Why does God permit evil????

@Inquisition,

Inquisition;106576 wrote:

Natural disasters cannot be considered evil just because they harm people. They are inevitable processes of life that without would render life impossible.

Nature is full of cycles of death and rebirth. To assign evil or good to these things is misguided because we would not exist without them.

If you dont believe in god, that is a correct but if god exists he caused these occurrences. He was aware of all of these consequences down to last ripple on a duck pond. If god exists they are evil because he knowingly created them and knew the consequences of his creation.

If your this powerful god you could create without making these disasters inevitable. Your God for god sake ,you can do better, no excuses now.

---------- Post added 11-28-2009 at 07:44 AM ----------

Caroline;106578 wrote:

Would you call the Anoconda snake that squeezes the life out of a deer evil? Yet life is lost and an innocent animal suffers. It's nature's cycle. So I believe you cannot call nature nor natural disasters evil, it's just nature's cylces.

Yes caroline if god created the snake, god is evil, because he knowingly created life knowing the consequences. The snake is not evil it, performs to its design, it has no choice, it cant shop at tescos.

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@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;106547 wrote:

With the exception of Intothelight you people refuse to listen to us, evil exists because god has given us a free will, and with that free will we can do exactly what we like even murder our own children. The the murderer might get off here on earth, but all of us, will one day when we stand accountable before God, and explain to him why we did what we did

We might be a fallen world outside of Gods perfect will!!

And natural evil exists because?

---------- Post added 11-28-2009 at 08:35 AM ----------

Caroline;106578 wrote:

Would you call the Anoconda snake that squeezes the life out of a deer evil?

Of course not, because the snake does not make intentional choices. But that is irrelevant. The suffering of the deer is an evil, and that is the claim. And the question we are discussing is not whether the snake is evil, but why it is that an all powerful, all good, God, permits the evil of the suffering of the deer.

No one is saying that the snake is evil, so when that is the claim you attack, you are committing the fallacy of attacking a straw-man. Pretending that is the claim people are making and attacking it because it is an easy target, but not attacking the actual claim that is being make. It is a fallacy of diversion. You are attacking a counterfeit target, hoping that it will be thought to be the real target.

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@prothero,

prothero;106446 wrote:

Well we find at least one point of agreement. The "free will" defense is not much of a defense or a solution to the "problem of evil" at all. Actually we probably have several points of agreement they are just not evident in this discussion.:shocked: We probably agree on what "god" is not but not on what "god" is.

Prothero, you have accepted that the described god is insufficient. My problem is that if you create any god with the ability to reason he becomes the same god as you have discounted. His beyond comprehension and we must leave it at that. Any attempt in my opinion fails otherwise he becomes so vague and invisible he disappears and becomes incomprehensible.

1 Reply

@xris,

[QUOTE=xris;106589] Prothero, you have accepted that the described god is insufficient. [/QUOTE] I am not sure what you mean. Which "described god"; the omniscient, omnipotent, all benevolent god of medieval scholastic orthodoxy? the conception of god that gives rise to the problem of evil? Yes, I think that conception of god is incompatible with a modern worldview and incomprehensible in view of not only evil but evolution (cosmic and biological) as well.
Omnipotence fails the test of both evil and evolution.
Omniscience fails the test of free will and moral responsibility.
In the modern world one must choose between god's goodness and god's power between mans freedom and moral responsibility and gods omniscience. To abandon Gods goodness is to abandon the pillar of the Western conception of God (mercy, justice and righteousness) or western philosophical values (truth, goodness and beauty). It is the medieval conception of god that is insufficient for belief in the modern world.

The god of scripture and ancient tradition is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Those characteristics arose in the medieval scholastic period when Augustine and Aquinas fused some Platonic and Aristotelian ideas respectively with early Christian tradition.

[QUOTE=xris;106589] My problem is that if you create any god with the ability to reason he becomes the same god as you have discounted. [/QUOTE] I do not understand why you would say this. God can have reason (the universe is rationally intelligible) without being all powerful or all knowing (made in his image). God can be very powerful, powerful enough to bring order into primordial chaos without having all the power. God can foresee the general pattern of events without knowing all things or all details. The future simply does not yet exist to be known by anyone including god. The god of open theism, process theology is rational and the source of transcendent possibility and value without being all powerful or all knowing.

