God and evil

[freedom13]

freefallife Ok, so satan created evil. Who created satan?? God did. God created evil!

Since, you don't believe there is no God. I don’t need to answer the question whether or not God created evil. You make that answer very clear in your following quote...

Freefallife Yes, I am indeed an atheist. The presence of so much pain and suffering in a world surrounded by an extremely violent universe is one reason I can not believe that it was created by a perfect loving being that wants nothing but the best for us. No, I don't believe god created anything, let alone evil. But IF he exists, which is the belief that I am challenging, then he created superfluous pain and suffering in the world. It is a paradox of christian theism that in 2000 years has never been explained to any degree of satisfaction.

You just proved my point. I'm done here. Good luck! I mean so long...

[freefallife]

Quote by: freedom13 Since, you don't believe there is no God. I don’t need to answer the question whether or not God created evil. You make that answer very clear in your following quote... You just proved my point. I'm done here. Good luck! I mean so long...

Maybe you don't get it. The existance of superfluous evil is one of my ways of challenging YOUR beliefs. Starting with the hypothesis that if there WAS a god. Who knows, if you could convince me that there was a reason for newborn still-births, of gross deformities, or any of the other seemingly senceless sufferings of humankind, you might swing my favor to the theistic standpoint. But I know the reality of the situation. You can't explain it, you can't justify the existance of so much suffering in the world, so you're going to bail out. Typical theist. I was expecting the cop out "god works in mysterious ways", but quitting is just as notable.

[Winter wind]

Freefallife

I'm taking a different approach then my friends.

If you have a moment, could you please respond to this post.

God and evil

If you find it to be similar to the other's argument, please tell me how.

[Kuldeep]

Quote by: freefallife Sorry, trying to justify evil with something as unsupported as reincarnation is just not going to fly. That is unless you have some solid evidence of any individual that has been reincarnated.

One such person lives even in our own city !!

[Morality Games]

But unless one such set of evidence exists in your city too, it doesn't do anyone much good.

[freefallife]

sorry for not responding, it just seemed to me that we had covered this.

Quote by: Winter wind As simple as possible. I'm a fairly well of child. So when I go to...let's say...inner Mongolia for a few days, the standard of living is much less then what I'm used to. So when I come back, the shower is five times nicer, the food five times tastier, and the beds five times softer.

Once again, the differeing levels of individual human suffering does in no way justify the existance of evil at all, which is the point of this thread. We seem to be getting a bit off track. I know that people suffer differently, but why suffer so much.

However, let's imagine I take one of the families from inner Mongolia back with me. To someone who has experienced luxury in a much lesser quantity then I, the atmosphere is much nicer. To someone who has rarely had a warm shower, the concept is much nicer then my simple return to luxury. There is a difference between someone who has experienced pain once and someone who has experienced pain more often and that appreciation of pleasure. It takes more then once.

I hope you can see how this doesn't justify the existance of evil in the first place.

The reason we suffer in different quantities is that we are all different. When faced with a choice of making everything the same and making everything different, but unequal, I go for different. Just because it is more interesting when people are different. However, this unfortunately means that some people are going to have a different amounts of suffering in life and a different amount of suffering they start out with. The cost of having a great verity in life is that life ends up being unfair. Now the question is can you make people different, yet make their suffering and pleasure equal. I think otherwise, because there is more kinds of pain and pleasure then one. To make all levels of pain and pleasure the same would probably make us far too similar. But, maybe not, so if you could post a metaphor, it would help me think and put this into context.

See above.

Because, again, without pain, pleasure is undefined, or the most extreme pain will simply be redefined as the absents of pleasure.

And, again, that doesn't explain why there is so MUCH suffering.

If we are all guilty of original sin, then why not simply have an angel sharply slap all of us accross the face each morning as we wake up? There you go. We would all suffer equally...we would know what pain was. Problem solved. There is no reason for the death of innocent children.

If someone is getting beat up in the street and you see this, yet do nothing, is that good? Is that the best you can be?

Now you are changing the paramaters of the situation. Interestingly, it only helps my argument. We agree that this would be bad (evil). To sit idle while someone was suffering. And yet God does it every single day. He sits idle and watches us suffer the pains and horrors that he created, hears our pleas for help and listens to our screams, and does nothing to lessen them, no matter how innocent the victim may be. He causes the suffering of innocent newborn children and feble old men. Accross the spectrum of humanity, the evil he caused is felt, and he sits idle. Tornados destroy a neighborhood of trailer homes killing dozens, and he sat idle. He sits idle as powerful hurricanes wreak havoc on an enite coastline. An earthquake and subsequent tsunami kills 227,898 and displaces 1.7 million people in 14 countries, and he sat idle as he watched those helpless thousands being swept away by enomous walls of water.

So, why ask me if I am good if I watch someone suffer when there was something I could do about it? A reasonable man should ask why a supposedly omnipotent god does the same with no apparent justification.

The neighbor is "good" by your standards, but in my standard he is average, because he neither helps nor hinders anyone. Good is having a positive effect on your surroundings.

So, if he only threw only 1 loud party a year (say on his birthday) he would be considered somewhat below average and therefore evil?

