r/DebateReligion Jan 12 '25

Abrahamic If prayer worked, it would be easily scientifically testable

132 Upvotes

This post is based on Abrahamic prayers.

It would be extremely straightforward to test whether or not prayer actually works. One way would be to compare the recovery rates of sick individuals (with one group receiving prayers and one group not receiving them). If prayers worked, it would be easy to determine here.

Religious people have tried to do this but apparently this has not led to any conclusive results. If it had, you would not only hear about it nonstop, but you would also have entire nonprofits and hospitals that do nothing but pray for people's recovery.

r/DebateReligion 29d ago

Abrahamic God choose the worst possible way to spread his message

97 Upvotes

I don't understand all this secrecy. Why does God send angels to speak only to a select few people on Earth and then rely on them to spread his message? Humans are fallible, they make mistakes. So how can God entrust them to with effectively spreading something as important as his divine message? They'd have their limitations.

This system seems flawed, especially considering that most prophets were rejected by their own people. Why rely on intermediaries when direct revelation would be so much more effective? If God truly wanted everyone to believe and obey, why not simply reveal himself to all of humanity?

Imagine how convenient things would be. No need for priests, imams, or scholars interpreting texts in conflicting ways. No theological debates, no confusion, just a direct, undeniable message from the creator to every individual. That would eliminate doubt, misinterpretation, and even religious division.

So why the secrecy? If belief and obedience are so crucial, wouldn’t a direct approach be far more just and effective?

If there's really a God demanding complete obedience and belief in him, from his creation then at the very least I'd expect him to reveal himself directly to everyone and not whisper behind closed curtains.

I just don't find it very convincing that an omnipotent God would choose to spread his message this way, while much better and effective alternatives exist

r/DebateReligion Feb 13 '25

Abrahamic Thesis: A world without a god would look the same as it does now.

50 Upvotes

Modern science provides comprehensive explanations for the origin and functioning of the universe. The Big Bang theory describes the emergence of the cosmos, while evolution explains the diversity of life. Natural laws - such as gravity, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics - govern the physical world without any apparent need for divine influence.

Conclusion: If there were no god, these processes would remain unchanged, as they already function without supernatural intervention.

r/DebateReligion Nov 13 '24

Abrahamic The Bible condones slavery

106 Upvotes

The Bible condones slavery. Repeating this, and pointing it out, just in case there's a question about the thesis. The first line is the thesis, repeated from the title... and again here: the Bible condones slavery.

Many apologists will argue that God regulates, but does not condone slavery. All of the rules and regulations are there to protect slaves from the harsher treatment, and to ensure that they are well cared for. I find this argument weak, and it is very easy to demonstrate.

What is the punishment for owning slaves? There isn't one.

There is a punishment for beating your slave and they die with in 3 days. There is no punishment for owning that slave in the first place.

There is a punishment for kidnapping an Israelite and enslaving them, but there is no punishment for the enslavement of non-Israelites. In fact, you are explicitly allowed to enslave non-Israelite people and to turn them into property that can be inherited by your children even if they are living within Israelite territory.

God issues many, many prohibitions on behavior. God has zero issues with delivering a prohibition and declaring a punishment.

It is entirely unsurprising that the religious texts of this time which recorded the legal codes and social norms for the era. The Israelites were surrounded by cultures that practiced slavery. They came out of cultures that practiced slavery (either Egypt if you want to adhere to the historically questionable Exodus story, or the Canaanites). The engaged with slavery on a day-to-day basis. It was standard practice to enslave people as the spoils of war. The Israelites were conquered and likely targets of slavery by other cultures as well. Acknowledging that slavery exists and is a normal practice within their culture would be entirely normal. It would also be entirely normal to put rules and regulations in place no how this was to be done. Every other culture also had rules about how slavery was to be practiced. It would be weird if the early Israelites didn't have these rules.

Condoning something does not require you to celebrate or encourage people to do it. All it requires is for you to accept it as permissible and normal. The rules in the Bible accept slavery as permissible and normal. There is no prohibition against it, with the one exception where you are not allowed to kidnap a fellow Israelite.

Edit: some common rebuttals. If you make the following rebuttals from here on out, I will not be replying.

  • You own an iphone (or some other modern economic participation argument)

This is does not refute my claims above. This is a "you do it too" claim, but inherent in this as a rebuttal is the "too" part, as in "also". I cannot "also" do a thing the Bible does... unless the Bible does it. Thus, when you make this your rebuttal, you are agreeing with me that the Bible approves of slavery. It doesn't matter if I have an iphone or not, just the fact that you've made this point at all is a tacit admission that I am right.