[QUOTE=xris;106589] His beyond comprehension and we must leave it at that. [/QUOTE]
But if the conception of god is to serve a religious function it cannot be left at that; plus human curiosity, philosophical speculation and existential angst refuse to leave it at that. People will have some conception of the divine (always have, always will). The task is to encourage those conceptions which contribute positively to the creation of value in the world and which help people cope with the evil and suffering in the world. God as ineffable mystery does not do that. One should maintain humility about all conceptions however including agnostic and atheistic conceptions.

[QUOTE=xris;106589] Any attempt in my opinion fails otherwise he becomes so vague and invisible he disappears and becomes incomprehensible. [/QUOTE] Fundamentally (in my case) I look at the beauty of the world and the universe (the order, the harmony, the development of value life, mind and experience) and I refuse to believe (despite Dawkins) that it is all the result of blind purposeless forces (a blind watchmaker). I have notions of transcendent value (the true, the beautiful, the good) which I do not think are mere social conventions and cultural influence (slavery is wrong, was wrong, will always be wrong). So my name for the source of this order and harmony for these inherent notions of transcendent value is god. The best conception of this god is the one I find in the religious corollary to process philosophy. The conception of god best put forth by Whitehead and Hartshorne and which now is represented in religious as opposed to philosophical thought as process theology. My conception of god is that of twentieth century religious philosophers not of medieval scholastic monks. In many ways this more modern conception of god is more compatible with ancient tradition and scripture. Pain and suffering are inherent in any "real" world. What is not inherent in any "real" world is order, harmony, life, mind and experience or the true, the beautiful and the good.

"Then God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as the many assert, but he is the cause of a few things only, and not of most things that occur to men. For few are the goods of human life, and many are the evils and the good is to be attributed to God alone; of the evils the causes are to be sought elsewhere, and not in him." Plato Republic II 379

The medieval conception of god cannot be rationally held in the modern world in view of cosmic and biological evolution and the evils of war and genocide in the twentieth century.. In fact such a view of the divine was never rationally held because of evil and suffering. This is the age of reason, of science, of enlightenment and our conception of god must be brought in line with our other understandings of the world but always with humility and always "through a glass darkly".
Do justice, love mercy and walk with humility.

1 Reply

@prothero,

Your doing exactly what i warned the danger of examination brings. You make him sufficiently vague not to be questioned but enough to realise he is wishful thinking. I have the same feelings that this life, this universe can not be just a big coincidence. It has many foot prints that point to a certain engineer but to invent an engineer and attempt to describe, it, has all the pitfalls any creators image has.

Im not saying we should not attempt to describe him or it, but it must be examined. If it has the ability to comprehend its creation then it is responsible and the consequences of its creation are his to be criticised. This silly idea, he is less than capable, is cop out. He could easily communicate his failings and make us realise we are not alone. Dont for pity sake say he has scriptures, scriptures hold no historical fact of his communication.

I have my own feelings of creation but it would never be placed as a certainty. We should muse but not put dogmatic certainty into its description.

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@Caroline,

Caroline;106578 wrote:

Would you call the Anoconda snake that squeezes the life out of a deer evil? Yet life is lost and an innocent animal suffers. It's nature's cycle. So I believe you cannot call nature nor natural disasters evil, it's just nature's cylces.

I've blocked the 3 Atheists in this thread, but that's a excellent point that I've brought up as well.

Calling a natural process "evil" doesn't make any sense to me, either.

-ITL-

3 Replies

@IntoTheLight,

I can recall my children when they did not wish to hear something they put their fingers in their ears and shouted loudly. It only comes with maturity the ability to listen and understand others have a point worthy of listening to. I wonder sometimes why certain posters even bother to attend if their sole purpose is to preach.

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@IntoTheLight,

IntoTheLight;106711 wrote:

I've blocked the 3 Atheists in this thread, but that's a excellent point that I've brought up as well.

Calling a natural process "evil" doesn't make any sense to me, either.

-ITL-

How about this?

I create a robotic dog that is incredibly vicious. I program it's brain to randomly chose weather or not to attack a given target or to ignore it. Then I let it go into the world. It is fully and completely self sufficient.

So when this robotic dog kills or maims a person, am I responsible for their injury or death? Or is it solely the dog's fault? After all I created it to act that way, so am I completely free of any wrong doing?

1 Reply

@IntoTheLight,

IntoTheLight;106711 wrote:

I've blocked the 3 Atheists in this thread, but that's a excellent point that I've brought up as well.

