What the trolly problem actually looks like

I never got this. They say he is omnipotent, therefore he does not perceive time in a linear way like we do. He knows everything that ever was, is and will be all at once. So there is not much to test here. Either he does the things needed to make me a believer or he doesn't. It's his choice and not mine. Free will is meaningless here, even if it does exist, he does already knows my choice before I make it or he is not omnipotent.

"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 whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus
- ~~Ackshually~~ it was probably not Epicurus, but Sextus Empiricus. From the surviving writings it seems Epicurus was really not fond of Atheists.
  (Doesn’t change that it’s a great argument, I just hate that we don’t have a definite source for it)
- As an atheist I take issue with Epicurus statement, which gets floated around a lot. I think it's because in Epicurus's framing of the universe evil has agency, whereas christian apologetics will respond with evil representative of a lack of goodness. Then there's the issue of free will to contend with.
Sure, but "God works in mysterious ways," so it's not my responsibility to clear up any paradoxes that arise from my religious axioms. Get with the program.
- "God works in mysterious ways" is a nice way of describing him as a Lovecraftian horror we cannot possibly understand.
- God works in mysterious ways
  I wanted to find out the origin of that tripe, and it's a poem that should be titled simply "Copium."
- "CAN God create a fart so big that even HIS butthole can't fart it??"
  Asking the real questions
- For those unaware, the original theological question is
  Can God create a rock so large he cannot lift it?
  The answer, and I'm not shitting you, is
  Yes. God can make a boulder so large he cannot lift it. And then he can lift it anyway.
- Can god create a fart so smelly that he himself cannot smell?
Hypothetically, if such an entity did exist, shouldn't that same logic also extend to knowing his own future choices? Since they already know everything that will happen, they also know everything that they themselves are going to do, and therefore, have essentially no agency themselves, because even if their power is infinite, it is already set beforehand what they are going to use that power for and they are essentially just along for the ride?
For that matter, if they know everything, and therefore know everything at all points in time all at once and so shouldn't perceive time linearly, then there is no room for such a being to really engage in information processing, since that requires taking in information, and doing something with it to produce new information, and this kind of being has already taken in all the information possible from the very beginning, does not experience a meaningful flow of time (and so cannot experience change with which to apply to that input), and already has all the outputs from the very beginning too. Since thinking is a form of information processing, it occurs to me a truly omniscient being like this should basically be a philosophical zombie; basically an unconscious object of incredible scope that merely appears to be a conscious thinking entity to humans due to our limited perception of time.
- As a thought experiment, if we think of a god as a being that exists in the 5th dimension, it could be omnipotent/omniscient to the lower 4 (3 spacial + time) but only have a limited presence/influence regarding things like probability, and no influence whatsoever on things like other realities.
  Similar to how we exist in the 4th dimension and can fully manipulate the lower three; but while we exist and are aware of time, we can't manipulate it outside of trying to nudge it with extreme speed or gravity.
  A god in 5th dimension then would kinda look like someone playing the Sims and making use of save states to try to optimize every decision in the game; and while you might be aware that other games exist, -this- one can only ever be Sims.
  This would make omnipotence a question of scope - to the individual sim, the player is all powerful in the ways that an individual sim can experience, so, omnipotent; but that player can't do shit to Minecraft, or instances of Sims running on other computers, so, simultaneously not omnipotent.
  Basically the Many Worlds theory, but each reality would have its own god.
  ...which still doesn't really pass the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good test, but it does at least frame the concept of god in a more interesting way from a mythology perspective.
  No religion that I'm aware of acknowledges things like dimensions, but then they present their god as existing in a way that's clearly outside the scope of the 4 we experience... So, there's wiggle room even in actual religious lore in how we package things like "omnipotence".
- This only exists if there is one possible outcome, it’s possible for the future to be undetermined, and still have an omniscient being know all future possibilities. They would know the infinite possible outcomes of their choices, all the iterations, but would still have free will to decide which path is followed. In this scenario people still don’t have free will because of the omniscience problem.
- That sounds like an AI to me
I think there was this guy Calvin who already pointed that out.
Omnipotent means "all-powerful." Omniscient means "all-knowing."
- Correct. But the Christian belief is that God is also omniscient. He is the three omnis: omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent
- And here I thought knowledge was power.
- So he has the power to acquire all knowledge, right? Being omnipotent includes being omniscient, except for the edge case of intentionally not acquiring all knowledge.
To be devils advocate here (ha irony):
The main argument against this by Christians would be, that God gives us free will that he does not control because that it objectively and ultimately good, and he is all good, so he must give us uncontrollable free will.
An alternative argument would just be that he's god, and we can't comprehend how he must have done/sees things, but it says it in the bible so it's true and we have no right to question it.
That second one is not a funny exaggeration, but something I heard said very seriously growing up in church. Somewhat to their credit, worshiping a god does imply an ultimate unquestionable authority, so this would happen at a certain point no matter what, from the perspective of the religious.

