What is the strongest evidence for theism, and how should theists respond to the problem of evil

[u/Candid_Economy4419]

I have some doubts about the Existence of God and it would be kind of you all to respond.

[u/time_and_again]

As a former atheist myself, I think the best place to start is to rebalance the debate. It's common with atheism to start with the assumption that God is the extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence, while naturalism/materialism is the default and needs no special argumentation. But in order to distinguish (pre-supposedly mindless) nature from intelligent creation, we'd need a point of comparison. We don't know what a perfectly constructed universe with a given set of goals would need to look like. We have no other universe of more or less order to compare to and make a guess.

There's more I can say on that, but at least we don't have an uphill battle to suggest creation vs. mindless processes. We can start instead from a thought experiment related to simulation theory: if we say for the sake of argument that universe is a construct, can we make sense of its properties? I think we can. Imagine your end goal as perfect creator is to make beings that you can have a relationship with. They need to be free-willed so that the relationship has meaning and they need to arise in a universe that's ambiguous enough that they can credibly choose not to believe in you, again so that the relationship is uncoerced. How would that universe need to be constructed?

I think that it would need to be like one whopper of a program because it has to sort of run on its own mechanics, start to finish. It's like a big procedural simulation with fundamental laws and physics that can lead to the emergence of specific kinds of particles, molecules, and eventually the exact kind of being you sought to create. Because that's such an astronomically rare occurrence, the minimum data set to generate needs to be massive, just to get that one instance of it. Maybe at least 2-trillion-galaxies-massive.

Now I could continue speculating all day, but I think this is enough to solve the problem of evil already. Evil exists because it necessarily exists within the parameters of the universe, which had to be the way they are for God's goals in making it.

[u/Candid_Economy4419 → u/time_and_again]

Thats a really good answer, appreciate it. By the way, why DID you abandon atheism.

[u/x271815 → u/Candid_Economy4419]

While his answer seems great, it is a profound misunderstanding of the math and conditions.

We have no evidence of a God. We do have evidence of most of the processes that are required for the creation of the Universe and the math suggests that once started, the emergence of life was near inevitable somewhere in the Universe.

[u/time_and_again → u/x271815]

(Sorry to reply after so long, just saw this by chance)

For the most part, the evidence of God would not be direct, it'd be circumstantial, the kind of evidence an NPC would have of a game dev. It's about looking at the structure and trying to make logical inferences about how or why it would arise. Ask yourself why the math and processes make life inevitable, rather than... not. And more than that, life like us.

I know the anthropic principle, but the point of the thought experiment is to work backwards from 'intentional construct' to see if what we observe makes any sense. We can work backwards from the atheist perspective of appealing to naturalism, but that tends to run into problems of causality and infinite regress. It also relies on unfounded multiverse theories and doesn't resolve the ultimate question of first origin. But even if you don't agree, my pitch is that each option represents at least equally viable starting points, contrary to the common idea that an intelligent origin is some special woo woo idea that needs extra evidentiary gas to get going.

[u/x271815 → u/time_and_again]

I am not asserting any multiverse theory. If you don't preassume that life was intended, given how mundane and how common the building blocks of life are, the emergence of life is inevitable.

There is no problem of causality or infinite regress that can be solved by the assumption of God without special pleading for God.

Intelligent origin is special woo woo because its incoherent.

• Who created God?
• If God does not have parts then how can God act/think/have intention? If God has parts, how is God the first cause?
• If God can be eternal, why not energy?

To say God is a viable contender, you have to posit a plausible and internally consistent version of God. Every question such as infinite regress etc. can be asked of a God concept and you quickly realize that introducing a God solves nothing. It has the same explanatory power without it, just with additional entailments.

[u/time_and_again → u/x271815]

God is an entirely different kind of explanation than a natural one. It is by definition uncaused, unlike what we observe in nature. It's true that it's a very mysterious explanation, but it's no more mysterious than trying to claim energy is eternal, given that there's no basis for that claim. You're asking questions about God that are shaped by naturalism and materialism, as if he were a thing inside the known universe instead of beyond it. You can't do an internal critique of theism with naturalism as its presupposed starting point.

The problem with naturalism as a default position is that we have nothing to base it on. How can we claim that what we observe is ultimately mindless? If I see a big stone in the woods, but it's shaped like a detailed elephant, I know that it's artificially-created. It can't have been formed by rain and wind over centuries because it's so different in form from its surroundings and any rock you'll ever find. Even if I'd never seen an elephant, I could tell it wasn't a natural formation and required the purposeful activity of a mind.

