"Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent...

Could you elaborate on how something can't be right and evil Because I dont believe that is always the case. The mere fact that something is evil doesnt mean it cant be right or just for someone or something else. People are often indirectly affected by circumstances that are malevolent for some but beneficial for others.

The bottom line to your argument(as far as I can tell) Pyrrho is that since we have the capacity for evil then God must not be omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent.
And the bottom line to my argument is that there is nothing inherently wrong with having the capacity for something and therefore this has no bearing on God being omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent.
If no one chose to do evil there would be no evil. There would still be accidents and there would still be pain and suffering but those things are not inherently evil

No, that is not the bottom line of the arguments. You appear to skim over the parts that you do not wish to answer. For example, in the case of disease, the disease itself may not have any intentions, but that does not mean that God did not have any intentions in creating disease. God created disease, knowing what the consequences would be. He made all diseases (if God made the world), KNOWING that doing so would cause suffering.

Imagine me as a mad scientist, who creates a new disease, and releases it into the world, knowing that it will cause pain and death. Of course, the disease I release has no intentions, but that does not mean that I have none in creating and releasing it. What would you say of me? But, you see, that is exactly the kind of thing that God did in creating diseases in the first place! And thus, God is as evil as that imagined mad scientist.

Additionally, God does not react to things as a good and loving being would react. Suppose you have two small children, and one starts hitting the other with a baseball bat. Do you seriously imagine that a good and loving parent does nothing about it? Well, if you model your actions and inactions on God's example, you let the one beat the other to death, as slowly or as fast as it happens. You do not interfere with such things, and do not even do as much as tell someone else about the problem and ask them to interfere. Is that what a good and loving being does? Yet God does that countless times, over and over. God allowed every murder, every rape, every bad thing that has ever happened, and did not choose to stop it. Such a being is about as far as possible from being "all good".

You had better give an example of what you have in mind. It is very hard to tell.

Well lets start with the definition that evil is an ethically unjustifiable motive or intent. Or the desire(intent or motive) to do that which is not good.

Note: I'm using the term "ethically" vs "morally" because I don't want to leave room for someone to say well because of x they think it's morally justifiable to, just for example, ram a plane into a building. There is a right and wrong despite any justification we care to use to make a given situation fall on our own personal morality code of right and wrong.

Natural disasters are neither good nor evil because they have no motive nor intent. And only things with free will possess the capacity for evil.

This also explains how something can be painful or cause suffering without being evil. Pain and suffering are not intrinsically evil but at the same time an evil motive or intent often desires to cause pain or suffering.

Something cannot be right and be evil because what you do or what your intent is can either be right or wrong, objectively evil or not. Now I suppose it may be possible to do something subjectively evil and it be right but that would mean that it wasn't evil even though you thought it was.

Ethics refer to the principals of morality, and the concepts of right and wrong are constructs created by our society. Cultures and individuals differ among what they all consider as "right and wrong." The only thing that is similar is that we all have morals, whether they differ or not.

I guess it would depend on your motives or intent. On whether I would classify it as evil. If your intent was to release it on the world I would classify it as evil. Now having said that, that does not mean that it is evil. If God released disease into the world, then my conclusion would be that an all-loving God's motives and intent were that of good, then it cannot be evil.

I know this was directed at kennethamy but I would say you would still be mistaken. Something is right because it's right and something is wrong because it's wrong. Now something can be wrong and not be (subjectively evil) but nothing can be right and evil. and what is wrong is objectively evil(meaning an ethically unjustifiable intent or motive) when it pertains to intent or motive.
So in this case while you may have justified in some way that it's OK to brake peoples kneecaps, I would say that anyone objectively viewing the situation would say you "ought" not do that.

Does not God give us a conscience and the ability to know right from wrong? If one of your children starts hitting the other with a baseball bat does he not know this is wrong? Indeed I would step in but that does not make me right. Also, you make it seem as though there are not consequences to every action. I'm not going to get too much into following down that road but suffice it to say there are many possible negative outcomes for the kid who did the hitting regardless of if the parent steps in or not.

yeah ethics is not the right word but I can't think of what is the right word.