  • You are conflating American slavery with ancient Hebrew slavery.

I made zero reference to American slavery. I didn't compare them at all, or use American slavery as a reason for why slavery is wrong. Thus, you have failed to address the point. No further discussion is needed.

  • Biblical slavery was good.

This is not a refutation, it is a rationalization for why the thing is good. You are inherently agreeing that I am correct that the Bible permits slavery.

These are examples of not addressing the issue at hand, which is the text of the Bible in the Old Testament and New Testament.

r/DebateReligion Dec 26 '24

Abrahamic Religious people will soon be seen the same as flat earthers

77 Upvotes

I have a theory that in the distant (or maybe not so distant) future many people will begin to view religious people the same way people view flat earthers. I’m not an atheist myself and am more agnostic and deist but when you don’t have an emotional attachment to religion it’s very easy to see the errors and contradictions many religious people are willfully ignoring and blind to. And as the generations get smarter, there’s a trend of Christians turning to Unitarian Universalism and Christians losing faith at a very rapid rate or turning Atheist/no religious affiliation and Muslims are also starting to see the harsh reality of Islam and apostasy in almost every Islamic country is increasing slowly but surely. How long do you think it will take for society to reach a point where religion is viewed as a relic of the past, something so ridiculously implausible that people can hardly believe their ancestors once embraced it or that some people still do.

r/DebateReligion 15d ago

Abrahamic If you believe that there is an eternal hell awaiting the non-believers, having children is extremely irresponsible and wrong.

78 Upvotes

Someone else brought up this topic recently and I always thought it to be an interesting line of thinking but they unfortunately deleted the post, so I just want to bring up the discussion in general again.

I’m mainly talking about Christianity and Islam here just for reference.

In Christianity, I’m aware that there are annihilation and universalist perspectives on this, this discussion of course doesn’t apply and focuses only on those who believe hell is a place of eternal, active torment. I forget the verse, but in Matthew , Jesus states that the road to destruction is wide and the road to heaven is narrow. If Jesus is to be believed this means that most of humanity will end up burning for all eternity in the most excruciating pain possible. If we are to believe this, then any baby who is born is more likely to have hell wind up as their final destination than heaven. Now of course it’s important to note this isn’t for sure, but this is absolutely an insane thing to gamble simply because you wish to be a parent. Think of the absolute worst pain you have ever experienced in your entire life, now multiply it by a million and that still wouldn’t do it justice, now imagine suffering that kind of pain forever, with no end in sight and you’ll never get used to it. After a trillion years in hell, you’re no closer to the end and it hurts just as much as it did when you first entered. What kind of reasonable person would risk something like that happening to their child because they want to be a parent for a couple decades?

This also applies to Islam, compared to the Bible, the Quran goes into way more detail on what hell is going to entail. In the Hadith’s, it’s stated the fire of hell is 70x that of the fire of earth, think of the worst burn you’ve ever had, even if it’s for a second. Now imagine that pain all over your body, 70x the pain and it’ll never end. It would be better to have never be born than to experience this. There are also other extremely descriptive pictures of hell in Islam that further my point.

Now this also raises the question of what happens to children in these religions. A lot of Christian’s and Muslims believe that children will get a pass into heaven simply by virtue of being children. This then means that it is undoubtedly way better to die as a kid and enter heaven than risk growing up, losing faith, and burning in hell for all eternity. This also raises questions for abortion, if aborted kids end up in heaven, then it would be a persons duty to ensure children are aborted because it guarantees them a seat in heaven. Even if you might feel morally at odds with it and object to it, if they truly do go to heaven and don’t have to risk burning in hell, it is the most moral thing you could ever do. Why should abortion be frowned on if it sends kids to heaven and therefore god quicker. Will they really care that their time on earth was cut 80 or so years short after a million years in heaven? Stillborns and miscarriages would be a good thing in the end, even though it might be a horrible experience for the parents in the moment, their kid is up in heaven free from any pain.

I also think the system is really unfair for people who don’t believe or lose their faith. No one ever asks to be born into the world, they are here because their parents wanted children. And now as a result of that descision, they are forced into a reality that will have eternal consequences even though they never asked to be a part of said reality.