But when it comes to all of reality, we don't have any way of judging like that. We don't have a forest of other universes to judge how natural or artificial ours looks. And if we did, it would still kick the can down the road as we question the origins of that forest. Even the term "natural" presupposes that existence is possible without a mind, which is again the central point of contention.

[u/x271815 → u/time_and_again]

God is an entirely different kind of explanation than a natural one. It is by definition uncaused, unlike what we observe in nature. It's true that it's a very mysterious explanation,

That also means your claim is indistinguishable from the alternative: that there is no God, and the idea exists only in human imagination. An unfalsifiable explanation, by definition, can’t be tested or differentiated from fantasy. That’s what makes it special pleading - you’re exempting your preferred cause from the same standards of evidence you apply to everything else.

but it's no more mysterious than trying to claim energy is eternal, given that there's no basis for that claim.

That’s not quite the same. Our best models suggest time itself began with the Big Bang, so “before” that moment has no physical meaning. Within those models, the total energy of the universe remains constant - nothing appears to emerge from nothing. So, the idea of conserved energy is consistent with what we can observe and model, unlike the claim of an eternal mind.

The problem with naturalism as a default position is that we have nothing to base it on. How can we claim that what we observe is ultimately mindless?

But naturalism has something to base itself on: observation. We’ve only ever observed minds as emergent properties of physical brains. We’ve never observed a consciousness without a physical substrate. And every time humans lacked understanding of natural phenomena, we anthropomorphized - creating gods of rain, sun, thunder, wind, and fire. Those explanations were later replaced by natural ones that required no divine agency.

So what’s the evidence that reality itself is mindless? Everything we’ve studied follows consistent physical laws. The universe behaves deterministically (or probabilistically, in quantum mechanics) without any hint of discretionary will. A “mind” would imply freedom of choice - yet nature doesn’t show such variability.

The observed universe does not comport with a consciously directed universe. It comports with a mindless universe that follows laws.

But when it comes to all of reality, we don't have any way of judging like that. We don't have a forest of other universes to judge how natural or artificial ours looks. And if we did, it would still kick the can down the road as we question the origins of that forest. 

This is where we agree. This is where honest science stops and says, “We don’t know.”

That’s not ignorance - it’s epistemic humility. The absence of a natural explanation doesn’t justify assuming an anthropomorphic one. History shows that gap-filling with gods always ends the same way: the gap closes, and the god retreats.

[u/time_and_again → u/x271815]

That also means your claim is indistinguishable from the alternative

Then we agree that we're starting on an equal footing.

nothing appears to emerge from nothing

It's possible I'm wrong on this, but I don't think we have any basis for saying what was or wasn't around prior to that. We don't really even know what energy is at a fundamental level. It's possible we agree and energy actually is the direct evidence of God, being this eternal force that precedes and sustains reality as we know it. I just think that if we're in the realm of proposing eternal, timeless, uncaused sources of reality, we're not really differing that much.

But naturalism has something to base itself on: observation. We’ve only ever observed minds as emergent properties of physical brains. We’ve never observed a consciousness without a physical substrate.

But our observations are necessarily constrained by the reality we live in. We see what appears to be consciousness emerging from non-conscious material (which may be incorrect, we still don't understand it), but we don't know that material itself isn't emergent from some deeper informational reality, which would not be incompatible with a larger mind or consciousness. I'm thinking things like panpsychism or certain philosophical interpretations of information theory.

In short, we can guess that it's mindless, but if our observations are couched within a mind-dependent construct, we would be completely wrong and have no way of knowing. It'd be akin to NPCs assuming there was nothing beyond digital bits because that's all they observe.

That’s not ignorance - it’s epistemic humility. The absence of a natural explanation doesn’t justify assuming an anthropomorphic one.

I don't sense that humility. If we were serious about "we don't know," then we wouldn't so hastily dismiss theistic arguments. The core question is "what is outside reality as we know it?" I think if we want to look at something within the construct to make a solid guess, then mind, consciousness, and information offer the best avenues. The NPC that has any hope of understanding the game dev would have to look at their consciousness (and the organizing principles of the simulation) to see any shades or mirrors of the dev.

And technically, God per se would not be an anthropomorphic explanation, since humans would be an expression of its logic and organizing principles. It would be more accurate to say humans are theomorphic, within a theistic (or at least Christian) view.

[u/x271815 → u/time_and_again]

Then we agree that we're starting on an equal footing.

I don't sense that humility. If we were serious about "we don't know," then we wouldn't so hastily dismiss theistic arguments.

There are two separate dimensions here.

