Douglas J. Bender

Sorry. One of the hazards of jumping in late on a discussion. My bad. But since you are already assuming, for the sake of argument, that this hypothetical God is omniscient, why not, for the sake of argument, also assume that He is perfect in love, etcetera? Your argument, if valid, should work in any case, whether God does or does not have these other characteristics.

Context, Jobar. And "English translation". The passage in Isaiah you are referring to is Isaiah 45:7, where the Lord says,
The above quote is from the New King James Version, but the same passage in the King James Version has "evil" instead of "calamity", hence your assertion that the Lord creates "evil".

The actual Hebrew word translated in this passage as "calamity" in the NKJV has several different, but similar, meanings, according to Strong's Concordance. It can mean any of the following: "adversity, affliction, bad, calamity, distress, evil, grief, harm, hurt, misery, noisome, sad, sore, trouble, vex, wicked, worse, wretchedness, wrong". Quite a possible selection for one word. Anyway, to us, using modern English, "calamity" is not strictly the same as "evil". When God says that He creates "calamities", He's just asserting that He has the power to punish, especially temporally/physically. The Flood was a "calamity", but not an "evil". For comparison, here are the Merriam-Webster definitions for "calamity":

Even God's judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah was a "calamity", but it was not a moral "evil", since it was the result of God's righteous (at least, according to the Bible, of course) judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah's sins . God does not cause or "create" moral evil, and the verse in Isaiah 45:7 in no way suggests that He does.

Okay with me.

No one has shown this to be the case, even discounting the word "totally".


In Christ,

Douglas

[ November 06, 2002: Message edited by: Douglas J. Bender ]</p>

abe smith

Back to original post here: There ISN"T any 'gahd" = a human fiction/artefact. Hence the initial qy is meaningless.

Douglas J. Bender

Abe,


The original post/question is an attempt to prove that God does not exist by contradiction - assume to be true that which you want to disprove, then show that this leads to a contradiction, thus disproving the truth of the original assumption.


In Christ,

Douglas

Jerry Love

Either 2 can occur o 2 cannot. If 2 cannot; it's moor, you are left with only 1, and no free will (no choice). If 2 can occur; its occurance disproves freewill as well (choice coopted).

It boils down to this. If every detail of tomorrow is known, then tomorrow is just as muteable as yesterday. I cannot make any freewill decisions as to what I will do yesterday...

Douglas J. Bender

Jerry Love,

Agreed.

Wrong. If 1 occurs, then free will follows directly because 1 says that you freely choose whether to eat the pizza or not.

True. But like I just now said in my previous post, you have not shown that 2 occurs. As far as we "know", either 1 or 2 could occur, leaving it logically possible for 1 to occur, thus proving that it IS logically possible for someone to know the future and yet have free will in the event known.

Actually, your argument, with the false conclusion removed, proves the opposite of what you think it proves:

In Christ,

Douglas

K

Douglas:

The key ingredient is that God supposedly created us. If God knew exactly what we would do before He created us using His own design, and He proceeded to create us anyway, then He did not give us free will. He chose what we would do ahead of time by selecting the design and going ahead with creating us.

If you don't believe that God created us, or if you believe that He answers to some higher power and had no choice to create us the way He did, then you might have a better case. Otherwise, God is the only one who made a choice.

[ October 31, 2002: Message edited by: K ]</p>

Jobar

Douglas, I asked the topic question in an attempt to point out the difficulties in claiming to know what a hypothetical ultimate being can or cannot do. To me, if a God exists who
-is all powerful
-created all things
-was unconstrained in his choices while creating
-is incapable of (or always eschews doing) evil
then evil would not exist. Why, we would not even have the *concept* of evil.

This problem, as I see it, totally invalidates the free-will answer to the paradox of evil. If God created all things, and evil exists, then God created evil- which blasts all the arguments for omnibenevolence to bits.

A3

Dear Jobar

It seems we have been here before. So we are talking about the same 'thing' would you mind giving your opinion on the following points?
1. What is good?
2. What is evil?
3. Can it be said that intangible abstractions are created? Or, are they merely conceptualized?
4. Are good and evil tangible or intangible?

Regards
Adriaan

Douglas J. Bender

K,

That would be like arguing that someone who somehow absolutely knew what certain people would do in a given circumstance, and who then arranged to have those people experience that circumstance, effectively removed those individuals' free wills. Without getting into a discussion about that someone's particular purpose in doing so, I think it should be clear that the other people still were responsible for their choices.


In Christ,

Douglas

[ November 03, 2002: Message edited by: Douglas J. Bender ]</p>

Douglas J. Bender

Jobar,


I think I realized that. But maybe not.

I disagree, for some of the reasons I believe I have previously presented here. God is no more responsible for the evil choices of His created beings than you would be responsible for the choices of your only child if he chose to hit someone whenever you acted in love and kindness (not a perfect analogy, but I never claimed that I could find a perfect one).

Understood. But I respectfully and strongly disagree with your assessment of the problem and its implication.

No. If God created all things, then God created free will beings; and if evil exists, then since God never creates or does anything evil, one or some of those free will beings "created" evil by making an evil choice.

Stop it - you're scaring the young children.

In Christ,

Douglas