MrDarwin

No, "goodness" is not a universal. It all depends on your perspective. When I eat beef, it's pretty good for me, but bad for the cow. Likewise, when a mosquito bites me, it's good for the mosquito because it needs the blood to reproduce, but bad for me, because I might come down with West Nile virus. WWII was "good" from my purely selfish perspective, because without it my parents would never have met, and I would never have been born. But I think we can all agree WWII was pretty bad for an awful lot of people.

[ September 04, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

Keith Russell

Greetings:

'Evil' is a human evaluation of something which is viewed as 'harmful' or 'undesirable' to human beings.

Keith.

MortalWombat

If he has the ability to prevent evil, but chooses not to, then he can't be all-good. If he wants to prevent evil, but is unable, then he can't be all-powerful.

luvluv

So you're saying it doesn't really exist? It's simply an emotional state, a subjective experience?

ex-preacher: You haven't really backed up your claim much. But at any rate, I do think that God is all good, but I don't think there's any such thing as infinitely good.

I say that in response to people saying, well such and such is plausible if good were benevolent, but not if he were omnibenevolent. I'm just saying if something is totally benevolent that's as benevolent as it gets. I'm not sure there is a distinction between total benevolence and this thing that has been called omnibenevolence.

Maybe K could explain?

K

luvluv, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we agree that an omnibenevolent entity would never ever commit an unkind act. I think our definitions diverge in that I believe the entity would also perform a kind act at every possible opportunity. I believe this second part of my definition is not part of yours. Correct?

Vanderzyden

Yes, the "problem" of evil.

A question:


Is it possible that, sometime in the past, he has withheld evil?


You are likely familiar with the basics of the Genesis account: God provides a simple explanation for living the good life as he designed it. But the first humans are persuaded that there is a better way than the Creator's way. They reject God, and he withdraws, indicating the physical consequences of their actions.

How is an all-good, all powerful God inconsistent with this account?

Vanderzyden

phlebas

By putting that stupid tree there in the first place? By giving Satan unsupervised access to Adam and Eve? By making Adam & Eve as gullible as they were? By being such a ridiculous crybaby stick-in-the-mud that he has to punish all humanity since then for a "crime" they didn't commit?

Am I getting warm?

Vanderzyden

Do you mind if I ask: Would you continue to perform kind acts to those who repeatedly rejected you, or denied your worth as a human being?

If the answer is no, then: Why should you expect the same from God?

Vanderzyden

Vibr8gKiwi

He's not omnibenevolent, so what's the point in asking that question? I thought the discussion was on what an omnibenevolent God would do.

Is the "unconditional love" of omnibenevolence actually conditional on belief, not being "rejected" (whatever that means), and such?

[ September 04, 2002: Message edited by: Vibr8gKiwi ]</p>

luvluv

We've already got a nice problem of evil thread going entitled "Convince me there IS a God". Let's not turn this into one.

K: That's close. I'd probably word it a little differently. My picture of total goodness would be what we could call a big picture goodness. He designs things towards the best possible ends. The other picture of goodness would be the micro-managing God, whose priority is to make sure everyone is perfectly content at every momment.

It's similar to my picture of the two styles of parenting. One parent disciplines some, but allows to make it's own decisions and learn from it's own mistakes. The other style tries to prevent the child from making any mistakes by restricting it's decisions as much as possible. In one instance, character development is seen as more overriding any bumps that come along the way, and in the other case the imperative is that the child never suffer at all.

One form requires many controls (whether external or in God's case internal... He would just make us with built in restraints) and the other form requires the freedom to make mistakes. Admittedly, I've loaded the question in my favor, but this is how I see it.

So which one of these options is really the best? Ensuring that no one suffers or ensuring that everyone has the ability to learn and make their decisions on their own.

(I know people are going to ask why can't God do both if He is omnipotent, but again it is a contradiction to say God could give someone free will and make sure they never used it to harm anyone.)

I know this could very easily develop into a POE thread, but I'd really like to use this thread to try to find some common ground on just what goodness means.