The meaning I'm trying to convey is that something is evil if it is a TRULY unjustifiable motive or intent.

for example
gravity exists
whether I believe gravity exists or not does not change it's value.
in the same there is morality
whether I believe that what I'm doing is just or not does not change when something is or is not just

But that is not consistent with what you said earlier:

If you judge doing bad things, no matter what the motive (and even with good motives), as wrong, then, if you were consistent, you would judge God to be bad for doing bad things, no matter what the motive. But the simple fact is, you call god "good" no matter what evil he does or allows. Which makes the statement, "god is all good" meaningless.

What I ask is consistency. If it is wrong to interfere, then a person who chooses not to bother calling the police when someone is being brutally murdered outside their window, is right to do nothing. But if one should interfere, then it is wrong to do nothing. So, which is it?

God, of course, does nothing. Do you seriously believe that it is good that rapes and murders are allowed to happen? Should nothing be done to stop them from happening?

Additionally, the "accidents" that happen can only happen because God made a world in which such things could happen. If, for example, God did not want babies to burn to death, he could have made them not flammable. But God did not choose that, and instead made them such that they can burn, and such that when they do burn, they suffer horribly. Since that was God's choice, he obviously wanted a world in which babies burn and suffer horribly. Do you see the problem now?

people want to argue the point about whether god is good or evil, when he is above both. they are terms that belong to us, we made them up and we define them in a million ways, partly according to geography, history and circumstance.


no one or group on earth has the capability to perceive the whole of even our own reality let alone what is beyond it from an objective outside the box perspective, and we are severely limited as to our capacity for understanding anything about it. if there is a god who created and/or is watching us, he would have that vantage point and be fit to make judgments.


if we believe that certain laws have been given us, such as the ten commandments, even those cannot be interpreted literally by everyone. that would mean that a masochist has been commanded by god to torture others. these laws are only a basic guideline of ethics. the finer points are going to be debatable and more than one answer exists for each question.


when a person believes there is a god, he must know that god would be capable of making correct judgments, and that is when faith happens. many people think they believe in god but when they investigate why they reached that conclusion they are left with nothing and therefore give it up. but there are also people who go on to have life experience that they interpret as evidence that there is a god, or subjective experience that makes it impossible for them to disbelieve. if anyone believes in a god they must also believe that he is competent to make judgments and leave that to the divine-that is faith.


it doesnt let us off the hook and mean we can enjoy ourselves and never interfere in anyone else's lives. it doesnt mean that anything goes. it means that we must really carefully think about our actions and their implications and make the best decision possible at the time, knowing all the while that not everyone else will agree and that we may be making mistakes for which we alone are accountable.

people want to argue the point about whether god is good or evil, when he is above both. they are terms that belong to us, we made them up and we define them in a million ways, partly according to geography, history and circumstance.

is it not enough to worship the great "I Am" for being exactly that?

But there might be other goods I know nothing about which I would know nothing which might result from the broken keecaps, and about which an onniscient God would know. good).

So you don't think that we should praise God for being good? It must then be a mistake to worship Him, since if we don't worship Him for His goodness, it must be only for His power. The way Baal was worshiped for his power. It is, then, fear, not love that motivates us to worship God, for how can we love him unless He is good?

i dont think i could love anyone i was afraid of. i love my son and will continue to do so even if i find out that he is very very 'bad'. also, i have loved a number of very 'bad' men in my life, and still love quite a few 'bad' people! i think they need love the most anyway...



i think what would motivate a person to love the god, a god, the complete all-ness of everything, would be honest if one had perceived something akin to love, benevolence, etc coming from it. worship and praise are other things, not love, and they have their places here and there.

personally i dont like praise, it seems like something to do in order to encourage someone when they are feeling insecure. but on the other hand, perhaps it is only that complete unified field of being that could be worthy of praise, since any portion of IT would be only partial.

worship i think means rituals, not necessarily involving any emotion. at least that is the context i put it within. but it could be used to mean unconditional love perhaps? so we are running into definition discussions.

My point was that those who worship God do so because they believe that God is good, and if you think that God is "beyond good or evil" then those people are deluded.

i wouldnt say such a thing about those people...they have every right to believe god is good!

It isn't a matter of having the right to believe God is good. It is a matter of whether it makes any sense to do so if God is beyond good, as you claim.

so which do you think makes more sense?


my point was that your statement 'if you think that god is beyond good then those people are deluded' must be a logical fallacy...

but i cant match wits with you on logic, you have all the ammunition!