Why does God permit evil????

Kennethamy you don't have to murder someone to learn that is wrong, besides you cant have a God electricuting people and not getting involved in natural disasters, as I explained before. He is either one or the other and realty tells us he does not get involved for all the reasons I have explained before, an uninhabitable world and a world without morals, it would be crazy, people would be doing bad things for the shear hell of it without consequence, it's as simple as that.

Could he not have saved at least two of them? Maybe two children?

How do you know he didn't save dozens of children? He could have saved many, and how would you ever know?

Yes, he could have. But would have two more been too much trouble? Perhaps infants, since they are small, and less trouble. I am trying to make a point here.

Only the god of supernatural theism would save some and forsake others. If god acts through natural process and throught natural law, then death from natural disasters and causes is beyond gods ablitiy and gods justice to change. To violate the laws of nature would be a violation of gods nature.

The concept of god in the problem of evil hinges on supernaturalism, anthropomorphism and greek philosophical notions of perfection. It is those particular concpetions of the divine that cause the problem. One can either live with the contradiction (or adopt some rather strange metaphysical notions), abandon the notion of god althogether, or change or alter your conception of divine action and divine purpose in the world to fit the apparent facts and experience.

On of the primary reasons people began to believe in an afterlife was the growing conception that there was not justice on earth, so if god was to remain just in human terms, there must be an afterlife where the just were rewarded and the wicked received their punishment. I think it is the conception of god that is in error and that supernatural classical orthodox theism is not rationally teneable. God is not a human writ large.

Why do people play this game? Because they are afraid of the reality of existence. They don't want to end. They don't like the idea of having an ego that will terminate and never do anything else. That their existence will ultimately come to not. They want to believe they will exist for ever and that everything they cherish will always be with them. These fairy tales help to cushion that reality and until people accept the reality we will continue to be victims of religious dogma.

Krumple your logic is correct re the agnostic vs atheist, but let us move on to the statement above. For the most part you are correct, gods that do not promise more than mortality do not get a look in, it is the here after we look towards. But this is not the reason I say I am agnostic. My quandary comes from one single thought...."what was there before the big bang"....nothing more nothing less and that question leaves my mind open to all eventualities.

I think you have to be careful about talking about "before" the BB. Since the conventional scientific wisdom is that time was created along with the universe. So, there was no before the big bang, since you are supposing that the BB took place sometime in time.

Kennethamy you don't have to murder someone to learn that is wrong, besides you cant have a God electricuting people and not getting involved in natural disasters, as I explained before. He is either one or the other and realty tells us he does not get involved for all the reasons I have explained before, an uninhabitable world and a world without morals, it would be crazy, people would be doing bad things for the shear hell of it without consequence, it's as simple as that.

Imagine if were to God banishes evil, what would be left with? A controlled Paradise that the people living there would not know that they were blessed , familiarity breeds contempt.

God would have to remove our Free will and kill all the wicked bad people. What standard of goodness would God impose on these creatures that had no idea that they are blessed?. In an eternity this Paradise would become one never ending place of unimaginably never changing boredom, due to God controlling every action, because he will have to keep us from any danger.

After a thousand years heaven/earth would become hell

There would be no, self-actualization , no challenges people really need to know what evil is to understand the reality of the goodness, in which they reside

But this is not the reason I say I am agnostic. My quandary comes from one single thought...."what was there before the big bang"....nothing more nothing less and that question leaves my mind open to all eventualities.

I fail to see why everyone needs to be confined to this view of god. God does not necessarily have to work outside of nature and natural law. God may work through nature and natural law. In many respects the universe is self organizing and in some sense life spontaneously arises through the inherent properties and self organizing principles of nature. God is not necessarily a supernatural being. God is not necessarily a being at all and certainly not necessarily anthropomorphic. Why is that people who do not actually believe in any god at all still feel they can dictate what properties god must have and how god must act in the world?


The Leibniz solution although satisfying the logical requirements of a solution to the traditional problem of evil is satisfactory to virtually no one.

You of course insist that "god" must be the traditional orthodox classical medieval scholastic vision of god. The problem takes on quite a different character when other possible conceptions of divine attributes and divine action in the world are considered. Abandon the notion of divine omnipotence, abandon the notion of supernatural divine action, abandon the assumption of creation ex nihilo, the traditional notions are too limited. Our visions of the divine change as our underlying conceptions of how the world works change. Only those opposed to religion in general continue to insist that god is the supernatural anthropomorphic being of medieval theology.

The Leibniz solution satisfies those who are concerned with the logical issue, and it separates the issues. And that is clarifying.

The problem of evil concerns what you call the classical vision of God. There is no problem of evil if we change the concept of God.

This is the problem of heaven. We assume that no evil is done in heaven nor is there any ability to do evil in heaven. So I agree with you Alan, good observation.

Yeah this is how heaven would turn out in my opinion. Your free will would have to be stripped from you or else you would eventually resort to some form of evil again.

To be honest, I doubt existing in heaven would take a thousand years before you were bored with it.

Why does there need to be anything before the big bang?
My definition of time is change or movement. A series of moments that follow one after the next.

To my mind the Christian heaven was not devoid of evil given that Lucifer had the free will to get shirty over what he believed was a bad deal.

So if we accept that Lucifer had free will so did the other angels, but they toed the line. We (humanity) were not the first to disobey god, he had a mini revolution on his hands with Lucifer, so evil intent which usually means you gain at the cost of others was there from day one.

Contentment is the key to not employing evil, and we are promised contentment in heaven.

Change or movement, eloquently put. I do not know why I require "something" before the bb but I do. I can not accept that matter materialized from nothing.

Originally Posted by Krumple
We are fickle, contentment doesn't last because it's effect wears off. You actually need a change of that situation for you to actually place value onto it. I could shove a needle into my arm that will give me some temporary contentment, but what if we made it so that the needle constantly fed me that contentment? Eventually I would lose sight of that contentment. I would become indifferent to it and almost desensitized to it. Over time that contentment would become a normal experience and thus I would require a new contentment to fulfill my new desire of it.

I think it all depends on what your perception of God is and what God is capable of doing, I don't believe in a God that is the grandfather living up there if you like and sits back and does nothing, if god exists then I think he is not something conceived in the religous sense.