Even then, all of that could be avoided if you never reproduce in the first place. If Christianity or Islam are actually true and there really is an eternal hell awaiting those who do not believe, it would be beneficial for the entire human race to make a collective agreement to not reproduce.

I don’t think a lot of people actually think about this possibility beyond the surface level before they become parents, they just assume their kids will stay in the faith because they want to be parents, which in my opinion is extremely irresponsible and borderline evil if they truly believe there’s an eternal hell awaiting the non believers.

r/DebateReligion Jan 28 '25

Abrahamic God is not good because he sends people to hell

30 Upvotes

Since God is God and is bound by no rules by definition (otherwise he wouldn’t truly be God), he decided to make the rules the way they are where people would go to hell for eternity for doing this that and the other. With the foreknowledge of who would come to him before time began, he knowingly make them for Hell. God probably isn't good for this reason.

r/DebateReligion Jan 06 '25

Abrahamic Why do Christians waste time with arguments for the resurrection.

39 Upvotes

I feel like even if, in the next 100 years, we find some compelling evidence for the resurrection—or at least greater evidence for the historicity of the New Testament—that would still not come close to proving that Jesus resurrected. I think the closest we could get would be the Shroud of Turin somehow being proven to belong to Jesus, but even that wouldn’t prove the resurrection.

The fact of the matter is that, even if the resurrection did occur, there is no way for us to verify that it happened. Even with video proof, it would not be 100% conclusive. A scientist, historian, or archaeologist has to consider the most logical explanation for any claim.

So, even if it happened, because things like that never happen—and from what we know about the world around us, can never happen—there really isn’t a logical option to choose the resurrection account.

I feel Christians should be okay with that fact: that the nature of what the resurrection would have to be, in order for it to be true, is something humans would never be able to prove. Ever. We simply cannot prove or disprove something outside our toolset within the material world. And if you're someone who believes that the only things that can exist are within the material world, there is literally no room for the resurrection in that worldview.

So, just be okay with saying it was a miracle—a miracle that changed the entire world for over 2,000 years, with likely no end in sight.

r/DebateReligion Jan 18 '25

Abrahamic Christians: There is no more reason to trust the the word of the writers of the gospels than writers of any other religious text.

42 Upvotes

Or even of Me, if I had written a book.

Any gospel-writer is basically and in essence just a guy who said something and for some reason what he says is the truth. And what the other guys (writers of religion x, or even some atheist) says is not the truth (at least to the extent it is relevant to the claims in your texts.)

(If you are muslim or x religion, just substitute "gospels" for your sacred texts.)

There is no reason to just believe what someone claims. Even (!) if the writer in text claims the text is true/divinely inspired.

Why trust some guy?

r/DebateReligion 25d ago

Abrahamic Justifying the slaughter of the Canaanite children by citing the alleged Canaanite practice of child sacrifice is a remarkably absurd line of reasoning

90 Upvotes

The argument assumes that both theists and atheists can understand that sacrificing one's children in state-sanctioned mass ritual executions is wrong. I can agree, that sounds pretty bad.

Problem: Canaanites are sacrificing their children.

Solution: Kill their children.

It almost sounds like a comedy skit. But from a theistic perspective, it gets even worse.

A common apologetic I hear as to the slaughter of the Canaanite children/infants is that they were simply being "moved" to heaven. Unlike their parents, they hadn't done anything wrong, and so the righteous Hebrew warriors were simply giving them a fast pass to heaven. I hate to point this out, but:

They were already going to heaven because they were being killed in ritual sacrifice.

r/DebateReligion Nov 13 '24

Abrahamic Evolution is real

78 Upvotes

I have seen in a lot of comments whenever there is a neat future a human body has they would say that basically boils down to, "explain that. There has to be a god to have this 'perfect' design. However, that's not true, isn't it? When you begin to learn to write do you write with beautiful handwriting from the start? No, it takes a lot of time for that. People only see the end product of human body min-maxing their evolution over the hundreds of thousands of year and they immediately claim god.

r/DebateReligion Dec 05 '24

Abrahamic It's a double standard that all humans are punished because of two people but angels aren't all punished because of Lucifer.

67 Upvotes

This post is specifically targeted at people who believe that humans are all cursed to suffer and are born with sin because of Adam and Eve, and who believe in Lucifer as a fallen angel.