My favorite one lol

I remember this one with the caption “but if you stop it it’s going to be unfair for the people that already died”
- Gotta love a suttle shame that caption has
This is literally ~~1984~~ COVID19
- Literally all Capitalism
Accurate
An impossible decision.

You are an omniscient and all powerful God.

You create someone who is tortured and killed in a war at the age of 2.

You are a benevolent God because you helped that person experience the full spectrum of what life has to offer.

The 2 year old did not acknowledge your supreme authority because you did not give it a developed brain to grasp the concept and so they burn in hell for eternity, never able to fully comprehend what happened to them. Their entire existence is one of suffering and unexplainable agony.

You are a benevolent God.

Praise be
"God is good, therefore everything God does is good."

If god is all-knowing, he knew I would grow up an atheist. If god is all-powerful, he hasn't done anything about it. So I guess he's okay with it.

Oh, no, it would be wrong for him to do anything to interfere with your free will! But it's totally fine for his worshipers to do so.
- Because you uhh, you have to make the choice? Even though God, if the being is all knowing, and all powerful, could set up conditions for every human being that ever existed to come to choose tobelieve in him, should he actually desire that.
  So either, he doesn't desire it, can't do it, or doesn't know.
  If he doesn't desire it, it doesn't matter. If he can't do it or doesn't know, then he is not God, and it doesn't matter.
- Why wouldn't he do something about it while I was alive? Not omnipotent enough?

I took a quick poll of people tied to the tracks, and a majority reported that:

I'm good.
Please get us off these tracks.

Hahaha, thank you.
He’ll take me when it’s my time.
- He works in mysterious ways.

Plus, he also knew you wouldn't accept him even before he created you.

God only kills people he knows will be evil

Just remember next time you see a make a wish kid that they are literally worse than Hitler

Dude blood cancer kids are worse than Hitler. Do you know how many times I'm watching Rick and Morty and I get interrupted by the make a wish foundation? It's infuriating.
I mean, Hitler was a bad guy but he did kill Hitler!
/s
Holy fuck that post is dripping with sarcastic and it still hurt to write.
- I mean, Hitler was a bad guy but he did kill Hitler!
  He also killed the guy who killed Hitler, though. That bastard.
Didn't Hitler killed a lot of gay men? How many gay men has the make a wish kid killed? Check mate, Atheists.

I brought a question like this up in a church. It was not well received.

Stop judging me by how I play Rollercoaster Tycoon >:(

No, because you define "evil" as "against your will", and "good" as "anything you do".

Plus, as said omnipotent creator you leave only highly questionable 'evidence' of your existence

If we're talking about Yahweh specifically, he even left evidence that shows he went from a god in a pantheon to the current supposed "one and only" god.
- All the pantheistic religions are more interesting than monotheism. They're still 100% bullshit, but monotheism is like having a D&D character with maxed out stats and skills across the board - they can do everything, but there's no creativity or challenge, so it's just so boring.

He'S nOt EvIl, He SaVeS yOu!

You forgot the "they accept you as the creator, and you let the trolley hit anyway"

Then condemn them to endless suffering and torment if they question you.
- Also if they don't, but they ate a ham sandwich or wore mixed fabrics or something.
It's just part of Your plan

if only it was just death by trolley... but no no.. ists actually burning for the eternity in a fiery pit of lava and ash, you know, love.

