Transplanar

For the sake of arguement, let's assume God exists, in hopes that we might uncover some motives here.

Now, God created the universe, from scratch. Being all powerful, he could have made it any way he desired, and being all-knowing, he knew how it would turn out in the future.

Now let me pause for a moment and analyze these premises. Because God could have made the universe any way he pleased, that means that anything that presently exists in the world is what he wanted to exist. Nothing more and nothing less.

Secondly, if he does see into the future... does he see what will happen with 100% certainty? Or does he see what will happen as a result of his present choice? If it is the former, that means that God essentially does not have a free will, as he is bound to doing what he saw Himself do in the future.

But moving along, God then created Angels. Now, one particular Angel, Lucifer, decided to rebel, and converted 1/3 of the Angels to his cause. Now... keep in mind that God created Lucifer, knowing full well he would do this as of the moment of Lucifer's creation. He would further know that even beyond Lucifer's damnation he would tempt the souls of human beings to evil.

Now, there are many problems here. Christians tend to argue that it is a universal law that everything must have an opposite (good and evil, black and white, etc). But what they forget is that God made the universe this way. It was an arbitrary choice to have such dualism. We could easily be creatures that know only good and happiness, and still have a plethora of happy, nice things to do.

Another potential arguement could be free will, that people need both good and bad choices for free will to exist. This is false. We already have physical limitations to our free will (ie, you can't just get up and fly around, no matter how much you'd want to), not to mention emotional restrictions on our free will (ie, in the case of someone being traumatized from snakes and not be able to pick on up). If we were restricted from evil thoughts, that would be no worse than either of the previous two cases (in fact, it would be far better!). We would still have the free will to give to charity, help the needy, spend time with our family and loved ones. Removing bad choices from the equation does not automatically make us mindless robots.

But even besides that, God arbitrarily chooses to have a policy of preserving the free will of human beings. He is under no binding contract whatsoever to do so, and could easily be going willy-nilly with it as we speak and we'd be none the wiser. But if we are to assume that he will not mess with people's free will, by his own choice, then it is safe to assume that he is okay with whatever choice that person makes. If one decides to be a priest that helps the poor, great. If one wants to be a serial rapist, great. If anyone did something that he really did not want, then he could have easily intervened and stopped it before it ever happened.

This is where I think God cannot be called omnibenevolent. He is not truly "good" by any measure of goodness, and I would say he is essentially nuetral, and uncaring. After all, if he did indeed love humanity as much as he claims he does, why would he have people suffer forever?

There might be a point here and there that I forgot to mention, but I think I've made my case well enough.

mikem

I enjoyed reading that! Christian theists have been working hard to emasculate the argument from evil. After all, even if one was persuaded by all their other arguments that a good god existed, the fact of the sheer amount of suffering in the world would blow them right out of the water. A popular argument now is that a certain amount of suffering is necessary, and that it is feasible for a good God to allow necessary suffering for a greater good.

I once wrote to a philosophy magazine using a similar argument to demonstrate that God was in fact an infinitely evil being, who allows a certain amount of good, so that we poor humans can see how different things might have been if we were actually better people than we are, and that our free will was inclined always towards the good. An evil deity would enjoy the additional suffering in observing how our self knowledge would make us beat ourselves up emotionally because we are not better than we are!

There is no contradiction in God designing a world in which we can freely choose between goods in a way that does not entail suffering. hence the reference to your quote. Maybe someone else could elaborate on how our world shows that God is infinitely evil and that this is the best of all possible worlds for him to extract as much suffering from it as he could?

:thumbs:

Mountain Man

One, there is no reason to make such an assumption.
Two, all theists have to do is reply that you do not know the mind of god and you have no right to question it anyway. No matter how logical your arguments are, they have a come back that protects their gods.

Roger Pearse

Is this thread in the right forum?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

dbarmstrong

Read Augustine. Evil is not a created thing it is the privation of good. If God created all things and created them good, and evil is bad, then God cannot have created evil, thus evil must only exist as it is the absence of good not as an actual tangible universal substance.

Terrible Heresy

Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Transplanar: It is an interesting argument. I think for many of us who grew up in theist homes being taught Christianity much of what you said is what started us down the road to atheism. The facts just don't add up. With further knowledge that these myth's were written in such convoluted ways...it's easy to see why there are so many holes in them.

Straight A

Then god did not create all things.

Bobinius

A tsunami is not the absence of anything, good or not: it is the presence of death, drowning and suffering. A positive fact.

HIV is not the absence of something. So, God did it. He is impossible to be omnibenevolent.

Amaleq13

I asked that same question in the Moderator Conference Room and, isolated Bible reference notwithstanding, the Existence of God folks can't wait to get their hands on it. :wave:

Transplanar

Well, to say that the Christian God is purely evil is to ignore the good things his religion has helped to promote. I'm not so much arguing that God is evil, but more that God is not good. He's more neutral. Human beings aren't his cherished love-children, they are his toys. He can be nice to his toys, or he can smash them to pieces, and he's in the unique position to have no one to answer to regardless.

I got a similar response to this on another forum, here's how I answered it: