Does ~X owe it's existence to X

[Blastcat]

Hi

It's been bugging me.

I think this is a right mess, and not just a bit trivial, but I've heard it used in arguments from theists a few times. Maybe the idea stems from something in the Bible.... I didn't look it up.



We can't have the light without the dark.


In fact, someone just used that bit of reasoning to me in a debate about the "Morality of God". I think his point was that EVIL actually proves that God exists.

I think he put like this:

" The existence of evil is one of the best proofs of God's existence, because if there's evil then there must also be good (can't have darkness w/o light). Good can exist w/o evil, but evil can't exist w/o good - since evil is the absence of good. "

____________

Questions for debate:

• 
  
  1. Can someone give an argument as to why evil is the absence of good? In general terms, How does ~X owe it's existence to X or vice versa?
  
  2. Let's say for the sake of his argument that evil IS the absence of good. How do we get from good is dependent on evil ( or vice versa ) to GOD? I don't see the logical progression at all, I see a leap.
  
  
  

____________

[Divine Insight]

1. Can someone give an argument as to why evil is the absence of good? In general terms, How does ~X owe it's existence to X or vice versa?

Evil is not the absence of good, but rather the opposite of good.

Example:

Someone has a flat tire along a highway. They get out and struggle to change the tire. Let's say the person is weak and is having a very hard time changing the tire.

In the case of the absence of both good and evil the person simply ends up having to change the tire on their own with no one stopping by to offer to help which would have been "good".

But the fact that they had to change it on their own was not "evil". So the absence of good does not become evil.

On the other hand if someone stops giving the appearance that they are about to offer help but instead robs the person of their money and leaves, then this was "evil".

Of course, we as humans have judged all of these thing to be "good", "inert" or "evil".

But even clearly isn't the absence of good, it's a totally different thing that exists on its own totally independent of good.

~~~~

On a second note existence of evil can never "prove" the existence of a God. To the contrary, "The Problem of Evil" is entirely a theological problem. In a secular world undesirable things (i.e. things we call evil) would naturally occur and be expected.

Evil only becomes a problem when an all-righteous creator is postulated to exist. If the world was created by an all-righteous creator then how did "evil" ever come to be?

The Abrahamic theologians proclaim that the answer to this question is to make "Free Will" possible. However, that's absurd because there's no need for evil to exist in order to have free will. If we lived in a world where evil was simply not possible we could still have free will to chose from any of the infinite good things that we could chose to do. So there is no need for evil to exist in order for there to be free will.

So the Abrahamic religions fail to account for why evil exists.

Buddhism actually has a far better theological explanation for why evil "appears" to exist but doesn't truly exist.

And of course in Secular Naturalism there is no "Problem of Evil". Instead if nothing ever happened that was undesirable Secular Naturalism would have an extreme "Problem of Goodness" to explain. But obviously that's not the case. So Secular Naturalism has no need to explain anything. Things are precisely as we would expect in a secular natural world.

But no, evil is not merely the absence of good, nor does the existence of evil prove the existence of a God. To the contrary, the existence of evil is the greatest problem for theologians.

Abrahamic theologians try to pin the blame for evil onto free will, which doesn't work.

Buddhism suggests that there actually is no "absolute evil" and what we consider to be evil is a purely subjective perspective. This doesn't mean that it isn't valid, it just means that it's a purely subjective perspective. Not unlike the view of Secular Naturalism actually.

So both Buddhism and Secular Naturalism have far better explanations for the existence of "evil" then the Abrahamic God myth offers.