Is God evil?

[Compassionist]

There are many verses in the Bible about God's predestination. https://www.openbible.info/topics/predestination Why would a good God predestine anyone to do evil? Surely, a good God would predestine all to do good? Does the existence of evil prove that God is evil? Surely, a good God would have made all living things to be autotrophs instead of making some autotrophs, some herbivores, some carnivores, some omnivores, and some parasites? Here are some examples of evil events which caused or are causing suffering, deaths, and injustices:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_n ... death_toll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_g ... death_toll
https://thevegancalculator.com/animal-slaughter

[Compassionist]

[Replying to Compassionist in post #1]

This is just the argument from evil, which Thomas Aquinas addresses as do I am many others. Here is my basic answer - https://www.freelymeditate.com/single-p ... y-for-good

Thank you for the link. Why didn't God make all the beings he allegedly created all-knowing and all-powerful? That would have prevented all suffering, injustices, and deaths. No one and nothing can harm all-knowing and all-powerful beings.

[JoeyKnothead]

...
Why didn't God make all the beings he allegedly created all-knowing and all-powerful? That would have prevented all suffering, injustices, and deaths. No one and nothing can harm all-knowing and all-powerful beings.

Then I couldn't sell you the cure.

[Compassionist]

...
Why didn't God make all the beings he allegedly created all-knowing and all-powerful? That would have prevented all suffering, injustices, and deaths. No one and nothing can harm all-knowing and all-powerful beings.

Then I couldn't sell you the cure.

Prevention is better than a cure.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to Compassionist in post #1]

This is just the argument from evil, which Thomas Aquinas addresses as do I am many others. Here is my basic answer - https://www.freelymeditate.com/single-p ... y-for-good

Thank you for the link. Why didn't God make all the beings he allegedly created all-knowing and all-powerful? That would have prevented all suffering, injustices, and deaths. No one and nothing can harm all-knowing and all-powerful beings.

I have to agree. From a quick look over the linked article, it seems that Aquinas has bombed again as his Ontological argument does. And for the common reason that all the Christian , Biblical and indeed theist arguments bomb - they only work if one already posits a god to start with. That was the case even before we understood (after discovering DNA) how instinct works and thus understand morals and free will better.

It was a discussion on a former board about Nietzsche and nihilism. His 'God is dead' (the jibe that stabs the soul of the God - Believer as they hope that ' The Fool hath said' wounds the atheist) seems to have been that Nietzsche was concerned about what would replace the basis for morality if god wasn't it.

Well, like many other great thinkers, including Aristotle, upon whose arguments I suspect that some of Anselms apologetics might have been based, Science has provided answers that Philosophy never could. They were in the metaphysical sense, trying to make bricks without straw - trying to make out the basis of morality when they didn't know what morality was.

Rather like Consciousness, Life and perhaps even cosmic origins, we have learned enough that as Hawking said : "God. Is. Not. Nesser -sarrry." And the old apologetics are dead, even if a god is not.

From one of the many discussions of Anselm's ontology online

"Sure, God could have made a world with less evil. But this would mean less free will. And on balance, having free will creates more good than the evil it also creates.
However, this response only explains moral evil, not natural evil. And while the natural evil as moral evil argument may work against the logical problem of evil, it’s less plausible against the evidential problem of evil."

This is just one of the objections to the rather blinkered Free will objection. And that without the old bitter joke about the Bible belt being hit by natural disasters because God is angry that same sex marriage was allowed in California. The main one being -of course- that even if it was philosophically valid, it it only valid if the 'parameter' of an existing god is correct, and might make more sense if it was not the god of Christianity. But then, the God -apologists ignore the other gods without thinking, just as they fail to see that all Theistic philosophy is founded on an irrational claim.
that in fact invalidates all their arguments - GodFaith.

We have a dead apologetic which was shot down even in Anselm's day (notably Gaunilo), yet the Believers keep rattling its' dead bones around and pretending it's alive.

[AquinasForGod]

[Replying to Compassionist in post #291]

One cannot become to be all knowing or all powerful or all anything. One must be eternal to possess such. I am sure you will ask why, and I could get into the logic of it, but you could easily look it up as well.

[TRANSPONDER]

...
Why didn't God make all the beings he allegedly created all-knowing and all-powerful? That would have prevented all suffering, injustices, and deaths. No one and nothing can harm all-knowing and all-powerful beings.

Then I couldn't sell you the cure.

Who could have known that Christianity would be so economically sound?

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to Compassionist in post #291]

One cannot become to be all knowing or all powerful or all anything. One must be eternal to possess such. I am sure you will ask why, and I could get into the logic of it, but you could easily look it up as well.

So could you and explain it here.Though you fail right away in your assertions, so you might save yourself and us the time and effort. Right away one could say that a being could pop out of nowhere or perhaps evolve and acquire the faculty of being all knowing and all powerful. It wouldn't need to have always existed or for that matter to be eternal thereafter. Your assertions don't have a scrap of validity.

P.s I had a look at a vid just now philosophy - problem of evil.(Comments turned off) Right away I felt the frustration that rationalists have with Philosophers, because they seem to live in a bubble as much as theists. They play their mind games with their own rules but, like the frog in the pond (1), know nothing of the outside world.

The video (decided not to post it - this stuff is easy to find) dragged the God -argument in right away. Immediately it had stopped being philosophy and had become theology. I didn't stay long enough to find he'd drag the Bible in as well, but logic says start with no assumptions. God dunnit is the Theist claim, not a philosophical proposition.

I can bet it wouldn't trouble to look at, or even show any signs of being aware of, the biological./socialogical evolutionary - in fact - scientific answers that might be proposed. Even as philosophy, it would be chasing its' own tail around this crystal sphere that it inhabits because it was too self -absorbed to see if there was an exit. That without dragging in theological oofle dust inside to further bemuse its brains.

Can you wonder that I find philosophy (like engineering ) useful but do not trust it with investigation. That's even when it isn't hi -jacked by Theological sophists trying to bamboozle us all.

(1) it's a funny thing but the simile is used both by materialists to refer to those who argue in ignorance (or denial) of the findings of science, as I have seen it used by theists to decry the refusal of rationalists to ascribe credibility to speculative fantasies they happen to like. I need hardly say which usage is wrong.

[JoeyKnothead]

[Replying to Compassionist in post #291]

One cannot become to be all knowing or all powerful or all anything. One must be eternal to possess such.

How can someone who ain't all knowing tell if some is?

I am sure you will ask why, and I could get into the logic of it, but you could easily look it up as well.

Or you could support your claims of it being all logical and all.

Here, in the debate in which you claimed it.