Calling a natural process "evil" doesn't make any sense to me, either.

-ITL-

"Though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I shall fear no evil". What kind of evil do you think the Psalmist was talking about? In The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (second edition, p. 699) we find:

"Two kinds of evil can be distinguished. Moral evil inheres in the wicked actions of moral agents, and the bad consequences they produce. And example is torturing the innocent. ...Natural evilsare bad consequences that apparently derive entirely derive from the operations of impersonal natural forces, for example human and animal suffering produced by natural catastrophes such as earthquakes and epidemics....".

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@Krumple,

Krumple;106838 wrote:

How about this?

I create a robotic dog that is incredibly vicious. I program it's brain to randomly chose weather or not to attack a given target or to ignore it. Then I let it go into the world. It is fully and completely self sufficient.

So when this robotic dog kills or maims a person, am I responsible for their injury or death? Or is it solely the dog's fault? After all I created it to act that way, so am I completely free of any wrong doing?

Ironically the same defense used by many Nazis....

1 Reply

@pigspigs76,

pigspigs76;106888 wrote:

Ironically the same defense used by many Nazis....

Not quite. The Nazi's defense of superior orders did not claim that Nazi was a robot.

---------- Post added 11-29-2009 at 04:54 PM ----------

Krumple;106838 wrote:

How about this?

I create a robotic dog that is incredibly vicious. I program it's brain to randomly chose weather or not to attack a given target or to ignore it. Then I let it go into the world. It is fully and completely self sufficient.

So when this robotic dog kills or maims a person, am I responsible for their injury or death? Or is it solely the dog's fault? After all I created it to act that way, so am I completely free of any wrong doing?

Obviously the robot dog is not a morally responsible being. He would not be morally responsible even if he were a dog. We do no consider animals morally responsible. So whether the dog is, or is not a robot makes no difference. But I don't see what that has to do with the issue. What the robot dog did were evil things, although, like an earthquake, the robot (or ordinary dog) is not, himself, morally evil. Why do you think that evils can be only perpetuated by morally evil things? Being killed by a dog is an evil thing, but no dogs are morally evil things. As I already said, if you do not like the term, "evil", just use the term, "bad".

2 Replies

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;106914 wrote:

Not quite. The Nazi's defense of superior orders did not claim that Nazi was a robot.

ahahah

They obviously did not assert Nazis were robots... I don't even know if robots were common knowledge back then ahahah.

Its not to far fetched to argue that the brainwashing tactics used on German children who eventually became Nazis are not dissimilar to the modern day programing of robots in a general sense.

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@kennethamy,

kennethamy;106914 wrote:

Obviously the robot dog is not a morally responsible being. He would not be morally responsible even if he were a dog. We do no consider animals morally responsible. So whether the dog is, or is not a robot makes no difference. But I don't see what that has to do with the issue. What the robot dog did were evil things, although, like an earthquake, the robot (or ordinary dog) is not, himself, morally evil. Why do you think that evils can be only perpetuated by morally evil things? Being killed by a dog is an evil thing, but no dogs are morally evil things. As I already said, if you do not like the term, "evil", just use the term, "bad".

Well I was not talking about a thing having morals. Since you missed the reason of the question, how about I change it?

I invent a substance that will fail on contact, but not always. If the substance does fail, it will kill who ever touched it. You can't avoid the substance because you will accidently touch it at some point. Since I designed the substance to behave in this manner, am I responsible for who it kills?

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@Alan McDougall,

[QUOTE=Alan McDougall;106547]With the exception of Intothelight you people refuse to listen to us, evil exists because god has given us a free will, and with that free will we can do exactly what we like even murder our own children. The the murderer might get off here on earth, but all of us, will one day when we stand accountable before God, and explain to him why we did what we did [/QUOTE]

Alan McDougall;106547 wrote:

We might be a fallen world outside of Gods perfect will!!

That still does not address the question of suffering and pain not due to free will and rational choice. It also is essentially the Leibniz suggestion that all "evils" are necessary for the greater good and thus are not gratuitous or genuine "evil".

The usual religious solution is that there will be final justice in the afterlife or at the second coming but it fails to address the reality of the experience for the "suffering child". I do not believe in a "god" who "permits" this type of evil. I willingly deny gods omnipotence to preserve god's goodness. This universe is not some staged drama for the human play of creation, fall and redemption. That notion should have died when it became apparent that the earth was not the center of the universe and man was not the crown of creation. It definitely seems incompatible with our current knowledge about the age of the universe, and the process of cosmic and biological evolution.

