If we're going to get Biblical about this, then it makes perfect sense for God to take the blame for everything. It clearly says in the New Testament that humans are incapable of being good because we have a sinful nature that is programmed into us. If that is true, then it means that God intentionally designed humans to be evil and will punish people for doing what they were designed to do, unless they love him and demonstrate unquestioning loyalty, in which case he will supposedly turn them into a better person.
I don't know if you interpret the story of Adam and Eve literally or allegorically, but it's clear that the Bible places a lot of the blame on the first humans for failing a test without the capacity to understand what death means or the knowledge of what consequences their decision would cause. It says that God intentionally cursed ALL future generations with painful childbirths, disease, natural disasters, and all other horrible things that happen in our world, all because they dared to question him and ate a piece of fruit.
I do agree with you that humans are a major contributor to the pain and misery that exists, but certainly not all of it. If we're going to bring Christian beliefs into the equation, then there is NO way to do it without at least blaming God for some of it.
Nice reductio argument.
Christian theology doesn't deal with logical scrutiny very well.
It's actually fascinating to contemplate the millions of pages of Christian theology that have been written since around the 2nd century ad which try to explicate and justify biblical absurdities and logical nonsense by inventing and conjuring up even more absurdities and logical nonsense, and so on, forming a very intricate and convoluted structure with no grounding at all in any kind of practical or sensible reality.
It makes me think of the flying island of Laputa in gulliver's travels, whose inhabitants only study and codify the arts, music, maths, astronomy all day, but cannot put any of it to any practical use. It's just a pointless flying island whose inhabitants literally have their heads in the clouds and are totally disconnected from practical reality.
God directs the flow in the macro level (ie nations, the bigger picture, universe, etc) and is in control but allows random chance and events to happen at the micro level (ie our interactions with other human beings and freak accidents in nature)
But aren't bigger entities like nations just the result of everything that happens at the micro level?
How can God both be in control of a larger process yet allow random chance to occur at its lower levels?
And think of all the wars and destruction that have happened at the level of nations throughout history. Do you think God directed the flow of that?
In which case that makes him responsible for all the suffering that resulted?
And why would he allow random chance to be part of events at the micro level anyway? If by random chance you mean 'free will', how does randomness allow us to be responsible for our actions?
I think the simplest and most rational thing is to just assume that there is no God, as thinking there is a God creates more problems than it solves.
In fact, positing a God only creates problems and solves none.
