I don’t mean to be offensive, but I really don’t think you are taking the problem of evil seriously. There is nothing beautiful about a person covered in small pox pustules; nor is there anything beautiful about tidal waves killing hundreds of thousands of people at a go. What could be more evil than choosing, for aesthetic reasons, to allow millions of people to die horribly rather than live happily?
Jesus said: “the Kingdom of God is within you.” Do that, look within for your answers.
I try to imagine a universe without any of those things, anywhere, and I don’t get any picture that isn’t rather boring and meaningless. As Heaven surely must be, come to think of it.
I also think it’s a fallacy to assume God has to be perfect – or even omniscient and omnipotent – to qualify as God. If he is merely the most powerful and percipient being in, and the creator of, the Universe, isn’t that enough to make him the Supreme Being?
When I do that, and I often do, usually I just find more questions. Not always, but usually.
Don’t have time to reply now; will return in the AM.
[TV Ad] Is your life boring and meaningless? Go out an run over a child.[/TV Ad]
To expand on lekatt’s partial verse:
Which I think is useful more for where not to look for the Kingdom of God (don’t look externally, science, other people), as it is internal, personal, but it does not tell you how to access it in this passage.
One intepretation of the story of the Creation and Fall, as found in Genesis, is that God did create a world without natural evils, until Adam and Eve screwed it up by eating the forbidden fruit—that it is not just humanity but all of creation that is Fallen and has to be redeemed.
Granted, taking the story as true in any sense (not just literally/historically) raises all sorts of questions and issues, but I think the story does need to be considered when discussing what the Bible has to say about theodicy.
Again, if you think that a world without smallpox is “boring and meaningless”, then you are saying that it was a *mistake * to eradicate the smallpox virus. That, in my view, is simply a *reductio ad absurdum * of your position.
And it’s true that you can pretty easily make the problem of evil go away by denying God’s perfection. But for most monotheists, that amounts to giving away the game. By definition (they will say) God is perfect, so if humans were created by some imperfect being(s), then that amounts to saying there is no God. Super intelligent extraterrestrials, perhaps; God, no. Now, there is of course a minority view which agrees with you; Charles Harteshorne is their standard-bearer. But his view is very much a minority view.
I think this is right, especially among evangelical Christians: moral evil results from free will, and natural evil indirectly results from free will too, in that Adam and Eve’s misuse of their free will caused humanity to get kicked out of the Garden of Eden, a place where natural evil was unknown.
No, I don’t think he is saying that. At least, it doesn’t necessarily follow. Maybe it’s the opportunity to do things that actually make a difference, like eradicate the smallpox virus, that make life meaningful?
He created tapeworms so that some of could have the satisfaction of figuring out how to get rid of them?
Here again, the apology portrays this god as a sort of bumbler who can’t devise a way to make life interesting other than by bringing pain and suffering on innocent people.
Or a vindictive monster who wants to bring eternal pain and suffering to those who followed the fall although they might not have done anything wrong. Yes, I know that the standard position is that everyone does something wrong but does everyone do something so wrong as to justify a tsunami that kills indiscriminately?
I’ve heard this argued before: natural evils allow room for us to display moral virtues, such as compassion, caring, etc.
I’m not saying there aren’t any theodies worth discussing. I am mostly arguing that **BrainGlutton ** is underestimating the difficulty of solving the problem of evil.
Remember that man is the one who wanted to taste of good and evil, not God.
But who put that tree in the garden?
Yes, God can not be found externally by science, nor can others tell you what God is all about. But you can look within and follow the teaching of Jesus, in time it will become apparent to you what is going on in the world and the part you play in it.
Edgar Casey was heckled by a real estate broker each time they met. One day Casey offered a $50 bet to the man, a lot of money in those days, the broker was to sit under his favorite tree for one hour every day for two months. During that time he could not read, eat, sleep, or otherwise amuse himself, his job was to talk to the tree asking questions or whatever came to his mind and listen for the tree to answer. The bet was he would hear the tree talk back to him in this length of time or he would win the bet. The broker paid Casey in a little over a month and never heckled the famous psychic again.
We live in artificial cities far from nature and reflection, we have lost our connection with God and deceive ourselves into thinking He doesn’t exist.
**I ** don’t want to taste evil. And I don’t know why I should have to just because Adam and Eve did so.
Now, in the Church of the SubGenius, we don’t have to deal with the “problem of evil.” We just assume Alien Space God Jehovah-1 is cruel and stupid. But that makes it possible to deal with him, as “Bob” has!
And besides, Bob is always willing to cut you some slack.
You probably wished you never had the chance to taste trans-fat, HFCS or any other foods that are unhealthy, but someone introduced them into our world. But now that they are in the world I’d say that you would like to try fried chicken in transfat with a HFCS drink just to experience it once.
I think a better question would be why did God allow Satan the chance at man. I see it as a option for independence from God, which seems only fair. The problem is that man outside the Word of God has no power over Satan, who can easially conquer man and put man under his kingdom.