[freefallife]

Quote by: Kuldeep One such person lives even in our own city !!

No way!! Awsome!!

Now prove it.

[wyoguy]

Paul covered this well in his letter to the Christians in Rome.....

Romans 9: 14-24

What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.” Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

So.... next Thanksgiving, when you carve the turkey and pray to the scientific community thanking them for all they have magnanimously, selflessly, benevolently given to the world.... you can reflect upon the words of wyoguy and ponder not that evil exists in this world, but it does not reign supreme, all for the sake of God's elect.

[Jack]

Watching the news lately, what with child molestation, murder and other "evil" acts performed by those who consider themselves god's elect, I don't see where they've made much effort to keep evil in check.

[freefallife]

Quote by: wyoguy So.... next Thanksgiving, when you carve the turkey and pray to the scientific community thanking them for all they have magnanimously, selflessly, benevolently given to the world.... you can reflect upon the words of wyoguy and ponder not that evil exists in this world, but it does not reign supreme, all for the sake of God's elect.

What are you, Calvinist? God's elect?? What in the world has your preaching got to do with the justification of evil? Nothing. Don't preach to me and please try to stick to the topic.

[JLrep]

Quote by: freefallife And what does sin have to do with natural disasters? Even the most pious of people can have their church blown apart by a tornado while the most vile can live their entire lives without such suffering. If all this is a punishment for sin, then one has to attempt to explain why innocent newborn children suffer. So what is it? If its all because of sin, why suffer the newborn child?

Because newborn children are sinful. They are not innocent. Whether or not they commit any overt sins, they are born of sinful parents and tainted by original sin.

The human race decided to sin, and so the human race suffers.

Quote by: freefallife Yes, I get what your saying, but you are not providing any SUPPORT for it.

If you get what I'm saying, why have you spent the past seven pages either misunderstanding or ignoring me?
I don't see how my support will clear things up. My support is my faith. You don't share my faith, but, the debate is justifying the existence of evil within a certain theistic framework, not proving or disproving that framework.

Quote by: freefallife Im sorry, but good is indeed subjective. What may bring a masive amount of pleasure to you may affect me less profoundly. Evil is the exact same. What may cause you immense pain, may not effect me as quite a disaterous. They are both subjective descriptions of a human experience. Lets say we both experience the loss of our familly dog. This experience might cause you great pain (evil), while it might not cause me as much distress. So, pain and suffering is subjective and evil is a description of an experience, in this case the loss of a family pet. Now lets say that we both go to a football game. We are cheering for opposing teams. your team wins the game, mine loses. You might consider that a great game, while I might not. So, pleasure is also subjective and it is a description of an experience, in this case a football game. While those examples may be oversimplified, I think with a moment of contemplation, you could apply it to any amount of evil or good experienced by individuals to any number of different experiences. The bottom line is that evil and good both exist and are subjective descriptions of a human experience, as I have shown. There is my support.

So, pleasure is subjective, and pain, and suffering, all of which are effects of evil or good, or are shaped by evil or good, but which are not themselves evil or good. Must I keep repeating myself? Experiences are composed of moments and events and people and places and things and other things which are more or less quantifiable.

Good and evil are subjective when your viewpoint stops with this world; if I kill a man because I dislike him and my neighbor executes a condemned man, then I killed sinfully (evil) while my neighbor killed righteously (good). But the reality is not that we've done the same thing, but we've done the exact opposite: I have disobeyed God's command, and my neighbor has obeyed it (by fulfilling his duty as an executioner). The two actions are objectively and entirely different.

Quote by: freefallife I will tell you this, under the definition of good, it does not say "see god"

Duly noted.

[Jack]

Because newborn children are sinful. They are not innocent. Whether or not they commit any overt sins, they are born of sinful parents and tainted by original sin. The human race decided to sin, and so the human race suffers.

I know this belief isn't unique within Christianity, but whenever I encounter it I feel so sad for those who accept it as reality. What must it do to a person's outlook on life to believe that even newborns are sinful and condemned to everlasting torture if they should die before being baptized, and that all of humanity is responsible for the mythical actions of the original couple? Yet every day I stand next to people with this mindset. They must feel such resentment for having been born into this "horrible" world.

However, to take on the creation story, the idea of original sin does address the actions of Adam and Eve. But the decision to visit the punishment for their actions on future generations was god's alone. Their actions didn't necessitate a sinful nature being passed along. It was the Biblical god's choice that it be so. For this, he is responsible, not the humans.

[wyoguy]

Isher said:

Watching the news lately, what with child molestation, murder and other "evil" acts performed by those who consider themselves god's elect, I don't see where they've made much effort to keep evil in check.

True, but there also, some may consider themselves intellectual but that doesn't neccessarily make them so.

[wyoguy]

Quote by: freefallife What are you, Calvinist? God's elect?? What in the world has your preaching got to do with the justification of evil? Nothing. Don't preach to me and please try to stick to the topic.

