The problem of evil

The Problem of Evil

Proof that it is logically impossible for an all-powerful, all-loving and all-knowing being to exist in the presence of disasters and suffering like 9/11, babies getting cancer, the Holocaust, rapists brutally raping children, massive earthquakes killing thousands of people in Haiti, etc.

Christians often make the claim that God knows everything. If asked for specifics, they’ll say this includes knowledge about when and where a rapist will brutally rape a child or when and where the next major earthquake will hit. Christians also often make the claim God can do anything. If asked for specifics, they say this means he is capable of doing things like diverting a typhoon so it harmlessly dissipates over the ocean, causing a car to break down, causing a sword to disappear into thin air. Christians also often make the claim that God loves everyone. If asked for specifics, they’ll say this means things like God doesn’t want for the families of children who get cancer to suffer and that God doesn’t want for children to get brutally raped.

While we all my dispute what “evil” means, we can all agree that things like genocide, ISIS attacks, destructive tsunamis, destructive tornadoes, the Holocaust, babies getting cancer and mass shootings at schools do occur. For the purposes of this essay, these are examples of “evil”.

Given the specifics Christians have provided about their God, we can conclude the following three things:

  1. If God can do anything and knows everything, then he must not love us enough to want to prevent things like 9/11, babies getting cancer or destructive earthquakes killing 200,000 people in Haiti.

  2. If God can do anything and loves everyone, then he must not know about the ISIS terrorist who is about to blow up a subway station, the rapist who is about to brutally rape a child or the typhoon which is about to slam into the coast of the Philippines and kill tens of thousands of people.

  3. If God knows everything and loves everyone, then he must be incapable of preventing things like the Holocaust, the Boxing Day Tsunami or any of the mass shootings at schools.

In an attempt to reconcile this, Christians will resort to one of a number of arguments. One common argument is that God needs to allow evil to accomplish a greater moral purpose. This argument fails, as it suggests if God does prevent the evil occurrence, then somehow that would deem him impotent with respect to accomplishing a greater moral purpose. Since we’re talking about a god which can do anything, such a response would be a straw man. Another common argument is that God will not interfere with man’s free will. Again, this argument fails, as in cases like babies getting cancer or a typhoon wiping out tens of thousands of people, no one’s free will is violated. Furthermore, a god which can do anything would be able to prevent a rapist from brutally raping a child without interfering with the rapist’s free will and would be able to prevent an ISIS terrorist from chopping off the head of an innocent westerner without interfering with the terrorist’s free will.

What can we conclude from this? That we know with 100% certainty that a God which can do anything, knows everything and loves everyone does not exist.

Yo dog. God like, works in mysterious ways and his plan is incomprehensible to our feeble, human minds because we’re sinners and all that. How arrogant of you to assume you can deconstruct the psychology of God. Even worse…who are you to decide what’s good and what’s evil? Are you God?

??

You seem to have a problem with our friend doing exactly what scriptures tell him to do.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good.

Have you not followed that good biblical advice?

If not, why not?

And if you have, why chastise our friend for being a better follower of scriptural wisdom than you seem to be.

Have you even read your bible?

Regards
DL

I have no problem with evil.

Here is an old O.P. I wrote to try to convey why evil, in a real sense, is quite good for us.

Gnostic Christianity’s hidden in plain sight secret. We must do evil.

Given evolution and evil, is the Gnostic Christian myth more intelligent than the Christian myth?
The Gnostic Christian myth explains evil quite nicely as compared to what Christianity has produced.

Doing evil must have conscious volition. In law, they call that idea, mens rea. It is the cornerstone of secular and religious law and shows guilt and the knowledge that one is doing evil to another. When present, that is the only time sin can be applied to mankind.

Gnostic Christians posit an evil God, Yahweh, because of his creation of the evolutionary system in place. This system forces us to do evil to others when we win competitions. We must compete to survive and thrive. We must do evil and that is why we see Yahweh as evil. In a more modern sense, not so much evil as a necessary evil. In the Gnostic Christian view, this allows hope that there is another God above Yahweh that might have a better system that excludes that evil. Yahweh then is just our idea of a system we do not like for it’s evils, and we actually hope to be wrong in our evaluation of reality.

Do you recognize that you must do evil to survive and that the Gnostic Christian myth is a better way to explain evil than the Christian myth does?

Regards
DL

As an ex nihilist and atheist the discussion of evil or good revolves around idealism in the construction of historical societal norms in evaluating destructive behaviors through enforcement of human authority. It’s as simple as that, no God is necessary. There is of course some grey areas in that what some view as evil others do not and sometimes under extreme circumstances violence or destructive forms of behavior become necessary for survival. (End justifies the means.) Morality and ethics are very elastic or fluid constantly changing with revaluations or revisionisms, they never remain the very same for long adapting/changing as circumstances of environment evolves. (As humans and societies evolve or devolve.)

What was good social practice of yesterday might be considered evil and malicious tomorrow, vice versa. All of this we can say morality or ethics is a circumstantial, historical, and imperfect phenomena but nonetheless a necessary component of maintaining social order.

Good post.

Regards
DL

Another explanation is that the creator of mankind is finite in powers even though he created mankind and wanted us to fare well.

