Take 2: The existence of unnecessary suffering makes a perfect God impossibole

To Begin I would just like to say some of Con’s points are very good and will deserve equally good responses from me. I did challenge it: You must be misreading the intentions of my own opening statements if you think I have not challenged the validity of either of your Round 1 premises your going to argue from. That was the only thing I did in round 1 besides accept the debate. I challenged your P1 that if unnecessary suffering exist God cannot be. I may agree God would not create it himself, but I did agree with the leap of logic taken with the ‘Then” that was shoved between the “If a” then “b”. “a” being ‘if suffering’ and “b” being ‘God cant be’. And I challenged P2 in my challenge that the suffering that exist might not be of a kind you can truly say is ‘unnecessary’. That the suffering is a kind of suffering that we could have not done without. Anyway one with meat of the debate… The Definition of Good: While I suppose in some applications that dictionary definition of good might work, But for all purposes of this debate, a debate where for my opponent has to show the existence of “bad” proves that a “good” god does not exist to stop, Con’s offered definition will not be good enough and I am going to have to challenge it. If you use that dictionary definition for ‘good’ then slavery for all purposes was not ‘bad’ but rather ‘good’ for a very long time because it had wide approval. Good must be objective enough to be indifferent to the swaying views of public approval. While what is ‘good’ has been a much debated controversy throughout history, I find C.S. Lewis’s description of what he calls ‘the Tao’ to be a reasonably good objective attempt calling what is ‘good’ good as it takes from the appealed to ideas of what is ‘good’ in all cultures and religions, not just his own. It is also possibly the only grounds my opponent can with any effect appeal to when charging a hypothetical god as not being ‘good’ if he were to fail to act in a certain way at certain times because to do this you must demand what is right and wrong be a code, a standard, a force that is greater than God and existed before God, a concept where the original term ‘Tao’ before Lewis used it came from. Your Argument from Time: You argue that God must exist outside of the universe and space and time itself if he created it. This is true. You argue because he would be outside of time he would see the future and know how exactly what has and can only happen in the future because of this. This is a false assumption and its false because it rest on creating a pitcher of what insight to the future must be like for such a being that you cannot know is there. Tomorrow I might go swimming at an indoor pool to exercise or I might go ride my bike on the New River Trail to exercise instead. I have not quite made up my mind. I might even just decide I don’t have time to do either tomorrow and end up not doing either. If you had the gift of sight into the future for my day tomarrow what exactly do you expect you would see? That you would see my going to the indoor pool and not the others if that’s what I ultimately end up choosing tomarrow? Or would you see all outcomes of my day tomarrow, as if multiple possibilities remain possible futures for me. I would say it would have to be the second one. Your guess of what future sight would be like is based on a philosophical view that the way things will happen is the only way things can ever end up happening. My view though is of one that says that the way things are going to happen can happen a number of ways, and it is not until they happen that the events are written in stone as happening only one way. You claimed you are the one with the burdon of proof this debate, live up to your claims and prove this baseless philosophy about the future that the way they will happen is the only way they will ever happen. Non-Man originated suffering: My argument has been that in the beginning what God created was completely devoid of suffering, and it was not until man began to go against the will of god that suffering entered the world as a direct consequence of this. Any kind of suffering wether it be a sore back after plowing a garden or labor pains or tornadoes destroying things….all are a result of the fallen creation that fell from the way it was perfectly made because of mans actions. You are all free not to agree with this theological and philosophical take on the origins of suffering if you wish, I probably could not offer solid proof to you this was the way in happened in the form of anything other than the Bibles word, but the point is while I’m not going to be able prove the philosophical view true to your, your not going to be able to prove it false. And someone with the Burdon of Proof trying to prove a particular argument PROVES one particular thing false is going to have to prove such possibilities are not only not provable, but philosophically or theologically not even possible. Something you have not even attempted yet. In any case you repeatedly say your argument stands considering all the supposed ‘non-man made’ suffering, if this is your key case your going to rest your argument on your going to have to prove it with some examples of what suffering is not mans fault. Because so far you seem to be relying on my mutual uncontested agreement that such non-man originated suffering exist, and I am definitely not offering that kind of agreement. I assert it does not exist, so you going to have to attempt to prove my assertion false with examples, and any you give I will explain away as to how they originate from man and not god is some way. “you have to prove free will exist!”: I find it ironic how you can claim to accept the Burdon of Proof and even state I only have to show you have not met it to win, and you spend most of time asking me to prove things. You prove to me free will does not exist. You prove to me that the way I will do things is the only way I will ever do things. That the only way I will be in the future has always been the only way I could ever become. Prove that George Bush could have never stoped himself from sending the nation to war in Iraq and Bill Clinton could never have stopped himself from having sex with that woman. Prove O.J. Simpson could never have not killed his wife and prove that Adam Lanza could never have not killed 20 five year old children. Your denial of the humans ability to choose is the radical positive claim, so offer your proof. Is it not possible that God made us for the same reason as the flies?: This has actually been your best point I think, and I need to give it a good answer. I guess it would be possible to create humans for the same reason as the bugs, but only under the circumstance that besides createing us he created another being that is to us the way we are to the flies. In other words animals and all other life and aspects of nature have been put here for us to see God’s creative artistic expression, or for our enjoyment or use in one way or another. To postulate our purpose could be the same as the creation of the flies comes with postulating God did create some other creature for a different purpose, the true purpose to love him and we are to just be food and pack mules to this higher beings. A creating all good God’s only purpose for bothering with creating at all I maintain is for us to love him and have a relationship with him. He might create more beings in addition not for that explicit purpose but at least one being God creates would be of a sort that would come with free will. God needs nothing to be complete, nothing to sustain himself, so personal joy and love are the only motives left on the table for such a God. Had God not created us, he would not have bothered creating the flies either. Creating at all means creating us and creating us with free will.