# Is God Evil? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 12, 2010, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668 "2010-02-12T05:33:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2010, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/81 "2010-02-14T23:41:24Z")
obviously “good” is the most subjective feeling in the world. it could be anything that triggers the plasure centers of your brain. for some people, it’s autoerotic asphyxiation. for others it’s a poster of a cat with an ironic caption. for a lot of us is watching others feeling BAD. if God wanted to regulate this and bestow “good” upon everyone with his omnipotence, he would be caught in quite the paradoxial predicament. In fact, i’m not even sure what “evil” is supposed to mean. If God is evil for letting the AIDS baby die, am I evil? Is evil restricted to conscious acts? Can an accidental act be evil? If an evil act has ancillary benefits, does it mitigate, or even offset the evil? What would you expect God to do that would make him not evil? ---
**Author:** ![Daylate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9dc877/32.png) [@Daylate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daylate)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2010, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/82 "2010-02-14T23:43:07Z")
The great H.L. Mencken gave the best description of God. “A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.” ---
**Author:** ![Camus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ba8739/32.png) [@Camus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Camus)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/83 "2010-02-15T03:58:52Z")
> [@pancakes3](#): > > In fact, i’m not even sure what “evil” is supposed to mean. If God is evil for letting the AIDS baby die, am I evil? According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the earth and all living creatures in between. Even according to the less literal denominations such as Catholicism, God created the universe and the earth and through natural processes like evolution, ensured that life was created and shaped to our present state. In either case, God would have had to directly and intentionally create and shape the HIV virus. You (uh, presumably) had nothing to do with a baby dying of AIDS. As long as the baby’s doctor knows too and it isn’t your baby, not doing anything is akin to driving past the scene of an accident in which paramedics are helping the injured. > [@](#): > > Is evil restricted to conscious acts? Can an accidental act be evil? If an evil act has ancillary benefits, does it mitigate, or even offset the evil? What would you expect God to do that would make him not evil? Someone falling asleep while driving and causing an accident that kills another driver would be described as irresponsible, criminal, and probably even reprehensible, but it would be stretch to call it evil. Reckless indifference to danger might be called evil, but usually evil is all about intentional action. The intention behind it doesn’t have to be evil (since someone committing an act that could be described as evil likely has their own rationalizations or justifications). But your third question once again goes back to one of the key problems - if the death of one baby leads to the parents devoting the rest of their lives to charity, is it worth it? Do the ends justify the means, particularly for the baby? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/84 "2010-02-15T04:59:13Z")
> [@VarlosZ](#): > > See above. There could theoretically be a moral universe in which it is preferable that we \*not \*experience life as an unending series of greater pleasures. Once you introduce pains into life, their apparent magnitude is not as important as it might first seem. Since beings are finite, I don’t believe in the possibility of ever-increasing pleasure. Two things. Good sex is good without reference to bad sex. The things that cause our pleasure centers to fire are absolute. Second, even if some evil were necessary, do we need quite as much? Wouldn’t one child drowning in a swimming pool do the job as well as tens of thousands drowning? > [@](#): > > Things could be much worse than they are. I’m sure we could both imagine much more horrible things than baby-killing earthquakes which do not exist in this world; alternately humans could be wired differently, so that we were in endlessly increasing state of emotional despair. Just as no one here is giving a hypothetical god credit for sparing us a worse state of affairs than actually exists, if there were no baby-killing tsunamis or the like, we would not be grateful for being spared them. Rather, we would just be upset about the next worst thing. True but irrelevant. We’re not saying a totally evil entity is running things either. That things could be worse does not refute the claim that things could be better. > [@](#): > > Perhaps, but if we posit that there is in fact a god, then what you or I find convincing about a particular moral argument is insignificant compared to what god finds convincing. But we’re the ones suffering. You’ll have to do better than just assert that god must make us suffer. If even on baby is killed for no reason, omnibenevolence goes right out the window. ---
