{"id":2634,"date":"2011-12-02T10:16:12","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T15:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2634"},"modified":"2011-12-02T10:16:12","modified_gmt":"2011-12-02T15:16:12","slug":"the-problem-of-the-cruelty-asshole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2634","title":{"rendered":"The Problem of the Cruelty Asshole"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We are all familiar with Epicurus\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.com\/atheism-in-philadelphia\/atheism-101-the-problem-of-evil\" target=\"_blank\">Problem of Evil<\/a> but for the Christian there is a bigger Problem of Evil too. I\u2019ll call it the Problem of the Cruelty Asshole.<\/p>\n<p>Epicurus has put his problem this way:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIs God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Christians claim that non-believers and unrepentant sinners will go to Hell to be tortured for all eternity. This they claim isn\u2019t God\u2019s fault despite his all-powerfulness, but our fault for not worshipping his ass for creating this situation. Fortunately the situation doesn\u2019t actually exist, but Christians believe that it does. So let\u2019s look at it for a moment through part of a conversation I recently had with a Christian:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Christian: \u201cWhen you die and you are face to face with GOD the fact that you died not believing and denying gets you eternity in HELL, not by GODS choice but yours.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My response: \u201cAre you saying that God can&#8217;t save me if I don&#8217;t repent, or God won&#8217;t save me? Is he willing to save me from eternal torture, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able to save me from eternal torture, but not willing to save me from eternal torture? Then he is a cruel asshole.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And there it is, the Problem of the Cruel Asshole. God created a situation in which people will be tortured for all eternity (which is a pretty long time) and then has decided that unless we believe in a bunch of ridiculous claims without sufficient evidence and worship him as a peasant would worship a Lord, we will be tortured for all eternity. He could stop it but doesn&#8217;t and then blames us for his choice to torture people for all eternity.<\/p>\n<p>Free-Will doesn\u2019t apply since as I stated before it would be an uninformed choice based on insufficient evidence. If God were to reveal himself to us and give us an informed choice, then Christians could <strong>try<\/strong> to pull out the Free-Will crap. But as it is now, the Christian God is just a cruel asshole. Fortunately this is all a fictional situation anyway and the only real cruel assholes are the Christians who propagate this type of cruel nonsense.<\/p>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\" style=\"font-size: 1em;\">Related articles<\/h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2587\" target=\"_blank\">What If It Is True?<\/a> (dangeroustalk.net)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2574\" target=\"_blank\">Soul Murderer<\/a> (dangeroustalk.net)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/new.exchristian.net\/2011\/08\/14-problems-with-christianity-part-i.html\" target=\"_blank\">14 Problems with Christianity (Part I)<\/a> (new.exchristian.net)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=a2ab92df-d592-4a0a-abab-3dac2ed99a5a\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"linkwithin_hook\" id=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2634\"><\/div><script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are all familiar with Epicurus\u2019s Problem of Evil but for the Christian there is a bigger Problem of Evil too. I\u2019ll call it the Problem of the Cruelty Asshole. Epicurus has put his problem this way: \u201cIs God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n<script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[589,556,12,1019,468,558,9],"tags":[2215,37,11,1930,1931,2216,2265,1127,2262],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2636,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions\/2636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}