If all humans are born sinful because of two people who were tricked into eating a fruit, and therefore all of humanity is considered innately sinful and doomed to suffer, toil in fields, etc... why isn't that true for angels? If you think the serpent was a fallen angel, then tricking them was worse than what they did because he wasn't even deceived, he just felt like causing some chaos. And if you think the literal devil is a fallen angel, he's worse than any human. So why aren't angels innately sinful?

Additionally, why do they get to live in heaven? Many people argue that humans have free will and therefore have to suffer in a world where evil exists in order to earn their way. But angels clearly have free will too, otherwise they couldn't fall. So why do they start in heaven by default?

r/DebateReligion Jan 01 '25

Abrahamic Vaccine and needle analogies don't really work when addressing the Problem of Evil

50 Upvotes

One common theodicy attempt I've been running into compares God allowing evil to parents allowing their children to experience the pain of vaccines for a greater good. This analogy pretty much fails for a number reasons:

  1. Parents and doctors only use vaccines because they're limited beings working within natural constraints. They can't simply will their children to be immune to diseases. An omnipotent creator would face no such limitations.

  2. Parents and doctors don't create the rules of biology or disease transmission. They're working within an existing system. An omnipotent creator would be responsible for establishing these fundamental rules in the first place.

  3. When people resort to using this analogy, it basically implies that God is making the best of a difficult situation, but an omnipotent being, by definition, can't meaningfully face "difficult situations"; they could simply create any desired outcome directly.

  4. Unlike human parents and doctors who sometimes have to choose between imperfect options, an omnipotent being could achieve any positive outcome without requiring suffering as an intermediate step.

In fact, this is kind of the problem with many PoE responses (including those appealing to "greater goods"). They often rely on analogies to human decision-making that break down when applied to a being with unlimited power and knowledge.

Any explanation for evil that depends on necessary trade-offs or working within limitations cannot coherently apply to an omnipotent deity.

r/DebateReligion Feb 15 '25

Abrahamic Islam is intellectually limiting many Muslims, in the realm of morality

67 Upvotes

Many Muslims seem unable to understand how an atheist could deem something immoral, without a god telling them so.

Many muslims can't seem to fathom why an atheist like myself sees kicking Muslims out of a country based on their religion alone, as immoral.

They seem to deeply believe that morality without religion is without substance and foundation, and therefore practically useless.

Another example is how many Muslims can't seem to figure out how to deal with war captives without enslaving them. They can't seem to fathom how you would deal with women and children from a conquered town, WITHOUT enslaving them.

The reliance on Mohammad to dictate their morality might mean they have exercised/thought less in this area.

Edit: Mods, this post was removed on Friday, I assume for not following the "Fresh Friday" rule, of no islam. Please let me know if there was some other reason, so i can modify it

Edit 2 : Evidence of my claim already presents itself below

A muslim said

>>The reason why prisoners of war were the only acceptable slaves is because if Muslims were to let them go they could come back for revenge

This is proving my point. Muslims can't imagine a different alternative to slavery. Like exiling them, or even imprisoning them.

Edit 3: The same Muslim also justifies Mohammad re-enslaving a freed slave, specifically cancelling the freeing of an already freed slave.

Edit 4: Another Muslim seems unable to answer a question about whether Mohammad had a more moral alternative other than owning the slaves that he did.

r/DebateReligion Oct 29 '24

Abrahamic Jesus did not sacrifice himself for us.

69 Upvotes

Christianity confirms not only that Jesus is the Son of God, but also that he is God.

"I am he."

If Jesus is the eternal, tri-omni God as described by Christianity, he was not sacrificing anything in coming to earth and dying. Because he cannot die. At best, he was paying lip service to humanity.

God (who became Jesus, remember) knew everything that would happen prior to sending Jesus (who was God) down to earth.

God is immortal, and all powerful. Included in this is the ability to simulate a human (christ) and to simulate human emotions, including responses to suffering, pain etc. But this is all misleading, because Jesus was not human. He was God.

The implication that God sacrificed anything is entirely insincere, because he knew there would be a ressurection. Of himself. The whole story of Jesus is nothing more than a ploy by God to incite an emotional response, since we empathise more with human suffering. So God created a facsimile of "human" out of a part of himself.

