₦airaland Forum

helinues:
I don't need to waste my time on you

The beautiful thing about saying you "don't need to waste your time" is how thoroughly you waste your own time by announcing it at all.

helinues:
Your if didn't cover the poster you attached by yourself

Moreover, your epistle didn't answer my simple question. Where is it in Nigeria constitution that one can be a vice president for 3 times

I'm struggling to understand why you're demanding chapter-and-verse citations for a position nobody here - op included - has advanced?

helinues:
It's disappointing for you to make this kind of thread

You mean Atiku can become a VP for the third time?

Actually Atiku Abubakar served as Vice President of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007, under one president, in one continuous political relationship. That is one VP tenure. He has not been VP a second time. He has run, unsuccessfully, for President six times. So it would be a second VP term, not a third.

Kobojunkie:
It is the absence based on false conclusions. That false grounding makes it no different from a religion. 🥱🥱

Two things here :-

1. No serious philosopher of religion - not even the theistic ones - defines religion as "whatever I personally think is grounded in error." You've wandered so far off the map you might as well have fallen off the planet.
2. To brand atheism religiously equivalent because its conclusion is wrong, you'd first need to demonstrate the conclusion is wrong, which is precisely the matter in contention.

By the way, not all religions/traditions are characterized by a belief in a god. 🥱🥱

True, but ultimately irrelevant to whether atheism - which is defined by absence of belief - constitutes one.

Kobojunkie:
Atheists are mostly religious folks,

I'm not sure why this constant mischaracterization of atheism seems to butter your biscuits, but atheism is definitionally one thing: the absence of theistic belief. That's it. Full stop. You should probably consult a dictionary before constructing arguments on foundations made entirely of sand.

as their belief does not simply stop at a lack of belief(most of them seem certain that a god cannot exist, hence making them religious in their leaning).

Poppycock. In the entire philosophical tradition, strong atheism - the positive claim that no gods exist - is distinguished from weak atheism precisely because they occupy different epistemic territory. There's absolutely no logical basis for collapsing certainty into religiosity. And even if we entertained your baroque little redefinition, "religious in leaning" is doing considerably more intellectual lifting than you are.

Tradition is also of religion. So, a so-called atheist who describes himself as one with spiritual awareness is definitely not an atheist but at least a traditionalist, as he claims. 🥱🥱

Whether or not one distinguishes between spiritual awareness and organized religion is an entirely separate taxonomic question from whether gods exist. That you're latching onto semantic trivialities while the actual argument evaporates around you is rather telling.

If this does not help you sort your confusion there, I don't know what else can. 🥱🥱

And what's with the yawns, btw? Is assembling a coherent argument really that draining for you?

TV01:
You are free to your view. Mine is different. I am sufficiently convinced by the evidence there is that there is a Creator, and that He is perfect in all His ways. How could He not be.

Well, in that case, conviction is still not evidence, however warmly it is held

You do realise that for believers faith is a factor. If "verifiaility" is beyond us, who is to say? Could you explain what you mean by structurally - is that within what you'd call a logical framework, or something else?

In many quarters, the concept that "faith is a factor" functions as a philosophical ejector seat - deployed with remarkable precision the moment logical turbulence becomes genuinely uncomfortable. But the sad reality is that the instant you invoke faith as a counter to a structural argument, you have conceded the structural argument and simply elected not to file the paperwork. What then remains is not a rebuttal but an aesthetic preference. And by structurally unverifiable I mean precisely this: the claim is arranged such that no conceivable state of affairs could count as evidence against it.

Why does suffering "have to be prevented". Why is incumbent on The Creator to ensure there is no suffering? Christianity portrays "suffering" as an outworking of disobedience by mankind - for which warning was given. For beings created out of and for love, freewill has to be a part of the mix.

