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.
But the premise that "Evil is here because mankind is here" is completely compatible with there being no god whatsoever. So, how does this solve the problem of evil?
If you re-read my posts on the other page you will get what im aiming for 100%.
And if we take mankind away there will be no evil.
Fruit has only a fraction of the deal with what we are talking about.
Adam and Eve were created, yes.
A snake (Lucifer) told them that it would be ok to take a fruit from the tree, god told them to never eat from that tree if they were obeying him.Yet they ate the apple and disearned all of Gods trust...
Even if humans/human-angels/human-demons were vaporized, there will still be evil. The fruit giving knowledge to Adam and Eve only proved that evil existed earlier. I assume God knew/invented evil.
You know, that if you belive in god, then there is certanily an Evil...But then there are those who belive in God, yet deniy the fact that they belive in evil. But there are those who do not belive in god, yet they belive in evil, without the other, you can't belive in one.
And this leads to those who say there is no god. But they then belive in a more "reasonible" answere, such as "the big bang" or "evolution", so really can they belive in evil yes, but what causes it? The people who belive in god, in return question this, as being errelvent, and not meaning anything.
Like Eshploded said:
I assume God knew/invented evil.
Therefor he certainly belives in god. Yet there are many theroies about HOW evil was invented. Did god creat it? Or is there a Devil? Things like this. But to the others like Athesist, evil, is promptly chosen by the person to do. Therefor the tearm "Evil" is loosly used, beacuse each person, in his or her right religion belives in a diffrent type of "Evil"....Though everyone knows about it.
Yeah, we've sort of drifted from the original topic, which was the argument laid out for god's existence. Although this has even drifted from the omnipotence paradox, which we were discussing earlier. I still think it's silly to try to define this very human concept in universal terms.
At the end, we're finite after all. But I find trying to describe it quite tantalizing; if God's attributes really are limited descriptions, I cannot imagine how awesome they would be in an unlimited sense.
