NOTE: This is not an anti religion post, simply a philosophical and age old debate.
Ok, so very very basically, here is an issue with the typical Christian view of God, a view shared by other religions, aside, however.
God is all good God is all powerful (omnipotent) God is all knowing
If God is all good, then why does he make evil things happen? Why does he create murderers and tsunamis?
Some say God creates us with the choice to do good and bad that we may have free will.
So, in this case God creates us without knowing if we'll choose to be good or bad people, or even if we will believe in him/her.
So God doesn't know if we're going to be good or bad, so God is not all knowing.
BUT - Imagine we still want to hold that he his all knowing, i.e he knows everything about everything. This means God creates us knowing that we're going to be good or bad people, this means that he condemns those he creates bad to a life of sin and ultimately hell, so he can't be all Good.
BUT - if we want to still hold that he is all good, then there must be another reason murderers and tsunamis exist, but what? Maybe God created the world, and is not powerful enough to intervene. Then God is no longer all-powerful. Either that or he is powerful enough to intervene, and simply doesn't want to, in which case he is not all good. What do you think about all this?
Either that or he is powerful enough to intervene, and simply doesn't want to, in which case he is not all good.
Well, to be honest, there is no such thing as a good or a bad. It's a perception. What might be good to you might not be to others. So how can one claim that this or that is truly ''good''?
The most common answer I get from religious people about such a question is that He wants to test us to see who goes to Heaven or Hell. Which is a bit daft, given that He already has a Divine Plan hence He knows who will go where in the afterlife.
Apart from that, what I feel is that there's no clear cut, absolute, universal definition of good or bad, let alone us understanding what good or bad is to God. Yes, what we perceive as good or bad is roughly felt and understood, e.g Murder and violence is bad, Cake on the other hand is good.
But it all rests on perception and what society has crafted into our minds and cultures over the ages.
Therefore the perception of good and evil depends on the one perceiving it. If you perceive something as good, then to you it is good. If you perceive something as evil, then to you it is evil. We can choose our own frame of reality or we can choose to follow the frame set by another in his perception of good and evil.
If we view the world in this way, what we see and feel is just it. Nothing more. Strip off any ideas about what is good and bad and therefore why has He deliberately created something ''good'' or ''bad'' in our lives.
This doesn't resolve the Divine Plan issue, but many non-Christian based faiths don't have this problem, so it sort of solves it for some. This makes an interesting read, though I just found it kind of.....amusing to have such blind faith so to say.
Things like tsunamis are tests for us humans. God doesnt "create" murderers. He creates humans. Humans have the choice to choose what they want. God, being the fact that he is God knows the choices you will make, but you have a degree of control. So you cant use the argument on judgement day saying "you created me to **** kids". Thats a choice you made.
i agree with what most people said here. but i have my own opinions too. i do think he creates humans and i do believe he knows if he will be bad or good. but... this is earth not heaven. i believe that god simply creates new life that can choose its path. i dont think god causes all the natural disasters. i think he barely does anything right now and just leaves us alone until the time we die (with a few exceptions maybe). also, since we are human we are not all knowing and we need to live life to learn. killing someone because it is obvious he will one day be bad wouldnt be fair to us as humans.
Things like tsunamis are tests for us humans. God doesnt "create" murderers. He creates humans. Humans have the choice to choose what they want. God, being the fact that he is God knows the choices you will make, but you have a degree of control. So you cant use the argument on judgement day saying "you created me to **** kids". Thats a choice you made.
Wrong, God is all knowing, he knew better.
i believe that god simply creates new life that can choose its path. i dont think god causes all the natural disasters.
You sound more like a deist then a religious person.
well... i do believe in the bible. but as for right now. i think he doesnt do alot except for the exceptions. i mean, if god is good and all knowing, he would just do miracles everyday and make earth the perfect place. but then there wouldnt be a heaven. so thats more logical to me.i believe god is fair but i think most people relise that life on earth isnt fair. so yeah...
You sound more like a deist then a religious person.
Well, it not like he can just deny that natural disasters have a scientific explanation. Since he knows this, theres no real reason to belive god does it.
nah... thats not the point. i can easily say that god made that scientific thing happen. its pretty easy. but then he wouldnt be good. so it doesnt work out
Let pretend you where a god. And you where all knowing.
A man who gonna kill his entire familly in a week.
He is on hes way home from work. You can choose to kill him in car accident now to prevent his entire familly get killed, or let him live.
What would you choose?
If you kill him now, then it means you killed a innocent man. If you dont kill him now, then it means his familly will get killed. If you kill him after he killed his familly, then it to late.
So just because you are all knowing, and can do anything. Doesnt mean you can make a better place. That why both heaven and hell exist.
Yes,but there's also option 4:Give the family a vision while sleeping so they can run away and avoid getting killed. But if you indeed were all-knowing and all-powerful,you wouldn't create a person that would think of killing his whole family in the first place. But,as someone already said,it's all a matter of perception about what's "right" and "good" and what is not.
If you got a dream about your dad killing you, would you run away?
you wouldn't create a person that would think of killing his whole family in the first place.
if you are all powerfull, then you would create something perfect. To something to be perfect, it need a free will. If it got a free will, then it up to the person to decide, what to do.
if your all powerful you can create something with free will that would be innocent. usually murdering is a decision but people usually have reasons unless they are metally ill (mentally ill people would be healthy in a perfect world and wouldnt murder). if someone stays innocent he wouldnt choose to kill even though he has free will.
besides this is a much easier K.O:
"can god create a rock he canot lift?
if he can he cant lift it. if he cant then he cant do something." :P
Wouldn't it take more energy to create something than to lift something? If god did create everything, that took WAY more time and energy than it would to lift a rock. Another question: Do you believe that god is an actual person? Or a spirit of some sort?