One may be momentarily seduced by the free will gambit - it carries a certain rhetorical elegance in the abstract, I'll grant it that much. Ultimately, it evaporates the moment you recall that omnipotence designed the entire system, possessed exhaustive foreknowledge of every resulting atrocity, and constructed it anyway. Permission? I think not.

Omnipotence acts likewise - with certain knowledge of the mercy and justness of the outcome. Again, you claim to know what is best. How? What is your framework for determining this?

I don't claim to know what is best. I claim to know what "omniscient", "omnipotent", and "omnibenevolent" mean, and I am holding your deity to His own advertised specifications rather than any standard I've imported. So no vex, but if your God demonstrably falls short of His own job description, that is not my framework malfunctioning, but yours. I only read the label on the tin, as presented.

Suffering is suffering. If you charge Omnipotence within your framework with the ability and foreknowledge to forestall it, why make any distinction?

Because being methodologically precise and having indifference to morality are not remotely the same thing, and conflating them would reveals a rather significant confusion about how these types of arguments work. Duh.

I have indicated why within my faith framework. I don't so much see a widening as no reason to restrict it. Omnipotence is in view is it not? .


TV

That's a fancy bit of footwork you're doing there, but I should warn you that you're tap-dancing smack dab in the middle of a minefield. In a debate about logical coherence, retreating into your faith framework is nothing but you choosing to forfeit but dressing said forfeit in dignified clothing and/or reframing it as rebuttal. You have essentially argued that within the system which presupposes the conclusion, the conclusion holds, which I have to say, is a breathtaking position to take on its own. Plus, your insistence that there is "no reason to restrict" the scope actually confirms my point with aggressive thoroughness - if omnipotence is in view across the totality of suffering, you have just volunteered an infinitely larger indictment than the modest one I originally tabled. So unless you're secretly supporting my argument, you've played yourself.

What you need to understand is that expanding the domain of divine responsibility does pretty muchnothing to fortify your position. If anything, it detonates it at scale and with considerably more collateral damage.

The preceding exchanges have demonstrated, with rather elegant consistency, that every manoeuvre you attempt here either begs the question outrightly or somehow multiplies the problem it was meant to dissolve in the first place. I would suppose a more nimble theologian might have identified these exits closing several turns ago. But, that would be a big laugh.

DeepSight:
The pleasure is all mine - the high quality in your thought processes was noticeable right away and for me such a thing is almost like a narcotic to a drug-addict.

This analogy is very, very dangerous. 😂

Classical theism aside, do you countenance the purely philosophical concept of the existence of a necessary thing, a necessary first cause of this material and finite world / plane / dimension / reality.

I refer to necessary things in philosophy as opposed to contingent things -

https://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/necessity.shtml

And if God were defined strictly as -

That self existent root of all other existence. Would you say that such exists.

Why call it God though? I mean, don't get me wrong here - if we're talking strictly on the basis of philosophical soundness, it's a coherent concept that's not easy to dismiss. A necessary being, a self-subsistent ground of all contingent existence, sidesteps several problems that cripple classical theism. I'll put it like this: if you wish to take the term "God" and define it strictly as that necessary root, but importing nothing further - no personality, no moral preferences, no codices, no interventionist agenda - then I may be considerably less resistant to the idea. The honest answer for me though is: I don't know. And when I don't know stuff, I withhold belief.

Cogito ergo sum. Descartes.

But this saying is used as logical deduction that we exist - and not of an explanation of what we are. But one concedes that it may also demonstrate that we are thinking beings.

Fair enough.

Do you think that a machine could achieve self consciousness? I ask this question because personally I doubt it strongly and it is related to the issue of whether any configuration of matter alone could achieve the same.

I think the honest answer to this question will depend entirely on what consciousness actually is, and we don't know, so... yeah. If consciousness is substrate-independent - tracking information patterns rather than biological tissue - then a sufficiently complex machine may already be having something like experience. If it requires something biology does that we haven't identified, then probably not.

In thinking of these questions please let me know if you think a machine can ever feel pain.

