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!

He doesn't support women in the ministry, vilified the LGBTQ community and most importantly, protected pedo priests.

He's JK Rowling level bad.

Please keep going, that was great!

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...

That's ... rather abstract. Besides, hating trans people is (sadly) still not a guarantee to find yourself on the 'bad' 50% of humanity. ... and that's assuming that only 50% of humanity is bad, which is rather forgiving!

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)

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!)

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fuck the the Catholic Church and anyone that supports it.

Well he hates AI too, because it threatens the confession booth. And trans people hate AI girlfriends because they demonstrate that love was never gated by an expensive operation; while Hinton, the father of backprop, considers AI conscious already. So there's that. In general the more someone thinks they're the Good Guys, the more they're the Bad Guys. Now watch Lemmy turn into a mental pretzel to justify their own hatred of AI while missing the parallel with the cotton plantations wherein black people were also treated as unconscious and inferior. I'll see myself out before my inbox fills with comments calling me a loser for siding with Turing.

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

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.

https://snapnetwork.org/2025/12/08/pope-leo-helped-shield-clergy-accused-of-abuse-in-peru-abuse-survivors-allege/

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.

Yeah, I was trying to joke about this a bit, but in all honesty, I just find this specific argument for belief to be basically Stockholm syndrome.

First things first, it's a really old argument. It's called Pascal's Wager, and the little joke I tried to make was about a criticism of it, called "argument from inconsistent revelations". This whole conversation has been done before. (This goes to OP about this, as well @MyBrainHurts@piefed.ca)

But, fundamentally, this whole deal with the "infinite value" of heaven and hell, is just a threat. It's your pimp saying "Obey me, and you get money and comfort. Don't, and I break all your bones and destroy you. Nothing else in your life matters, due to the absolute power I have over you".

There's nothing more to this argument. It's just taking a carrot-and-stick threat at face value.

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?

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.

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.

What are “good” and “evil”?

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.

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.

I'm an antitheist, but just to play along:

God is real, and he's a fucking asshole.

Vance did reap the last popes soul, he could only do it partially on this one.

Those are very different things, but I don’t see how or where they were conflated.

Because a moment's or even human lifetime's suffering is effectively nothing when compared to eternity. Show me someone who wouldn't trade a hundred years of suffering for an eternity of bliss and I'll show you a silly goof.

So, just like my friend's kiddo getting jabbed, yeah, sucks in the moment but no reasonable person would really call it horrific suffering given that, while unpleasant, it lasted under a day compared to her (hopefully) ~ 35,600 days on Earth. Saying because suffering exists on a human time scale when you're talking about infinity is similarly silly.

You keep coming back to this "why can't God make free will without evil? If he can't, he's not all powerful!"

But it's a basic definition problem. You're effectively asking God to make 1 = 1 AND 1 = 2, which fine, could do but it eliminates the entire usefulness of 1 as a number.

Similarly, if the idea of free will is to find and reward good people and punish those who squander free will (by being jerks) free will probably necessitates the capacity for evil. (Otherwise, just stick with angels. Haven't read the bible thoroughly but I'm pretty sure that's basically the point of angels, perfect beings incapable of doing evil except for the one God made rebellious etc.)

EXCEPT your pimp can plausibly offer you literal eternal bliss.

This whole conversation has been done before.

Yup, just like the "oh you better have chosen the right God!" I think every ten year old has that thought and figured they've got religion on the ropes.

It's probably one of those irreconcilable arguments. If a God exists etc, then yeah, you can absolutely see a system of infinite reward/punishment. If no God exists, yeah, you can easily see a system enacted to control the masses.

I know which I think is more likely but I also know that anyone completely dismissing the other side without qualification probably hasn't thought it through with a mind willing to question their own beliefs.

Do you mean the designer, omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, creator, Jehovah, or the lord god that gave that gave us viruses, deadly bacteria, genetic diseases, parasites, , volcanos, earthquakes, blindness, cancers, floods, droughts, starvation, meteorites, death from lightning strikes, pestilence, holy wars, tidal waves, asbestos, infant mortality, trachoma, life threatening radioactive elements, solar flares, malaria, smallpox, despots, dictators, slavery, mass extinctions, ice ages, trachoma, hare lips, cleft palates, animal sacrifices, infant genital mutilation, mental illness depression, bilharzia and anxiety, autism, Parkinson's disease, Hansons disease, hernias, the appendix, compacted wisdom teeth, acne, dementia and complete morons?

you forgot omnipresent.

and they still die to thier own hubris, sick and old, or from cancer.

Not to take away from your beautiful comment, but wasn't there recently some research that the appendix might actually be beneficial? It had something to do with storing a copy of gut bacteria that can be re-seeded into the gut if needed. (I'll post a link if I come across the study again.)

This weighing of temporary suffering against eternal bliss is just another example of what a lousy game God is playing. He could have come up with something else - but he didn’t. That makes him, in any case, a huge masochistic asshole.

And even if all of that were actually true, the question arises as to why anyone would ever regard such a being as the measure of all things, let alone worship it.

Which was Mother Theresa's whole thing. Making suffering worse to have them closer to Christ. I hope she burns in the hell she believed in.

So if there will be no suffering and no evil in the eternity, why can't it be like that already? If one is incapable of doing evil in heaven does he have free will? If your answer is that he will not be willing to do that, why? Because here on earth one can be good and die and one can be good and turn evil in the end, what makes heaven different and why it wouldn't be possible right here right now?

I think it depends of the definition of a god that you can prove or disprove their existence, I remember the invisible green dragon in Carl Sagan's garage: only falseable gods can be proven or disproven, if defined unfalseable then there is nothing to discuss about (but at the same time such god would have zero consequences/influence in our universe)

Obligatory:

if you look at how cancer develops

that doesn't need God.. that just happens here on earth as a random lottery / your life choices

And not from corporations poisoning us..

I'm just struggling with my own slow process of discarding faith and found the arguments useful... I don't have a particular direction or anything

God is obviously malevolent. All of his conservative representatives being evil should be a clue.

He makes quite a few of the right decisions. His stance on ai, giving press dumpl a hard time.

But still... not passing the bridge on some issues like same sex marriage afaik. Or putting pedo priests to justice .

(Someone correct me on this if it's outdated)

that's life choices. these corporations produce nothing but for people

It was ages ago, Wikipedia links to a paper for 2009 and another review paper in 2016.

If God is everywhere, then he's up your ass too.

This is simply the laws of nature with no supernatural design behind them. Read or listen to Christopher Hitchens. He can articulate this position much better than I can. But religion will tie itself in knots trying to explain our lives within its overview. And when we rightly question how things can be we are told we must have faith. No evidence is given because there is none to give. It's a clever trick.

Mysterious ways, brah. Mysterious ways.

Pedo priests are like bad apples in barrel. As per allegations they've been there for centuries. I wonder if there are any apples that aren't rotten for one reason or another

I think it makes more sense to say Yahweh is malevolent. It started off as a god of thunder and war, and when the ancient Judeans moved from a polytheist pantheon to a monotheist model, that's who the groups that won had chosen as their god.

But yeah, name a single diety directly responsible for more death and destruction? It literally pits 3 and a half groups that worship it against each other! To generate war. To generate death. It feeds on death and pain.