(this is a response comment to dug from chinaparace.blogspot.com that was to big to fit there, and contains to much effort to be soley wasted on him. he has a good sense of humour and a character that is easy to pick on by bullies like me, and he does raise excellent questions, and i frequent his blog often.)
You are referring to an argument that C.S. lewis wrote about in his book, "The Problem of Pain". it goes something like this:
If God were good, he would want his creatures to be happy.
If God were powerful, he would have the ability to make his creatures happy.
I am not Happy. Other creatures are not happy.God is either not good, or not all powerful.
everything comes down to free will, as i will try to demonstrate
What you say by "There is more evil than good." from a social science perspective is that people choose evil over good. alternatively, from a physical scientist' standpoint , that nature itself is evil in the sense that hurricanes, tornadoes, and volcanoes kill people who do not deserve it compared to people who do deserve it. i would like to save the latter for a later time, dismissing it quickly by the christian belief that nature itself was perverted by the fall of man into sin.(dodged that one) we will focus on evil as any choice that is not good.
But why Does God not remove evil with his power? I am almost sure the following statement is an original which hasnt been disproven yet,but it is based closely on CS Lewis' view, and may be plagerized. i would much rather have heard it somewhere else so i could not exclude these doubts about it. please comment below if you know this to be written by anyone credible so i can remove this stupid paragraph about who wrote what. Also tell me if it is false, because i will correct it in the face of any convincing argument or, much more preferably, a Biblical passage.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/evil.html#LULJBABnN3bA is a good place to go in depth for the skeptics with KJV Bibles, as evil was a synonym for disaster. please read before sending me a passage.
In the same way that a shadow is "created" by obstructing a light, God shows us there is evil where ever his goodness is obstructed, he did not need to "create" evil because the desire to make obstructions come from the the hearts of all fallen men and beings. So in the unbelievable light of God's goodness, we make evil shadow puppets. Take away these desires and you contaminate a person's free will, as i will address later. He certainly is able, but does not seem willing to do what we think is best. The real question is, "how can God make us happy while keeping our free will intact along with an accurate concept of evil". any limiting of our free will or ability to conceive evil would be like taking a part of our brain out of our body, it is destructive, not constructive. If we had a computer with free will, it would be much easier to strip the software that allows it to be into a state without it. If you think about it, that is what happens to a body in death. we need to remember that the way in which free will was forced upon us in the same way the mind is forced to live within the brain, it simply could not exist in any other way. That is not to say the soul could not exist outside of the body. the soul is like a three dimensional object sitting on a sheet of ice facing down. it could be picked up and moved, but how could you explain this feeling to something that has only ever slid back and forth? It is not conceivable to it in its natural environment. i am about to comment on your first post at the end of this. but back to the "real question". How would you like God to make life less evil, without removing free will? I'd love to hear suggestions from you but i'll offer some i've heard.
Take away the evil choices.
by doing this, he is creating an environment in which there is no ability to choose, a person who chooses put in an environment without choice, in is like being an active mind in a parapalegic's body. Is he a saint because he does not beat his wife? He may be good, but is he good for such reasons that he has no choice in? Even if he desired to beat her, he still could not.
Correct evil choices.
If God corrected evil choices no choice would have consequences, but without consequences how would we know when we have done wrong? The most immediate satisfaction would be the one always chosen, and who could blame them? Raping someone in the office would result in no greater harm to her than holding a door open for her. Any person who has met such a victim knows this is not the case, and the evil of the action is shown by the consequential years of trauma and fear. In this respect we are lucky to know that what we may do is evil based on sources not from God's word. Imagine dying and realizing God was sending you to hell because of actions you had no idea were wrong. We are to judge a deed by it's consequences the same way we judge a man by his actions. All actions are judged by their consequences, murderers get executed, robbers pay back what they owe through years of their lives. it comes down to either paralyzing people's ability to choose or removing right and wrong altogether. The first goes against God's design for us, the second is a false representation of what he knows.
in addition, what most people want should be phrased "take away the cosequences of my bad choices"
Take back my bad choices. to take back choices that were false seems like a good idea, just let people make the mistake then let them learn from it, make the same decision, but should people be given an infinite amount of "take backs" until they get the right answer? I am reminded of a multiple choice gamme i plyed in gradeschool that involved teams. if the team that chose A got it wrong the next would say B, then C and so on. but does this show our intelligence, we were destined to get it right one of the times, so we had only an illusion of intelligence. in the same way we would be given only the illusion of free choice if we were dstined to get it right some time.
