I'm an antitheist, but just to play along:
God is real, and he's a fucking asshole.
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2026
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As an atheist, and a devils advocate (Gods advocate?? hmm), my friend used to tell me that God knows best, and every unexplainable events could be explained by God seeing further than us, therefore having a long-term goal. Meaning, to achieve this noble goal, it is paramount to bestow cancer upon the pope (suffering is closely tied to Christianity after all), while also keeping billionaires alive.
Fuck the the Catholic Church and anyone that supports it.
If he smoked or other risk factors and genetics have a lot to do with health. Some are more at risk from genes, but bad lifestyle can make various illnesses sooner, worse and advance faster than those who live healthier. There is no supernatural reward for suffering now. We're all temporary conscious stardust in this time to exist, and all the elements in us will be recycled again. That's the truth that frees us from the damaging dogmas and conditional belonging. Enjoy being the universe observing itself for this short time, peace!
Besided, all the World Leaders obsessed with immortality, having health checks and tests daily, from the top of the top doctors money can buy. They get all the extreme treatments, boosts, spikes and highly customized medicine and enjoying very early detection of malignant stuff.
I bet this pope bloke missing a few of these privileges, so it was a late-ish diagnosis.
I was just saying - as he's a Christian and pretty much won that whole game, he probably isn't worried about dying. And Christians, like other religions, think earthly suffering is unavoidable but human life is short and eternity is long. In their view, God gives you what you can handle, and it would make sense that he could handle more, right?
Earthly suffering, or earthly success, doesn't prove or disprove God. God could also be a villain, right? Or just not be able to perceive us as individuals. Nothing that happens here can prove or disprove God, short of a God coming here and proving themselves.
This always boils down to the Epicurean Paradox.
So, most religious mythology (including Christianity) defines its god as 3 absolutes:
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All good (not a shred of evil)
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All powerfull (its will is our reality, period)
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All knowing (it's fully conscious of literally everything that happens in its universe)
So how is it that evil can exist? Cuz we can see that clear as day, everywhere. God either...
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is aware of it, has the ability to stop it, and chooses not to, in which case it is not all good.
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is aware of it, wants to stop it, but doesn't have the ability to, in which case it isn't all powerful.
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Has the power and desire to stop it, but isn't aware it's happening, in which case it isn't all knowing.
Every single attempt to answer the Epicurean paradox does so by rugpulling one of the three pillars and presenting god as instead only being two of those absolutes. (and if anyone reading this takes that as a challenge, feel free to give it a go).
How can this be explained, other than God doesn’t exist?
Either Christianity and most other religions are being deliberately dishonest about the nature of their gods, or, as you said, god doesn't exist.
What are “good” and “evil”?
Why are you asking me? Those already have established meanings, there's no need for me to reinvent them, nor do I have any kind of authority on our language even if I wanted to.
Ehhhhhhh. You're conflating this existence with all of eternity. Those are very different things.
Consider God as a parent. I used the example in an earlier response but my friend took her child to be vaccinated. For a baby, that's a very unpleasant day. In a week, she won't remember it.
Similarly, an all powerful, good God can be okay with someone suffering for a momentary blip because the end result is an eternity of paradise. (What is a lifetime of suffering against infinite years of happiness?)
"But wait!" you cry, "surely an all powerful God can skip the ANY suffering bit, right? He's just choosing not to because he's a prick!" Which misses the possibility of self imposed constraints on power. If I build a system and choose to work within that system, that's still me being all powerful. And if, as an all knowing being, I know that a half moment of unpleasantness means an eternity of bliss (so I can reward free will, instead of just creating a bunch of automatons), that's a tradeoff a good and all powerful God may make.
You’re conflating this existence with all of eternity. Those are very different things.
Those are very different things, but I don't see how or where they were conflated. Nor how conflating them would even be problematic in this context: they'd both be within god's full scope of control, right?
Similarly, an all powerful, good God can be okay with someone suffering
So, not 'all good'.
self imposed constraints on power. If I build a system and choose to work within that system, that’s still me being all powerful.
And if that system you just built includes evil, again we're in not 'all good' territory.
I know that a half moment of unpleasantness means an eternity of bliss
According to self imposed rules that include evil
that’s a tradeoff a good and all powerful God may make.
A tradeoff? Why would god need to trade? If he wants something, he just makes it so -- unless he isn't all powerful. Or unless we're still in the self-imposed-rules that allow for evil, which again is claiming that god is evil.
