Let me start by saying, yeah, I am a Christian. Now is probably the time that most of the forum goes “ugh, he’s gonna tell us we’re going to hell isn’t he?” Well guess what, I’m not. I would like to express my personal opinion that really, in some sense, resolves a lot of the problems that many people face with Christianity, at least it did for me. Granted, it won’t help with your issues if you don’t keep an open-mind, so please, at least consider this. A rather large number talk of the problem of evil. It seems to contradict Christianity for God to allow evil things to happen, right? After all, if He can stop it (which an almighty God should be able to do)then the act of not stopping it is an evil act in its own. And since even the bible says that God can do no evil, there is a huge contradiction so nothing works out. Well here comes the correction to the misconception. God can do no evil. He can have us commit evil acts, He can cause evil things to happen, but He does no evil. And now you have a hypocritical Christian limiting the ‘almighty’ God, right? Not really. Evil, in the sense that we know it applies only to man. God is held by no such standard. Is He to necessarily be held by the laws that He places upon His creation? Absolutely not. For God’s actions to be evil, something must have applied a moral standard to Him. It is my belief, and the general belief of most Christians, that there is nothing and no one above Him. No standard can be placed on God as those who believe in Him see it. Everything He does is good simply because it is done by Him.
Any comments regarding this are welcome, don’t be too harsh though, I’m new.
Oh boy.
Be gentle folks.
… but could you explain how this relates (if at all) to Genesis 3:22 -
It seems to me that if this is the case–if God is simply beyond any moral standard–you couldn’t really call him “good” either.
If Genesis is now a reliable authority on the mind of God, why is it dismissed in Creation debates?
Well, you have to understand what I mean when I say “good”. I mean good in the sense that He is doing what is right. That’s a general understanding we have of “good”. If I do something right, I did (for the sake of grammatical issues) well…but that is accepted as good. Because He is God He cannot do the “wrong” thing. So, I think it’s all ‘good’.
And to deal with the Gen 3:22 issue…just because God knows of good and evil doesn’t necessarily say to me that He didn’t create it. I don’t see how exactly I was supposed to respond to that.
Well, I was hoping you would respond to the apparent contradiction between what you said, which seemed to be that we cannot understand what God percieves as good and evil, and what the bible seems to be saying there; that we do share his perspective.
Um, red herring? - this isn’t a creation debate (at least not yet)
Genesis isn’t dismissed from creation debates on the basis of what it says about the mind of God, but rather on the problems with literal interpretations of it.
That doesn’t implicitly mean it’s devoid of meaning or content though.
In my defense about missing the “apparent” contradiction, what is ‘apparent’ to you might not be so to me. After all, it is apparent to me that there is a God, and apparent to many people that there isn’t. Now, on to the subject. It says man knows good and evil…it doesn’t say that man’s understanding of good and evil is necessarily the same as God’s, and even if it is, God’s understanding of good and evil does not stipulate that He is held to their respective standards. I’m sure this doesn’t quite cover the subject as you’d like it to, but I’d be more than happy to keep trying.
Huh?
Here’s something to chew on, PhilsGT500. Three weeks ago my father died of cancer, incontinent and comatose, after nearly two years of intermittent suffering.
If I understand the point you are trying to make, God created everything, and everything he created is good. Humans, as one of his creations, appear to have this built-in condition, by which a certain percentage find that their own bodies rebel against them, causing excruciating pain and eventual death. The pain itself appears to be pointless torture, since it derives from a condition that is not the sufferer’s fault and which the sufferer can do nothing substantial to prevent.
So according to your view, unbearable pain and horrifying death by cancer are good, because God included this in his plan; it is only because of our imperfect understanding of this plan that we find that this seems evil.
I say, well, crap.
Actually, don’t worry. I don’t consider God responsible for evil any more than I consider the Easter Bunny responsible for chocolate eggs. Or something.
Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”
Perhaps it’s best to not dwell on what the Bible actually says and stick to what you want it to say.
Oh, I see you’ve already done that.