Provide only innocent choices.
This is how God created us to be in the Garden of eden, with only one, single wrong option to make. Some may argue that it is impossible for us to have existed perfectly forever because, given enough time we would have chose the wrong decision, like the mentioned kids in school. This is what he wants to restore us to in heaven.
God could have us perpetually wandering the earth wondering what type of ice cream we should have, and one day we would choose vanilla, the next chocolate, and randomly choosing between things without evil consequences. God would watch us and be amused, laughing and chuckling with us like a senile old grandfather, not caring one way or another. Theoretically we could exist like this, our free will would be satisfied, but God did not design us to do this, and God's first priority is not what type of ice cream you like, or what shirt you will wear, and God is not a senile old grandfather.He wants a relationship with his creation, he wanted that and indulged in it while he walked the earth with Adam. the relationship he had in mind when he made us was one of intimacy, but we desired to be better than him. Now He wants a straight answer, Will you love Me and follow My commands? everything created by definition as a purpose, every painting, hammer, toy, paper, or any other creation is designed to do what the master wants it to do. if you don't believe me, just try to think of one thing, just one thing, that you have made that had no purpose, whether to provide amusement, pass time, get a good grade,get a mediocre grade, get any grade better than a zero... if you think of one let me know, but if you cannot, it seems pretty good evidence that our creator wants us to serve a purpose.
this last paragraph goes a little off track, thinking of removing it, but just in case it helps someone...
if we are not created, then i don't know what to believe, but i can not believe that a creature with free will has an advantage over a creature that does every decision off instinct. i cannot understand how an animal that thinks twice before mating could ever be more productive than an animal that will hop on top based on instinct. if we are the heirs of the most successfully reproducing members of our species, then we should become more sexual each generation. and because we should be the at least the billionth generation, we should have been blatantly sexual creaturesfor the entire existence of humanity.
almost this whole post is based off of the book i mentioned earlier, "The Problem of Pain"-CS Lewis. Doug, i'll lend it to you if you'll read it
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Its dug, not Doug. I don't want to keep debating this issue all the time, but I just want you to realize one thing. Every argument used to try and solve "the problem of evil" can be used just as effectively to argue the existence of an all powerful, all evil god. Imagine another planet, very similar to ours, with inhabitants that believe that everything was created by and ruled by an all powerful, all evil god. You visit this planet, and have a philosophical discussion with its inhabitants. "How can you believe in an all evil god when there is so much good in the world?" you ask. "If he is all powerful, he would surely get rid of all this good."
ReplyDeleteThey answer that god gave them free will, and that they are free to do good if they please. This explains why socially, there is so much benevolence amongst humans in such an evil world.
"But how do you explain all the natural good in the world, like beautiful sunsets, and flowers, and warm breaths of spring? Wouldn't an all evil god not allow for such things in nature? These things don't need freewill to exist, so why is there so much good in the world?"
They answer that because of adam and eve's original righteous act committed in the newly created perfectly evil world ruined it for everybody, and made nature have some good in it too.
In a world with some good and some evil, socially and naturally, these arguments really prove no more the existence of an all good God than an all evil god. However, I still believe the argument from design is a valid argument, just not valid for arguing about God's goodness.
oh and you might ask why an evil god would give us free will, as only a good God would do so. This evil god did not want us to do evil and follow him blindly like robots, but choose to do evil. By giving us free will, this evil god actually increases the amount of suffering (just how others say the good God actually increases goodness with freewill) in the world because along with freewill comes the frustration of temptation and the agonizing feeling of guilt.