I've stuck to the topic just fine, thank you. You just don't like my slant on it. I think you are presumptuous to place God on trial. That He gives evil slack in it's chain from time to time is His sovereign right. It is my point that it is also within His rights to severe the chain entirely but He has chosen not to. Let's face it... none of us has delved into the absolute depths of our own depravity. Not Hitler, not the random serial killer, nobody. Something restrains us. Call it what you want, social constraints, whatever, I call it God's sovereign will. The point is that evil is still constrained.

I'd bet that you didn't even read the scripture I quoted.

[Rainbow]

Quote by: freefallife Ok, I will attempt to explain my position one last time. I asked in the OP for a justification of evil. You responded with your atom analogy. Good (protons) vs Evil (electrons). So, going with that analogy, we take a look at the atom. Every atom by definition has no charge. Otherwise, it has a charge and by definition becomes an ion. Every atom has the same amount of protons and electrons. (that's from 7th grade science class. I didn't rewrite it) With your analogy applied, the previous statement would read: The world has the same amount of good and evil. I hold that this is not the case. To put a finer point on it, I said that: The more protons an atom has, the more electrons it has. with your analogy applied, the previous statement would read: The more good the world has, the more evil it has Maybe now you can see how your atom analogy fails. The existance of good and evil is not like an atom. If anything it would be more like an ion with far more negative than positive.

I am afraid you need to Re-think your determination(s) again. I have a sense you understood my expressions - in my previous posts, within this thread - incorrectly.

Example :
- H2O (water)
2 atoms of Hydrogen + 1 atom of Oxygen
(Notice the fact, that the molecule of water is Not being equally shared in half - by Hydrogen and Oxygen, respectively.)

That molecule of water perfectly matches all the conditions, for :
- state of balance
and
- state of opposition.
These states apply to all the elements in the Universe we live-in.

Exception :
Science stands for witchcraft.

[Rainbow]

Quote by: freedom13 My point is this, since you don’t believe in the existence of God it will be impossible for you to believe that God created evil.

This is the point I addressed to freefallife previously.
I think freefallife questions data within the Bible, instead and indeed. Otherwise, this thread stands for syllogism, starting from its label.

[freefallife]

Quote by: wyoguy I've stuck to the topic just fine, thank you. You just don't like my slant on it. I think you are presumptuous to place God on trial. That He gives evil slack in it's chain from time to time is His sovereign right. It is my point that it is also within His rights to severe the chain entirely but He has chosen not to. Let's face it... none of us has delved into the absolute depths of our own depravity. Not Hitler, not the random serial killer, nobody. Something restrains us. Call it what you want, social constraints, whatever, I call it God's sovereign will. The point is that evil is still constrained.

Yeah, but it doesn't justify the existance of evil in the first place, which is the point of this thread. So its constrained. Big whoop. Now all you have to do is debate the thread topic and justify the existance of superfluous evils in the world. So, no, Im sorry, your theistic rant was NOT on topic.

I'd bet that you didn't even read the scripture I quoted.

Yes, I read it and NO it does not justify the existance of evil. It basicly states that god is going to mess with anyone he wishes.

Romans 9:15 ...I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion...."

That evil is in the world to show us how powerful he is.

Romans 9:22 What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath...

Ok. Why use evil?? Justify the use of pain and suffering just to prove to your creations that you are "the man". Could not an omnipotent god find a more benevolent way to demonstrate his power? Of course he could. So romans 9 leaves us back where we started...with absolutly NO justification for superfluous evil.

[freefallife]

Quote by: Rainbow I am afraid you need to Re-think your determination(s) again. I have a sense you understood my expressions - in my previous posts, within this thread - incorrectly. Example : - H2O (water) 2 atoms of Hydrogen + 1 atom of Oxygen (Notice the fact, that the molecule of water is Not being equally shared in half - by Hydrogen and Oxygen, respectively.) That molecule of water perfectly matches all the conditions, for : - state of balance and - state of opposition. These states apply to all the elements in the Universe we live-in. Exception : Science stands for witchcraft.

So, now your changing your analogy from the singular atom, to an entire molocule? Concession noted. Moving on.

What the covalent bond of hydrogen and oxygen atoms have to do with the justification of evil is beyond me, but let me see if I understand this correctly.

You state that everything has a state of ballance. You are therefore asserting that there is just as much evil in the world as there is good. Is that your position?

You state that everything has a state of opposition. I have already pointed out numerous things of which there is no opposite. What is the opposite of banana??

[freefallife]

Quote by: Rainbow This is the point I addressed to freefallife previously. I think freefallife questions data within the Bible, instead and indeed. Otherwise, this thread stands for syllogism, starting from its label.

<sigh>...And as I stated, this is a topic by which I am challenging YOUR beliefs. My beliefs or lack thereof are irrelevant.

[ItsDarts]

Quote by: JLrep Because newborn children are sinful. They are not innocent. Whether or not they commit any overt sins, they are born of sinful parents and tainted by original sin. The human race decided to sin, and so the human race suffers.

Can we assume you do not believe in evolution, even though many christians do? Even the pope says that evolution is to be believed but it was god who sparked it. If this is the case, then there is no Adam and Eve and hence, no original sin as described in the bible. So how do you reconcile this with your argument?