u/truckaxle

Thesis: A malevolent God is not incoherent

In another thread, a theist challenged the idea of a malevolent God as incoherent and confusing. I suspect they are leaning toward Classical Theism, which holds that evil is merely the absence of good.

There’s no inherent contradiction between the idea of a malevolent God vs a benevolent God. In fact, based on the evidence in the world, the malevolent God theory is easier to defend given the overwhelming presence of natural evil, while theodicies like “the fall” fail on multiple levels.

Furthermore, any proposed solution to the Problem of Evil can be flipped to address the Problem of Good. For instance, Plantinga’s so-called solution to the Problem of Evil is easily reversible, portraying a God who actively seeks free-willed moral evil and in doing so risked some free willed agents using their free will for good.

Note: Yes, I agree there are many possible options between those two extremes, including God not existing, being disinterested, existing in the future, and so on.

In the spirit of Fresh Friday.

Christians often wonder what kind of evidence would be convincing to non-believers for the resurrection of Jesus besides human testimony.

Imagine you are deity, the omni supreme being of all the universe, that is sacrificing yourself and resurrecting yourself to appease yourself of this meta-rule you have for blood atonement.

What types of miracles or supernatural events could you envisioned to authenticate and leave a historical mark on this event beyond anything of a mere human?

Not having a lot of creativity, I will start with the given miracles already provided in the Bible.

For example, what if the original autographed gospels are magically preserved and are imperishable. What if these gospels magically replicated themselves like fish/loaves in a basket and needed no selection, canonization, copying, translating or printing. And now you have the originals so no questions if this verse or that verse was added or subtracted. Big win here.

And these replicated gospels also replicate for evangelists when travelling to far off lands in the language of those, they are about to preach to. No need for translators.

Evangelists could genuinely and demonstrably speak in various languages unfamiliar to them when immersed in glossolalia.

Or maybe reoccurring miracles. Holy men being resurrected each year for 3 days and coming into the holy city of Jerusalem to preach and then disappear.

Or 3 hours of darkness every year, in every time zone on Good Friday with no natural explanation.

Or people being magically healed of blindness and other diseases on Golgotha every year on Easter Morning.

Or clouds of smoke and pillars of fire every year at the same time that confounds scientists and non-believers.

Am I wrong to expect something truly significant when it concerns the Supreme Being of the universe?

Can anyone come up with others?

There is not a single good reason why God would value human faith or your belief sans evidence. Not one.

However, there is an obvious reason why a false religion would value "faith" or belief without evidence. They are:

1. They do not have any evidence.
2. Your belief is absolutely essential and necessary to propagate the particular religion

It is really simple. A demand for your belief without evidence is major clue of the false nature of the religion being promoted.

tldr: Faith is not a virtue but a hallmark of a false religion.

Across history, thousands of distinct religions have emerged. Despite each claiming to be the one true faith, they tend to share a familiar set of features:

• Human‑authored holy texts filled with stories, legends, and revelations attributed to a divine source or inspired by a deity.
• Limited Revelation. Revelation from deity to human is restricted and limited. A select group of special persons in the past communicated directly with the deity anyone else has to take their word on it or rely upon even less direct attestation. Yes, some claim to communicate with God in prayer but the major revelations that founded the religion are in the past of someone long gone.
• Miracles placed safely in the distant past, never in the present where they could be verified.
• Dependence on human effort for propagation via proselytizing, cultural transmission, or military conquest. No major religion has spontaneously arisen in multiple places or times independently. They are all restrained by geography and time.
• Strong cultural boundaries. Religion adoption overwhelmingly matches the religion of their upbringing. Foreign religions are easy to dismiss.
• Anthropomorphic god(s) whose personality often resemble the authority structures of the era in which the religion formed.
• Inevitable schisms Once a religion lasts beyond a generation, disagreements tend to build up, leading to schisms and divisions.
• Invisible deities, inaccessible to direct observation.
• Promises of salvation and often escape from death, often paired with threats or fear-based consequences for disbelief.

If your religion doesn’t fit these patterns, feel free to point it out. I may be overgeneralizing, and I’m certainly not familiar with every tradition on Earth. Buddhism is one example that probably doesn't have all these traits.

But taken together, these recurring traits make it hard to treat any one religion as uniquely true. None stands on evidential ground clearly above the others. The simplest explanation is that religions are meme‑complexes. That is cultural information systems created by humans, shaped by storytelling and legends, and sustained only by the engendered belief of their adherents.

I just got my new IR sauna and I’m loving it. It’s a compact, one-person hot box with 1200 watts of power. It heats up to 149 degrees in about 15 minutes and is way more efficient than a traditional sauna.

