Soma

What is good to God is not necessarily the same as what we humans perceive goodness to be. Acts such as murder are immoral for man because we are subordinate to God's moral edicts, but nothing is immoral for God.

copernicus

In other words, there is no distinction between God and Devil. Traditionally, monotheism, which had its roots in Zoroastrianism, posited the existence of the Devil to explain evil. Increasingly, nowadays, we are seeing the Devil part of the equation fade away. In any case, by calling God "benevoent" you appear to admit that his motives are within "man's ability to grasp". Otherwise, you cannot call God evil or benevolent. He would just be ineffable.

Hold on! Not so fast. Argument 2 depended on the gratuitous assumption that it is logically impossible to remove the necessity of evil and ensure goodness remains knowable and attainable. That is not a logical impossibility. There are many ways that God could ensure that we come to know the difference between good and evil without actually allowing evil to happen. One way to do that would be to make sure that no evil deed went unpunished and that all wrongs were righted. That feat is within the realm of logical possibility. You ran past this one too quickly.

One could argue this??? I hope that you have read Candide. Voltaire's famous Dr. Pangloss made this argument far more eloquently than you have. We live in the best of all possible worlds. That was the running joke throughout Voltaire's brilliant satire.

You keep insisting that God has an "omnibenevolent" nature, although you had earlier denied our ability to make such judgments about his nature, which you purport to consider unfathomable by humans. Can we or can't we make such judgments about God's nature? Or is it possible to hold contradictory positions on the same subject? I thought that you said logical impossibilities were beyond even God's powers. Are you even more omnipotent than God?

Ganymede

Wrong - the PoE was constructed on the basis that suffering exists not on the position of God in regard to morality. Further an omnimax god could and should do something to prevent suffering but clearly does not.

orac

The problem of evil does not prove that God does not exist. It proves that God is not omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

Fortunately you just acknowledged that an omnipotent God does not exist, because you agree that God does not have the power to create a world without child molesters, murderers and genocide - just to name three distinctly evil things that exist.

Refuting an argument by agreeing with the conclusion is an unusual technique.

I'ld go as far as saying you didn't actually refute anything.


The argument that evil exists that is necessary really annoys me. I have never heard a single argument why God feels the desire to use pain and suffering to teach lessons to people. So, I'm going to be very blunt here:

You say only necessary evil exists: so, what exactly do you think is necessary about child abuse?

Yes, I know you'll say child abuse is completely wrong, evil, etc. I don't imagine for a second that you would ever say it could possibly be good.

You did, however, argue that "only the amount [of evil] that is absolutely necessary is present". So, I'ld like to know what you think is necessary about that particular evil. (Or are you prepared to admit that "unnecessary" evil exists, with no benefit that makes it an acceptable thing?)

beastmaster

But earlier you cited Aquinas for the proposition that God is *not* good per se, but merely the *source* of both good and evil. Thus, it's not proper to say that God is omnibenevolent since he is responsible for good *and* bad.

To summarize, so far you have established that god is neither good nor moral.

You seem to be more convinced by the PoE than I am!

Then God is beholden to justice.

Now you are just contradicting yourself.

Edit: And whaddya know, in your next post you write:

Priceless!

Soma

My line of thinking what that because God is so very different from us, what we would typically think of benevolence is not something we can expect from God. Benevolence with regards to God would mean being adverse to executing an unjust act; however, for God, no act is necessarily unjust. It's difficult for most people to understand how God could be benevolent while doing things we abhor (most of us, anyway).

The scenario you have posited requires man have experience with evil, thus man will still do evil. You could argue that God could endow man with full knowledge of good and evil, but that would strip man of His free will. It is impossible to have good without evil, because we understand goodness only through evil (and vice versa).

As the Taoist might say, you cannot have the light without the darkness.

I don't believe I had read it before, the notion that we live in the best of all possible worlds is vaguely familiar to me.

I am not judging God's nature, I am ascribing to Him qualities Christians typically assign to Him. Those qualities, when considered in combination, often have served to undermine the Christian God concept. I am demonstrating that the PoE is a fallacious argument which does not refute the Christian God concept.

Soma

My first reply destroys the PoE argument. But assuming you reject the first reply, then my third objection implies God permits a limited amount of suffering to allow us to know happiness and cause us to strive for it.

beastmaster

If they only could have compressed the Bible into five words . . .

K

Soma:

Then it makes absolutely no sense to call God good. Good is a human word to describe what humans perceive goodness to be. If God doesn't fall in that category, then it's as non-sensical to call God good as it is to call Him pink (but pink in a way that humans don't perceive pink to be).

Soma

I did not acknowledge that an omnipotent God does not exist. I have redefined omnipotence to mean only those acts which are not logically impossible.

I assume you reject my first reply, where I argue that God permitting evil is not evil itself?

In that case, neither you nor I would know whether or not the level of evil present in the world is unnecessary. However, if we assume God's benevolent nature would be such that He only permits the amount that is absolutely necessary, then we can surmise the amount of evil is the least it could be.