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Comment by paradox242 | Hacker News Reader

Glad to see the problem of Theodicy mentioned in this work. All by itself it illustrates the logical inconsistency of at least the monotheistic religions which claim for their diety benevolence, omnipotence and omniscience.

When trying to resolve the question of where the source of evil lies in this paradigm it quickly becomes a "pick any two" situation. They can't do this of course, because once you give even an inch you have lost everything.

Oh, your power is not unlimited? Oh, there are forces acting against you of which you have no knowledge, or perhaps you actually don't know what you are doing with all this creation business? Oh, you actually are also the source of all evil?

It much less a compelling argument for many humans to worship a fallible, ignorant, or evil being as the sole power and creator of the universe, as this reminds us too much of ourselves, which is the very state of being one wishes to escape when seeking the divine.

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This always strikes me as sort of a straw man. Any serious theological works, even very old ones, deal with these questions. This kind of thing feels to me like a very superficial engagement.

It is a strawman. And typically, this strawman wears a fedora. It's the classic "haha see I used your beliefs against you can you tell how superior I am?" argument you see from pseudo-intellectuals. In fact the argument presented by the previous poster is basically a textbook copy of the tired Euthyphro Dilemma.

Godel's incompleteness theorem might be a better approach to applying logic to faith. You can't prove the existence of God because we have no system above God from which to prove him with. You would think a famous logician like Bertrand Russell would understand this. Though, he did waste a large portion of his career trying to solve the crisis of foundation in mathematics. One would think this experience alone would provide some enlightenment on what faith actually is. Perhaps even geniuses aren't infallible.

Gödel also formally proved the existence of God. As in it can be checked by computerized theorem provers.[1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_ontological_proof

Well, he proved a theorem. He chose to define a “godlike object” and showed in every carefully-defined “world” such an object exists. Saying that this “proves the existence of god” is … a bit of an overreach, don’t you think?

No, I don’t. Also that’s how we prove literally anything. There is always a model, because we don’t have direct access to reality. So if your bar is that high you’re going to have to call climate change and relativity a bit of an overreach too.

Gödel's proof is an example of deductive reasoning. It falls apart if you don't accept its axioms.

The case for climate change, or for relativity, is made inductively, by empirical observation.

The two cases are not remotely comparable.

Funny you should say that on account of it’s well known that deduction is never wrong and induction sometimes is.

A proper deductive argument that contains no errors will be valid, but it won't necessarily be sound if the premises are incorrect. In that sense deduction can most certainly be "wrong".

You don't understand Gödel's incompleteness theorems (there are two of them). They don't say what you think they do.

In the Socratic/Platonic/Aristotelian most high God paradigm this is trivially simple. Good is logically equivalent to that which God approves of (see Euthyphro). Thus by the definition of free will it’s a logical consequence that it’s possible for creatures to do things that God doesn’t approve of, which is to say do evil. God permits but does not approve.

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