ReplyDelete"what if they did the opposite of what we did". This is possible only for actions have a single physical action that accomplishes the opposite, which none do. if the opposite of going to school is not going to school, there are infinite ACTIONS that would accomplish this. Dying and choosing not to go are both could both be the opposite of going to school , but anything can only have one opposite. love hate. good bad. add subtract. also, you want to say they do what WE THINK is wrong, a one sided flip or reflection, but make the fatal assumption that it does not affect their philosophy. but how could EVERYTHING reverse, without their philosphy changing? you are then forced into saying that philosophy is not a thing, wjhich implies it is nothing, which can be easily disproven. "WE say right is right, wrong is wrong, but neither can be both", but imagine listening to them:"Wrong is right,right is Wrong. But if i say X is wrong, because X is right, then what is to stop me from saying X is right because it is wrong. and if i say that x is right because because it is wrong... repeating itself into eternity. every circumstance has a single action that is absolutely correct. if you want meet some man, you should shake his hand. you may say that there is a more right action than simply shaking a hand, maybe he would like a hug, maybe he is armless, or does not want to be touched. but there are infinite actions that fall within the allowed greeting. like the number of points on a single closed line segment on a graph that describes the margin of error for a political election. But what if you scream in his face, act like a chicken, You could do infinitely more actions that are not acceptable. like taking that straight line segment we used, and stretching in and turning it into a plane. If right decisions exist as the surface of a liquid then wrong decisions exist as the liquid beneath.
ReplyDeleteI agree with pretty much everything you said. But I don't know how what you said is supposed to make it more reasonable to believe in an all good God rather than an all evil god. It comes down to this: without any preconception of God's moral character, how can you look at a world with both good and bad in it, and conclude that an all good God made it? You're arguments can be used to "prove" the existence of an all evil god, and I think I have successfully shown that. Even if you don't think I have successfully shown that, you must admit that the issue is not clear at all. What I mean is that it isn't absolutely obvious that God is all good. You could say that it is just as reasonable to believe in an all good God than it is to believe in a morally neutral creator of physical laws type God. If you agree that both sides are equally as reasonable, what makes choosing to believe in the latter type of God punishable by an eternity in Hell in many Christians' eyes? Most believers in this type of God don't accept that the doctrine of Jesus is true, and according to most evangelicals, this is exactly what will happen to them (burn in hell, forever). If you can just tell me that believing in an all good God is just as reasonable, if not less reasonable, than believing in a morally neutral God that established the physical laws, I will be happy.
ReplyDeletecreate light, and you must allow shadow.
ReplyDeletecreate darkness, and you dont have to allow light.
if you were sitting in a cave, you would be completely surrounded by darkness, you could not see any light.
if you were to sit on the equator, bathed in sun light brighter than any other place on earth, the contrast of your shadow would appear darker than anywhere else.
why would a god who could create an all evil universe, also decide to create light? If God Wanted this life to be bad he could make sure of it.
have you ever heard the phrase
"love to love things and you will love things,
love to hate things and you will hate things,
hate to hate things, and you will love things."
This childish phrase proves the illogicallity of hatred towards everything, and that a mixture of love and hate brings hate.
and the logicallity of the ability to love everything.
if you say that this is only the scheming of a languafe system, consider math.
(+)*(+)=(+)
(+)*(-)=(-)
(-)*(-)=(+) if none of these arguments change your mind about the ability an of evil god, i dont know what else to say. i will address the issue of a neutral god next post.
I dont want to get stuck on the metaphor. Lets instead use the words good and evil for light and dark, respectively. Create goodness, and you must allow evil, if I can translate your first sentence as such. I don't agree with this. Your favorite food does not taste good because many other things taste bad, that is ridiculous. I'm sure it is possible that there is one person out there who thinks every food is good, and doesnt need to taste dog crap for him to be sure he really likes all the other stuff. I realize this is a metaphor and may not exactly be the same type of "goodness" were talking about. So ditching that example, don't you think there could be a world where everything is good, even without evil present with which to compare it? I certainly think so.
ReplyDeletenext you say, if i can translate, that if you create evil, you don't have to create good. I think this is true. And I also think it fits perfectly with the revision of your first sentence: if you create good, you really dont have to create evil, which I have shown.
This shows, again, that both an all evil god and an all good God have equal probability of existing according to the responses you gave to The Problem of Evil argument.
you're absolutely right. i should have said:
ReplyDelete"create complete light, and a possible distorter(us) and you allow for the possible creation of a shadow." but
"create complete darkness, and a possible distorter(us), and you will have darkness complete unaffected by any distorting efforts"
as for the metaphor, if God did not claim to be light, it would be invalid, but because he says he is, if you disprove it you win! the bible constantly talks about being like light, and if you are being confused it may be because it is the opposite of the 50-50 shot mentality you possess. instead of altering a valid argument, maybe it's possible you should alter your mindset.
"don't you think there could be a world where everything is good, even without evil present with which to compare it?"- you describing heaven
I had considered your question like a psychic and had written on it in my original blog. but to reword to almost unfailable,
1)"free will in areas of good and evil is a fundamental part of life on this physical earth(before heaven or hell), given to us and established by God",
Is this disputed? i would like to hear an argument disproving it.
2)god wants us happy.
Jesus died for us to be saved, so he must want us happy. but it requires choice of free will. combine these two together and you get:"how can God make us happy while keeping our free will intact along with an accurate concept of evil",
By only addressing one question at a time we would prove nothing.
1)x is a number less than 10
2)x is even
if i say "x is 5, x is ten", then because i have not respected the full premise created by both requirements my statement relative to the premise is false. if i know the premise to be true, then i have found the truth. have only offered examples of god giving free will OR happiness when in order to progress we need to look at both at once. if a solution to the latter denies the first, it is not true.
and under the last purple heading,"provide only good choices" read the sections again (if you had read them at all). God wants us to make big decisions, because they are necessary for him to know we love him.
By stating there is no need to eat dogcrap on our world, are'nt you saying they should eat it on their's? that is after all the nature of opposites...
"you can distort a right answer, it turns wrong. the affect you have had is visible and destructive and reverses the original outcome."
eg. Man eats food. ->Man eats old food.
original outcome=healthy
distorted outcome=sick
-distortion obvious and effective
"you can distort a wrong answer, but it was already wrong. so the change has no reversing affect."
eg. Man eats old food.->Man eats older food.
original outcome=sick
distorted outcome=sick
-distortion not obvious or effective, only extent of sickness changes.
But why not say,
A. Man eats old food.->B. Man eats food.
to restore old food to food is impossible without a very particular temperature, other ingredients. if you recook it, you kill the bacteria, but this is not the natural way things progress and is a restoration of order. Law of entropy states that anything is exponentially more likely to go into a state of disorder than into a state of order, which means that there are far more ways to bo rong then right. if this right and wrong in this world world were 50-50 the liklihood of a house falling down and a broken house building itself would be identical
You continue to think of life as a multiple choice test with anwers Good or Bad as equally likely, when really it is an open question with infinite possible answers.
ReplyDelete"if your answer is wrong, then only its opposite is possible"-false
"if your answer is wrong, then all other answers are possibly right, but only one is absolutely right" -truth
also if light had the ability to obscure (as darkness does), then darkness would have to be able to expose (as light does). and if you have done this, you have simply taken the name "light" and replaced it with the name "darkness". to quote shakespeare: would not rose by any other name smell just as sweet?
if you cannot accept that evil and good behave functionally, and not just linguistically, different i dont see how you would distinguish between the two. you are correct to simply write good for light and evil for dark, i just use physical examples that God uses for a testable basis on his perfection.
I read everything you said. Its obvious we don't agree on the whole light/dark issue. I don't think God was calling himself a beam of photons when he referred to himself as "light". If it's not a metaphor, then how could God have created light on the first day? Did he create himself? It makes no sense, really lets not talk about the light thing anymore, we wont go anywhere.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I was attempting to show you is that, plain and simple, it is just as reasonable, if not significantly less reasonable, to believe in an all good, all just, all powerful God than to believe in a Creator of the physical laws who set the universe into motion. You dodged my question about hell earlier. I need you to address this. Many Christians believe that, since most of the believers in this latter type of God do not except the doctrine of Jesus as truth, they will be sent to hell. Please answer me, am I right about this? If a person who has been revealed the "truth" that God exists, how are they supposed to know which monotheistic religion's god to believe in? Let's say a person believes in God and not Jesus, and the worst thing she has done is say stolen a candy bar, or lied to her parents more than a few times. Let's say the person is 18 and just beginning to start college and is killed by a drunk driver while crossing the street. Would the Christian God send her to hell?