That's what happen when you make up some entity to be responsible for everything including suffering and shits

Is the real riddle about not being powerful enough or smart enough to spell omniscient correctly?

The Christian solution to the Trolley Problem: "Don't worry, guys on the tracks! I'll pray for you!"

Here's my take.

Whether "God" is all good, all knowing, all capable, or all something else is an irrelevant question. It presumes "God" has motivation to demonstrate any of these "all"s in a way we could comprehend, and I'm not talking about the Futurama idea "when you're doing it right, they won't be sure you've done anything at all" deal.

I mean that "God" is gone. Packed their shit up and moved on, when exactly they'd have done this is up for debate, but for relatability's sake I'll say after the ascension of Jesus.

"Jesus died for our sins.", this phrase references Jesus's cleansing the human race of original sin, the frustrated children of young earth creationists accuse this notion of "God" forgiving humanity for trying to learn things, but since the Torah is intended as a metaphorical text, I take the meaning of what Jesus cleansed humanity of as "sins of the father."

Basically, "God" made humanity, and then left when humanity gained self awareness and individuality. The point of any religion they'd have placed on earth, or any messenger they'd have sent would be to model good behaviour for the people they appear to, and then to leave those people to learn to choose to behave themselves, not for fear of punishment or for promise of salvation, but because doing the right thing in a moment is just the right thing to do, and that alone merits doing it.

So the chain of development is "God" makes the world and the beginning stages of humanity, at some point "God" takes the training wheels off by making every individual responsible for their own actions rather than to be tied inextricably to some ancestor's will or legacy or crimes, "God" leaves to give humanity the free will to choose goodness for goodness' own sake rather than out of some command to do so.

In other words, if there's a great and powerful creator, they're obviously not here to intervene for their own law, and that'd probably be by design if their intention was for us to exercise our own free will in a moral manner.

Regardless of if the shoe fits or not mythologically, I feel like the "do right for right's own sake" is a proper enough "final imperative" in a free will model of the world.

You're essentially positing the deist possibility, where an all powerful entity created existence and afterwards just left it to its own devices.
- Certainly what'd make the most sense to me given how much of the observable world doesn't work in any other scenario besides one with no creator at all.
  Note that I'm not saying I believe it in a spiritual sense, just that if I had to accept that a creator was responsible for the universe, that the above description is what would make the most sense to me given what can be observed in the current world.

Nothing in the Bible says that God is truly omnipotent; the Bibile itself references multiple times the existence of Satan, the evil, which ruins the existence on Earth and pushes people to commit sins.

So no, this meme doesn't have any fucking sense.

Atheist here. I have a co-worker who says the world is ultimately just and so we don't have to really work at improving things because the difference will be paid off in the afterlife.
Do you subscribe to that as well?
- No, i think this would be great but being realistic, it's a no.
…but didn’t God create Satan as well?
- Yes, the bible says that God created Satan, an entity which had free will and was "good". Like the human, the entity could also do sinful things thanks to the fact that he had free will. Infact, Satan turned "bad" but Lucifer’s sinful pride cost him his place in paradise.
The bible doesn't say a lot of shit that many Christians claim to be true anyway. It is absolutely a common claim that god is omnipotent.
- It is a common claim, doesn't mean that I have to claim that

lol. this has such teenager atheist energy.

"my sole exposure to religion and spirituality is abrahamic and im very rational and mad about it."

Sounds like OP hit a nerve 🤣
You not liking the "energy" of the post doesn't make it inaccurate though, does it?
Abrahamic is a large percentage, so yeah. The concept of a deity or deities that have some evil component to them isn't just from that line of religion evolution. At least the gods of Greek, Roman, Norse, etc. openly had human flaws that contributed to their behaviors, and didn't fall into the "mysterious ways" excuse.
Most people on Lemmy seem to be English speaking, and most English speakers are primarily exposed to abrahamic religions, so yeah that tracks
- Could you elaborate? I do not understand what you mean. Is it because they are referring to the abrahamic religions as simply abrahamic?
....you realize what sub you're on right?
The "problem of evil" has been a topic of serious scholarship for millenia. No "theodicy" makes logical sense, but more than just teenagers examine it.
People talk about thing therefore people must not know other thing exist hur