Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
/ Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
/ Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
/ Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
/ Then why call him God?
-Epicurus
I’m agnostic although raised a Jew, and I enjoy playing devil’s advocate, but how do you argue against this? Seems to me Epicurus got it pretty much right. God is either weak, mean, or both, and any of those qualify he/she/it as a big piece of crap and not worthy of my tithings or worship.
I assume one likely answer is that free will causes evil, and God gave us free will because some good caused by it outweighs some bad (not even potential, but actual, as God knows all, sees all). Of course, the people that tell us about this good that comes from free will can’t tell us what this good is because then they’d be making some sense…
sunday night on the BBC news there was a rabbi in israel that cause a stir by saying that the jews that died in the holocaust were suffering because of bad karma of previous lives. other jews were objecting to this statement but the interesting thing to me was that he was talking about reincarnation at all.
the word hell in the old testament is translated from sheol, which means place of the dead. the christian heaven and hell seems to come from roman paganism.
the question of EVIL looks very different from the paradigm of reincarnation. near the beginning of psalms there is talk of god laughing because the kings of the earth are doing evil. does god know something the kings of the earth don’t know?
We’ve covered this in numerous other threads, but I can see you’re new here. So here’s a basic recap of the Orthodox Jewish point of view:
For whatever reason, G-d wanted a world of beings capable of exercising free choice. Free choice could not exist if evil were not an option.
Is this malevolent? No, because the rewards of leading a life of freely-chosen good is a good thing. The possibility of evil enables this to exist; making evil impossible would preclude the existence of this reward. Hence, allowing evil is an act of beneficence…it allows the greater good to exist.
The truth is, I now see from the statement at the end of your post that you’d pretty much gotten to this point. You seem to have a problem with this point of view because there is no sufficient Earthly description of heaven. Well, can’t help you there. Just try to picture the most enjoyable thing you can imagine and then figure it’s even better than that.
Since we’ve all only lived in a world where good was a freely-chosen option, are we qualified to say whether it is a good thing? It seems you’re assuming it’s good because of your belief that God is good.
Which brings us right back to: God knew all this crap was going to happen, so (to get back to the OP’s question) it can be concluded that evil came from God. Hmmm…now the wheels are turning. That kind of makes sense. God could not have existed in 100% “goodness”, because good requires evil, to be meaningful. So, maybe God is the epitome of both, and Satan is just another face of God. Just thinking out loud…
As I attempted to point out in this thread, believers tend to say that God has a higher purpose - that free will/disasters teach us how to be better creatures or allow us to earn something we couldn’t otherwise obtain. I say this means that the God described is not omnipotent, because if He could do anything, he could give us that secret ingredient they say must be earned, but without the suffering they say is necessary to earn it. If he can’t do this, he’s not omnipotent, is he?
God is divided. Evil exists cause he’s not complete. The soul of each person has the part of God with in it. The point of life is to return it to him.
There is no evil. You only think there is.
All loving means letting go. If you love somthing, then you allow it to make it’s own decisions.
God isn’t the only good.
Ect. Ect.
Go type in “Theodicy” in a search engine and you’ll get some real answers.
The way i look at it god is good and good is what god does. The definition of good comes from god because good isint some “truth”.
God does have a higher purpose, hes letting us learn for ourselves mostly. Of course he could just give us something to make us learn probably but whats the point of something if its not earned?
Though there is one truth, wordgames don’t mean nothin.
Sorry is I was unclear on the following point: the OP, it seemed to me, was asking questions about inconsistencies in the accepted Judeo-Chritian definition of G-d. My response to him was intended to settle those contradictions within the context of that belief system, in which G-d is indeed defined as good.
Naturally, there is no extraneous proof that freely-chosen good is better than non-chosen good, although instances in the real world comparing the sensations of satisfaction and happiness between people who have earned what they have and people who haven’t can possibly be taken as an illustration of a general principle that applies in that realm as well.
SeatTime:
Well, the “omniscience” angle wasn’t part of the OP, otherwise I would have addressed it as well. There are a number of old threads on this board which deal with the issue of free choice vs. omniscience. While I’ll give you a “nutshell” answer, further debate on the subject that can be found in those threads might answer questions that will arise from that answer, and I encourage you to read them prior to posting questions about it.
That nutshell answer is: He knows of the evil that men chose because they chose it.
AerynSun:
Well, that depends on your definition of omnipotence, doesn’t it?
G-d is able to do anything that is not inherently impossible. By that I mean something that is not self-contradictory by definition. He can create, for example, a horse with wings if he wants to. But he can’t create a horse that simultaneously has wings and doesn’t have wings. By the same token, there’s no way to create “unearned earned reward.” It’s inherently impossible. That "secret ingredient to which you refer is no secret. It’s the satisfaction that a person feels as a result of completing a task that he worked on. There is a special quality to the results of one’s own efforts that cannot be replicated in unearned things.
If that sort of “non-omnipotence” makes him, in your eyes, a deficient being, then so be it. But the definition of G-d’s omnipotence as defined in Orthodox Judaism includes that clause.
Part of the problem is the way you look at evil. According to Christian theology, evil does not exist in any objective, real way; rather, it is an absence of God. So God did not create evil, he molded us in his own image, giving us the free choice to accept him or not. Evil arises when we do not all strive to embrace God in our hearts.
Have a look at The City of God. It is an enormous book, so check out the index entry for “evil.”
That sounds a little too much like if you don’t believe in God then you are going to Hell. I am not a Christian. I do not embrace God in my heart. But I am not evil. I consider myself to be a pretty moral person.
Or when you say that “we do not all strive to embrace God” that just presents the opportunity for evil. That is to say - I don’t believe in God, therefore evil exists, even though I myself may not be a perpetrator of said evil. If that is the case, it seems to make “evil” too subjective to put a finger on.
Well, if he was, then he is not accountable for it.
Semantical gibberish. Why did God allow him to choose evil? Which is God, impotent or malevolent?
Hey, I asked you first.
Evasive. Reconcile God’s perceived omnipotence with His inability to destroy evil or else His perceived omnibenevolence with His unwillingness to destroy it.
Nonsense. I see no evidence of that.
Of course not.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
But I do not claim to be omnipotent, and He does.
That’s not fair. How can I possibly know what might be accomplished billions of years from now?
Which St. Augustine certainly would have agreed with. It took almost a thousand years for Christian theologians to concoct Limbo, where all of the patriarchs and saintly pre-Christian pagans ended up.
Well, you may not be evil by nature, but your failure to believe in God opens the door. According to this kind of theology, godlessness = evil.
And that is precisely the point. Augustine was struggling against the legacy of Manicheism, whose pantheon consists of the warring gods of good and evil. Augustine was himself a Manichee before converting to Christianity. He sought to prove that there is no independent existence of evil, hence it is only a subjective lack of God.
Considering my views, and holding them up against St. Augustine’s views, my only conclusion is that St. Augie was a crack-pot.
If I say to someone, I don’t believe in God, that pretty much says that I do not believe in Hell, or Godlessness=Evil.
If the only retort is, “It doesn’t matter what you believe, that’s the way it is.” Then I can only roll my eyes. That argument is akin to banging my head against a wall, is it not?
I don’t know why you would expect an orthodox man of faith to accept otherwise. God/Good is, no matter what you may believe. So you are right, I would not expect you would get terribly far with your line of reasoning. Though Augustine may have some surprise answers for you, given how far his intellect surpasses mine.