[QUOTE=IntoTheLight;106553] It seems to me that your argument is that God allows "natural evil" to occur so therefore God is bad and/or irresponsible. Is that your position? -[/QUOTE] No my position is that evil is inherent in any possible meaningful actual world, that god is not omnipotent and that creation was not ex nihilo. Without god the world would still be the chaotic formless void. God is powerful but not all powerful. God is rational intelligence. Gods purpose is the creation of value (higher experience).

[QUOTE=IntoTheLight;106553] Job wasn't affected by Natural Evil at all. In the Book of Job, both the Christian god and Satan conspired to make Job suffer. The manifestation may have been "natural evil", but it's origin was God & Satan pulling the strings to make it happen. [/QUOTE]

IntoTheLight;106553 wrote:

Why does God allow Natural Evil to occur? -

Well I think it is a mistake to take the book of Job too literally. All the afflictions of Job are natural occurrences. I think the point of the Book is to question the ancient wisdom that good fortune in this world indicated gods favor and misfortune indicated god's displeasure. It was an acknowledgement that the righteous and just do suffer in this world. The answer in the book of Job basically is that man should not question god, that god's ways are beyond human understanding and that the righteous as well as the wicked suffer in this world. Even more cynical in that respect is the book of Ecclesiastes.

[QUOTE=IntoTheLight;106553] If we assume that God is omniscient and can see into the future, it is possible that God is playing some sort of cosmic chess game with humanity - putting certain people in certain places at certain points in history in order to further a goal of some kind. -[/QUOTE] I assume neither and think such assumptions create insolvable problems between, science, religion,experience and reason.

[QUOTE=IntoTheLight;106553] While it may seem "evil" to us, the outside observers, that a 13-year-old kid fell off a cliff in a rockslide, it's possible that there's a bigger picture that we are not privy to.What's your take on that possibility? [/QUOTE]

IntoTheLight;106553 wrote:

-ITL-

it is Leibniz solution; this is the "best of all possible worlds" . That from our limited human perspective what appear to be evil is not "gratuitous or genuine evil" but "necessary evil" for the greater good. I think it requires us to suspend rational inquiry into the nature of god and the problem of evil. In view of the scope and extent of evil I find it to be a solution that defies, experience, reason and intuition (inadequate and contrived).

[QUOTE=Inquisition;106576] Nature is full of cycles of death and rebirth. To assign evil or good to these things is misguided because we would not exist without them.[/QUOTE] The mother whose child dies in infancy experiences the event as "evil" not "moral evil" but "natural evil" and an event that an all powerful all loving god could prevent. That parent does not see how the death of their child contributes to the greater good or was a necessary evil.

1 Reply

@prothero,

The defence of this or any other god is becoming more and more devoid of reason. This lesser god Proth. what ability has he actually got? What purpose does his creation serve? If he did not create us , how does he fit into the scheme of the universe? If he is not omniscient ,how near to it is he? I need a definition, not a fuzzy picture that reminds me of a Greek myth.

1 Reply

@IntoTheLight,

IntoTheLight;106553 wrote:

It seems to me that your argument is that God allows "natural evil" to occur so therefore God is bad and/or irresponsible. Is that your position?

-ITL-

No. The argument is that God could have either stopped the natural evil from occurring in the first place, or if not, he could have saved those people who would suffer from it in the second place. A child, who caught the bubonic plague, could have be saved by God. Since the child was not saved, the question is, why not if God is all-powerful, and God is all-good?

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

His put us on his ignore list Ken , did you not realise. We have been thrown out of his proverbial pram.

1 Reply

@xris,

xris;107042 wrote:

His put us on his ignore list Ken , did you not realise. We have been thrown out of his proverbial pram.

That does not matter. I do not reply for him alone.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

I do not beleive in God in the common sense of a being that controls everything. But for the sake of the argument lets say he exists.

If God decides to let a child die of the bubonic plauge, or a deer suffer, or any seeminly innocent life form suffer, he does so for a reason.

While i think it would be possible to claim to know God's reasoning, i think what makes the most sense to humans is that such a death is neccesary. Life needs to die so that other life can bloom. We can't all go on living forever because the world would overpopulate and we would all starve to death, a horrible and cruel fate.

