Dr Rick

The Christian god is a contradiction as the PoE illustrates. The god of the Bible is simultaneously love that is unfailing and inseperable from the people that he heaps misery upon:

Romans 8:39
...neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Psalm 36:7
How priceless is your unfailing love!

Psalm 48:9
Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love.

Psalm 51:1
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love...

Psalm 52:8
But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God's unfailing love for ever and ever.

1 John 4:8
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

The argument is against the contradictory god who is unfailing love that nothing in creation can separate people from who nonetheless allows and even imposes suffering and evil, and in the end, seperates the most of them from his love that nothing in creation can seperate them from by allowing them to burn in hell for all eternity.

How did you come up with that strawman?

The god of the Bible in whom all things are possible does everything perfectly; that's what the Bible says:

Deuteronomy 32:4
He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just.

Matthew 19:26
Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

haverbob

Maybe you would get an A if you wrote something so wierd that the Professor might at least give you an A for creativity. Here goes:

Let's attack the very root of both sides of the argument rather then answer for or against a paricular side. Everyone can agree that evil is not an object or event. It is a perception. Actually, to put it more accurately, it is an OPINION of an object or event. That is a very important distinguishment. Therefore something cannot be classified as good or evil until we apply that opinion or judgement to it In fact, the classification itself does not exist until we create it (or at least perceive it if one wants to argue that evil exists on it's own, with or without our awareness of it). Still the same point. We need to acknowledge evil before it exists in our perception. If we do not perceive evil, is there still evil? HOW COULD WE ASK? WHY WOULD WE CARE? Evil exists because we accept and apply the concept. Therefore evil is our creation, not God's and the whole argument becomes moot at the very root. God did not force us to see evil. I'm not a big Bible person, but if you look at the Bible through this lens, it becomes very different. That was what the fruit of knowledge opened up to Adam and Eve. It was the awareness of good and evil. So now they had OPINIONS about their surroundings and their situation. Surely the Garden of Eden was not a place or else we would have returned to it by now (or at least identified the place that we can't return to). It was a PERCEPTION and one that lacked any OPINIONS. God did not create evil for us because he did not show us evil. He created free will (so the Bible says) and that was what caused US to create evil. It could have been different. So who is responsible? We chose it even when we were advised not to. The advisement itself was a subjective action on God's part that went as far as he could without actually taking away free will. Therefore God has no responsibilty for evil in our lives and is not immoral unless one wants to argue that providing free will is immoral. So again the argument is moot. Next logical question. Why did God allow Satan to tempt us or even to have contact with us? Is that not showing us evil and therefore evil was created FOR us (not by us) at that very moment? It depends on whether you think Satan is evil (and it takes an opinion to do so). My guess is that he is actually not. If Satan served no purpose for God, then why would God not end Satan's existence at the beginning? So surely he does and therefore cannot be considered purely evil. What purpose? To create the existence of free will. You cannot have free will without having choices. Without Satan, you cannot have free will. Thank God for Satan. In closing, let me make a larger more encompassing statement that many people find difficult to grasp. "The only thing wrong with our existence is our opinion of it."

Wiploc

I'll be surprised if anyone agrees. To call something evil is to say that it causes human suffering. Or, in another usage, to call something evil is to say it is sinful, whatever that means. You have reduced it to meaning "something that I don't like."


Not the way you've defined it.


Now you're backsliding on your definition. These questions don't make any sense if you stick to the meaning you have assigned the word.


I don't think so. When other people discuss the problem of evil, they are asking why there is suffering or sin. You cannot resolve those questions by using the same words to talk about something else.


I'm not sure how that would follow. Is this is a god who doesn't do miracles and doesn't know the future?


Here you are conflating the concepts of immorality and evil, after taking such pains to distinguish them.


How can guessing come into it? Lots of people disapprove of the Devil. This makes him evil by definition (your definition).


See: "Argument, circular."


So it is your opinion that the kids didn't have free will until the serpent showed up?
crc

NonContradiction

You are misreading me. Some people seem to be claiming that God's perfection implies that He should be all-loving or all-benevolent. I am disputing that claim.

Dr Rick

Completely understandable, however, as your explanations lack any hint of consistency:

How exactly did you determine that perfect knowledge is all-knowing, and perfect power is all-powerful, but perfect benevolence is not all-benevolence?

NonContradiction

Since you are making the claim that perfection implies omnibenevolence, perhaps you could explain to me how you arrived at that conclusion. I don't see it.

I think it's absurd for a benevolent, perfect being to love benevolent and malevolent beings equally. I don't love everybody in this world, and I certainly don't see that as a character flaw in me. I have a lot of faults, but not loving everybody isn't one of them.

Dr Rick

Simple enough; I just followed your explanations of "perfect knowledge" and "perfect power."

Dr Rick

By the way, what exactly are you arguing on this thread? Are you arguing the PoE, or the perfection of god, or something else?

NonContradiction

I am willing to concede that God isn't omnibenevolent. Since God's perfection doesn't imply that He must be all-loving, at least as far as I know, then I have no problem with making the concession.

If you think that a perfect being would be omnibenevolent, then I would be interested how you reached that conclusion.

Dr Rick

That is the point of the PoE; it argues against the "tri-omni" god.

It doesn't refute a "di-omni" god; you dismiss the omnibenevolence and retain the omniscients and omnipotence, but a omniscient and omnibenovolent god that isn't omnipotent could just as easily be left from the argument.

I can't describe what a perfect being would be like, though I suspect it would look very much like Charlize Theron.

If you want to describe the god you worship as perfect and not omnibenovent, I can't prove you wrong anymore than you can prove that the invisible pink unicorn is not perfect.

What we can do is point-out definciencies in eachothers concepts of the perfect being, and here you are at a distinct disadvantage because we know more about the putative characteristics of the god of the Bible than the IPU.

One who considers the god of the bible perfect must reconcile his perfectness with the genocide, infanticide, and misery he has ordered and even performed himself, the contradictory and often just plain wrong holy book he allows us to ponder as evidence of his existence, his failure to not seperate the vast majority of humanity from his "inseparable" love upon death, the horrible punishment he metes-out for rational thought and not believing the bizzare and twisted tale of Christianity (Why is that the one "unforgivable act" that dooms most of humanity to hell? How could he be so offended when he couldn't even keep all of his angels in-line?), and so on.

If you find this being perfect, so be it; personally, I find him closer to being perfectly awful.