probably been done, but how can christians justify an all-loving, all powerful god who allows eveil to exist?

Indeed it has been done. The prospect for original ideas, however, has long since expired. The human pysche has been in a reactionary state....probably forever. I know my thoughts are merely spawned in relation to my enivornment, others thoughts, etc.

For the sake of the topic.....loose your concept of duality. Out the door.

How could a God judge one that does not have the potential to do both good and bad?

Or, you could look at it this way...

Darkness is the absence of light. By creating light, God also created darkness. Same with good and evil. Without anything to contrast the good, it would not exist in our minds as 'good'. It would simply be.

What is evil?

Well, there's the more topical and obvious answer of: good created evil, therefore neither is good nor evil. But, if it boils down to the chicken or the egg, good came first and therefore owns evil, meaning, technically evil has no power except for what good allows it.

Then there is the more technical answer of: Saint Lucifer was never evil. He was gods favorite angel and was so close to god that god gave him a choice (which no other angels have ever had) to decide whether he thought humans were worthy of gods love. Only his answer wasn't the same as gods and so god loved him so much he said

"Okay, you can try, but I bet you can't prove to me humans aren't worthy of my love."

So, Lucifer isn't the embodiment of evil, nor are demons, or hell, or any of that. That's all the evolution of the story. In the beginning it was basically about two dudes making a bet.

Cheers,

Lost

what is an entity?

how about this? consciousness itself is the ultimate paradox...

to conceptualize consciousness is to see it objectively, which is exactly what it is not.

non-dual.

quote:Originally posted by Kensei:

probably been done, but how can christians justify an all-loving, all powerful god who allows eveil to exist?

Simple answer: Evil doesn't actually exist. Would you like the complex answer?

uh... sure. would you mind?

Evil is an abstract.

My opinion:

Evil is a way to make us better people.

Do your parents give you everything you want? Of course not. They make you undergo hardships.

Hence: evil.

I think everyone already hit on it pretty well. What we call "evil" is exactly whatever we make of the word. People simply consider some actions as evil. Evil exists because good exists. "There can be no suffering without joy." It is simply a perception from a 'standard' that we have created. If an action is deviant, then we tack a name such as "evil" onto it.



ethics, good/bad, fullfillment of needs, empathy, altruism, duty, action, communication, symbolism.

For those that are talking about evil as not really being evil, does anyone here deny that we do indeed experience suffering? Why wouldn't the Christian god help prevent or stop the suffering? If you were walking past and someone was being raped, wouldn't you help? Wouldn't you at least call the cops?

Gillibiabtiag: I'm sure that an omnipotent can bring about that state without having to resort to having people suffer.



[This message has been edited by R_I (edited 10-05-2004).]

Does cold exist or is it simply the absence of heat?

Heard Tony Campolo (champ) speak on the weekend just gone. He talked about "Open Theology" for a bit, in relation to the emerging church's interest in demonstrating God in way that is both authentic to human experience, and to what the bible has to say about God (as opposed to maintaining our doctirnes of what God is supposed to be like).

Open Theology tends to suggest that is not "100% in control" and a number of other ideas that are often at odds with the dominant systematic and dogmatic theology of the past few centuries. Niehbur is the man you want to read on this subject.

In this framework God is all loving, but apparently not "all powerful" (whether that be willingly or not) at this stage, which gives the "problem of evil" within xian thought a different spin.

I posted this in another section on Catholicism. Here's my problem of evil:

"They believe that God is omnipotent. They believe that God is omniscient. They also believe that God cannot do anything that is not good; he is omnibenevolent, if you will, that is, he cannot do anything evil or wrong.

How then, if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, did original sin come about, since he is all-knowing and knew from the start that man would sin? How did evil ever become existent in our world? Let's now consider the three possibilities, and how they all contradict their concept of God in the end.

The first is this: God could not stop man from sinning. It was man's choice, not God's, it was Satan's influence, whatever they want to say. In any related case, this means that God was unable to stop evil from happening. This would mean that God is NOT all-powerful.

Another option is this: God allowed man to sin. However you want to put it, if God had the option to use his infinite power to stop man from sinning, but didn't do so, he allowed evil into the world. This would mean that God is NOT all-good.

The last option is this: God had the power and the will to stop man from sinning, but he did not expect man to betray his trust in such a way. This would mean that God is NOT all-knowing."

You can call evil an abstract all you want just to preserve the credibility of the belief. However, suppose evil is merely the absence of goodness. When your God created everything, he said that "it was good." This infallible God said that the creation was good. When this goodness is lost (the absence of goodness, aka evil) then this word of God is contradicted. However, an infallible God cannot be wrong...

quote:Originally posted by Kensei:

probably been done, but how can christians justify an all-loving, all powerful god who allows eveil to exist?

