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PaperclipPerfector  21hr ago (text post)   592 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for January 21, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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Yes.

I need to go hunting on SMBC, because he had to have made a comic about this. If not, he really needs to.

That is, I'm pretty sure you've just solved your problem of evil, in quite the unique way.

It certainly seems logically plausible that whatever god may have created the universe, at the time that he/she/it created the universe, thought, "Hmmmm, I wonder if it would be evil to create a universe where eventually, one day, maybe, depending on how things go, a two year old will get ALL?" Perhaps this deity looked around, took an opinion poll to gauge the vibes, determined from the (presumably otherwise empty) room that it seemed a-ok, and proceeded to create said universe. Guess that just wasn't evil, by a common sense and consensus definition of the term.

I'm not entirely sure what you're on about, but sure? Why not.

If moral relativism or the "problem" of theodicy are new to you, I suppose Google has sources that might be enlightening.

They're very not new to me, but apparently, they're pretty new to you, because you thought that this was a very serious issue for you. But now you've solved your own problem, in like a quarter of a second. Record time in philosophy! Just needed a common sense and consensus definition of evil!

If you were less intentionally obtuse, I'd probably spend more time discussing this with you. But I'm really not paid enough to write a philosophical treatise for a hostile interlocutor, in fact, I'm not paid at all.

Please note:

I'm using a common-sense or consensus definition of evil

Is a very unambiguous statement, and can be trivially interpreted by someone arguing in good faith. If a question on an internet poll asks me "is murder bad", and offers yes or no as answers, the usual "commonsense" answer is to say yes, without a long-winded debate about the definition of murder or badness. I presume this extends to a question about the morality of genocide.

Ah, but what is evil? You cry, source for that contentious claim? Spare me. I'm quite confident I'm had this chat with you, but I'm not quite ready to go trawling through years of comments to find it. We didn't get anywhere, and it wasn't for a lack of me trying.

I don't know what you're talking about. You gave a nice definition and the properties of your definition. I'm not even asking for more at this point. Yes, I did ask you to say at least something about what your words mean, because if you can't manage to explain it at all, it's highly likely that you're confused about your own words. But at this point, I'm just looking at your nice definition/properties and observing that you solved your own problem from before. This is good news! This is wonderful news! Shouldn't you be happy that you had a problem before, and now you've solved it? The "inherent tension" in your philosophical positions has evaporated! That's the whole point of this OP.

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