To those who believe in a perfect, all-powerful God

Great Debates
1

What’s wrong with this reasoning:

God is a perfect being
A perfect being can do no wrong
Therefore God can do no wrong.
It is wrong to allow people to suffer undeservedly if you have the power to stop it.
God is all-powerful.
Thus, God has the power to stop any suffering.
Some people in the world suffer undeservedly.
Thus, God allows some people to suffer undeservedly even though he has the power to stop it.
Therefore, God is doing wrong.

This appears to be a contradiction. If you believe in an all-powerful, perfect God, how do you resolve this? Which part of this argument do you disagree with?

Please note: I’m not trying to convince you that there is no God (as a matter of fact, I believe in a sort of God myself, although not exactly the perfect, all-powerful Judeo-Christian God). Nor am I trying to say that people who believe in God are being illogical. I don’t doubt that many of you will have a perfectly legitimate answer to this question, probably involving rejecting one of the basic assumptions I made in the above argument. What I’m wondering is which one? Would believing a religion like Christianity require me to believe that everyone who suffers deserves it? Or that there’s nothing morally wrong with allowing people to suffer, even if they don’t deserve it? Honestly, I’m not trying to make a point here, I’m just wondering how people will answer the question.

2

And yes, I realize that to make it deductively valid I’d have to throw in some intermediate steps like “that which is all-powerful has the power to stop any suffering”, but I think that the line of reasoning is pretty clear from what I have above.

3

I think the fallacy in this argument can be found in this statement:

“Wrong” is a subjective term.

God can do no wrong… he’s God. Or so the saying goes. Or something.

The preceding statement should not be taken as an endorsement of any particular candidate or party by any individual.

4

“Perfect” would seem to imply “good.” But when the omnipotent god permits children to suffer from lukemia, spina bifida, sickle cell anemia, and other horrible, deadly and debilitating diseases it it clear to me that he (she/it) is not in any human sense good. Certainly not worthy of worship.

5

In the Book of Job, Job is beset by trials and finally asks God essentially the same question as the OP’s.

God replies, “Where were you when I made the world?”

The implication in that answer, at least as I see it, is the unsatisfying conclusion that God is not simply an ultra-powerful person. He is a different sort of presence, one that is simply beyond the understanding of humans.

I enjoyed shows like the recently-cancelled Wonderfalls because they (obliquely) made this point – not that God was necessarily the driving force behind the talking animals, but we’re talking concept here. Jaye, the protagonist, is ordered by a mysterious force that manifests as talking wax animals to break the tailights on a priest’s car. She does so.

Now, if that’s all you see, you may conclude that whatever force is giving Jaye her orders is malevolent - or crazy. But through the magic of Hollywood, we get to see the entire chain of cause and effect: later in the show, the broken tailight causes a police officer to pull the car over, and a routine warrant check reveals the priest had an outstanding warrant for unpaid child support – for a child he never knew he had (conceived before he entered the priesthood, I hasten to add.) Father father is reunited with his former girlfriend, who hasn’t known where he was, and his heretofore unknown child, and everything is happy.

Of course, that’s a simple scenario, and through the magic of television, we get to see all the parts, and all the cause and effect. That’s because a show that just portrayed random bad events without any evidence that they were part of a higher purpose would be unwatchable.

Actually, it is watchable. We call it Life.

  • Rick
6

The contradiction raised by OP was faced early on in the development of modern religions, and that there have been several different answers.

(1) The concept of God developed over time (or, if you prefer, human understanding of God developed over time.) In the earliest parts of the Bible, for instance, written say around 1250 - 1000 BC – there is perfect justice. Evil deeds are punished compatibly with the crime, and good deeds are rewarded. Suffering is the result of evil actions, either by some wicked person(s) (the Egyptians kill the first-born of Israel) or as punishment for evil actions (the first-born Egyptians are killed.) It may be harsh by modern standards, but there is some notion of justice in this world.

So as people came to understand that there is sometimes suffering in this world that does not appear to be related to evil deeds (“suffer undeservedly”), the concept/understanding of God broadened. If God is a God of perfect justice and mercy, then this world must be only part of the picture, and there must be another world, an after-life, in which all wrongs are righted. This concept appears in biblical (and related) literature beginning around 600 - 100 BC, evolving to the early Christian concepts of heaven and resurrection.