**Author:** ![Oveja\_Slayer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/47e85d/32.png) [@Oveja\_Slayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oveja_Slayer)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/85 "2010-02-15T05:27:05Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > One could question :Why a God would regret creating humans,(when he knew they were faulty) then destroy the entire earth(according to the Bible) and keep a few humans and a few animals alive in a Ark, packed together for nearly a year. Since all plant life would have also been destroyed,and many innocent babies and mentally challenged people. > > If he knows all things, created all things as is recorded in the Bible then he didn’t act like a loving father. It would seem to me a being of such high intellect could have found a better way to teach people than to kill everything on earth except some sea life! Why didn’t he start over when he knew Adam and Eve were faulty,instead of punishing their offspring? We would put such a human father in jail. Doesn’t God rate a higher standard? Beating a child for a minor fault that he hasn’t been told about( or is not responsible for) is not a fair punishment. It is like punishing someone because they haven’t the ability to do something. It doesn’t tell if a God exists or not, but does dispute the idea of a loving ,fairminded,kind being! If you were talking to someone who believes the Bible is literally God’s word spoken from heaven on high to our ears, then you’d have really good questions that would require that person to soul search, or just ignore the issues you’ve raised and live in their blissful bubble. I think the flood story was an account of a large catyclysmic flood (that there is some archeological evidence for…as well as flood stories from many many ancient cultures) that was given meaning by making it a spiritual story - a morality lesson. Looking that the OT from a socio-historic perspective, God’s “chosen people” were likely pagans, worshipping gods of the sky, the trees, the animals, etc. They attributed everything to deity because that was the best explanation they had. So was that really “God” or did it just happen and people built a story around it? Again, we assume “bad things” are punishment, or that God should save us from everything bad. What do we stand to learn, gain, develop or grow from if everything is happy and “good” all the time? Maybe periodic cleansings are needed to spur evolution? There could be macro-purpose in such events, and people, who are quite self-centered and think on a rather small scale overall, thought it was “all about them” like we usually do and applied a meaning that is flawed and faulty. Or maybe this God character is just a vindictive bastard. Lot’s of people are mono-theistic and don’t view God as viciously as the OT portrays him. ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/86 "2010-02-15T06:51:37Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Since beings are finite, I don’t believe in the possibility of ever-increasing pleasure. Yeah, I’m somewhat skeptical about even the theoretical possibility, but for the sake of argument I was assuming god could do it. > [@](#): > > Good sex is good without reference to bad sex. If good sex happens to be the worst part of your day, is it still good? > [@](#): > > Second, even if some evil were necessary, do we need quite as much? Wouldn’t one child drowning in a swimming pool do the job as well as tens of thousands drowning? > > True but irrelevant. We’re not saying a totally evil entity is running things either. That things could be worse does not refute the claim that things could be better. > > But we’re the ones suffering. You’ll have to do better than just assert that god must make us suffer. If even on baby is killed for no reason, omnibenevolence goes right out the window. I’m not necessarily sticking up for omnibenevolence; I’m just saying that “God is Evil” doesn’t hold water if he actually exists. And if he does exist, then apparently we’ve been wrong about misery-prevention being so important to the moral order of the universe. Suppose god showed up and said the following: “Look, I’m not your fucking nanny. It’s not my job to keep you from being sad. The whole point of your existence is to figure out how to stop killing each other in wars, how to keep your kids from drowning in pools, how to keep people safe from hurricanes, and how to put the bad things that do happen into perspective (you suffer way more than your brain chemistry requires, believe me). Once you’ve figured all that stuff out, the universe will be better off for it, and you’ll be better off. And if you never figure it out, well, it’s still morally better than if I hadn’t taken off the training wheels.” How would you dispute what he says? Personally I don’t see the inherent value to struggle and difficulty, but if god says I’m wrong then apparently my ethics are confused. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/87 "2010-02-15T07:42:40Z")
> [@Oveja\_Slayer](#): > > Again, we assume “bad things” are punishment, or that God should save us from everything bad. What do we stand to learn, gain, develop or grow from if everything is happy and “good” all the time? Maybe periodic cleansings are needed to spur evolution? An omnipotent god wouldn’t need any of that. It wouldn’t have to drag us through all the unpleasant intermediate steps, no need for evolution and growth; just _poof_ and he’d have whatever he’s aiming for. > [@VarlosZ](#): > > If good sex happens to be the worst part of your day, is it still good? Yes. > [@VarlosZ](#): > > I’m not necessarily sticking up for omnibenevolence; I’m just saying that “God is Evil” doesn’t hold water if he actually exists. And if he does exist, then apparently we’ve been wrong about misery-prevention being so important to the moral order of the universe. That’s only true if you buy the idea that God is automatically right. > [@VarlosZ](#): > > Suppose god showed up and said the following: “Look, I’m not your fucking nanny. It’s not my job to keep you from being sad. The whole point of your existence is to figure out how to stop killing each other in wars, how to keep your kids from drowning in pools, how to keep people safe from hurricanes, and how to put the bad things that do happen into perspective (you suffer way more than your brain chemistry requires, believe me). Once you’ve figured all that stuff out, the universe will be better off for it, and you’ll be better off. And if you never figure it out, well, it’s still morally better than if I hadn’t taken off the training wheels.” > > How would you dispute what he says? I’d say that he designed us and the universe poorly if he had good intentions. I’d say the fact that we mere mortals can improve upon his work demonstrates that we are either more competent or more moral than he is. I’d say that his statement demonstrates that he has the same regard for us as so many lab rats. And I’d say that he’s in no moral position to make claims about what is “morally better” and what isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/88 "2010-02-15T10:25:35Z")
> [@](#): > > **Oveja** : The major downfall of all religions is they all piously believe they have 100% of the Absolute Truth. Yes. We are no different from most of the people posting here. It’s pretty normal to think you are right. If you thought you were wrong, you’d change your mind and then think you were right about that. Right? ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/89 "2010-02-15T10:36:49Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > No One can say they know anything about God. What is taught, believed or written is of human origin, some believe the humans who use the belief in God to give him attributes of both Good and Evil,(at least in the way they translate the Bible, and other so called holy books, books written by humans for humans). No one can say anything about God except what they were taught, read, or want to believe. It is an individule choice of who or what to believe. There are many different ways to describe the word God. The many, many religions back this up. Even people in the same religion have different views. Some see God to be loving and kind, others like to believe that God uses evil to teach a lesson and many way out ideas. I’ve been making that same basic point in “existence of god” threads here for several years now. I’m glad to see that someone else expresses this in a similar manner. God is whatever you make him/her. Everyone creates their own, individual, personal idea of “God” (of course, some people choose to create no god at all–we call them atheists). This leads me to the best answer and explanation (that I am aware of) to the eternal question: “Does God exist?” While I am an atheist\*, I believe that ultimately (and quite paradoxically) the answer to the question is indeed, “Yes. God exists.” But God exists entirely as a personal concept in each theist’s mind, and is different in every single case. Therefore, this existence is wholly meaningful only to the individual who is positing (and therefore creating) it. Many theists believe that they are worshiping the same God that others in their religion do yet none of them define God precisely the same way. In fact, they seem never to be able to satisfactorily define it at all. This is as it should be, however, because this creation has no real definition outside of the individual believer herself (or himself). No one can really completely define God for the same reasons that one can never fully describe one’s dreams. That is–the thoughts, memories, experiences, etc. that make up an individual’s dream or concept of God are far too uniquely personal to describe beyond a elementary outline. This God has no complete meaning or complete reality outside of that individual’s head. For group discussions of God or Gods it is most useful to think of God as “X” because there is not, and never can be, a constant value for God. The very word (much less the concept) “God” means something different to every single person who has ever lived, or ever will live. \*If I conclude that God exists, how can I consider myself an atheist? Because I have no belief in “God” as it is described by others (i.e. God having any reality outside of an individual’s personal concept). My idea of “God = X” differs so significantly from any concept of God that I have ever encountered that I feel it is most useful to label myself an atheist. ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/90 "2010-02-15T12:24:02Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I’d say that he designed us and the universe poorly if he had good intentions. I’d say the fact that we mere mortals can improve upon his work demonstrates that we are either more competent or more moral than he is. I’d say that his statement demonstrates that he has the same regard for us as so many lab rats. And I’d say that he’s in no moral position to make claims about what is “morally better” and what isn’t. You’re not engaging the notion of “god,” but rather just giving answers that apply to any mortal, finite authority figure you disagree with. You may as well be claiming that if Superman was real, you could beat him up. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/91 "2010-02-15T13:20:26Z")
> [@Oveja\_Slayer](#): > > If you were talking to someone who believes the Bible is literally God’s word spoken from heaven on high to our ears, then you’d have really good questions that would require that person to soul search, or just ignore the issues you’ve raised and live in their blissful bubble. > > I think the flood story was an account of a large catyclysmic flood (that there is some archeological evidence for…as well as flood stories from many many ancient cultures) that was given meaning by making it a spiritual story - a morality lesson. Looking that the OT from a socio-historic perspective, God’s “chosen people” were likely pagans, worshipping gods of the sky, the trees, the animals, etc. They attributed everything to deity because that was the best explanation they had. So was that really “God” or did it just happen and people built a story around it? > > Again, we assume “bad things” are punishment, or that God should save us from everything bad. What do we stand to learn, gain, develop or grow from if everything is happy and “good” all the time? Maybe periodic cleansings are needed to spur evolution? There could be macro-purpose in such events, and people, who are quite self-centered and think on a rather small scale overall, thought it was “all about them” like we usually do and applied a meaning that is flawed and faulty. > > Or maybe this God character is just a vindictive bastard. > > Lot’s of people are mono-theistic and don’t view God as viciously as the OT portrays him. I wonder about a God who is called a good father, picks out one group of people excludes the one’s who are also His creation and His children. Helps the one group kill another. This same God was supposed to know that some of His children would be bad but created them anyway. I wonder does this God get His kicks out of seeing some of His non-chosen suffer or even be killed? I do not believe it was God, but the writer of the story and the people who like to believe they were special and used God as an excuse. This same idea seems to be going on today in many places! ---
**Author:** ![Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/46a35a/32.png) [@Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walker_in_Eternity)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/92 "2010-02-15T13:34:30Z")
> [@Camus](#): > > According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the earth and all living creatures in between. Even according to the less literal denominations such as Catholicism, God created the universe and the earth and through natural processes like evolution, ensured that life was created and shaped to our present state. In either case, God would have had to directly and intentionally create and shape the HIV virus. You (uh, presumably) had nothing to do with a baby dying of AIDS. As long as the baby’s doctor knows too and it isn’t your baby, not doing anything is akin to driving past the scene of an accident in which paramedics are helping the injured. The essential difference here is about power though, I have no power to cure AIDS whether I stop to help or not, the God of the Bible could and that is what makes ignoring its suffering evil IMO. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/93 "2010-02-15T13:36:42Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Only if you equate “free” with “random”. No, it only requires equating “free” with “not predetermined.” If the choice has already been predetermined, as you say it should be, then it is clearly not free. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/94 "2010-02-15T14:24:44Z")
And making someone “free” to choose what he is designed to covet but with the threat to suffer horribly, indefinately is… well, evil. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/95 "2010-02-15T19:27:43Z")