Most evangelical Christians, I know from experience, will say that a person like this would be sent by God to rot and burn in excruciating pain for an eternity in hell. Any religion that states this is not worth practicing, and any God who would flaunt his powers by making innocent people like this suffer for eternity is not worth worshiping and is most certainly not worth calling Good or Just. If you can not agree with me, I don't want to debate the issue anymore.
i agree with you, doug. and, to quote thomas jefferson himself:
ReplyDelete"christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man."
i'm sorry i got to this argument so late. that is all.
your idea of justice is based on the amount of sinful decisions people make(correct?).
ReplyDeleteIf you were holding a clicker that would save from death either Joe-a man who has always lived in poverty, giving all of his extra money to starving people, and only sinned once in his life- or your own mother,-who you have seen sin over and over again and who spends alot of money on herself while knowing that people in Africa are starving- and you had to save one, who would it be? I would choose the one i loved, how about you? If you save your mother, then at that moment, your relationship with her is the most important factor in your decision, joe's and her sin has nothing to do with it. Your decision would be evil according to YOUR belief in complete justice, so your beliefs and actions wouldn't add up.
If we are made in God's image, why cant He make a decision based on similar deliberations? God is not a cosmic adding machine counting every time we curse, or lie, he does not just accept those who make 51% good decisions (as the Koran says he does). He is a person, a loving person, and love is not earned or deserved, but given and accepted as a gift.
You don't think of a Father in heaven, for would a perfect father destroy his son, even if his son deserved it? Isn't a father's love shown through being merciful?
you think of an impartial judge who you have to sway to your side, which is impossible to do bacause you are wrong.
if christianity were about giving people what they deserved, everyone would be sent to hell, that even goes for the girl that did less sin than most christians and died in the crash.
I do not like this fact, I wish i could know everyone goes to heaven regardless of relatonship with God.
i agree with Jefferson, i dont know why God would loves us any more than know why my mother loves me. We dont earn it, and anyone who tries will come up painfully, infinitely short.
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ReplyDeleteI quote "if christianity were about giving people what they deserved, everyone would be sent to hell". In effect, you just said EVERYONE deserves to burn in hell for AN ETERNITY. Hitler deserves the same horrid punishment as a three year old girl who dies of brain cancer. HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT AS UNJUST? There is something wrong with your moral standards and I simply cannot carry on an intelligent debate with you any longer.
ReplyDeleteI could do a much better job of being god if God is really how you describe him.
doug, i love you.
ReplyDeleteeddie, you're a great debater, and i respect you for your intelligence. but if you can't agree with me that this is unjust, then we cant debate this topic anymore, because i'll never agree with you on that point.
ReplyDeleteIf you had to choose to punish hitler and punishing osama bin laden, you might say, "Hitler","Osama", but you might wonder "why not both"? why should the two worst people on earth be compared to eachother as a standard of right and wrong? they are both deserving death compared to any person in the world who never killed anyone in spite. It does not matter which of them did more bad, because the PENALTY FOR killing Three-thousand and killing six million deserves the same punishment. Hitler killed Thousands of times more people than osama bin laden did, but they both deserve the same fate. How is that fair? should we let osama go because he is not AS GUILTY?
ReplyDeleteif you think that osama and hitler deserve the same fate with a difference of millions of murders, then you must also believe that there are certain sins which are evil enough that quantity does not make a difference. a single murderer deserves the same fate of a triple murderer. but who is to know what sins are evil or not? I belive it is God.
ReplyDeleteis a single lie as bad as a thousand lies? who is to say it is not? a person who lies? isnt that hypocritical?
Your opinions are formed by everyone you see, without thoughts of how a perfect person would see it. The world does not revolve around what we think is right or wrong, but what is right or wrong. the self centered mentality is not true if we are not the center.The way you look at murder is the way God looks at masturbation, or lying. until you realize that you are not the center of the universe you will not ever understand.