Replying to Avatar Jeff Swann

A God that is all knowing & all powerful in some arbitrary sense that allows Him to do anything at any time, a God that can easily smite evil doers, would necessarily be responsible for allowing evil to exist & to go uncorrected. There would be good reason to hate such a being.

But if God is reality, or the underlying laws that bring reality into existence, then those who deny God are responsible for evil. And salvation would only be possible through knowledge & acceptance of God.

Both concepts of God could accurately be described as all knowing, all powerful, & infinite, but IMO only one of them makes any sense.
61
61bb909b... 2y ago

Good topic.

A syllogism:

If God is all-knowing, he knows about all evil.

If God is all powerful than he can stop all evil.

If God is maximally loving, he would want to stop all evil.

Evil exists.

Therefore a God who is all-knowing, all-powerful and/or all-loving does not exist.

The problem is that 2 and/or 3 aren’t necessarily true.

God cannot do illogical things (like make square circles or free robots). To have truly free humans existing, he can’t stop all evil.

Is it true that God would be unloving for allowing evil? A father who takes his kid to the dentist loves his child enough to allow pain for a greater good. So also, God may allow pain and suffering for a good reason.

This is the Christian story and I think it makes sense. So, yes, humans are responsible for evil because God can’t stop us without violating our free will or killing us all off.

See William Lane Craig’s work on the problem of evil. Here’s an intro:

https://youtu.be/k64YJYBUFLM?si=00IGQ6vRn9WefYJu

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Avatar
Jeff Swann 2y ago

The logic of "allowing pain & suffering for a good reason" requires one to treat people as some sort of collective blob where individuals don't matter. A good father does not allow his children to destroy themselves or to kill & rape & enslave each other. Those behaviors would be indications of a father's failure.

61
61bb909b... 2y ago

I don’t follow your blob comment.

The dentist analogy is just stating that a child with limited knowledge may think his father hates him for taking him to such a dreadful place. We are such small children. It’s perfectly logical to say that this argument is not necessarily valid because we don’t have all the counterfactuals as fallible humans. In other words, we think the dentist sucks, wait until all of our teeth rot out. The father cannot avoid the dentist. God cannot force humans to be perfect.

61
61bb909b... 2y ago

Furthermore, killing, rape, and enslavement are all just words for extreme sin. If God could have a good reason for allowing me to hit my finger with a hammer, I don’t know why he couldn’t use extreme evil and abuse for good also.

In fact I know many terrible stories where people, while not justifying their abusers, see that they had valuable lessons and could help others in the midst of their pain.

Avatar
Ike 2y ago

There's no way to help the ants in an ant farm without wrecking the whole thing