In my experience, I can raise my core body temperature to 102 degrees in roughly 23 minutes, though it takes some effort to reach that point, and by then I’m drenched in sweat and starting to feel a bit lightheaded.

I’ve been reading Bryan Johnson, and he’s not a fan of IR, instead recommending traditional saunas. Much of what I’ve come across also suggests that IR isn’t the most effective way to raise your core temperature to the so-called magic number of 102.2°F, where heat shock proteins are said to kick in. Honestly, I haven't looked into this claim, but for now, I’m rolling with it.

I read about Johnson's Sauna protocol, and he says it takes him 35+ minutes to get his core up to 102.2 and yes he mentions it takes some fortitude to get there. I can do that in 23 minutes with IR! I do stack my sauna session with a pre-work out, but he does also.

Also, he recommends icing the boys (if you have them) and an ice pack on the head to prevent overheating those body parts. My head is above the direct IR panel, and the boys are also out of direct exposure, so they are both cooler than they would be in traditional sauna. So why does IR get such a bad rap?

Anyone else have this experience or opinion? I am new so the sauna experience but really loving my IR sauna.

There’s been a surge of posts here defending Classical Theism. But let’s be honest with the actual text of the OT:

Classical Theism does not comport with the God of the Bible.

In the Old Testament, God changes constantly. He delights in the aroma of burnt sacrifices. He becomes angry, wrathful, and even appeased. God is surprised as in the Tower of Babel story. He is called a Man of War. This God is also locked into the concept of the spilling of blood or killing things to atone for transgression. Are these archaic attributes a necessary feature of the uncaused cause?

And in Exodus 32, after God proclaims to Moses that his anger is seething and he wants to destroy the Israelites assembled to a golden calf idol. Moses councils God, like a councilor to a king, and brings up a couple of points. At this point God we are told changes course and the text says:

“And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.”

or

"The Lord [then] reconsidered the evil He had said He would do to His people."

There are some variations in translation, but they all convey the message that God changed His mind and did not carry out what He had previously said He intended to do. I encourage everyone to read Exodus 32 and see for themselves in the translation they like best.

Yet Christians committed to Classical Theism’s unchanging, impassive deity often wave these passages away as metaphor, analogy, anthropomorphism, or arguing that Scripture only speaks this way because humans need simplified images to grasp God. These arguments are a prime example of eisegesis or reading into the text your own external biases and doctrinal precommitments without merit.

I’ll keep this short and aimed at belief‑centric religious claims. Those religions that insist God values your belief, rewards believers, and punishes unbelief.

The claim that God rewards belief is a bare assertion, repeated so often that people stop noticing it needs justification. It is assumed to be self-evident because humans have a stubborn habit of projecting earthly authority structures upon notions of the Divine.

Throughout history, megalomaniac rulers have demanded loyalty, obedience, and constant affirmation. When people imagine a deity, they often inflate those same traits to cosmic scale. And thus, for an invisible deity, the first test of loyalty is belief. Disbelief becomes treason.

But here’s the part that cuts deepest: there is an obvious, structural reason why invented religions elevate belief to a sacred duty. Without human belief, the system dies. Belief is the oxygen that keeps the institution alive. Organically doctrines will evolve that glorify belief and demonize unbelief - it is a survival mechanism. Belief along the way becomes a virtue and disbelief a sin.

TLDR: Belief is not a divine concern; it’s memetic necessity. For the religious meme‑complex, belief is existential and necessary and thus elevated as the highest concern of the false God.

One thing I think religions get right is recognizing that humans easily fall into idolatry - a strong desire to worship, love, or revere something we have created ourselves. The problem is that they fail to see their own idolatry.

In pre-literate cultures, this urge was directed toward statues, temples, and figurines. In post-literate cultures, it shifted to written works aka "holy books". Same impulse, just different objects.

And when you think about the concept of Supreme Being having fallible humans write the alleged infallible "word" of God is just insane. A Supreme Being would have all sorts of ways to convey its truth. Using hearsay through the error prone channel of long dead humans is the silliest notion.

What I find especially difficult to accept is the idea that a Supreme Being would rely on fallible humans to produce an allegedly infallible message. If such a Being exists, there would be countless ways to communicate truth directly and clearly. Depending on the error prone channel of secondhand accounts, oral traditions, and writings passed down through generations of imperfect people strikes me as one of the least reliable methods imaginable.

Every week, people post in this subreddit saying they don’t believe in God but are still tormented by the fear of Hell. Often, they admit to being indoctrinated as children or struggling with OCD, making it hard to control their thoughts.

Here’s a clear argument: IF there is a God who judges based on belief or non-belief, it’s more likely that God would punish religious believers with Hell and damnation and reward virtuous non-believers. To enumerate a few reasons...