If we need evil to fare well, then it is more good for us than evil for us. Right?

Regards
DL

If it is good for everybody, it no longer qualifies as evil.

Is it evil to steal to respect your parents?

Is it evil to kill those who force people to not keep the sabbath day holy?

Is it evil to lie about not worshipping false idols?

These are pressing questions that need answers, right now!

In canada we dont worship books.

It would to the losers of the competitions, but if they recognize the necessity, I agree that they should see more good in evolution than the evil that comes to losers.

Regards
DL

I am surprised you would need someone else to answer those simple questions for you.

Regards
DL

Hmm. We do have our right wing loonies just as they do in most countries.

I wonder if whoever designed the loony was thinking of those for the human loonies.

Regards
DL

Commandment 5 (sometimes 4): Honour your father and mother, u sinner!
In case you want to challenge the difference between honour and respect, just switch the terms in my original question.
Do you violate this commandment or 8/7: thou shalt not steal?

Commandment 4 (sometimes 3): Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
How are you supposed to do this if people are preventing you?
Of course, they could still be remembering the Sabbath day even if they’re forced not to keep it holy, but what if their brain was interfered with to disrupt this capacity to remember?
Do you violate this commandment or 6/5: thou shalt not kill?

Yes, and commandment 2 (sometimes 1) says thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.
In case you want to dispute making graven images and worshiping false idols then as before, just switch the terms in the original question.
Do you violate this commandment or 9/8: thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour?

You seem to have missed the point behind my trolly post, which I put together with little thought in a matter of seconds that was simply to ask “is it evil to violate one commandment for another?”

You say there’s no compulsion in religions? How do you reconcile this with ten commandments? Commandments that are not compulsory? You’re ordered to uphold all these things but really it’s just a guide?
You might say that some commandments are more important than others, that killing is more evil than making a graven image, but if so surely the less evil one is still evil to break? The lesser of two evils is still evil.

I skimmed you saying something about evil being inherent in religion, and I was glibly making the same point as inherent in even its most fundamental and widely known set of rules: the ten commandments.

None of you ignorant ones has read even the first chapter of the Bible.
The problems began with the discernment of good and evil. The tree of knowledge from which Eve was tempted to eat the fruits.

What “we” since see as “evil” is tribulation.

“Beyond Good and Evil”;
the restoration of the garden.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqLdDKy2XUQ[/youtube]

What happens, when an “evil” deed is done upon you?
You become more aware of your soul.

“Wy was this done to me?” You are forced to ask.

If you do not ask this, it will happen again, and again, and again -
if you simply judge and dismiss as “evil” the person that did the deed, such deeds will come upon you again and again, like Israelis upon Palestinians until they heed the “evil” in their own hears, which means their violence, their will to live, their will to dance in the holy spectacle - like the Jews learned from the what was inflicted upon them by nazis and now are dancing every Sabbath-eve these days.

Heed, ye lame ones
Heed your life-force, cultivate the fire that shines from your eyes, and so you will ward off evil-doers.

I will ignore your semantics just as you ignore answering my question.

I do not steal anymore. :laughing:

I do not follow the filthy commandments, but Jesus himself answers the question you put when he said that the Sabbath was created for man and not man for the Sabbath. IOW, we can ignore it should we choose to.

Seriously? Ok.

That would be as mean, cruel and abusive as what this link shows.

youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac

I do not kill anymore. :laughing:

I speak of lies and you speak of idols??

I do not lie anymore. :laughing:

First. They are lousy commandments and not worth following as written.

Second. All moral issues are subjective and to follow a command that goes against ones moral sense is the thing to do.

As you can see below, that is not what I said.

I said. — Have you not heard that there is no compulsion in religions? Or so religions tell us even as they use Inquisitions and Jihads.

First. The first pat is a question and not a statement.

Second, do you not spot the cynicism dripping off of the second sentence?

As you can read above, I do not have to reconcile anything. I just needed to adjust how you read.

Not to Christian dogma that says break any commandment and you end in hell. Be it a small lie, lusting even just mentally after a woman or murder; all get you thrown into hell.

[/quote]
I do not recall implying that evil was inherent in religion but would agree that that is the case for most of our mainstream religions. They are idol worshipers and I see that as evil.

I do not see anything evil in Gnostic Christianity. If I did, I am free to rid my ideology of it or just seek a new ideology or religion.

Regards
DL

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-QIH87SbNk[/youtube]

I have read all of the bible.

So you have taken it upon yourself to rename the tree of knowledge of good and evil to the tree of knowledge of good and tribulation.

What you see as tribulation/evil, your Exusltet hymn calls Adam’s sin a happy fault and necessary to God’s plan.

That follows the older Jewish interpretation that is superior to0 yours and that is possibly why Gnostic Christians also see Eden as our place of elevation and not the fall that Christianity stupidly put to us becoming as Gods in the knowing of good and evil.

Now if you can tell us you think Christianity reversed the moral of that myth to a fall while calling Adam’s sin a happy fault and necessary to God’s plan, then you will have something worth hearing.

Regards
DL

But not with attention, perhaps.

I did no such thing, you are thus a liar.

My what?

You know nothing, and you know it not.

If, if, if.

Many regards.