I was a YC founder in 2006 and still do software engineering and data science full-time, but on the side I also do Christian apologetics, helping fellow engineers/scientists/mathematicians seek answers to life's deepest questions.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
Epicurus
There are multiple potential answers to this basic riddle in various religions. Are you interested in understanding them?
For example, we can say that while God is omnipotent, he has chosen to create a world with humans who have the possibility of choosing to be good -- your word -- or not -- and grow through this choice. A world cannot exist where the "evil" is prevented, unless you also take away the the agency from humans and this potential for growth.
Much of which we think of as "evil" is actually consequence of things we do. One simple example in modern terms is that we tend to repeat the same unconscious patterns over and over again.
We often do it because we have a trauma maybe from childhood -- that we are not conscious of. If I get a physical trauma, muscles around the traums tend to form a tension to protect the site where we get hurt. These often become chronic even after the wound has healed. We have many such chronic tensions in our body.
Similarly, when we get a physical trauma that is too unbearable for us to process, we create tensions around it that protect us from experiencing it.
These patterns we repeat cause much of our suffering. By becoming more aware of our wounds, they can start healing, and we can start becoming free of such suffering.
Our "work" is to learn about ourselves, to overcome these traumas, and heal our wounds. In such a case the "evil" we see is actually a reflection which is necessary for us to become aware of these things in ourselves.
I'm replying to a comment about the Catholic/Christian God...
In his myths he has no problem actively interfering with man. The great flood story itself is a giant logical paradox.
God is perfect.
God is all knowing.
Yet God creates a world so screwed up he has to reset it.
What free will does every human who's not Noah have ?
Revalations heavily implies that one day God will get sick of this. Too much free will or something.
Honestly everyone has a right to whatever myths get them through the day. The issue becomes when your myth infringe on the rights of others or are used to persecute. As in, your magic book has a few dietary restrictions, cool.
Your magic book calls certain people abominations, or suggest they should have less rights, not cool.
But all major religions have multiple strands, and like others, Catholicism also has one or more mystic strands as well. Mystic strands of different religions are thinking man's version of the religion and actually closer to each other that you would guess from the surface level understanding of the religion.
Probably you can find people who believe what you are saying. People believe in strange things.
But if you want to have an intellectually honest discussion about this, you should first try to understand clearly the best possible arguments of the thing you are critisizing.
That is why I asked whether you are interested in understanding the religious point of view. What you are presenting is kind of a straw man version of Catholicism, and I imagine on site like this you will have hard time finding anybody willing to argue about that.
Note also that I have not anywhere said anything about what I believe. I have explained to you a kind of short version what is my understanding of the synthesis of Christian mystical traditions.
This feels like is a side stepping of Epicureus where the primary focus of refutation revolves around trying to explain away "evil" as that which is perpetrated by human beings upon one another.
Perhaps, if you replace "evil" with "suffering", you get a more expansive view of the Epicurean argument.
And if you feel the expansive version is too amorphously defined to refute effectively, you could just replace "evil" with just "plague" or "earthquakes". For eg.
"Is God willing to prevent plagues but not able..."
Yes, I can understand it feels to you like I am side stepping the argument.
The "evil" in the paradox above (I am not responding to Epicureus but to the quote, which is presented out of original context) refers implicitly to a very limited, modern definition of the term, as your examples show.
All the religions that I have some understanding of, have much more elaborate understanding of the question of good/evil. But each religion has a unique view point of this question, so we cannot generalize these terms. I just gave one example.
The paradox is a false dilemma. In my understanding, such dilemmas are often set up within religions as tools to help you to think things through for yourself, they are not refutations of the religion.
I am not trying to refute an argument or convince you of anything. That would be pointless.
I don't consider earthquakes to be "evil" by any sensible definition. But the question "if God exists, why did he create a world with earthquakes" is an interesting question. I don't have any idea how any religion would approach this question.
If you are really interested in what religions can offer you, you can take a look at the feeling that arose in you when reading my reply.
You said you felt that I was side stepping the argument. To me it seems that it was partly because you thought that I was trying to refute an argument. You also missed the part where I said "Much of which we think of as ..."
This being HN, you can think of religions as methods to hack your own thinking. You can use such feelings (and the fact that you miss some key points when you discuss the issue) as a signal for yourself that there is a subconscious emotional issue related to the question. You can learn about yourself and grow through studying these issues.
Firstly, I appreciate your kind and thoughtful answer.
