zloubida

Mind reading

everything has to have an origin, except God?

The actual argument is everything has to have an origin inside the universe, thus our universe to exist must have a cause exterior to it. We call this cause God. It's not a question of higher being, just that a universe where the effect predates the cause can't hold. God is not less omnipotent because they can't make a round square.

Why couldn't an all-powerful being have chosen to create the universe such that everything is good?

I thought I answered this question twice, I'm sorry if I'm not clear, English is hard for me. So I'll try again: because it's logically impossible to have a universe which is not a part of God, thus independant and free, that is also perfectly good, as God is perfectly good. Put as a formula, the formulas

universe = good and universe ≠ God are not possible at the same time if God = good

Logic is not created, it just is.

You can have plenty of choice without the ability to do evil.

It's not a question of choice, nature for example doesn't have any choice, and there are illnesses and natural catastrophes. It's a question of being. God being the Good, they can't create something purely good that is not them, or bound by them, thus or not different, or not free. But they didn't created evil, evil doesn't exist, evil is just something not good, thus not God. And it's a spectrum, from almost good to almost not good.

They're bound by logic. They can make anything possible, but 2+2 will never be 5, and even God can't change that. Something can't be and not be. Something thus can't be free without having any choice, or it's not freedom.

Yeah, it's that. I'm a Christian, but I have atheist close friends, and I love our debates, but it's because we respect each others enough to accept and recognise that we use the words differently. It's generally not the case on the net.

The Epicurian argument is strong only if you have a very broad definition of all-powerfulness. A definition that classical Christian theology doesn't have, as it recognizes a lot of logical limitations. All-powerfulness is the capacity to do everything possible. So yes, the Christian God is limited.

One of these logical limitations is: God can't create anything free without allowing their creation to do thing that they disapprove, thus God being good, they can't create freedom without accepting the existence of evil, which is not a thing per se, but the absence of good. God chose freedom over perfection, and it's not a human.thing, but a cosmological one.

So yeah, this is a strong argument only of you are already convinced, but it's generally the case on religious matters. I tend to tink that the only purely rational position is true agnosticism, but sometimes for important things you have to make choices without being sure. That's why I'm an agnostic theist.

My penis is a hair dryer, AMA.

One can't judge a relationship on an image alone but… there's a few redflags on this one. I hope for you they're false alarms.

It's a difficult debate, complicated again in the case of the Free France that the institutions against Vichy always controlled a part of the French Empire.

However, my first comment was more because I understood the way you worded your first message as “the Nazis destroyed the Vichy regime” when the Vichy regime was established by the Nazis.

Yes, but there's a conflict on its legitimacy. The question is: had the National Assembly the power to pass the constitutional law of 1940 or not? For Vichy, of course yes, and then the Third Republic stopped there. But for the Free France (the political branch of the Résistance), this law was illegal, and then the Third Republic was still the legitimate form of the French government. That's why in 1944, at the Liberation, De Gaulle didn't proclaimed a new Republic, but passed an ordinance reestablishing the Third one.

I did the contrary.

Small correction in an otherwise very interesting message:

The previous French state (Vichy France) was destroyed by Nazi Germany.

Vichy France is the result of the destruction of the Third Republic by Nazi Germany. But de jure, the Third Republic's constitution was still legitimate until the new constitution of 1946.