God is not good if he has the power to fix this world but doesnt.
First of all I would like to thank you theists for engaging. I enjoy interacting with religion. I enjoyed it as a believer and I enjoy it as an atheist.
Imagine if you had a button, and were aware of a child starving to death. If you press the button the child gets food. You choose not to despite knowing every ache pain and moment the child experiences, until they die a slow death. You would not be good let alone all good in that situation.
Even if you were to resurrect the child and give them paradise and immortality, you still chose to watch while they suffered. I dont think there is a good reason to watch them starve to death only to give them eternal funland afterwards.
Not wanting to violate free will is not a good reason here. We will shift to a rape example here because it fits with free will better, but for example you have a button, to stop a rape in progress. But choose not to push it. And the reason is because you respect the rapists free will too much and you want the rapist to be able to choose to love you. That makes no sense. We dont respect rapists free will, when we find out they are rapists we isolate them from society as a punishment in prison whether they want too or not. If they get out they are on a sex offender registry list and we restrict their free will within society.
Not wanting robots is another take on free will. Keep in mind the current stats, 28.8% christians with over 45,000 christian denominations worldwide and over 4000 to 10000 religions worldwide. 7% of the global population include atheists and agnostics. Seems like there is a better path to go down then what we currently have. And whats wrong with being a robot who is happy and where God is happy. If I am provided for and joyful, why does being a robot matter again? And we dont know for sure God actually interacting with reality would create a population of robots.
Imagine if you had a button that gave someone eternal love security comfort and peace, but you didnt push it because you didnt want them to be a robot. I would say you were not good if you refused to push the button.
But somehow God is still allowed to do all these things and still be called good because he is powerful, he created the universe. Could God send everyone to eternal suffering and still be called good? If not then you have a line where there are things God cannot do and be called good. If so, what even is the definition of good at this point? Whatever God does? Congratulations you redefined good in cheerleading for your deity.
How do I know whats good if I dont have a God? My gut and working it out through reason, but its my standard. We can have a discussion on it about why it would be good to have a child starve to death when you have the power to stop it, but saying your position is the only valid one because you presuppose an all-powerful deity doesnt mean your right or automatically win.
In conclusion, God lets children starve to death, God respects rapists free will more then stopping them, God would rather have you suffer (Maybe for eternity) then make you a "robot", being a "robot" is not a bad thing, and we have no evidence for if God actually showed up everyone would be forced into roboticism. Also I can make moral judgements as a non believer. I think with the above reasoning, its obvious to anyone whos not a believer in monotheism the theistic God of monotheism is not a good God given the world.
Posted Jul 4, 2025, 1:24 AM UTC