The christian Belief is that God gives you freedom of choice.. To do as you will To love him or not to love him.. To be 'good' or 'evil' What you should be asking is how can this country be safe when we allow Murderers to walk free? It isn't the people it's a chosen few.. It isn't God.. it's those who use the name of God to blow up abortion clinics .. If people feel justified in their actions then they have done no wrong.. It's all about morals man.. And Morals are "To each his own" If I think I'm right. I'm right, and You can't convince me otherwise, because In my opinion I am right and I am justified in my actions .. We all know what they say about Opinions..



[This message has been edited by HèLLzShèLLz (edited 10-17-2004).]

Evil is not a problem if one sees that it is merely an illusion, another instance of the dualistic fallacy.

God allows what some call evil for the same reason he/she/it/them allows what some call good--free will.

Evil is a problem if one sees it as suffering and unhappiness.

The Christian god could've created individuals that both have free will and never sin. In fact, it will supposedly be like this in the Christian Heaven.

The problem is that evil or suffering hasn't been shown to be a logical neccessity. I'm sure whatever the Christian god wants to achieve, he can do so without the suffering. He's omnipotent, for crying out loud.

The only reasonable thing to assume is that the Christian god does in fact want us to suffer. Pretty much any other goal can be achieved without it.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, here's a little something I posted on another board concerning the free will defense:

When I bring up the problem of evil against my Christian friend, he usually responds with the free will defense.

To counter it, I've come up with this: I'll ask him if the Christian god has free will in that he has more than one choice that he can make but he always chooses the one that will do maximum good(the best one) or if he is constrained to only making the best choice possible in any situation. If my friend agrees with the first statement, then I'll respond that the Christian god could've given us the quality that enables him to have free will and yet always choose the best decision.

I'll be interested to hear the explanation for that not happening to avoid the whole problem of evil. If he agrees with the latter instead, then it does seem that the Christian god has no free will(can only do what is best). If that is indeed true, then the Christian god's love would be worthless because he has no choice but to love us(apparently the best choice). Just like if we had no choice but to love the Christian god, our love wouldn't be worth much at all.

[This message has been edited by R_I (edited 10-18-2004).]

quote:Originally posted by Eil:

how about this? consciousness itself is the ultimate paradox...

to conceptualize consciousness is to see it objectively, which is exactly what it is not.

non-dual.

Yes! Conciousness is primary.

Existence is a paradox too. For there to be anything now, there had to be something to make it, and something before that... so either there was always something, or something came from nothing.

Good & evil don't exist as they are man-made concepts. One only needs to look at nature to realize this.

When hurricane Frances battered the southeast, was that evil? When a tiger downs a deer for dinner, is it being evil?

Since those two ideas exist only in our minds, everyone will have a different definition of what good & evil means to them.

More or less.

Yo, R_I--pain is mandatory, suffering is optional.

I suppose you are eluding towards one closing their mind to the pain or something. But isn't pain undesirable and unneccesary in that the Christian god could've created a world where you don't need them? I'm familar with the example of a child needing pain to tell it not to touch a stove but in an alternate world that the Christian god could've actualised we wouldn't have to worry about such things.

Let's leave pain alone then. Is there suffering? Is this suffering then neccesary? Could the Christian god have created a world where suffering does not happen and still achieve his goals? Do you even know what his goals are? Like I said before, it seems that he wants us to suffer as his omnipotence permits him to let us do otherwise.

Look, I'm tired of word games. Evil, unhappiness, suffering, whatever. All I know is that this world is not the best possible one that the Christian god could have made unless you are going to discount his omnipotence and omniscience. Just look at the people starving in poor countries for instance.

The relation between the Christian God and Evil is that they aren't really real. I mean sure there about as real as anything else, but merely symbols. Merely being a misleading word because all there is, really, is symbols. I believe it was Marcus Aerilious (apologies on the gross misspelling) who said that things in themselves aren't really good or evil, but the judgements of these things are.

We all have an idea of what something refers to in our own heads. When I say nail I have an idea in my head what this word refers to. When this idea disagrees with the idea of what another thinks it refers to. If I'm thinking of my finger nail and the other person thinking of a nail holding up a picture. Is my idea wrong? Are either of them wrong? Are either of them right?

This works even in a more ambiguous manner when in reference to God or Good and Evil because these are things of a metaphysical nature. We can't experience them through normal 5 sensory experience. So the abstractness of these symbols become even less tangible. When you break it down you can't escape this filter you put between the idea in your head and the reality in and of itself which may or may not even truly exist.

When you execute your life in this fashion and take it seriously morality becomes a twisted and perverted version of reality. Because any idea isn't really free of doublethink, and when you think your idea is free of this doublethink and believe it to be justified as true for all well....

You've got ingredients for mass murder. justified mass murder.