That was one answer.

(2) Another answer was the one given by Bricker and the book of Job: that God is not a human, and that we are not in any position to judge. We see only part of the picture, we do not understand the grand scheme. We can only trust in God’s righteousness, but we don’t understand what it means.

(3) A third answer is that right/wrong are only one feature of life that God cares about. God also cares about giving people the ability to CHOOSE between right and wrong. Creating mankind in God’s image means that people have the ability to understand, to discern, and to choose.

If God intervened in each case of suffering, if we saw perfect correlation between doing evil and suffering, then we would no longer have free will. There would be no incentive to do evil. In God’s scheme, allowing people to choose is more important than having a perfect world with no suffering.

BTW, one corollary of this is that people must help God to perfect the world. Although God is perfect, the world is not, and it is our task to work towards perfecting the world – relieving or removing unjust suffering.

7

What about people who want to suffer (i.e. masochists)? Should God prevent them from suffering?

Actually, Bricker’s and C K Dexter Haven’s answers are way better than mine.

Quite the opposite: Christianity teaches that Christ suffered without deserving it; and his followers can expect to as well.

8

This one:

You have yet to establish why this must be so, and it is not axiomatic (in the way that “a perfect being can do no wrong” may be). Do you believe that there can be no positive consequence to suffering?

9

We only grow sometimes through pain. Ever thought that?

10

I suppose you can find some examples of undeserved suffering which had positive results, but surely you can also find examples of suffering with no benefit, right? I mean, what about people being tortured and experimented on during the Holocaust? Surely you wouldn’t tell me that that suffering was somehow “worth it”, would you? And if not, and if God is all powerful, why didn’t he stop it?

So far, C K Dexter Haven’s third point makes the most sense to me – that God considers the preservation of free will to be of greater importance than preventing suffering. But this doesn’t address suffering that isn’t caused by humans, like the stuff DesertGeezer mentions.

11

It taught us that humankind is capable of such hate, and what underlying reasons can lead to that sort of inhumane action.

The biological experiments were examples to the human race of how we can go great lengths in appaling acts if we consider one race lower than the other.

12

OK, but would they be so much worse an example if God had stopped half or a third of them? Suppose only five million Jews had died in the Holocaust, instead of six. Would the lesson about what horrible SOBs humans can be have been any less clear?

13

Humans would have some degree of being able to think for themselves do their own actions etc etc, God didn’t have in mind as us all as senseless robots. Its just a manner of God setting them in the direction which shows them what actions lead too, in which better minded people learn to work harder to avoid such concequences as the Holocaust. It maybe a harsh lesson yes, but hows that different from the harsh lessons people learn all the world on an individual level?

14

I guess I just think it’s hard to make the argument that we need as much suffering in the world as we have. If one less person were afflicted with a debilitating illness, if one less person were the victim of rape or torture, wouldn’t that be an improvement?

Also, with regard to the notion that God is determined to let humans exercise their free will, and not to intervene to prevent them from doing evil: How come he didn’t follow those rules in the Bible? If Biblical stories are to be believed, God used to intervene all the time. He got the Jews out of Egypt, didn’t he? How come no modern day oppressive regimes find themselves dealing with plauges?

This is getting a little off topic from my original post, but it’s something else I’ve wondered about. For those who believe in the Bible: How come God seems to have gotten so much more subtle in the last couple thousand years? Does your religion give an explanation for why we don’t see Biblical-style miracles today?

15

Its our perogative to follows those rules, if we’re dumb enough not too, then we go to hell to pay for those misdeeds, get it? But even in those rules, theres room for free will.

If there was one less rape etc yes it would be an improvement, but we as a race have to make it ourselves and train ourselves in making sure everyone understands its a terrible crime, its called Human development. Because what would we learn if we just let God decide everything?

16

Man created God in his own image.

No, that doesn’t mean I’ve given up Christianity – it’s an observation about psychology, not metaphysics.

The only sentient beings we humans know (other than putatively God or angels, an item we’ll table for the moment) are other human beings, whose behavior and reactions are much like our own, or our own at their best or worst. Each of us has it in him to be another Stalin or another Francis of Assisi or Gandhi, depending on what we let out and what we focus on.