1. Non-believers can access a level of virtue that theists cannot. Full stop. Every good deed by a theist is inevitably tainted by the expectation of reward or fear of punishment, influences that they can’t fully separate from their actions. Non-believers, however, can act purely out of goodwill without expecting anything in return.

Even theists have made this point for us. Plantinga’s Free Will Defense argues that God’s most desired Good is free-willed moral action. He claims that God wanting this ultimate Good had to run the risk of free-will agents doing moral evil.

By that logic, atheists are the freest free will agents of all, so therefore God must value them most.

2. Non-belief is the only mental position universally available to everyone across all times and places. Theists often struggle with explaining what happens to those who never hear their “magic words” or read their “magic book.” Some Christians even claim that people who haven’t heard the gospel might reach heaven if they lived a virtuous life, but once they do hear the magic, they’re accountable - so the questions is why do they risk telling them? Or why would anyone allow a child come to the age of accountability? This is insane!

If God judges based on mental stance, the only universally accessible position of non-belief is the most logical.

3. God is truly hidden which is what we would expect if the hypothesis is correct that God will reward atheists and punish believers. If God is “testing” humans to see who can resist believing in the false religion of their time and culture and remain committed to reason, evidence and truth then divine hiddenness is to be expected. The evidence divine hiddenness matches the hypothesis.

4. Non-belief takes courage and honesty. Embracing a religion, especially one you were indoctrinated into, is by comparison easier. Many people note that being a non-believer in a theist-dominated culture is challenging and often comes with social, family and professional rejection. If God values things like courage and intellectual honesty naturally God will love the atheists, the most.

In summary, in the expanded game theory version of Pascal's wager where a particular mental position yields infinite reward or infinite punishment, the non-belief square is the most likely to offer an infinite reward. And this position faces no competing squares like those encountered by religions - there are literally thousands of beliefs to choose from, and they are all equally wrong.

TLDR: Atheists go to heaven and believers go to Hell. (assuming there is a God that judges you in the afterlife). So those with OCD, OCD on this.

Sorry for the poor formatting reddit just wants to indent the first paragraph.

I met yesterday with my prospective surgeon at Huntsman Cancer Institute. In passing he mentioned that he removes lymph nodes. He did not state if this was limited or extended.

I am 3+4 grade 2 and was surprised to hear that the lymph nodes are going also. Is this standard practice? Are there any downsides to having lymph nodes removed? Do it influence chances of biological reoccurrence?

I have found a recent research paper (2024) on this situation, but they seem to indicate biological reoccurrence is different from distant metastasis, so I was confused.

Apologists often argue that the Bible is not a science textbook, but rather explains who created what, the relationship between humans and God, and communicates eternal theological truths through metaphorical language and imagery, not literal facts about the natural world.

This is a cop-out. Genesis reflects the cosmology of its time and offers no insight into the actual facts of natural reality. There is no higher understanding present. For example, ancient cosmology didn’t understand the atmosphere or light diffusion, so it failed to link the sun directly with the day-night cycle, resulting in the idea of day and night existing before the sun’s creation on the fourth day.

In Genesis, creation is earth-centric - a huge error that mirrors human ignorance, or even conceit, in thinking we and the earth are the center of everything. In reality, the universe existed long before Earth formed, and claiming the sun and stars were created on the fourth day is a major mistake that misrepresents the true order of events.

The parenthetical phrase "He made the stars also" is, from a modern perspective, arguably one of the most amusing understatements in the Bible.

The references to the "firmament' and separation of waters are another misstep. Again, these are ancient near east cosmology not the truth of reality.

While such errors are understandable given human authorship, they clash with the concept of divine authorship. If the Bible is mistaken about things we now know to be untrue through scientific discovery, it’s likely that the theological “facts” may also not be true or reflective of reality.

Recently got my biopsy results back with diagnosis of bilateral multifocal 3+4 contained prostate cancer. I am 67 years old.

Looks like surgery is in my near-term future and will be meeting soon with Dr Jack Andrews at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. About 15 years ago I had a HoLEP procedure and wondering how this all factors into RARP. From some papers I have read I have something on the order 2 times the incontinent rate and most likely a longer surgery.

Anyone here gone through a RARP procedure after a HoLEP?

At first, they assigned me a doctor who does both HoLEP and RARP (Dr Scott Cheney) but as I pressured them with "lets get going and get this thing out of me" I was in rescheduled with Dr Jack Andrews who is younger, but RARP is his main activity. So, I worry about a less experienced doctor with a more complicated procedure.

I need to store my F150 for 5 months and I have questions about what to do with the starter battery. Should I just disconnect the battery or attach a trickle charger. It will be garage stored and no issues of freezing temps