So maybe God allows some evil for the greater good (as in not letting us all starve to death) And this WOULD happen if you have even toyed with population simulators.

Now the cynical atheist would point at this suffering and demand an answer, and say that your god must be evil (and maybe claim that science is at least trying to reverse these sufferings that your god created, such as cancer)

But they are misguided. They fail to see all the miracles such a God (if he exists) would be responsible for. It is much easier to point out the wrongs than work together with people.

So what if we cured every decease and ended poverty and death due to starvation and war? Unless we are smart enough to completely revise everyone's lifestyle on the planet, we would be headed for doom.

I am trying to take a position i rarely take here. I am opposed to war and i think that some die is really unfair. But for all of us to have food and get along and stop hurting animals we must chage our cultures, drastically, which is what i propose.

So maybe thats it? God allows evil for a greater good. Or maybe he is not supremely omnipotent. Many theists point out that god cannot do ANYTHING he wants, because that would involve a contradiction. He merely exists in the best possible form, at his maximum, which is not limitless.

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@xris,

I am just putting forth a vision; it may not appeal to your intuitions or sense of aesthetics. I am not saying it is "true" or the only "rational" conception of divine nature or divine action in the world. It is just what appealed to me after considerable contemplation and searching. It really is not even my vision (I have few original thoughts) but the vision of process philosopher (A.N.Whitehead) and process theology (Charles Hartshorne) as I understand it. All such visions of any "god" must be partial and incomplete and subject to humility and examination.

It is the god of traditional orthodoxy (immutability, impassibility, omniscience, omnipotence) that to me seems to fail the test of coherence and correspondence to the facts of the world as we now understand them in the modern age. The traditional conception may have been adequate to the facts in medieval and ancient times but they do not correspond or cohere in modern times.

[QUOTE=xris;107025] The defense of this or any other god is becoming more and more devoid of reason. . [/QUOTE] I do not understand this. My position is that the world is rationally intelligible and therefore if this world has a creator, the creator must be rational intelligence. God is at the least rational agent.

[QUOTE=xris;107025] This lesser god Proth. what ability has he actually got? What purpose does his creation serve? . [/QUOTE] The ability to bring forth order, harmony, life, mind, experience and value from the formless void. This seems like no small feat to me. The ultimate metaphysic is creativity. The ultimate purpose is divine value. The ultimate mechanism is process. God's values are not necessarily mans values. God is aesthetic agent but not necessarily moral agent.

[QUOTE=xris;107025] If he did not create us , how does he fit into the scheme of the universe? . [/QUOTE] It is in god that all possibilities (If you are a fan of Plato all eternal forms reside). Possibilities of value do not come from nothing they arise from the primordial nature of God. Divine nature provides possibility for value: divine action (which is always persuasive not coercive and always through nature and process not by supernatural means) brings those possibilities into actuality. Man is part of creation not the purpose of creation although man represents a very high form of value and experience in the world. Since god is creative principle we are a divine creation and the product of divine action but we are not the "purpose of the universe. Man is not the measure of all things.

[QUOTE=xris;107025] If he is not omniscient ,how near to it is he? . [/QUOTE] The future does not yet exist to be known by anyone even god. God is omniscient in the sense that the past is perfectly preserved in divine memory and the present (the experience of all the actualities (creatures and other entities) is taken in by the divine experience. God feels the delight and the suffering of the world. God is also omniscient in that he knows all the actual possibilities of the future.

[QUOTE=xris;107025] I need a definition, not a fuzzy picture that reminds me of a Greek myth. [/QUOTE] All conceptions of divine nature and divine action from a limited human perspective will be "fuzzy" partial and incomplete. All such notions are held with humility and "through a glass darkly". Some conception is inevitable to hold as part of a working worldview.

First, I find the classical orthodox medieval scholastic conception of the divine lacks coherence and correspondence to the facts of the modern world. The conception I use (for me anyway) fits my intuition, experience and reason better.

Second, what I find curious about your position is that (on the one hand) you maintain that god is incomprehensible and yet (on the other hand) you seem sure that god (if he exists) needs to be omniscient and omnipotent? Why is that?

In what way is the god of classical theism more rational, adequate, and coherent than the god of process theology? Why does the god of orthodox theism correspondence better to the history of universe and evolution than the god of process theology?

To repeat myself in light of the OT "why does god permit evil?"
God does not "permit" evil. Evil is inherent in the nature of any real actual world.

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Why does God permit evil????

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