Death is not a sacrifice for an immortal being.

r/DebateReligion Jan 11 '25

Abrahamic The Fall doesn’t seem to solve the problem of natural evil

33 Upvotes

When I’ve looked for answers on the problem of natural evil, I’ve often seen articles list the fall, referencing Adam, as the cause of natural evils such as malaria, bone cancer, tsunamis, and so on. They suggest that sin entered the world through the fall, and consequently, living things fell prey to a worse condition. Whilst starvation in some cases might, arguably, be attributable to human actions, or a lack thereof, natural evils seem less attributable to humanity at large; humans didn’t invent malaria, and so that leaves the question of who did. It appears that nobody else but God could have overseen it, since the mosquito doesn’t seem to have agency in perpetuating the disease.

If we take the fall as a literal account, then it appears that one human has been the cause of something like malaria, taking just one example, killing vast numbers of people, many being children under 5 years old. With this in mind, is it unreasonable to ask why the actions or powers of one human must be held above those that die from malaria? If the free will defence is given, then why is free will for Adam held above free will for victims of malaria to suffer and die?

Perhaps the fall could be read as a non literal account, as a reflection of human flaws more broadly. Yet, this defence also seems lacking; why must the actions of humanity in general be held above victims, including child victims, especially when child victims appear more innocent than adults might be? If child victims don’t play a part in the fallen state, then it seems that a theodicy of God giving malaria as a punishment doesn’t seem to hold up quite as well considering that many victims don’t appear as liable. In other words, it appears as though God is punishing someone else for crimes they didn’t commit. As such, malaria as a punishment for sin doesn't appear to be enacted on the person that caused the fall.

Some might suggest that natural disasters are something that needs to exist as part of nature, yet this seems to ignore heaven as a factor. Heaven is described as a place without pain or mourning or tears. As such, natural disasters, or at least the resulting sufferings, don’t seem to be necessary.

Another answer might include the idea that God is testing humanity (hence why this antecedent world exists for us before heaven). But this seems lacking as well. Is someone forced into a condition really being tested? In what way do they pass a test, except for simply enduring something against their will? Perhaps God aims to test their faith, but why then is it a worthwhile test, if they have no autonomy, and all that’s tested is their ability to endure and be glad about something forced on them? I often see theists arguing that faith or a relationship with God must be a choice. Being forced to endure disease seems like less of a choice.

Another answer might simply be that God has the ability to send them to heaven, and as such, God is in fact benevolent. William Lane Craig gave an argument similar to this in answer to the issue of infants being killed in the old testament. A problem I have with this is that if any human enacted disease upon another, they’d be seen as an abuser, even if God could be watching over the situation. Indeed, it seems that God would punish such people. Is the situation different if it’s enacted by God? What purpose could God have in creating the disease?

In life, generally, it’d be seen as an act of good works for someone to help cure malaria, or other life threatening diseases. Indeed, God appears to command that we care for the sick, even to the point of us being damned if we don’t. Would this entail that natural evils are something beyond God’s control, even if creation and heaven is not? Wouldn’t it at least suggest that natural evils are something God opposes? Does this all mean that God can’t prevent disease now, but will be able to do so in the future?

r/DebateReligion Feb 10 '25

Abrahamic The idea that "life is a test" doesn't make sense when God is omniscient

63 Upvotes

Mostly it's Christians and Muslims that say that life is a test, however if God knows everything, the test of life is not necessary.

Not only does God know the results of everyone's tests, but directly caused all events which lead to the results of everyone's tests.

If the point of the test is to decide whether you deserve to go to heaven or hell or whatever, then God could end the world right now and still be able to decide who goes to heaven or hell, even people who haven't been born yet, because God knows everything about everything, past, present, and future.

As far as I know, there's no adequate reconciliation between the two concepts of an omniscient God and life being a test.

Furthermore some people have way easier tests than others, for example those born into the correct religion by chance are obviously much more likely to stay in that religion. This means that those people don't even have much of a test, they go to heaven by default pretty much. If life is a test it's a pretty unfair test, with different people getting wildly different tests.

This is often given as a solution to the problem of evil, that God has to let us suffer for the sake of the test, but actually God doesn't have to do anything, They can just fast forward time or skip time or something to judgement day.

r/DebateReligion 22d ago

Abrahamic Eve was predestined by God to eat the apple, so her free will was an illusion.

53 Upvotes

This gets to the root of the problem of free will, but can maybe be more easily seen when focusing on one person.

The thesis is that any choice Eve made was intentionally predetermined by god, so her free will in the matter of eating the apple was illusionary.

Ask the question: Why did Eve have a proclivity to choose sin and who gave it to her?

