This problem of The existence of Evil and the existence of God at the same seems to come up here on AG, more than any other argument against Christianity, (which i find odd since there are better arguments out there...) so I thought i'd just make one topic on the subject, to centralize the debate. Christians please add or change anything i'm about to say, atheists/agnostics have a swing at what i'm about to put forward, and if anyone has a different way of looking at it, please go ahead.
Here's the argument, usually, 1.God exists. 2.God is omnipotent and omniscient. 3.God is all-benevolent. 4. All-benevolent beings are opposed to all evil. 5. All-benevolent beings who can eliminate evil will do so immediately when they become aware of it. 6. Evil still exists 7. Therefore, God does not exist or he is not omniscient/all-benevolent.
The problem with this argument is #5. The word immediately. As with most people's thought process, why does evil still exist?? You must keep in mind of this. How can you possibly constrain a time frame to an eternal being? God is not bound by time, we know from the several prophecies within the bible assigning days or years to a specific event have rarely come in those human time periods, we must therefore assume that Immediately to a being outside of time means absolutely nothing. We know by the following
"3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Revelations 21:3-5
that Evil will end on earth, and that is all that is required of God. He will, according to our finite universe, eventually abolish all evil from the earth.
Evil was not created by God, and cannot be completely destroyed by God. This is because evil is an absence of God.
riiight kinda of all but the part that he could destroy evil but this would have him exerting his will on us all the time so i guess ya it's pretty much right
riiight kinda of all but the part that he could destroy evil but this would have him exerting his will on us all the time so i guess ya it's pretty much right
No, what you are saying doesn't really relate to my statement. The thing is, he can't destroy evil. Because if he could, he would have had to destroy it, that is God's nature. He can't destroy it, because it is the absence of Him.
What you said, sort of made since, BUT, yes there's always a but to everything! God can't destroy evil, because evil is a part of God. As you should all know he gave is power to Lucifer, which means evil and God share the same life in someway. It may not make since, since I just got this off of Wikipedia somewhere lol, but I can see where the person who stated this is coming from....?
Are you suggesting that if the man had simply trusted the god at first and taken the correct fruit, that his decision would have somehow been invalid? That you have to screw up BEFORE you can make the correct decision?
No, I am not. We did not take that pathway in the beginning. We could have made the correct decision in the first place, but that did not happen. Because we did choose the path of evil, that is why I'm over here debating about it with you.
What is wrong with saving everyone else, then "curing" the afflicted?
Because salvation in the Christian view is curing one of sin. It is saving oneself from evil. You cannot be saved without being delivered from evil.
Starting from the beginning, there never had to BE evil, or the bitter fruit as it were in your analogy. If he were to abolish evil right now, there would be no outcry from people who are suffering saying, "HEY! We weren't done being in torment yet!" I doubt that anyone would choose to suffer before being given a good option.
I have said this again and again, and all I can say now is to read my previous posts on free will. God created the possibility of evil to give us free will. You cannot have free will when you have nothing to exercise it from. The point is, we were given an option. God said, "Don't eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, eat from the Tree of Life," but we ate from it anyway. My question is, why do we blame God for a mistake that we made, which we deserve to suffer for?
Suffering is a tragic part of life, and the idea that a benevolent god would use such a vehicle to appear to us is, by nature, malevolent.
This goes back to what I have said before...in our universe, our world, we appreciate joy best when we have experienced anguish. It did not have to be that way, though. God could allow us to experience that exact same joy without the horror if he chose to. After all, he's god.
Let me use another analogy. When I was a kid, I tried for a long time to learn how to ride a bike. My dad would guide me, then let me go, and I would go until I lost balance and fell. I fell down a lot, and I scraped my knees, fell face first, did all the clumsy oaf stuff. And my dad let me suffer. He would pick me up each time, and guide me, but whenever he let me try by myself I would hurt myself. And I thank him now for not stepping in and babying me. Because when I finally managed to balance and ride that bike, I was the happiest kid in the world. If he kept me on training wheels, I could just go the rest of my life without knowing how to ride a bike. God and suffering work similarly. God works for the final victory; he has used something that we would consider terrible and an act of malevolence for the ultimate good. His master plan works for the long-term of forever. We brought suffering into the world, but God has used it to work to the final triumph of evil.
Evil is very relative.
How is it that rape, murder, theft, and greed are all considered evil universally? Where is the relativity in that?
And we're back to square one, where choosing not to is malevolent.
What we consider to be evil may be different than what God intended. Technically, God made us in his image, right? So when we were born, we should have been perfectly innocent. But the world and our experiences change us. Some of us, this turns evil. But that does not make God evil, because that was the doing of man.
Evil is the doing something that does not fit the law, the moral law. This moral law comes from God, it is God. God represents the moral law, the moral standard we are supposed to fit. Regardless of how your raised or what you see to be evil, there is an absolute truth to evil/sin. If you are clinically insane and are in turn a psychiopathic killer, and you think that killing is perfectly ok does that make it not-evil? No, of course not. Moral relativism is a falsehood, because the moral law, the moral concious we have comes from THE LAW or God.
As carlie said, one way to think of evil, is the absence of God or the Absence of Law. The only problem with this line of thinking is it is verrry hard to make it fit the idea of omnipresence.
heros4eva, Sometimes i would stay away from wikipedia's arguments. This is the 3rd time in 2 weeks i've seen very bad arguments from wikipedia. Evil can not be a part of God, because God CAN NOT sin or be evil. God is goodness, and commiting an evil would make him evil as well, and it is an impossibility to be both all-evil and all-good. 100%+100%=/=100%. Yes, He gave power to lucifer, but he, unlike man, had the full capability of choosing everything (though i'm pretty sure that changed...i can't remember) and lucifer and a large portion of the angels choose to rebel.
heros4eva, Sometimes i would stay away from wikipedia's arguments. This is the 3rd time in 2 weeks i've seen very bad arguments from wikipedia. Evil can not be a part of God, because God CAN NOT sin or be evil. God is goodness, and commiting an evil would make him evil as well, and it is an impossibility to be both all-evil and all-good. 100%+100%=/=100%. Yes, He gave power to lucifer, but he, unlike man, had the full capability of choosing everything (though i'm pretty sure that changed...i can't remember) and lucifer and a large portion of the angels choose to rebel.
You're right. Wikipedia is not a reliable source, but it is a good place to get a general idea about most things.
If one accepts the idea that god made everything, than one is stuck with the problem that god also made evil. The creation of Lucifer/Satan is an attempt to divert attention away from the flaw in their logic.
If one accepts the idea that god made everything, than one is stuck with the problem that god also made evil. The creation of Lucifer/Satan is an attempt to divert attention away from the flaw in their logic.
God did not create evil in fact Carlie was correct when she says evil is the abbsence of God the Satan argument is showing how evil comes from a beings own free thinking not from God
If one accepts the idea that god made everything, than one is stuck with the problem that god also made evil. The creation of Lucifer/Satan is an attempt to divert attention away from the flaw in their logic.
God did make everything, and he made everything perfectly. One of the things he made perfect about us was free will, that we had the ability to love (forced love, ie love without choice is not love). To have free will, God created the possibility of evil. He did not create evil itself, for everything he created was good. You see, to be truly free you have to have a choice between good and between evil. And he left the decision to us. God gave us freedom, and we wasted it. He let us choose between life and death, and we chose death. So God is not at fault with evil. He did right in allowing us moral perfection in the form of freedom, but we did wrong in spoiling that perfection.