Again, don't know. And to be honest, that uncertainty should genuinely unsettle us.

Fair enough - at the subjective level. Am I to take it that you are firm in your mind that there is no purpose of this world inherent in any external factor beyond us?

Firmly is probably too strong a word. I hold it as my best current assessment, subject to revision. But yes, I find no compelling evidence for externally imposed purpose.

Eureka! I have found it!
I have finally found someone who wonders about one of the strange things I wonder about. Because I have strange thoughts, wondering for example if I have not already passed on and happen to still be having a human experience in another dimension cut off from the last point when I was awake or conscious. This leads to / springs from / is related to several other considerations some of which question whether this reality or experience is real or simulated. So let me ask if you think experience is real, or a sort of imposed virtual reality.

I've been there mate, trust. Too many times - that particular vertigo where you wonder whether the you who woke up is continuous with the you who fell asleep, or a new instance that merely inherited memories. It sits at the intersection of philosophy of mind, personal identity, and what we might loosely call simulation thinking. I can accept any definition for it, provided it has nothing to do with claims of being authored by a conscious designer.

What do you think of that possibility and of Simulation Theory? Maybe you can also chip in here -

https://www.nairaland.com/8621001/lordreed-revisiting-simulation-reality

Thank you. I've gone through the OP @link. Several of those arguments you put up there are not bad per se. Bostrom's trilemma especially is logically tight. Truly, if civilisations capable of ancestor simulations exist and tend to run many, the arithmetic does favour simulated existence over base reality.

Where I'd push back a little is the chain of inference. The Planck length is a resolution limit of our measurement tools and theoretical models that may actually indicate the limits of current physics rather than pixels in a program.
The observer effect is real and strange, but the consensus reading among physicists is that it doesn't require conscious observers, but physical interaction, which measuring instruments provide.
Some other stuff there like the double slit experiment isn't settled science. It's still a minority consensus.

The strongest argument you've got there is Bostrom's statistical one. However, I should point out to you - with regards to the argument - that the phrases "statistically probable" and "demonstrably true" occupy different epistemic categories - and that the simulation hypothesis, like God, risks becoming completely unfalsifiable, which kinda makes it scientifically inert, no matter how interesting it sounds.

budaatum:
Sorry for barging in. But I wonder how true this is, and if you have considered that 'you are, therefore you think'?

Essentially, did your "thinking" precede your existence, is what I am asking?

That's a sharp reversal, but then again I don't suppose Descartes was making a causal claim about sequence. He was establishing certainty from the inside. The thinking is the evidence of existence, not its cause. You've reframed the epistemology as ontology. Those aren't the same argument.

DeepSight:
Welcome, Nerdcat

Thanks for giving me audience.

Your very well weighed responses to a few theological / philosophical matters interest me. Can you summarize your worldview for our benefit. Lets start with -

- Do you believe in the existence of God

No. I find all evidence presented in support of the concept to be insufficient and the logical architecture of classical theism - in particular - to be structurally compromised.

- What do you think you are

I think, therefore I am. 🙃

Tho I suspect you're looking for a more rigorous answer, so I'll say that I'm an arrangement of matter that just happens to be conscious, and self-aware. I'm not entirely sure how I gained this awareness, though I can try to speculate. I'm equally not sure how much more time I have left on this planet.

- What is the meaning / purpose of life to you

Meaning for me isn't discovered, but constructed. I don't believe in an objective meaning of life, as per the religious rhetorics for instance. Personally, I build my own meaning of life from my curiosity of life itself, the people around me, the universe in general etc. If I hard to pick my current purpose/meaning - it's to acquire sufficient material resources in terms of food, money, and more, to satisfy myself and my loved ones for as long as I can breathe.

- Do you believe in life after death

No, and I think the desire for it is psychologically understandable but also quite dangerous in epistemic terms, as it too easily becomes the engine driving belief rather than the conclusion following from evidence. What I find more interesting is the question of whether "I" persist continuously even now, between sleep cycles. That one keeps me up at night, fittingly enough.