We take that image and shape our own understanding of God by it. Further, as little kids we knew that Mommy or Daddy could fix anything that was wrong – and we paint Him in their image. Then, when we reach an age where the real world starts poking holes in that rose-colored picture, we reject Him because He doesn’t meet up to our expectations of what He ought to be.

“Logic is a means of going horribly wrong with perfect certitude.” Any handy reference will give you a list of logical paradoxes and fallacies, ranging from the proof that a cat is a dog, because each is an animal, and things equal to the same thing… to Pascal’s Wager to the wonderful absurdities that one comes up with when one starts reasoning from absolutes. (Paging St. Anselm!)

The God whom I know is not one who necessarily is omniscient, omnipotent, or omnibenevolent – but what He is, is self-limiting – there is very little if anything that He cannot be, but there is much that He refuses to be. Dex’s take on the relative importance of free will as opposed to suffering is one element of that (I agree with him, by the way) – but there is more to it than that.

Remember that Jesus’s favorite metaphor for Him was Abba – Father, Daddy, the intimate loving Parent in the Sky. And perhaps the hardest, and most rewarding, task for a father is to permit his children to grow up, testing their wings and their limits, facing problems by themselves, with him as a fallback but solving their own problems by themselves.

The ability to “make it all better” is there – but you use that sparingly on an older child or teen; he or she not only wants but needs to do it him/herself if possible – just to know that there’s help available when he/she has reached his/her limits.

Whatever picture you have in your mind of God, whether or not you believe in Him – you’re wrong. (And so am I – I’m not claiming any special knowledge here.) Whatever He may be, it’s something beyond what any of us may image or comprehend. And yet it’s something as close as the smile on the face of a sleeping child, or a sunset painting the clouds with flame, or the ripple of a gentle breeze across a pond. He embodies paradox, because He is beyond our comprehension – but not beyond our reach. For among other things, but first and foremost, He is love.

17

Do you have names of/links to these references? I would love to show my former philosophy teacher. I said once that something could be logical true but factually false (or maybe I said logically correct but realistically incorrect - I can’t remember my exact words) and she got red in the face and had to dismiss class.

I’m not an xtian but I try to be as intellectually honest as possible and logic/philosophy seems (to me) to have just as many holes in it as religion.

18

If a person starts from true assumptions and reasons deductively to false conclusions, the flaw is in that person’s understanding of logic, not in logic itself. If the logic is good, but the conclusions are obviously false, then one of the assumptions must be false.

All logic can tell you is “If ___ is true, than ___ must also be true.” To reject logic is to claim that there are no statements like this which must be true by their structure alone. I think there are many obvious examples of statements which are clearly true from their form (Like “If all A’s are B’s, and all B’s are C’s, then all A’s are C’s”). Unless you can find an example where a statement like that fails to hold, then I think it’s pretty absurd to reject logic.

Now, if you want to say that logic is useless in resolving certain questions because it’s impossible to agree on the inital assumptions, that’s a different matter. But nevertheless I think logical arguments can be useful in establishing precisely which assumption is the point of contention.

19

Agreed. I should’ve made myself more clear.

20

Building on Bricker’s and C K Dexter Haven’s comments, it is worthwhile to note that the suffering that exists in the world are not of God’s doing. Nonetheless, He is routinely accused of being the source of it, or accused of negligence (among other crimes) for not intervening to stop it.

Mankind’s suffering is a result of the endemic sin that we are all born with. (Rom 5:12) As a result, mankind has inflicted these sufferings on itself. (Ec 8:9) Satan has played a role in this from the beginning of man’s creation. (Ge 3:1-4, John 8:44, 2Cor 11:14, 2Cor 2:11 and many, many others)

And while God has a vista that is far beyond our comprehension He has given us a glimpse of his “grand scheme”, and invites us to be part of it. (and enjoy the benefits) We are not blind to his plans for mankind, nor is He asking for ‘blind faith.’ It is not only possible for us to know God’s qualities and purposes, but He wants us to know Him. (1 Cor 2:11-13, Pr 2:1-14, Rom 2:2, 2 Tim 2:7, Phil 1:9,10, Pr 3:1-7) (and hundreds of others)