More importantly, I thoroughly commend the intellectual honesty when you said this:
> But the question "if God exists, why did he create a world with earthquakes" is an interesting question. I don't have any idea how any religion would approach this question.
To be clear, I wasn't hoping for a handy solution to one of life's "big questions" in an HN comment.
I was just pointing out that your response to the Epicurean argument was a bit narrow in the assumed scope of the assumed interpretation of the Epicurean argument.
I was just considering an app to facilitate the other side of the apologetics argument with an interactive resurrection of IronChariots.org as a native app.
All conspiracies's enemy is logistics. And yet for these eucharist miracles, the logistics are simple. They all have a clear and obvious point where foul play could be inserted, where the complicit number of people can be brought down to just 1. You may not like this explanation, but it's one people will rightly use to counter it. 'Why would people lie' is a pointless exercise. They would. Each person has a different story, intent, motivation.
Anyway I just read the first one, but I'm aware of these miracles some time ago. I don't think it has outward persuasive powers catholics think they do. It sounds trivial and specific. It's also so clearly some growth to me. You got the wafer, you got contamination, and you put it in a container with water. Of course, then they would find a separate heart tissue to send to the scientists.
(Also unrelated, but it's kinda funny. Catholics would be saying it's the literal body of Christ. And they they dropped it to the floor and went 'well, I can't eat that'.)
> Catholics would be saying it's the literal body of Christ. And they they dropped it to the floor and went 'well, I can't eat that'
When Catholics say this, they mean Transubstantiation.
As in, it retains the accidents (physical/observable properties) of bread and wine, but its substance (what it is) does literally become the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ.
So it might look, feel, and taste like bread and wine, but it is in fact the body of Christ.
You're correct that we can't prove the chain of custody for the Eucharistic miracles - this is discussed at the bottom of the article.
In general, there's no airtight "proof" for any miracle, and the best way to determine whether Christianity is true is to live the faith and see what happens. I wrote an article about this:
> the best way to determine whether Christianity is true is to live the faith and see what happens.
So you're telling me you tried this with a bunch of other religions before you landed on Christianity? You became a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Wiccan and lived those faiths?
I did a similar thing, having been agnostic for many years. I thought I'd give Christianity a go, and keep going until I felt it likely wasn't true. ~5 years later, I'm still going.
Of course, if I was not living in a Western country with a historically Christian society, I may well have tried Islam etc instead. But I happen to be in a mostly Christian country, so I gave that a go, and so far it has stuck.
I don't think that's in any way inconsistent. I have never claimed to be doing a scientific study. I have a PhD, and did post-doc research. I know what science is, and what it isn't, and how far it can reach. IMO these big questions are beyond the reach of science.
In order to really test the waters of a particular faith, you have to put your weight on it. I don't think this would be possible if my research schedule told me I'd be converting to Buddhism in 2 years, and then on to Islam after that, etc. So this "scientific" approach is flawed from the start. Instead, it makes most sense to start off with what you think is the most promising.
I'm convinced that Christianity is true, so I don't feel compelled to keep exploring other belief systems. My conviction comes from the intellectual evidence, the witness of other Christians, and the fruits of my own faith life as a Christian. As I mentioned in my previous comment, I believe that ultimately the fruits of a lived faith provides the strongest assurance.
So basically you are confirming your own belief system using, well, your own and choices of other people which believe in the same thing. That sounds a little bit biased, isn‘t it?
Wait a minute… This has even a name in logical fallacies: CONFIRMATION BIAS.
This could be applied to any faith. Likely many people would find that faith was also true? So they are all true simultaneously? But they also contradict one another, and have people killing each other in their "team's" name?
AFAIK there hasn't been any evidence shown for any of the faiths yet.
I was a YC founder in 2006 and still do software engineering and data science full-time, but on the side I also do Christian apologetics, helping fellow engineers/scientists/mathematicians seek answers to life's deepest questions.
Some cool articles for the HN crowd:
- My interview of Evan O'Dorney, a three-time Putnam Fellow and two-time IMO gold medalist, who converted to Catholic Christianity: https://www.saintbeluga.org/veritas-part-i-conversion-of-a-p...
- In-depth scientific overview of Eucharistic miracles: https://www.saintbeluga.org/eucharistic-miracles-god-under-t...
- Conversion testimony by the Chief Scientist at NASA JPL: https://www.saintbeluga.org/veritas-part-iii-bellows-of-aqui...