Many thanks.

The pleasure is mine.

DeepSight:
Completely resonates with me.

I am curious. Even tempted to create a thread to "interview" you here. I have a history as a resident Larry King on this board. Let's do it.

https://www.nairaland.com/8664951/welcome-nerd-philosophy-existentialism

With pleasure.
I'd be delighted to jump in.

DeepSight:
Very well weighed. Very. Interesting.
Agnostic thus? With possible / potential belief in / acceptance of the spiritual and intangible?

Agnostic feels the closest, yes. I don't dismiss the spiritual outrightly. The existence of consciousness alone gives me sufficient pause for that. But what I resist - often strongly - is the leap from "materialism is incomplete" to any specific theological architecture like perhaps Christianity or Islam.

DeepSight:
This kind of simple nuance you have laid out here is sadly beyond your co-discussant TV01, who notwithstanding all grandstanding to the slightest knowledge, is one of the most unscholarly discussants you can ever waste your time on.

Sounds like you're old buddies, haha.

You are one of the soundest writers I have come across in a long time. Are you new here or a returnee in disguise. And are you pure atheist? Are you strict materialist?

I appreciate the compliment.

To your first question, the answer is a mix of both. I've been around as a guest, but never registered to actually contribute until recently. As it is, I'm still primarily a ghost on this site.

To your second question, the answer is no - I hold the question genuinely open. Materialism hasn't closed every gap yet.

HeatSeeker:
Look for the finest babes in town. If the babes don't slay in the church don't even bother

I'm telling you - this is precisely what sustains young men's theological commitments. One cannot manufacture piety inside a congregation of the drearily unsightly.

No baddies, no viable redemption route. 😎

TV01:
I disagree. Evidence for a creator abounds. My faith is historically attested too. Evidenced.

While I find the evidentiary landscape barren on both counts, I should note here that evidence for a creator isn't synonymous with evidence for an omnibenevolent, omnipotent one. There's quite a gap there - and it's pulling serious overtime.

Again, you rightly limit your observations to "observable reality". That was my point - not an attack on your morality, but your ability to take into account, or even all the relevant dynamic.

If the bounds of my finite understanding disqualify me from indicting the divine, they equally disqualify you from vindicating it. You cannot selectively invoke epistemic humility only when it serves your argument. Forward from that point: a God whose goodness is structurally unverifiable is also a God whose goodness is functionally meaningless as a claim. To wit, you have not expanded the argument, but have quietly dissolved it by making it unfalsifiable on demand. I don't necessarily think you're arguing in bad faith, but you are arguing with a framework that immunises itself against every challenge by simply retreating into inscrutability.

All of God's attributes work in tandem. Actions by other players in the cosmos earthly and heavenly have consequences. Faith assures me that God has this all worked out. Whilst there may be pain and suffering now, redemption will come to all those who put their faith in Him.

And how exactly does "worked out" constitute a response to a logical problem? You've described a feeling of assurance, not a solution to the structural incompatibility between omnipotence and preventable suffering. Faith that everything eventually resolves doesn't address whether a morally perfect omnipotent being would permit the specific suffering in question to occur at all. That is the actual argument, and you've moved cleanly past it without engaging it. There's little here that constitutes a counter-argument rather than a restatement of belief.

Your take is temporal. A surgeon rips open a mans chest to perform open heart surgery. Tat is harm, damage, but the end thereof is healing. One who was limited view of only the ripping may come to a different conclusion.

That analogy doesn't hold, and I'll tell you why. First, the surgeon operates within knowable causal chains and with the patient's eventual consent, while an omnipotent deity operates under neither constraint and with total foreknowledge of the outcome before the disease even forms. Second, the surgeon cannot prevent the disease. Omnipotence, by definition, can. So you're comparing a limited agent doing their best with an unlimited one choosing not to.