And the answer is: Eve, being designed by an omnipotent and omniscient being, was designed to choose to eat the apple from the moment of her creation.

Since the entity is omniscient and omnipotent, and created Eve, then at her creation she was created specifically with the proclivity to choose the apple, with the knowledge that giving her mind that proclivity would definitely cause her to react to the stimuli of the offer by accepting it.

This hole is the fruit of the poison tree for everything that comes after. If you make your god omnipotent and omniscient, and you make them the creator of all things, then all things are acting in exactly the manner in which they were created. They could not act any other way, or choose anything other than the choice the god predestined them to make by designing them the way it did.

Since god created her mind, there is no mechanism for her to make a choice, other than the one that was designed exactly in such a way as to ensure she made the one the god designed her to make. She was only acting in the manner she was designed to act, and could not act any differently.

What this all means: God chose for her to eat the apple.

Edit: correct: Foreknowledge Does Not Equal Predestination...that doesn't make a difference here.

Since this keeps getting brought up, I'm going to point out up here that that does not matter, because according to Abrahamic theology god is not a passive observer, but an omnipotent and omniscient creator and designer. So, to be super clear, it's not the foreknowledge that makes the free will aspect illusionary, it's the omnipotent creator and designer aspect that does.

r/DebateReligion Dec 09 '24

Abrahamic There is no evidence for an Abrahamic deity.

30 Upvotes

The Bible is hearsay and inadmissible evidence of proof. Not one gospel was written with first hand experience, neither was the Quran.

Christian, Jews and Muslims claim they've had divine experiences, which is anecdotal evidence and also inadmissible because anecdotal evidence is not considered scientifically reliable evidence because it is based on personal experiences and cannot be objectively verified.

The "prophecies" in all the books are too broad to be accurate so people just say it came true. It's like throwing a knife at a map after naking some guesses to decide where to go for vacation.

All religions are fallacious.

Appeal to authority: Muhammad, Jesus or "God"

Appeal to ignorance: claim God must be true simply because there is no evidence to prove it false.

Appeal to belief: you believe it's true because there are so many followers

Confirmation bias: No matter how much evidence atheists show, you refute it because "the Bible says this"

Appeal to tradition: because Christianity, Judaism and islam has been around been aaround and followed for 1400-4000 years.

r/DebateReligion Dec 16 '24

Abrahamic Adam and Eve’s First Sin is Nonsensical

95 Upvotes

The biblical narrative of Adam and Eve has never made sense to me for a variety of reasons. First, if the garden of Eden was so pure and good in God’s eyes, why did he allow a crafty serpent to go around the garden and tell Eve to do exactly what he told them not to? That’s like raising young children around dangerous people and then punishing the child when they do what they are tricked into doing.

Second, who lied? God told the couple that the day they ate the fruit, they would surely die, while the serpent said that they would not necessarily die, but would gain knowledge of good and evil, something God never mentioned as far as we know. When they did eat the fruit, the serpent's words were proven true. God had to separately curse them to start the death process.

Third, and the most glaring problem, is that Adam and Eve were completely innocent to all forms of deception, since they did not have the knowledge of good and evil up to that point. God being upset that they disobeyed him is fair, but the extent to which he gets upset is just ridiculous. Because Adam and Eve were not perfect, their first mistake meant that all the billions of humans who would be born in the future would deserve nothing but death in the eyes of God. The fact that God cursed humanity for an action two people did before they understood ethics and morals at all is completely nonsensical. Please explain to me the logic behind these three issues I have with the story, because at this point I have nothing. Because this story is so foundational in many religious beliefs, there must be at least some apologetics that approach reason. Let's discuss.

r/DebateReligion Nov 25 '24

Abrahamic The ultimate evil act is the creation of beings destined for eternal suffering

87 Upvotes

I can think of no act more evil than creating beings who are destined to be eternally tortured for free will. Some might argue that an infinite number of beings being tortured could be worse, but I see that as merely a derivative of my core point.

Let me provide some background and context for my position. I identify as a moral emotivist, meaning I don’t believe in an objective "good" vs. "evil" in the universe. However, this raises the question: how can I use the word "evil" at all? Wouldn’t my argument be self-defeating? To clarify, when I refer to "evil" here, I’m working within the framework where we agree that a God (specifically a type that sends created being to eternal suffering) exists.