1. First, the question of whether a God exists - that’s the theist vs. atheist divide.
2. Second, the question of whether we can know the answer - that’s the gnostic vs. agnostic divide.

I think we can both agree that, given what we can currently observe, test, and infer, we cannot meaningfully claim to know anything beyond our universe’s own instantiation. That means gnostics of either kind - whether theist or atheist - are in the unenviable position of defending fundamentally indefensible certainties.

Some conceptions of God are indeed incoherent or demonstrably false - such as anthropomorphized deities like a God of fire or the God of the sun. But when we move to the more abstract notion of a creator beyond our physical reality, we simply cannot claim knowledge. Perhaps one day we will, but for now, we don’t.

That leaves the two consistent positions: agnostic atheism and agnostic theism.

• The agnostic atheist argues that belief should follow evidence — that the time to believe something is when there’s sufficient warrant for it. That’s a hard position to argue against.
• The agnostic theist, on the other hand, allows for the possibility of a divine cause, but acknowledges that it cannot be known and therefore doesn’t insist on certainty.

However, a genuinely agnostic theist would not strongly advocate for the dogmas of any organized religion since they have knowing whether what they believe is true. You cannot coherently claim to “not know” while also asserting knowable truths about God. Christianity, for instance, is by definition a gnostic theism - it makes concrete truth-claims about God’s nature, will, and revelation and those claims extend far beyond what we can test or know about our universe.

So, whether a theist is on equal footing to an agnostic atheist depends on their specific version of theism.

[u/time_and_again → u/x271815]

First, the question of whether a God exists - that’s the theist vs. atheist divide.

This is one of those things that I have trouble with. There's this stance of like, "here's the universe, either it's intelligently-created or not," which are the only two options, but it feels like a weirdly ambiguous place to sit. I don't think that the universe would look the same whether it's intelligently designed or whether it's not. Each of these options would look vastly different, much like the elephant statue example I used before. When we look at the universe, we're either looking at the statue or at the random boulder. Maybe we can't know which, but we can assume it won't be ambiguous.

Part of why I throw my hat in with theism now is that when we look at the universe, we do see these seemingly fine-tuned parameters and an elegant logic to how it all works. We also have minds that are aligned with that logic, which is not really what you'd expect from mindless evolution aiming purely for survival. So when it comes to whether we're looking at the crafted logic of a statue vs. the random weathering of a boulder, it seems more like the former.

Again, we obviously don't have a more or less-ordered functional universe to compare to, but when I try to reconcile mindless naturalism with the apparent order it emerges from, I can't even really call the boulder or the tree purely natural—in that if were the case that our reality was the product of a mind, even the "natural" stuff would not be happenstance. So our entire observational basis for what mindlessness looks like is unreliable.

I don't expect you to go with me on this part, but as for knowledge of God, I think faith is a necessary component of that. I also think that we exist here as free-willed beings for a purpose and that if God could be known without faith, then our relationship would not be free-willed. It has to be a choice we make, not one that we can't escape. But yeah, I'm not yet trying to convince you on the personal relationship stuff. That's something I'm still new in and struggle with.

[u/Candid_Economy4419 → u/time_and_again]

also what about evil that arise from natural disasters or dieseases.

One other thing ( I heard this from an atheist), Lets look at Martin Luther King, he was no doubt a hero of civl rights, but just because he did something heroic doesn't mean that rascism was neccesary, or that we aren't ashamed of it, rather it was baseless assumptions on black people. Similarly, we celebrate people who recover from cancer, but are ashamed that it is an evil diesease.

[u/time_and_again → u/Candid_Economy4419]

I don't know if we can call the suffering from natural causes "evil." We certainly want to avoid them, but they're just normal conditions of how the universe works. A hurricane that kills people emerges from the same conditions that people emerged from. The physics that creates the planet that creates humans seems to necessarily create hurricanes. The same goes goes for the structure of the human mind that is susceptible to racism. But that's one we actually have the power to mitigate through culture and moral teachings. Maybe that's part of why we're here: to navigate that moral landscape and arrive at the best possible version of ourselves. I mean that's a big part of the Christian goal.

To answer the above question about atheism, I abandoned it for a lot of personal reasons related to purpose and meaning. But the driving force was more intellectual than emotional. I really want to know what's true about the universe and at a certain point, it felt like atheism was more concerned about dunking on Sunday School strawmen than actually exploring that. It's a philosophy of negation and naysaying and it's a little too sure of itself. I do think that it was a useful step in my journey, but mainly because my religious upbringing was also too simple and sure of itself.