My point was that God creates evil…I don’t see how your verse makes an issue of what I want the bible to say. Thanks though
erm, yes, it does:
Hmm, I mentioned this in one post a while back, but no one responded to the post since, so I’m going to go on the assumption that no one read it and repeat it here. It’s more in response to El_Kabong’s story about his father. In the begining, suppposedly man existed in paradise. When God first created man, he was immortal, didn’t suffer, had no pain, and the concept of cancer or any other physically dilapidating, decrepifying, slow and excrusiatingly painfulway of suffering never existed. But man fucked it up, rebelled against God, and all these things became a part of his world. Or we a part of it. This stuff exists. It’s not good, evil, right or wrong. It’s unfortunate, yes, but cancer in and of itself is not “evil.” The fact mankind suffers from it is all part of shit that happened between mankind and God a long time ago. At least according to Genesis.
If you don’t believe Genesis, again, cancer, AIDS, syphilus, whatever, they are not “evil.” They’re a factor in life, like floods, mountain slides, volcanos and whatnot. These aren’t intrinsicly “good” or “bad,” and God has nothing to do with it other than his creation of it. God doesn’t “Give” people cancer, but HE created a world in which it exists. Why? Who knows. But that’s not evil.
Well, the usual answer is to offer the Mysterious Ways product line. That’s still a generally hard sell to make as a cold call (the real problem is lack of product samples), but I would think it’s still an easier one to market than the Might Makes Right starter pack.
So it’s God’s will that my kitten is dying?
Yeah, I thought phils’s point was God is above moral judgements. And there is scriptual support for that. See Job 40:8-9 “Wilt thou also disannul my judgement? Wilt thou condemn me that thou may be righeous? Hast thou an arm like God? or can you thunder with a voice like him?”
And so on. Actually the last five chapters of Job are all God pointing out how you can’t question what God does beacause he’s, well, God.
Of course on the other hand, phils, didn’t Abraham ask God “Shall not the judge of all the world do right?”
And get away with it?
Welcome to the SDMB 
It is obvious to me that there is no Santa Claus because there is no evidence of him.
It is clear to me that there is no God because there is no evidence of Him.
Why is it apparent to you that there is a God?
Your standard of debate is fine!
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if God does not have the same understanding of morality as us, how do you tell Him apart from Satan?
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if God can ‘get involved with evil’, should we listen to Him?
Oh, I agree, but from the standpoint that “shit happens” rather than “God did this and we’re too simple to understand why”. I was simply objecting to the premise of the OP, which I personally found ludicrous.
Here’s a big question that comes up everytime. What type of “evidence” would one need to prove the existance of God? Why is it some people are content with “something inside me just says He exists, and I can’t deny that” and others need God to come down, shake their hand, create a hamster out of nothing and explain the workings of the universe. What would be considered sufficient “evidence” to prove God exists?
I don’t have the same understanding of morality as you, how can you tell me apart from Satan? Maybe you shouldn’t. Who knows. The accepted belief is that God has a level of understanding no human could ever hope to attain (aside from maybe Jesus). The question is, if God were to come down and, oh I don’t know, start violently raping little boys while pouring sugar into the gas tanks of every car He saw, would you be able to stand there and tell him “What you’re doing is wrong, God.” The basic understanding is that our moral code is based off of what we believe God’s intentions of us and our existance are, so most likely, He wouldn’t do that. But his “understanding” doesn’t determine how we judge him or recognize him. Some people love God, some people downright hate Him.
Now, what I just said about Him raping little boys could be conceived by many to be a VERY evil statement. The next question is, what is evil? Are natural cotastrophes evil? When a volcano errupts and burries an entire civilization in molten lava, is that “evil”? When someone’s appendix explodes and poisons them and they die an excrusiatingly painful death, is that evil? When a mother murders her newborn baby and puts the body in a vat of battery acid, is that evil? Many would agree that the first two aren’t evil, but that the last most definitely is. Many would blame the first two on God, but the last on the will of the mother. That tends to state that evil is a result of man’s actions, and that God is above such things, because although “He chooses to take us away,” He doesn’t do such things out of malice and spite. But He has in the past. So what’s all this mean? I don’t know, you tell me.