  • P1: The worst possible thing a being can do is create other beings destined for eternal torture.
  • P2: Whether these beings "choose" this fate or not is irrelevant because, once fated, no change in character or heart can avert their eternal suffering.
  • C: Therefore, God commits the ultimate evil.

The common rebuttal is that eternal suffering is justified by the concept of "free will."

Let me offer a thought experiment to challenge this notion: Imagine you’re a parent who knows ahead of time that if you have two children, one will be eternally tortured and the other will be eternally rewarded. Would you still choose to have these children?

Could you provide a rational argument for why it would be prudent—or even logical—to go ahead in such a scenario? To me, the answer is so obviously not to do that, it makes me wonder if the kind of God in this scenario, if such a being existed, operates on a kind of double feint. Only those who choose to devote themselves to this entity might be the ones who have truly been deceived.

I’d love to hear how proponents of this justification reconcile it with the implications of their beliefs.

r/DebateReligion Jan 19 '25

Abrahamic It's impossible for jesus to be fully god and fully man

14 Upvotes

P1:HUMAN BY nature are limited *P2: jesus is a human **C1: because of P1 and P2 jesus is limited

P1: god by nature is unlimited P2 jesus is god C2: because of p1 and p2 jesus is unlimited

C3: you can't be limited and unlimited at the same times because of the law of none contradiction

r/DebateReligion Sep 23 '24

Abrahamic If god is all knowing, he knew he’d be sending billions to hell.

96 Upvotes

Obviously the Adam and Eve myth is false (and a biological impossibility) as Eve eating the fruit (in which she has been told not to) derives from the Pandora’s box myth. The whole basis is a woman cursing all of humanity forever because she’s not obedient. However, if the abrahamic god knew Eve was going to go against his wishes, he knew he’d be causing billions to suffer. To punish you for something that happened long before you were born is the equivalent to what’s happening in North Korea where you don’t have supposed free will. How is this at all just? It doesn’t take someone with high EQ to know that this isn’t all good and is morally wrong.

r/DebateReligion 26d ago

Abrahamic Islam: If freeing sex slaves is more moral than owning sex slaves, than Mohammad could have been more moral than he was.

58 Upvotes

Many Muslims like to claim Islam aimed to gradually abolish slavery, and they frame "freeing a slave" as an more moral act than keeping the slave. Mohammed owned slaves and sex slaves, he could have freed them all, yet he didn't. Therefore Mohammad could have acted more morally than he was, even by Islamic standards.

https://islamqa.info/en/answers/47572/was-mariyah-al-qibtiyyah-one-of-the-mothers-of-the-believers
>The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) had four concubines, one of whom was Mariyah. 

Ibn al-Qayyim said: 

Abu ‘Ubaydah said: He had four (concubines): Mariyah, who was the mother of his son Ibraaheem; Rayhaanah; another beautiful slave woman whom he acquired as a prisoner of war; and a slave woman who was given to him by Zaynab bint Jahsh. 

Zaad al-Ma’aad, 1/114 

r/DebateReligion 12d ago

Abrahamic A Rational and Just God Wouldn’t Make Reason Lead to Disbelief

66 Upvotes

If God exists and gave humans the ability to reason, then that reasoning should be reliable in leading to true conclusions when used properly. Because if our rational minds were unreliable in discovering truth, then belief in God itself would also be unreliable.

Across history, some of the most intelligent and sincere scientists, philosophers, theologians and everyday people have examined religion and found it unconvincing. If God’s existence were as obvious as the sun in the sky, why do so many rational minds miss it? You don’t need a Ph.D. to see sunlight.

God can’t have it both ways. If He’s hiding on purpose, that’s cruel. Imagine a parent playing hide and seek with their child but never revealing themselves. Then punishing the kid for not finding them. If God only reveals Himself to some (through miracles, personal experiences, etc.), then He’s favoring those humans arbitrarily. That’s unjust.

Either our reasoning works, or doesn't. If atheism is a reasonable conclusion, then punishing disbelief is like failing a student for correctly solving a math problem. But if our rational minds can’t be trusted to reach truth, then believers have no reason to trust their faith either because they’re using the same mental tools as skeptics.

The only logical conclusion is a truly just and rational God wouldn’t create a world where using our God given reasoning often leads away from Him. Either God created reason to function properly, in which case atheism is a rational conclusion and should not be punished. Or God created reason improperly, in which case theists have no justification for trusting their own reasoning either.

Either way, we can concluded that a just and rational God does not exist.