Just filling out your postulation. Resorting to an emotional use-case is not required. If you declare omnipotence is responsible for and to alleviate pain, harm and suffering, surely it must be the totality of it?

I'm afraid the emotional charge of an example has zero bearing on its logical weight. I think you're simply struggling to distinguish between rhetorical intensity and argumentative precision. I cited children with brain tumours because the causal chain is clean and agent-neutral, not because I'm appealing to your sympathy rather than your reason.

The parent who abandons their offspring and leads to lots f hurt and poorer outcomes. The one who leaves a supposedly committed realationship causing heartbreak. Random muggings, assaults, terror attacks, wars, along with a host of other things all cause pain, harm or suffering. Why not charge omnipotence with them as well?


TV

Simple: human agents cause those harms precisely because omnipotence permits them to, which merely relocates the problem rather than dissolving it - and now you must explain why a morally perfect omnipotent being permits the enabling conditions at all. Besides, you're widening the scope as though that helps your case when it doesn't. If anything, it multiplies the problem considerably. It's worth noting I never excluded human-caused suffering from the indictment. I used the tumour case because it surgically - pun intended 😎 - removes the human-agency variable, nothing more.

TV01:
I said previously, perhaps consider your own finiteness and limited understanding. Maybe revisit your own contextualising mercy as an attribute of God.

Have you clocked yet, by the way, that the assertion "your understanding is too finite to indict God" renders it equally too finite to recognise, trust, or worship Him? That blade, my friend, is double-edged - thoroughly and symmetrically so.

Is mercy God's sole or primary attribute? What of Holiness, Justice and other attributes. Your wanting an explanation and your dissatisfaction with what you can fathom about how God dispenses mercy does not make you righteous, just or merciful. Nor does it legitimise how you choose to understand it and demand that God apply it.

Nobody claimed mercy was God's sole attribute. My dissatisfaction has hardly anything to do with the subject. The problem here is the logical structure of omnipotence colliding with observable reality, which no inventory of additional divine attributes actually resolves. Holiness doesn't explain tumours in children. Justice, interestingly, makes the problem worse, because justice applied to a child who has committed nothing arguably demands intervention. As for my righteousness being irrelevant - that's correct, and also entirely beside the point. My argument stands or falls on its own merits, independent of my moral CV. Attacking my standing rather than my logic is the oldest deflection in the catalogue.

As above, what makes you think you are able to perfectly take the measure of what is proportionate or not?

The same thing that makes you able to measure proportionality when you declare the plan ultimately just and good: basic moral reasoning applied to observable evidence. You can't simultaneously claim proportionality is assessable when it favours your theology and completely inaccessible when it inconveniently doesn't.

In light of omnipotence, all suffering is preventable. Could God not have excluded death from His creation? Is death not, suffering, harm or pain? Why focus on an emotive user case. Why do you limit your demand to "suffering children"?


TV

If all suffering is preventable under omnipotence, the moral responsibility calculus becomes total, not partial, so congratulations on that own goal. The fact that I keep bringing up brain tumours in children is me giving you a concrete, causally clean case. I focus there precisely because it resists your "human actions" deflection most ruthlessly. Scope it however broadly you like, the problem scales with you.

TV01:
Perhaps your insistence of what mercy means, explains and guarantees is what requires re-visiting?

Whatever we call the attribute in question, an omnipotent being who observes preventable child suffering and observes it anyway still has an explanation problem.

And who clearly stated what the consequences for mis-use would be. And who has an unfolding plan to restore all things to plan.

What kind of restoration plan requires centuries of children dying as operational overhead? Also, announcing consequences in advance doesn't absolve the designer who made the consequences disproportionately heritable by innocents.

So if there is any pain, harm or suffering by conscious beings, God is at fault? So death itself falls into that category. Are you charging that to God as well?


TV

Don't go rolling off the cliff now. Let's take it from the top once again - I charged an omnipotent deity who permits preventable suffering with moral responsibility, which is categorically not the same as blaming God for every scraped knee. Piggybacking on that, death as a natural biological phenomenon is a separate conversation entirely from a child's brain tumour.

TV01:
Why would I deny suffering exists? Your understanding and expectations are yours. I dont see mercy as having to explain in the way you do, or suppoe that any suffering means an absenc eor failing of mercy.

So mercy means nothing, explains nothing, and guarantees nothing - correct?

Sin and corruption are with us. Literally our inheritance through our first father Adam. That God does not del with things in a manner not to your liking or understanding means nothing. You are literally setting your expectations (based on literally nothing) for Omnipotence that you have no regard for and at once shaking your fist when they are not met.

Note that inherited corruption still requires an architect who designed the inheritance mechanism, approved the terms, and chose not to revise them.

Why in your worldview is is suffering bad - how do your quantify it?


TV

I'll oblige your deflection for now. In my worldview, suffering is bad because conscious beings experience it as bad, report it as bad, are affected by it and are subsequently destroyed by it - which is rather the point of the word "suffering." I quantify it the way any non-lobotomised observer does: by its effects on actual persons.

Beans and spaghetti.

It sounds like a nightmare, but I promise you, this combo is deceptively elegant. 😎

Kukutente23:
I'm not talking of you
You've not asked any reasonable question
Christianity ha an already answered question
While the general philosophy of the supreme being is a question that continually seeks answers

If Christianity has already been solved, then why do forty thousand denominations exist, each furiously disagreeing with the others about those very same answers?

Kukutente23:
Because one is an already answered question while the other is a question yet to be answered

Answered by whom, exactly? Because from where I'm standing, you've been dodging both with considerable effort.

Kobojunkie:
Of course, it would sound like that to you.🥱

If it walks like a donkey, and acts like a donkey, then it is, in fact, a donkey.

Kukutente23:
Lol
You couldn't even make up your mind on which you want to discuss

Can you articulate a reason why we can't discuss both? Go on.

Kukutente23:
You would find yourself a confused man

Strongly disagree. There really is no contradiction. The problem here is that the distinction b/w specific critique and general principle is something you can't grasp because it operates beyond your current cognitive bandwidth, and I say this without trying to be offensive.

Kukutente23:
You're still not able to pick a side dude
Are you here to interrogate the Christian idea of creator worship or you're here to question why we should worship the creator at all?

I'm here to do both, simultaneously, and without contradiction.

Kukutente23:
I don't believe the subject of this conversation is too interrogate the base of worship in a religion.
This chat was intended to interrogate the relationship between creator and creature and the essence of the relationship. If your wish to reduce it to Christian doctrine, be my guest but don't mix things up in your attempt to reduce deity worship to your narrow prism

The creator-creature relationship you've invoked carries every implication I identified, regardless of which brand name you slap on it. So move the goalposts wherever you want - it matters little when you can't defend the goals from coming in.

Kukutente23:
Is the below you or your alter ego writing from another realm


I do not waste my time on folks who cannot even remember what they wrote minutes back. Get yourself properly articulate before you come back

Well, at least your lack of reading comprehension is no longer in doubt. By the way, what you cited there says "inevitable suffering, genetic defects, and eventual total systemic collapse" - a catalogue of structural vulnerabilities baked into biological existence - which is, rather embarrassingly for you, the precise opposite of claiming that "aging alone defines existence." You've unwittingly submitted evidence that directly contradicts your own accusation. That takes a genuinely special kind of audacity.

I hope we can use this to learn a lesson in reading comprehension before deploying previous quotes as weapons, because nothing announces defeat quite like your own exhibit exonerating your opponent.