> [@VarlosZ](#): > > **begbert** , your problem is at the top, where you’re defining evil as that which is not preferable to humans – fine if god is imaginary, but if he’s real then certain human preferences may lack moral significance. There’s two ways for this to go: God cares about people, or he doesn’t. If he _does_ care about people, what does that mean? Anything at all? Unless I’m missing something, if god cares about us then things that are bad for us, are bad for him, due to that sympathy/empathy thing. If you love your dog it at least _bothers_ you when it gets slowly lowered into a meat grinder, right? If god isn’t completely impartial to humans, he either likes seeing us run through the meat grinder, or he doesn’t. I’m just going to take it as axiomatic that a god that revels in our pain is evil, if you don’t mind. I’m aware that the contrary argument can be _made_ (“things are good because they are God’s will”), but I find it to be an uninteresting attempt to define the problem away. So. God is either good, evil, or completely impartial to human pain. If he’s impartial to humans, a reasonably good case can be made that to _us_, he’s evil. (You could alternately make the argument that we’re a plague on the universe that should be exterminated as quickly as possible, but I see that as another uninteresting attempt to define the problem away.) > [@VarlosZ](#): > > Also consider that happiness, sadness, and tragedy are relative states. Eliminate the hurricanes and dead babies, and run of the mill death becomes evil; remove that and it’s hang nails and traffic jams; get rid of those and bad hair days are full blown personal tragedies. By your logic, if there was a god the only way he could not be “evil” was if life for all vaguely sentient beings was nothing but an infinitely increasing and accelerating series of pleasures (or, perhaps, if we were unable to have either positive or negative emotions). Fine for us, perhaps, but it could theoretically be sub-optimal by standards other than what we’d want for ourselves. No, by my logic, if there was a (reasonably omnipotent) god, the only way he could not be “evil” was if life for all sentient beings that he cared were at a maximized level of happiness, to the limits of the god’s ability without compromizing the god’s other objectives. In fact, I think that this arguably could be the _definition_ of being good. It should be noted that I don’t believe that evil is needed to “appreciate” good. Certainly appreciation of good reacts to knowledge and experience, in a variety of non-linear ways, but that doesn’t mean that ongoing blissful ignorance is a worse state than being glad that you aren’t _currently_ immersed in boiling pitch. I’ve never lived in Somolia. Seriously, I don’t think I’m missing out much for the lack of the experience. BUT - even if we _grant_ that an awareness of the pain you’re missing will heighten your enjoyment of momentary lapses in pain, you’d still have to argue that the world we see is the _optimal_ balance of pain and pleasure to maximize subjective enjoyment. Which would certainly mean that nobody dies immidately after suffering - if you don’t get a chance to experience the rebound after, then the suffering has no benefits. And last I checked, immidiate pre-death suffering occasionally happens… > [@VarlosZ](#): > > If god were to appear and say that the universe (or even humanity) was better off (morally, aesthetically, however) for the existence of occasional ignorance, randomness (either apparent or actual), misery, and capricious death, we’d have no basis for contradicting him. He can see the whole of existence (including whatever supernatural realms may exist in this scenario), and we can see virtually none of it. What we see doesn’t matter - we know logically that our experience must me maximally positive, unless god doesn’t care about us or is _forced_ to make us suffer to meet some higher objective. (And omnipotent gods can’t be forced, by definition.) > [@JThunder](#): > > No, it only requires equating “free” with “not predetermined.” If the choice has already been predetermined, as you say it should be, then it is clearly not free. The thing about free will, is where does the choice come from? Any knowledge, preferences, or personality you have are predetermining factors, and all these can (and arguably, must) be stripped out the part of the decision-making process that you are claiming grants you freedom. And when you have stripped out all that is predetermined, all that is left is randomity, by definition, since it’s uninfluenced by anything. But rather than trying to get anybody to agree on an objective definition of “free will”, how about answering this: does _God_ have free will? Becuase if he does, he proves beyond doubt that it’s possible to have free will without ever choosing to do evil. So, since we _could_ have been greated as good with free will, why would god make us otherwise\*? - Or, if you prefer the Genesis account, why would he put us in a room with a large red button marked merely “don’t push me”, that would _turn_ us to having the bad kind of free will? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/96 "2010-02-15T21:22:51Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > No, by my logic, if there was a (reasonably omnipotent) god, the only way he could not be “evil” was if life for all sentient beings that he cared were at a maximized level of happiness, to the limits of the god’s ability without compromizing the god’s other objectives. In fact, I think that this arguably could be the _definition_ of being good. I have a problem or two with this (aside from the whole question of how you define “happiness”): For one thing, it sounds like you’re equating being less than maximally good with being evil. If I cooked you a delicious dinner, but it wasn’t as delicious as I might possibly have made it, am I evil? If the world God created and the existence he blessed us with is better than nonexistence, but still has room for improvement, it seems to me to be stretching things a bit to call such a Creator “evil.” (Though I can still see the problems with calling such a God “omnibenevolent” or “supremely good” or some such.) For another thing, what if some sentient beings are not at a maximized level of happiness due to their own choice? Is a God who gives people the _opportunity_ to choose and/or earn great happiness “evil” in comparison to a God who forces them down the paths that maximize their happiness? > [@](#): > > The thing about free will, is where does the choice come from? Any knowledge, preferences, or personality you have are predetermining factors, and all these can (and arguably, must) be stripped out the part of the decision-making process that you are claiming grants you freedom. And when you have stripped out all that is predetermined, all that is left is randomity, by definition, since it’s uninfluenced by anything. Right now, I have the choice whether or not to post this reply (or even to reword my response in various ways before posting)—or at least, it sure feels like I have that choice. By “free will” or “choice” I mean that whether I do so or not is not completely determined by the previous state of the universe—at this moment it could go either way—but neither is it randomly determined: it’s something I can control. That’s what I mean by free will; and my experience tells me that I have either free will or the illusion of it. And I don’t know how to tell which it is (free will or the illusion) without making question-begging assumptions. ---
**Author:** ![Oveja\_Slayer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/47e85d/32.png) [@Oveja\_Slayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oveja_Slayer)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/97 "2010-02-16T01:15:25Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > I wonder about a God who is called a good father, picks out one group of people excludes the one’s who are also His creation and His children. Helps the one group kill another. This same God was supposed to know that some of His children would be bad but created them anyway. I wonder does this God get His kicks out of seeing some of His non-chosen suffer or even be killed? I do not believe it was God, but the writer of the story and the people who like to believe they were special and used God as an excuse. This same idea seems to be going on today in many places! Totally agreed. That’s why I like seeking God out on my own without established religion getting in the way of spirituality. When God hates all the same things and people you do and you are always the special chosen one…you’re probably making god in your image instead of trying to find any truth on the matter. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/98 "2010-02-16T03:18:11Z")
> [@Cumberdale](#): > > I find that argument tiresome and weak. God is so far above us that we are less than ants are to us. If humans had created ants and given them the ability to think on some basic level, then it is up to us to be able to communicate with them on their level. If an ant can understand that I don’t want it to get into my sugar bowl and does anyway then an appropriate punishment would need to be used to show displeasure. I sure wouldn’t wipe out ever creature in my back yard save 1 personal favorite and tell them to go on from there. Wait till gawd finds the magnifying glass. We’re all gonna be in deep shit then. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/99 "2010-02-16T17:39:25Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I have a problem or two with this (aside from the whole question of how you define “happiness”): > > For one thing, it sounds like you’re equating being less than maximally good with being evil. If I cooked you a delicious dinner, but it wasn’t as delicious as I might possibly have made it, am I evil? > > If the world God created and the existence he blessed us with is better than nonexistence, but still has room for improvement, it seems to me to be stretching things a bit to call such a Creator “evil.” (Though I can still see the problems with calling such a God “omnibenevolent” or “supremely good” or some such.) It comes down to knowledge and capability. And, of course, just how evil you have to be to be “evil”. The latter