The problem of evil

[William]

Q: Is the statement "Then there is "The problem of evil"" one of fact or conjecture? [science or opinion] In realty, does such a problem actually exist?

The problem of evil refers to the challenge of reconciling belief in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God, with the existence of evil and suffering in the world. eta:{SOURCE}

[Bust Nak]

Moderator Intervention

There is a report of off-topic posts in this thread, may I suggest that the discussion on Biblical laws be taken to a new thread please.

______________

Moderator interventions do not count as a strike against any posters. They are given at the discretion of a moderator when he or she feels that some sort of intervention is required.

[William]

Q: Is the statement "Then there is "The problem of evil"" one of fact or conjecture? [science or opinion] In realty, does such a problem actually exist?

The problem of evil refers to the challenge of reconciling belief in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God, with the existence of evil and suffering in the world. eta:{SOURCE}

It would appear that no one can show that the so-called "problem of evil" is a real thing, and thus it can be accepted that the problem doesn't exist in nature, but only as an illusion within the minds of those who believe such a problem actually exists.

Those who believe in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God are only able to explain coherently and logically why evil exists, when they identify evil as an unnatural reaction to a natural thing, and therein, much conflating and misrepresentation occurs, giving rise to the illusion of the so-called "problem of evil" as an argument nontheist try to use to debunk any possibility of such a GOD existing.

I think that in order to believe in the problem of evil as a real problem, one has to think of evil in terms of it being a permanent unnatural thing in which an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God allows to go on unabated for eternity.

Most theists - including most Christians I have encountered - do not believe or have as part of their mythology, that evil is either a natural thing or a permanent thing.

[oldbadger]

Overcoming the illusion of evil...what we notice and how that effects our understanding of experience in this universe.

I watched up to 3 minutes and some seconds.

Alan Watts could benefit from reviewing the ABC rule of communications...... to be accurate, brief and clear.

If you cannot explain a thing simply, then you don't know enough about it.
Albert Einstein

[TRANSPONDER]

Q: Is the statement "Then there is "The problem of evil"" one of fact or conjecture? [science or opinion] In realty, does such a problem actually exist?

The problem of evil refers to the challenge of reconciling belief in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God, with the existence of evil and suffering in the world. eta:{SOURCE}

It would appear that no one can show that the so-called "problem of evil" is a real thing, and thus it can be accepted that the problem doesn't exist in nature, but only as an illusion within the minds of those who believe such a problem actually exists.

Those who believe in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God are only able to explain coherently and logically why evil exists, when they identify evil as an unnatural reaction to a natural thing, and therein, much conflating and misrepresentation occurs, giving rise to the illusion of the so-called "problem of evil" as an argument nontheist try to use to debunk any possibility of such a GOD existing.

I think that in order to believe in the problem of evil as a real problem, one has to think of evil in terms of it being a permanent unnatural thing in which an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God allows to go on unabated for eternity.

Most theists - including most Christians I have encountered - do not believe or have as part of their mythology, that evil is either a natural thing or a permanent thing.

Evil and what it actually is has caused a lot of confusion. We may have seen the Christian apologetic argument is not a Real Thing but only an absence of Good. But is Good a real thing, or an absence of evil? It seems clear to be that this is really known - it does not exist other than as human conventions about a vert real thing - the instinct of species welfare.

That is the real thing, as real as the twanging of a bowstring or a muddy handprint on a rock. Music and art, however are human constructs and do not exist, other than as human constructs. And yet they matter, or we think they matter, which will do just as well.

So where does that leave us with post #212 above? It makes the first point irrelevant - it doesn't have to exist in nature to matter. The second point is sound, I think; some Christians see evil (and indeed Good) as a real thing, or maybe not, but just the doings of beings they believe in. Maybe that's the problem all along - good and evil do not exist in nature but in the minds and deeds of real beings. The question then is, are God and perhaps Satan, real beings or mythical? If the latter (and that is what atheists think), then the [problem evil vanishes as an atheist apologetic.

The problems caused by evil, as a valid problem even if not a real thing existing apart from humans, remain, and are still a problem for humans, though not a problem for a god, nor caused by one.

[William]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #214]

The problems caused by evil, as a valid problem even if not a real thing existing apart from humans, remain, and are still a problem for humans, though not a problem for a god, nor caused by one.

Therefore, the challenge of reconciling belief in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God, with the existence of evil and suffering in the world, is illusionary.

[AquinasForGod]

Great minds like Aquinas thought the problem of evil is worth addressing. It is one of the most difficult arguments to address. However, I understand it a bit differently. It has to do with God being the good and only good.

If God is only good, then why is there so much suffering in the world.

It is not an easy argument to address. However, even atheist philosopher Graham Oppy says it is not positive evidence against the existence of God. Nonetheless, many have become agnostic or atheist because of it. For that reason alone, I think it is worth addressing.

The following answer is partly from Aquinas and the rest from myself.

It is the nature of God to bring about maximal goodness in the world, which follows from God being the good. Only God is good because to be the good is to be perfect. In fact, when Aristotle says God is the good, he means God is perfect. Anything that is created cannot be perfect. It is good that God creates, for existence is better than non-existence, or to be actual is better than to be potential and God is the purely actual actualizer, from Aristotle's argument from change and Aquinas' first way. It is good that some things have freewill.

Now here is where comes the logical consequence of God doing the good, which is to create freewill beings. Based on the premise that God is perfect and created things cannot be perfect, then the created freeewill beings cannot be perfect. This means they will make choices that are less than perfect, which means they will cause suffering.

So that explains why suffering is necessary if God does the good. It is a consequence of doing good.

This does not explain natural evil, however, such as tornados, earthquakes, etc. I personally think reincarnation and karma are the best explanation for this, but that is not a typical Christian response, so I will give a more standard response.

Aquinas shows through the reasoning that evil is an absence of the good. The good is the subject of evil and thus evil is an accidental property, meaning it is not intrinsic. Evil exists in the world in the way a hole in the wall exists in the world. The hole is not a thing in itself but the absence of a thing, so as darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of good.

So all created things are something less than the good, and thus are evil, not perfect. The natural order of an imperfect world will lead to things like tornados.

I think this answer is not as good as the reincarnation karma answer, which I came up with.

Natural evils exist as a way to execute God's justice in the world, to keep souls karma balanced. As we cause suffering to others with ill intentions, we gain karma. This means we owe a debt. We must suffer as we cause suffering, as the bible says, reap what we sow. But souls as they reincarnated life after life would sometimes gain too much karma to have to wait around for freewill beings to cause them suffering. Hitler is a good example. He caused so much suffering, so much evil, if he had to wait around for freewill beings to bring him his due karma, he might never get his due justice, so God has natural evils to be sure souls like Hitler reap what they sow.

However, this only makes sense of light of reincarnation, otherwise tornados are causing suffering to innocent children or to souls that have no caused much suffering.

I hope this helps someone feel better about suffering in the world.

I do not know if we are allowed to share links, but the following argument explains why evil is necessary - https://www.freelymeditate.com/single-p ... y-for-good

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #214]

The problems caused by evil, as a valid problem even if not a real thing existing apart from humans, remain, and are still a problem for humans, though not a problem for a god, nor caused by one.

Therefore, the challenge of reconciling belief in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God, with the existence of evil and suffering in the world, is illusionary.

Only if we take it as a given that the existence of a god that is anything to do with humanity or its' morals is illusionary. That is the point of the problem of evil - that the god claimed by the Bible - believers to be good, caring for us, etc, is not feasible. The problem of evil makes Bible belief and any of the Abrahamic religions (and their spin - offs) unfeasible. Deist -god is of course not affected by the problem of evil, and there the argument is based purely on ID arguments.

All the time we have believers in personal gods that are ckaimed to be good and hands -on with humans, the problem of evil is a valid one.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to AquinasForGod in post #216]

That was an excellent response and covers a lot of the ground.

The atheist rebuttal is that, given god being good (indeed perfect) and man not, as you say the created is imperfect (I presume the Genesis scenario is gone as what God created was Good and only the Fall..which we won't get into here... led it earthly life being all not good). And natural disasters is a bit trickier. Your apologetic of Karma (I presume used in a Deistic context) is an interesting one, but does smack of the Christian 'we had it coming'. This is Not the actions of a good and kindly god who loves us and is merciful. We would not (if we had the power) stand by why evils happened and reason that 'these people have created a society where such things happen; they had it coming'. That is not moral behavior in any way that matches the morals that God supposedly gave us, especially with natural disasters which are hardly man's fault.

Free will does not excuse God's inaction and Christians know it doesn't as they constantly try to detect God's action in human affairs, and of course the Bible is full of examples of God intervening in the world to do miracles and to accomplish His will. The blinding of Paul until he converted was a total overriding of free will.

Thus the problem again stares us in the face; if God can interfere and intervene, why doesn't he? The answer also stares us in the face "God can only intervene in ways that could as easily NOT be the work of God since, for some reason, He cannot allow himself to be demonstrated by convincing evidence'. This is usually linked to free will to believe as a condition of being saved but that has its' own problems (how can what you believe rather than what you do, be the parameter for deserving heaven?).

All this makes no sense and as they say, slice it where you like, it always makes no sense and is the reason why the problem of evil is a doozey of a deconverter and denialist - levels of Faith are needed to dismiss it. Though as I said, you had a very good try.

[William]

[Replying to AquinasForGod in post #216]

The challenge of reconciling belief in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God, with the existence of evil and suffering in the world, is illusionary.

The premise that "all things created are imperfect" is not shown to be correct.

[brunumb]

It is the nature of God to bring about maximal goodness in the world, which follows from God being the good. Only God is good because to be the good is to be perfect.

Doesn't that assume facts not in evidence? Where is any of that demonstrated to be true?