He has provided the bible as a record of His purposes, and the bible, coupled with prayer, provide a means of understanding Him, His qualities and purposes. Although the bible continues to be one of the best distributed books year after year (and remains the most widely distributed book in human history) the amount of bible reading is appallingly small. If you’re a Christian, it is incumbent upon you to read the bible. (John 17:3, Pr 2:1-5) Even a non-Christian wanting to know about Christianity is best served by going to the source. I’m aware that here (more than any place I’ve ever seen) the bible is often held in contempt, and even among believers is looked upon with skepticism. Others pick and choose what they will believe or follow. Regardless, if God purposed that the bible be a prime means of understanding Him, and if He outlines not just his future plans, but the consequences of not following the “rules”, it can be hardly said that we were kept in the dark. (Matt 7:21-27)

As to the OP, I would submit that we can all sit around and opine as to God and His purposes. (and for some, His shortcomings) But if you want to know why God allows suffering to continue, pick up the bible and read it.

If God isn’t the source of suffering, why doesn’t he stop it anyway? As C K Dexter Haven noted there is an element of free will associated with God’s plans. This “power” to choose is perhaps the greatest gift we have been given. And this power has been conferred to all sentient creatures, not just humans. (John 8:44)

But more than free will is at stake. It’s what we do with our free will that matters. In Eden, Satan raised the issue of sovereignty. Essentially, he told Eve (and by extension Adam) that humans were being duped—that they did NOT have to abide by God’s rules to live a happy life, or to even be like God.
(Ge 3:4,5) That issue, the question as to whether mankind has either the right, or even the ability, to govern himself is the one that we are all witnesses to.

A primary theme in the OT is whether the Israelites would follow God and his rules, or whether they would follow other gods. (and pay the consequences) A beautiful set of verses sums up a common refrain, * “26 “See, I am putting before YOU today blessing and malediction: 27 the blessing, provided YOU will obey the commandments of YOUR God that I am commanding YOU today; 28 and the malediction, if YOU will not obey the commandments of YOUR God and YOU do turn aside from the way about which I am commanding YOU today, so as to walk after other gods whom YOU have not known.”* (Deu 11:26-28) (also see Deu 6:4-9) Nonetheless, the Israelites were free to choose their course.

As Bricker noted, the account of Job strikes the same theme. Satan told God that the only reason that Job served God was that god put a ‘hedge around him’ and that Job’s service and obedience to God were simply due to what Job got out of the deal. ** (Job 1:7-11)** Job was free to choose.

Even Jesus was subjected to the same question. Upon coming out of the wilderness, he was confronted by Satan who tried to convince Jesus to compromise his integrity. (Matt. Chapter 4)

The answer to that question—whether mankind is able to live independantly of God—is the question was answer individually every single day by our choices. And, individually we are held accountable for the choices we make.** (Heb 4:13) **

But Jesus’s choices (he too had the gift and power of free will)** (See Matt 26:39)** provided a means for answering that question for all time. As a perfect man, he not only kept his integrity and chose to serve God, but he provided a ‘corresponding ransom’ for Adam. As a perfect man, Adam’s sins could only be answered by another perfect life. By coming to earth in the form as a human, Jesus not only left us an model from which to pattern our lives, but he ‘paid’ the bill Adam left us through genetics. the debt of sin and the death that sin earned. His perfect life and integrity provided the means to find salvation. **(Matt 20:28, Eph 1:7, Jo 3:16, 1 Cor 15:22, Ro 5:12, 1 Tim 2:6, 1 Cor 15:45,47, and others) **

At some point in the future, that question will be answered to the satisfaction of God and be clear to all creation. Many call this Armageddon. At that time, all sufering will end, and those righteous people who kept their integrity, like Job and Jesus, will enjoy the results of their choices. **(Rev 21:1-4, Matt 24:14, Dan 2:44, Ps 37:10-12, 29 and many others) **

In the meantime, we must understand that sin (and suffering) are [were] a natural result from Satan’s, & Adam’s rebellion. God not only isn’t responsible for their choices, but he lovingly sent his beloved Son to clean up a mess that he didn’t create. (Jo 3:16) He further holds out the hope that one day all suffering wil end and the only people remaining will be those who excercised their free will by upholding God’s righteous standards in their lives. To that end, our suffering is temporary. For those who wish to not only understand why God permits suffering, but what God requires of us, it is necessary that we read His bible daily and endeavor to know Him and his purposes more closely.