question is handily avoided in any theological discussion where the god is claimed to be perfectly benevolent, of course. (Which in practical terms is all such discussions.) For the former question, suppose that you know somebody is out of work and desperate for a job. You know of two job openings, both of which the man is qualified for; one is a hard, stressful, long-houred job that pays a barely-adequate subsitence wage, and the other is a wonderful, high-paying, low-stress, fun job. By any measure your friend would be better off in the second job; if you tell your friend about the first job and keep the second job a secret, are you evil? By POE definitions, yeah, you are, because you’re certainly not perfectly benevolent. By any measure, you’re kind of a jerk. If you have the knowledge and capability to give somebody an optimal result, deliberately withholding the optimal result for no external reason (and omnipotent gods can’t have external reasons) is malicious, pretty much by definition. > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > For another thing, what if some sentient beings are not at a maximized level of happiness due to their own choice? Is a God who gives people the _opportunity_ to choose and/or earn great happiness “evil” in comparison to a God who forces them down the paths that maximize their happiness? There’s two ways to argue this. I’m going to argue the latter. The first argument is that when god creates a people with a predisposition to get themselves into trouble, then the act of creating these people is an act of evil. The second argument is that I can _concede_ that until I finish convincing you that there’s no such thing as meaningful free will, that I cannot ‘win’ this point. However, as long as there are still earthquakes that take out Haiti, I don’t have to. 🙂 > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Right now, I have the choice whether or not to post this reply (or even to reword my response in various ways before posting)—or at least, it sure feels like I have that choice. By “free will” or “choice” I mean that whether I do so or not is not completely determined by the previous state of the universe—at this moment it could go either way—but neither is it randomly determined: it’s something I can control. That’s what I mean by free will; and my experience tells me that I have either free will or the illusion of it. And I don’t know how to tell which it is (free will or the illusion) without making question-begging assumptions. The thing is, your physical state is _part_ of the previous state of the universe - including your mental state\*. And at any point in your internal decision-making process, it is strongly-if-not-entirely determined by the state of your mind a pico-instant prior. You do have the illusion of control, and in a way you _have_ control - if by ‘you’ you are speaking of the part of the universe inside your mind as opposed to the rest of it that’s on the outside. There are mechanisms inside your head that operate largely unaffected by events outside (well, give or take a swing of a lead pipe), and this independence of thought from the external world gives you a justified reason to think of yourself as ‘free of will’. But the fact remains that despite your freedom from outside influences, you are decidedly _not_ uninfluenced by your own thoughts and prior thoughts. And within the realm of your own head, your decisions are either determined by your own preferences and thoughts and knowledge and the deterministic decision-making processes that use these things - or there may be some random elements that feed (slightly) into the result, giving you a (small) amount of nondeterminism. So yeah. You have control over your decisions - but you don’t have control over the processes in your own head that actually _make_ the decisions you make. Inside there, there is just determinism and randomity\*\*. - This argument assumes either a materialist universe or one where the ‘supernatural’ is on a timeline running in the same direction as ours - because if not a lot of things break down, including our own sense of identity in our timeline. If your thoughts aren’t being created in the order we experience them but instead are edited in random order by an external author, then we aren’t real at all and free will _certainly_ doesn’t exist. \*\* Or there’s some other person mind controlling you, who isn’t you (since your experience doesn’t include theirs). Don’t laugh - I write fiction, and this happens to the characters in it all the time. Of course, people this is happening to obviously don’t have free will. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668/100 "2010-02-16T22:12:53Z")
I think the whole whiny,\* “God’s a big meanie cause he smites us with famine, pestilence, war, death and whatnot”\* is just a red herring. You know how it sometimes feels good when your tooth aches a little and you wiggle it with your tongue to get that ol’ pleasurable-pain thing going? Well God’s like your tongue, only acting on a much grander scale. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-god-evil/528668.md?page=6)