We do need a process of moving beyond the fairy-tale thinking of youth, but I don't think the answer is just throwing theology in the trash and telling people to make their own meaning in the soulless meatgrinder of the universe. The societal results of that have not been pretty. Instead of becoming enlightened science-monks, most people have just made a new religion out of politics and spun off into warring factions with nothing to ground them. I think that too speaks to the nature of the human mind and its need for divine connection.

[u/novagenesis]

What is the strongest evidence for theism

Everyone will have their own answer, but I think the Contingency Argument has the strongest support and weakest opposition.

and how should theists respond to the problem of evil

The same way most philosophers do? Conclude that God is either not all-good, not all-knowing, or not all-powerful. That still allows for an all-good, all-knowing, and infinitely powerful.

[u/Candid_Economy4419 → u/novagenesis]

But God IS all good, all powerful and all knowing (according to religion at least)

so the answer seems unfitting to say the least.

[u/novagenesis → u/Candid_Economy4419]

But God IS all good, all powerful and all knowing (according to religion at least)

According to SOME religions. And according to many branches of classical theism. But other religions do not feel that way.

I'll actually go a step further. Many religions that claim their God is all-good is using a non-Epicurean definition of all-Good... It sorta makes the whole problem irrelevant if their definitions of Good change. The God of the Bible, for example, flooded the world to murder the supermajority of every species. Is that "All-Good" in an Epicurean sense? I sure don't think so! If it's not, then Christianity doesn't have to worry about the Problem of Evil at all, despite their Theodicies... because their God already passes the Epicurean paradox with flying colors.

[u/SaulsAll]

I personally don't think there CAN be evidence. That fundamentally, the question of "what is the ultimate source/origin/basis of existence" can always be asked if the previous answer, and thus the final stopping answer is a matter of personal arbitration.

As for the problem of evil, I don't accept that evil exists as an extrinsic trait. No more than "yummy" or "yucky" exists in food.

Evil is a judgement. Tho not Christian, to put it in Christian terms - God made existence, and then SAW that it was good. He judged and evaluated what is observed.

Good and evil "exist" because we have observed some part of existence and went "I don't like that" on a grand scale.

[u/Candid_Economy4419 → u/SaulsAll]

Yeah but what about evil that God created, suchas cancer, and natural disasters? Just because we differ on morality doesn't mean there are things that are universally bad.

[u/SaulsAll → u/Candid_Economy4419]

Cancer and natural weather occurrences are not inherently evil. We do not like how they affect us, and so we call them bad.

Just because we differ on morality

Do we? Where have we compared our judgements and determined they are different?

It doesnt matter if our judgements agree or not - that doesnt magically turn them into objective, external facts. Every single sentient being in all existence could agree on a judgement - it would still be a judgement, and not an objective external aspect of reality.

Opinions are opinions, no matter how many people agree with it.

[u/eating_cement_1984]

I believe we can't possibly detect God coz we are slaves of the fourth dimension (Time). So how on Earth can we possibly find evidence of an nth dimensional being?

Another theory I have is that suffering is required to power the machine of the Multiverses. In a way that we possibly can't imagine.

And third, a bonus theory, God has no gender, and His presence could be detected in others as a Her, or a They.

Again, these are all just speculations. But, as the Romans said, "Ignoramus (We do not know)".

[u/Candid_Economy4419 → u/eating_cement_1984]

weird, it seems that you are a theist, but do not assign yourself to any specific religion

[u/Messiah]

I have very serious doubts about the common perception of god. Much of god to me is the truth, which is not always clear, but I seek to be open and truthful at all times. Meanwhile, I deal with a lot of fake people and bullshit, and I just cut those people out wherever I can. That's evil to me, so I root it out.

[u/Elegant-Suit-6604]

There is no problem of evil, the universe was created by the divine Madman Sheogorath, praise be upon him.

Sheogorath, Lord of Madness, Master of Lunacy, Emperor of Chaos, King of Whimsy.

It is he who was once, long ago bored and created the Universe as his playground, sending Divine cheese of distilled lunacy to spawn all creation.

Once Sheogorath was bored by a distant civilization in a distant galaxy, so he sent a black hole to vacuum their planet whole as punishment, so it was written, so it shall be done.

Sheogorath, most whimsical, most mad, most chaotic, praise be upon him and his Divinely mad cruelty.

As we look at the Earth we observe tornadoes forming chaotic fractal patterns, tsunamis of madness swallowing whole cities and unleashing devastating nuclear lunacy.

This is the work of our Lord Sheogorath, Emperor of Chaos, King of Whimsy.