Soma

They are not solid refutations. God endowing man with free will gave the potential for evil, thus God created evil before the fall.

In Heaven, there is no evil because man fully understands what evil is and loses his desire to do evil. He attains every good conceivable in Heaven because he knows all evil.

For the second part, I contend that man cannot know what goodness is without first experiencing evil. Evil must exist for goodness to be understood.

Soma

Not semantics, but the consequences that come from applying those terms to God. One must take into account God's divine nature when ascribing qualities such as benevolence to Him.

OK, I admit I didn't think this through fully, but I'm here to learn from the pros. However, I'm still not convinced that my argument is incorrect.

Soma

I stand by my first reply where I argue that God permitting evil is not evil itself. You're right, I can't know whether or not God can create good without evil, but my first reply stands (so far). The subsequent argument I made was just for argument's sake. I concede that I cannot be certain whether or not it is logically impossible to have good without evil.

Child abuse motivates us to eliminate the practice. OK, not a great answer, but if God wanted to us to have free will, He would permit the choice of child abuse.

Soma

I am arguing this: What is immoral to God is not immoral for God to do.

Take, for example, murder. Murder is immoral to God, but it is not immoral for God to murder.

Ganymede

You OP was a refutaion of the PoE. The PoE has nothing to do with whether God's actions are in themselves evil or not evil. It has everything to do with a benevolent God allowing evil and suffering to exist when it is within his power to prevent said evil and suffering. Thus you must explain not why God commiting murder is OK, but why God allows murder to be commited.

Dr Rick

...which doesn't address the objections raised. We aren't disucssing the timing of the creation of evil

Your argument could make sense if it was logically impossible for free will to exist without evil. Since it is not logically impossible for free will to exist without evil, it is logically possible for free will to exist without evil. Therefore, there is no logical reason that an omnimax god must allow for evil, and by definition, an omnimax god would not want there to be evil if it was avoidable. Evil is logically avoidable, yet it exists. Therefore, an omnimax god does not.

Rick

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Soma :

You're not going to get very far with this. Most leading apologists are not Divine command ethicists, and with good reason. You've removed all content from the locution "God is good," because it's a tautology if everything God does is, by definition, good. You'll also have to provide some argumentation to show that such a situation is even possible; most people think morality isn't the sort of thing that can be dictated like that.

Further, if we can't grasp God's benevolent nature, we just don't have epistemic access to whether He's benevolent or not. We don't know what kind of benevolence God has. So we can't even say that God exists, because we don't know what that statement means.

Further still, benevolence is different from moral perfection. If you're benevolent to everyone, you wish them well. So for God to be allowing useless suffering to be compatible with God wishing us well, you have to accept that useless suffering is within our best interests. Therefore, don't get mad at me if I meet you on the street and attempt to inflict some useless suffering on you.

And finally still, God is maximally great. A being is better if it matches up to humanity's moral rules than if it doesn't. So God must follow them, too, for the most part.

I have no reason to believe it is logically impossible to reduce suffering in the world without reducing the total goodness. An assertion of implicit contradiction in some proposition bears a heavy burden of proof.

Then argue it. No atheist will find it intuitively plausible at all. There seems to be far more evil than is necessary.

Soma

You are quite right and I realized the error of my argument. After much thought, I am not so sure that my position is tenable. I can't account for why God permits evil in the world when His very nature would cause Him to prevent it. I've only demonstrated that it's OK for God to do evil.

Edit: I hereby concede that my argument is false and that I have failed to refute the PoE argument.

beastmaster

Bravo for the candid admission! But this is not really a "defeat" for you because it's not necessary for a Xn to refute the PoE. I think you ended up taking the most coherent (or least incoherent) position, which is that it's OK for God to be or allow evil. After all, "Being God means never having to say you're sorry."

Soma

I'm not a "true" theist as I believe in monism, which is basically string theory on steroids. I enjoy debating the validity of God concepts. I was convinced I had refuted the PoE argument, but it's blatantly obvious I haven't.

Personally, I think the omniscience and free will problem is the best argument against the Christian God. There is no way one can argue that free will is anything but an illusion with an omniscient creator... unless one interprets the Trinity doctrine in an unorthodox way...