(so I can reward free will, instead of just creating a bunch of automatons)
Yeah free will usually comes up in these conversations, but right out the gate that's an attack on god's power: does he not have the ability to grant free will without also allowing evil? And even if he can't, and ignoring that that claim is that he isn't all powerful: why is the ability to commit evil always a criteria for free will? We can't fly, shoot lasers out of our eyes, or fart out unicorns either, so with or without the ability to commit evil our freedom is still not absolute - does that make us a bunch of automatons?
Or rather, if the ability to commit evil was taken away from us, would we lose our free will? Let's look at your freedom of choice within the context of dinner. Half a second's thought, and I've got dozens of restaurant options, or grocery stores that allow me to cook up something that might fall outside of what the restaurants here offer: the number of options, while technically finite, are so mind-bogglingly huge that it might as well be infinite: so I'm gonna say my freedom of choice here is almost literally absolute.
One of those dinner options is to kidnap my neighbor's 4-year old, throw him in the oven, and cannibalize him. Why? Cuz god lets me, right? Sure it's illegal, but we don't care about legal authority, we care about god's. So if god snapped his fingers and changed our reality so that I'm no longer even capable of considering that, let alone committing it, evil is officially off the menu... but the billions of other possible combinations are still open, so I'd argue that my freedom of choice didn't actually change all that much. Does that make me an automaton?
...and what about the things that I already don't have the freedom to eat? Most of our reality isn't edible. And even if it was, I can only fit a few handfuls of it into my belly at a time - I can't have the moon for dinner, it won't fit. ...does that make me an automaton?
Point is our free will already exists within a system that has limits. Evil is one of many, many, many parts of that system, so even ignoring Epicurean Paradox, why is evil always a focal point of free will?
If God existed, I doubt he goes around with a magic cancer wand. That being said, Pope Leo isn't a good person, he just has a good media team.
Pope Leo isn't a good person
Why do you say that?
He doesn't support women in the ministry, vilified the LGBTQ community and most importantly, protected pedo priests.
He doesn't support women in the ministry
That's not entirely true. While he doesn't support women in the priesthood or as bishops (as set in Catholic dogma), he has placed women in high administrative positions within the Vatican, which is something other popes haven't done.
vilified the LGBTQ community
Also not true. He's pushed a policy of welcoming all people, and while it's true he doesn't support gay marriage, that is again due to established Catholic dogma and has been much more progressive than previous popes.
protected pedo priests.
I can't say whether or not that's true, I can't find any instances of him protecting pedo priests.
He doesn't support women in the ministry
Admin positions aren't the Ministry
vilified the LGBTQ comm
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/09/pope-leo-xiv-lgbtq
protected pedo priests.
There's another case in Chicago if I recall correctly
In any case, being gay is still considered a sin and he was at a pedo priests birthday party 3 years ago. He's being told to pander by his media team, but absolutely nothing has changed and he's more than likely a hateful power hungry horrorshow. He's at a minimum worst than Francis (not saying much, every Pope is a low bar)
The whole org is a fucking shit show, I can't believe people are actually buying this stuff.
I mean... would he have even been allowed to be the Pope if he didn't do those things? (let's not pretend the Pope is actually a divine appointment)
I'd argue striving to be head of one of the most hateful orgs automatically makes you bad person. Protecting pedos comes with the territory but doesn't give him a pass so to speak.
Original sin baybeee!
🤣🤣🤣
What constitutes a "good" person?
I'd argue with how pathetically shitty the average person is, that Leo is, in fact, a good person, whether or not you believe in any sort of divine guidance.
Hell, he doesn't even have to be a good Christian (by teachings, not Christian acts) to never the less end up on the 'good' half of humanity!
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Forking shirtballs, we're in the bad place!
We're in the only place, unfortunately.
As an atheist: you get the concept wrong. All religions treat this life as a test and the nice part is yet to come. Children dying early or the Pope is them getting to heaven faster
Anyone whos actually read the bible knows the christian god is a violent genocidal sociopath. It only makes sense he would reward that behavior.
That is the god of the old testament, he had a complete personality shift in the new one.
Splitting himself into two (or three?) seems to have an calming effect on God
The early Christians weren’t really happy with the new religious literature they had at the time, so they agreed to remove specific parts. The remaining books were largely incompatible with the older ones, but they clearly weren’t aiming for a consistent collection anyway. As a result, we got a book series with all sorts of twists and turns.
You're talking about the same god that let Satan torture Job to win a bet. Even in Christian doctrine, god doesn't give a fuck about people. He just wants obeisance.
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Other than god not existing? God is malignant
With the way Christians and similar preach? Yea, God's a psychopath and so are they.
Though there are several theologically sound explanations, especially if you truly believe "God" is beyond or bigger than our universe.
Basic believer: "God works in mysterious ways". Sure, that Harlequin baby only ever had a miserable existence, but that's because their soul didn't need to experience a full life! Sure, your school teacher only ever did good works and then got ran over by a truck, but God thought it was her time!
More logical theology: God is bigger than the universe. He sees the whole thing. If something bad happens, then it is merely a wrinkle, or if you believe in divine guidance, it's a tragectory change to something better. Either way, God's not helping you, because what you want makes for a worse over-all universe. Or, if you want to be more literal about it, maybe God doesn't necessarily have the power to truly magic something. Maybe he cannot instantly change an exact, single detail about this universe, yet created it, could destroy it, and has enough control to drastically change things? Like a video game dev seeing how their Sims playthrough plays out.
Deeper theology: We're here to be tested/checked/validated/etc. God said he gave us the answers, not that he'll do the test for us. Besides, if we were instructed to take care of something (like Earth, or your personal life), why in the ever loving FUCK would you expect someone else to do the job you were told to do? Nobody is going to be happy to have to step in to fix something you fucked up, especially when they were the ones who put you on the job to take care of it in the first place.
Deeper science fiction: How would such a great being even begin to care about the individualities of creatures even lesser than ants to him as ants are to us? It's not hard to imagine someone caring deeply about their creation, but not really caring about exactly how the tiny details come out for every single detail. Like a single piece of glitter falling off your child's art piece, an individual life is meaningless so long as the whole picture remains.
Mix and match those views to your heart's content, and I've heard all of them and more growing up in a church. Bunch of intellectually weak clowns unwilling to admit religion is just Baby's First Philosophy...
Please keep going, that was great!
Not sure of too many other opinions I've directly heard, but what kind of belief do you want to hear more of? (I know I said I heard more dismissive/excusive beliefs, but I don't remember them in any representative fashion; it was thankfully years and years ago!)
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A part of the problem is that you're misunderstanding fundamental parts of the religion you're referencing.
In this religion:
The God of Abraham does not answer your prayers because he made you to experience all the negatives so you can learn from them, it's part of "His Plan™". He made you as you are, to sin and fail and suffer. He then made a half human son, Jesus, who he allowed to be sacrificed in order to forgive you for the sins you have been made to commit. You simply need to give yourself to Jesus and accept him into your heart. According to the story.
The rest of the problem is all the logical failures that come as a part of this.
The pope is God's favourite person, so obviously God wants him in heaven as soon as possible.
So, so many ways.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/ offers some good discussion.
Aww man. I tried getting Kagi's LLM to summarise the examples and refutations and even that's proving too much for my burnt out brains...
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His plan is ineffable, it can't be effed
- good omens (I think)
The theological explanation from Catholic dogma would be along the lines of God doesn't really interfere with the day-to-day goings on of the world.
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Or god likes the pope too and wants to hang with him but to do that he has to kill him.
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People who face challenges learn and grow as individuals. They become better people. The best people usually have had the most to overcome. Lung cancer is a hell of a life lesson and teacher.
The people you don't respect or you dislike usually haven't earned it. They've had it the easiest.
I believe we set/choose paths that put our own obstacles in our way. Not because we are wrong or stupid, but because we choose to learn or gain strength (spiritual or physical).
And saying God can't be the light in the sky, a flower in a valley, an antique carbureted engine, or a lung cancer diagnosis is to limit God's ability to make us better people... and I am not willing to do that.
The best explanation I've heard, as an agnostic, is this is our misperception of this life vs an eternal (infinite) afterlife.
Sure, bad people might live really fun lives for maybe 100 years while good people might suffer for the same. But then, for millions and millions and gazillions of millennia after that, both are punished or rewarded for how they chose to live those 100 years.
My friend's baby had a bunch of vaccinations the other day. Horrible day for the kid, unfun and stabby. But in a dozen years, will she remember it? Nope. But that day, that's all she could comprehend. Similarly, for this brief go around, yeah, what we can see and experience is all we can really comprehend. But the promise of at least Christianity, but I think many other religions, is that the next life is infinite and all that matters.
Conclusion: its use to keep the miserable good people placid while the bad guys have all the fun
If there's no God, then sure. If there is a God, there's a life of infinite paradise for those who deserve it.
That's the whole thing. The conclusion changes dramatically if there is or isn't a God.
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