Kobojunkie:
Atheism is founded on the dogmatic belief, without a foundation in facts, that there exists no power higher or greater than that which is currently known. It is a religion. It is all built on falsehood.🥱

Sounds like the usual, desperate attempt to redefine atheism to me - probably because you lack the wits to engage with atheism in it's purest ontological form.

DeepSight:
Let me come in here. It is not just aging by itself I referred to in the OP. I referred to the infirmities, indignities and vulnerabilities it is often attended with.

I suspect he already knows this, but is going to pretend otherwise, as confronting the implications head-on would be significantly lethal to his position. 🫣

Kukutente23:
Your comment seems to place the aging and dying of mortals as a misnomer which the deity responsible for creation should be vilified for.
You did not stop there. You somehow summarised aging as the whole essence of existence and defined it as a terrible physical affliction which supersedes all other natural processes
If aging is blamed on God, who do you hang birthing and growing upon? You're simply assuming too much to aging in a bid to disparage the creator

This is a rather unnecessary wild goose chase you've subjected yourself to - chasing a straw man of your own frantic assembly while the actual argument stands untouched in the corner, waiting. I never summarised aging as "the whole essence of existence," and I'd invite you to locate the sentence where I did, but I suspect the search would be both brief and frustrating. I don't even understand the interpretive gymnastics required to read "inevitable suffering and systemic collapse" as a dismissal of every positive biological process simultaneously. Please reel it in, and actually engage with the proposition: mandatory gratitude is philosophically untenable when suffering is structurally guaranteed. And even if we generously credit your god with the beauty of nature and the gift of life, we must still be forced to reckon with cancer, neurodegeneration, grief, viruses, and the whole bag of nasties. It always amuses me how Christians insist on trying to audit these facts selectively.

Kukutente23:
You did not answer my question
What law says the condition for a deity to be worthy of worship, father or not, is that he should exude love towards his worshippers? What about fear? Is it a valid ground to be worthy of worship? Is admiration allowed? What about the purely transactional idea of being powerful enough to protect and sustain the worshipper? Are any of these valid or love alone is the condition upon which worship can be genuinely built?

There's no singular law or statute. Finito. So come off it already. And I didn't fail to notice that you've just smuggled in a concession by listing fear, admiration, and transactionalism as viable worship foundations, which tells me everything I need to know about your religion: it's no different from a protection racket. And furthermore, the moment worship becomes a purely coercive affair, the term "father" morphs from a benevolent term to become a grotesque euphemism.

Now, I'm not sure how you missed this, but love was YOUR religion's central sales pitch, not mine. So don't blame me for holding up your text to the light of facts.

TV01:
Nope. But I don't gainsay your right to position it as you see fit. I'm happy to see you ascribe omnipotence to God. Unless you possess that attribute yourself, you can prove nothing.

I don't need omnipotence to identify a logical contradiction. Beyond your suspiciously breezy "nope," you've essentially agreed that suffering exists and mercy doesn't explain it. It is what it is.

Harm and suffering are not from God. They are as a result of the actions of others. Ultimately, everything will be set right for those that put their trust in Him and His salvational work - even if temporal suffering persists for a time.


TV

Allow me to stress-test that thesis with a child's brain tumor, thank you very much. Now, you tell me, whose actions specifically caused that one? Harm and suffering from purely human conduct is one conversation, but metastatic cancer in a seven-year-old is structurally another one entirely. Keep in mind - an omnipotent deity who permits the latter while possessing the power to prevent it is morally indistinguishable from its architect.

Kukutente23:
What theory or law do you refer to in the bold above
Can you clearly explain the relationship between being a loving father as you put it and being worthy of worship?

Maybe you should stop to sit with the implications of your own question - because demanding a law governing why loving fathers are more worship-worthy than petty tyrants suggests you might have a rather suspicious moral framework. This is elementary relational ethics that even children can grasp instinctively. It is the capacity for genuine love that seperates a benevolent guardian from a malevolent one. Without that genuine love, you cannot be called loving or benevolent.