    Not at all. The premise is “all-knowing”. That is in fact a mechanic who’s able to account for every particle within the engine block.

    I wander carelessly through the yard.

    You are not all-powerful. The premise says: god is. If you were easily able to spare all those small insects, deciding to kill them anyway would make you a psychopath.

    Suffering is a consequence of our human condition.

    Our human condition, within the scenario of the thinking exercise, was very consciously created that way by god.

    I would not consider a world devoid of feeling one that was compatible with an all-loving god.

    An all-powerful god would have been able to create a reality with feeling, but without suffering. And religion already claims that he can - that’s the idea of heaven or paradise.


  • We’re talking about a concept of god who’s omnicscient, don’t forget that. In your metaphor I knew perfetcly well beforehand were you would build your house and consciously put my bulldozer there, knowing it would one day destroy your home.

    Using my power and knowledge to so something that will harm you is mean spirited. The same must be said for god. Exceptions would be if god didn’t have another choice or didn’t know better. Both of those are addressed in the Epicurean paradox.

    An omnipotent god would have been able to build a world without suffering. His volcanoes would maybe spray rainbows.

    God didn’t build a world without suffering. Therefore we can conclude: It is not possible for him to be at the same time fully able and willing to do so. Or to put it more formally: A omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving god is incompatible with a world that includes suffering.






  • You’re arguing the process of plate tectonics is ontologically wicked.

    Not at all. You’re still fighting a strawman. The existence of volcanoes and cancer isn’t evil. If it was however consciously created by an omnipotent and omniscient being, that would be evil. The paradox doesn’t relate to our reality itself, only to the claim of said characteristics in a god in relation to said reality. You still seem confused about that part.

    But this sounds like Perdition. Absolutely nightmarish. An eternal hellscape I would wish to escape at any cost.

    If you truly cannot a reality with less suffering than ours you are truly unimaginative, mate. Or completely ignorant to the suffering that exists in this world. Or maybe both.

    But it is also perfectly possible that all of this exists without a Singular Perfect Entity at its origin.

    Right, which is why this is the most obvious answer to the Epicurean paradox: This singular perfect entity doesn’t exist. Congratulation, you’ve now arrived at the same conclusion as Epicurus 2.5 thousand years ago.



  • You’re discounting enormous processes that provide enormous benefits over the order of millennia to marginal discomforts experienced by tiny minorities over the course of months. Why stop at volcanoes and cancer? We could claim that teeth are evil. We could claim that fire and salt are evil. We could claim that emotions are evil.

    If you’re seriously arguing that there is no unavoidable suffering in this world you’re very ignorant towards your fellow human beings. An omnipotent god could create a world without volcanoes and without sickness. Yet he didn’t. You’re sill not understanding even the starting point of the Epicurean paradox if you don’t get that.

    With the conclusion that such a deity does not deserve to be worshiped, presumably because an immensely powerful but flawed being is not worthy of reciprocal love and devotion. But that’s not an argument against God, its an argument against Parents.

    Again, you’re misunderstanding the conversation. It’s not about judgment or whining, it’s not about arguing if it’s okay for god to be how he is, it’s not about any conclusions from gods nature to anything. It’s a logical thinking exercise about the premises of the abrahamic idea of god’s characteristics and whether they make sense or not.

    If the premises are: god is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, the existence of human suffering creates a paradox. (And if you’re unsure why just look at the guide above.) What you’re saying has nothing to do with that. You don’t resolve the paradox by insulting those who find it interesting to think about, you’re disqualifying from the conversation. If you believe in a god without those characteristics the Epicurean paradox says nothing about your faith at all.


  • Hardly convoluted.

    While you’re arguing about all the parts of human suffering that can easily be attributed to humans, other forms of suffering exist as well. Think volcanoes. Think cancer. You’re not making a good argument if you’re conveniently forgetting that not all suffering has to do with our free will at all.

    At the point, you’re not arguing against the existence of a deity. You’re arguing against the existence of Buddy Jesus and the big smiling sun baby from Teletubbies.

    I think you’re misunderstanding the Epicurean paradox. It specifically argues against a very specific idea of god with the characteristics of being omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving at the same time. Call him “buddy jesus” if you will (some call him “God”), but that’s exactly the thought exercise we’re talking about here. No one is arguing against deities in general. The term is way too broad to have a single conversation about every potential divine entity anyway.


  • Suffering without purpose. And that’s where things get sticky. Because the argument from Evil needs to assume the recipients of suffering are innocent and undeserving. Otherwise it’s not evil, just karma.

    There’s plenty of undeserved suffering in our world, I don’t think we have to debate that. Either evil is the consequence of our free will in some convoluted way - then the same will be true in the afterlife - or a paradise without suffering is possible - then an all-loving and omnipotent god would have been able to create just that. It simply disproves the idea that our suffering was somehow unavoidable to an all-powerful god, because that doesn’t make sense withing the ideological framework of the abrahamic religions. It must be avoidable. Otherwise paradise would be unthinkable.