It apparently applies to the Devil, too, and the Angels which sided with him.
It isn’t absolutely necessary? I can agree with the thought that God is not required to act on his own laws. Do you feel that this only applies to God? You say:
The government makes the laws; are they immune from being judged by them?
No standard can be placed on God by us because God is the source of the standard. I can live with that. But this means God cannot be good, either: a result that you aren’t likely to agree with.
Perhaps we should change the wording from “good and evil” to “right and wrong” and if you are omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent then I would assume that you are absolutely incapable of making a mistake therefore unable to do something wrong. I guess it really depends on what semantics you apply to the word “evil” I personally believe that there is too much emotional baggage applied to the word evil so I try to eliminate it from my personal lexicon. (Though I still use it accidentally from time to time)
mswas, I am not sure the distinction will remove the necessity of understanding the source of the valuation (whether that be good/evil, right/wrong, happy/sad, whatever/opposite of whatever) should not be held under that valuation.
It doesn’t serve us well to say that everything God does is good, because if we lived in God’s image than we should be able to attempt the things God did, which are in many cases pretty shitty things and would definitely violate the ten commandments. I see no particular fault with God being able to do evil to evil, even if the odds are always in God’s favor by having Himself the standard for good and evil in the first place.
I do see a fault with saying that one cannot apply the term “evil” to God because he is above it (the system of valuation), but then proceed to say God is good. However, i also have ceased requiring that people be perfectly rational, so I suppose this is just a fine intellectual excersize.
Well, I think the point is more that god is infallible, then applying and moral judgement to his actions. I think morality is something that societies apply to themselves and they certainly do not apply to any creature outside of those cultures. I mean the way I have seen some animals mate it looks pretty close to rape to me, but I wouldn’t say those animals are evil or even wrong. Good and Evil are human moral value judgements and can’t be applied to other cultures let alone anything else.
I’ll try and clear some of what I was saying up. When I say ‘good’ I don’t mean ‘good’ as opposed to ‘evil’. I mean ‘good’ in the sense of that anything He does cannot be an incorrect action. He does what He pleases and whatever that might be (good or bad in our perspective), it is an action of God and therefore divine and not subject to our questioning. I use the word ‘good’ to describe those actions sipmly because the sense of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ has been instilled in me. I worship and revere my God, I understand that anything He does is correct because it is what He does, in that sense I see it as ‘good’. I do fully understand the questionable use of ‘good’ towards God if he is not held to our moral standards. However, it is the best word I have discovered in order to describe what He does.
if god had nothing to do with the evil acts of the terrorists, fine. But god must have had something to do with the fact that it rained the day after, pretty much ruining any hope of finding survivors. How do you reconcile that?
There are many things in both the universe and in the Bible which I find morally objectionable. If God is all good, and therefore everything he does is a correct action because it is divine, then why did he give me (and many others) an innate moral sense than contradicts with his own?
Another consideration is what our proper actions toward “evil” should be. Should we not try to stop diseases, because obviously they are the will of God? Should we celebrate when people get raped and tortured because that must obviously be the will of God as well?
It cleared the noxious fumes from the air that were causing many people to get sick throughout the city and stopped there from being further casualties. Another explanation I have heard on this is that it closed off air passages suffocating the survivors that could have surely suffered long agonizing days of heat, dehydration, or bleeding to death therefore easing the suffering of what was most likely a lost cause. Many of the whole bodies that were found were found pretty early on before it rained IIRC.
I personally was praying for rain as my friend was stuck in his sweltering apartment with the windows shut and the AC turned off because the smoke was too much, and he lives on 105th street.
Kalt…what’s there to reconcile? As you can see from mswas, some good can be thought of the rain. But even if he wasn’t here to point that out, I don’t see how God is being wrong in bringing rain.
What you attempted in your O.P., phils, is simply to make evil disappear by slight of words. Unfortunately for you, the evil still exists in the universe (natural, moral, and existential), and if God is responsible for the Universe, he is responsible for evil!
The traditional logic remains utterly undamaged after thousands of years of attempted theodicies:
God is perfectly good (omnibenevolent)
God’s power in unlimited (omnipotent)
God is all knowing (omniscient)
God is the sole creator of the Universe
There is evil in the Universe
Conclusion: If you accept all five statements, God is responsible for evil. There is NO escape! Certainly no mere assertion such as phils’ can make it disappear.
We now have a new unit of measure for distance leaping in logic. Physics’ light year pales by comparison.
Without any consideration whatsoever toward context, you’ve swept away the whole of point of morality. God could do evil if He decided not to love. All gods can do this, including us.
This assertion is spiritually insane.
You’ve confused reality with a play. There is nothing either good or evil about the universe. It is an amoral construct that serves God’s purpose as a mis-en-scene wherein we act out our morality. And morality is of such a nature that we each have our own distinct journey. No one, including God Himself, exerts any influence on our moral decisions.
The point of morality is to decide through free-will whether we will love. That is, we each. I cannot call upon what I might discern as an evil act by you to justify an evil act for myself. Your moral journey is your own and is closed to me, just as mine is to you. Your moral decisions have no bearing on mine, nor mine on you. From your perspective, not being privvy to the unabridged context of my morality, you must make your own moral decisions.
When you look, you see nothing but atoms. You do not see my moral context. And from what you see, you form your own morality.
Guin’s kitten is dying, just as our cat recently nearly died. There is nothing evil in this without a moral context having been supplied. The evil is not in the atoms, but in the decisions we make when he interact with the atoms. Morality is born of our decisions. What will her decision be? Knowing what little I do of her, I suspect that she will decide to bring goodness out of her tragedy. But I cannot know, nor can I decide for her.
Nonsense. God is not good simply because He holds the station of being God. God is good because He loves.
Owing to your newness and relative civility, I have been as reserved as I am capable. If you decide to press on and argue against the points I’ve made, all bets are off.
Just out of curiosity, how many people believe God is personally responsible for everything, such as the Flash floods in Houston this past Summer, or for the sunny days of last week, or the death of a loved one? How much influence does God have not only on our physical lives, but the environment as well?
Personally, I don’t think God is responsible for every little event that happens. I believe He has knowledge of everything, but as for being in direct control of every little breeze, every time I sneeze, or my friend’s pot cravings, I don’t think He’s the one pulling all these strings. But that’s me.
I can agree with the thought that God is not required to act on his own laws. Do you feel that this only applies to God? You say: