Printable View
I find this word quite intriguing because it plays on the notion that the presense of evil in the word negate the existence of God.
The other idea is that evil could not exist without good/ie God.
The question that comes to mind is this:
Does God need beliefs from anyone to exist?
I think the arguments against the problem of evil slant more toward free will, that is, that it wasn't god who created evil but rather that humans chose of their own free will to defy god and thus "create" evil. God places a high value on free will, and thus, allows us to choose to be good or evil, and being imperfect humans, we frequently choose evil.
If by God, you mean The God of the Abrahamic faiths, then no, He doesn't need us to believe in Him. If you mean God as a concept humans came up with, then he DOES need us to believe in him. I am a supporter of the second theory.
Evil will exist in the world without God, since humans are the ones that cause it.
Evil in the world is what leads me to personally find the idea of the Christian god rather foolish. However I can't deny the existence of some kind of higher being that created the universe.
Interesting that you do quote evil with defyance of God. I wonder if god ever defie defiance itself.Quote:
Originally Posted by SkyCetacean
About free will I am not sure myself it exists. I firmly believe it does not but that is beside the point.
I feel that god makes us then it is up to us to make of it what we wish.
I tend to separate god from our wishes. I am not so sure god gives allowances because he has already give us a brain to use of our own accord.
I chose to use my brain and avoid evil. Others chose to not have one and go on to excute evil as a mean to prove themselves up as being useful.
I do not see the difference between the two.Quote:
Originally Posted by Volya
.Quote:
Evil will exist in the world without God, since humans are the ones that cause it
Agreed.
I feel the title of 'chritian' to a god rather foolish myself.Quote:
Evil in the world is what leads me to personally find the idea of the Christian god rather foolish.
However I am not sure I follow what you mean.
Good point. The big bang has hardly a hand on everything although I am inclined to believe bigbang was god's making to keep the mind racing towards the existence of God.Quote:
However I can't deny the existence of some kind of higher being that created the universe.
The numbers of scientists disagreeing against the religious does not get better then this.
Conflict at the heart of earth and humanity.
cacian, I think this is another of those topics where you need to do some more research xDQuote:
Originally Posted by cacian
There is a big difference between the two 'Gods' I mentioned. The first, is assuming that God is real, and is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent. The second is saying that God isn't real, he is just an idea humans came up with. I assume you are an atheist?
When I say the Christian god, I mean God from the Bible. What else would you call him?
I am not an atheist and bear no labels upon myself. I am enjoy my own views on what God is what isn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Volya
I did mention somewhere else that I think there has to be only one higher being and that all religions eventually all lead to one god.
I have no other name for god but god.
I know god is real but that is beside the point.
Whether it is real for others does not concern me.
I speak of evil and whether by deying evil one defies god this higher being.
If there is a God, beliefs are not needed for him to exist. Beliefs do not cause anyone or anything to exist (at least not by the mere cognitive activity of believing). Beliefs about a woman being pregnant do not cause a woman to become pregnant. Just as your laptop exists independently of a mind knowing it, if God exists, he'll exist whether someone believes he does. Things that exist exist independently of minds.
:cheers2:We disagree regarding these matters. For God to be or exist, we need to believe that it is so. It is different for God to occur physically apart from the imagination or any belief born to it. That's when people are comical.Quote:
Originally Posted by Umbreon
:cheers2::leaving:
God exists regardless of one's belief.Quote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
Faith does not reinforce one's existence. One does not depend on the other.
Does your bed exist?Quote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
Okay, now if that exists, do you (or anyone for that matter) need to believe that your bed exists for it to exist?
(The answer should be "no.")
As someone pointed out earlier, individuals hold different meanings of God, and it affects the answer to your question.
If by God you simply mean some extremely powerful being responsible for the creation of the universe and divorced from any holy books or doctrine, then I would say that the existence of evil seems to pose no problem. An entity’s power seems to say nothing about its beneficence or any other motivation for that matter.
If you are speaking about particular Gods as described in religious texts, then you run into some fairly insurmountable issues. The argument about evil though, usually is dilated to include events that are bad in general such as natural disasters, debilitating disease, and other such examples which are not directly authored by humans or sentient entities.
We can then ask questions about why God would let such things happen to people. If, as in the Christian tradition, he is believed to be a loving and caring God you have an issue.
At this point most will object on the grounds that you cannot know the will of God, he works in mysterious ways etc… I see no issue with this on the face of it. It seems likely, in fact, that an omnipotent being would have inscrutable motives. This, however, just leads to an even more insurmountable difficulty with respect to ANY of God’s motives. Maybe God really doesn’t care if we sin or not. Maybe he just wrote that in the Bible to see how we would react to it. Maybe he does care about sin, but he wants us to sin as much as possible. Maybe heaven doesn’t exist. Once we have admitted that God’s motives are beyond the scope of our understanding, the entirety of the Bible’s (or any other holy text with a similarly anthropomorphic Godhead) meaning and relevance is called into question.
The Abrahamic God is generally thought to be morally perfect, omniscient (knows absolutely everything that is knowable) and omnipotent (can do anything at all, save, perhaps, for instantiating a logical contradiction.)
The presence of evil is the world is attributed to man's free will, which, for some strange reason, God is said to highly prize. Of course, free will doesn't account for natural evils like tsunamis that level coastlines and kill thousands of people in an hour. Does a tsunami have free will, such that God does not wish to preclude it?
But put aside natural evil. It is easy to show, via logic, that if God is omniscient and omnipotent, he is entirely responsible for evil, even if man has free will.
One need only look at the case from the possible worlds terminology of modal logic.
"Adam eats the apple" stands for the introduction of evil into the world on Judeo-Christian theology. If Adam has free will, then there are two possible worlds: A world at which Adam eats the apple, and a world at which he does not.
God, being omniscient, knows ahead of time which way Adam will choose. This does not impeach Adam's freedom, however, since Adam eating the apple supplies the truth grounds for God's advance knowledge of this act.
But God is supposed to be more than omniscient. He is supposed to be omnipotent, and he is supposed to have made the world. An omnipotent being can make any world that he wants, provided it does not bring about a logical contradiction. And being omniscient, he will know in advance how the world he makes will turn out. He will also know in advance how the counterfactual worlds that he does not make would turn out, if he made them.
Being perfect, he cannot err in making the world that he wants.
This means that it was within God's power to make the possible world in which Adam freely eats the apple and introduces evil into the world. And it was also within his power to make the possible world in which Adam freely does not eat the apple and does not introduce evil. Both worlds must be possible since Adam's act is logically contingent and not necessary. If it were necessary, then Adam would lack free will.
God, with perfect foreknowledge, perfect freedom and perfect ability, and also with perfect responsibility, chose to make the world in which Adam freely ate the apple and introduced evil into it.
It logically follows that the Abrahamic God, if he exists, is entirely and solely culpable for all evil in the world from first to last. Since it is impossible for a perfect God to err and make a world that he did not want, it follows that God wanted evil and its sole and complete source.
I think God "exists" in the same way any other symbol exists: as a way for humans to conceptualize a complex reality. It has always been so convenient for believers to ascribe intent to phenomena that the definition of God as a powerful sky being is understandably common. However, it's not an original observation that the existence of suffering in the world does away with such a definition of God as either all-powerful or all-loving.
If God is all-powerful and yet doesn't mitigate the suffering of the innocent, He can't be all-loving. If God is all-loving and yet doesn't do away with suffering, then He can't be all-powerful.
Those accepting a religion have no problem with evil. Their religion solves the problem of evil for them. Those who don't have a belief system need to continue looking for a solution to the problem of evil. Because of this, the problem of evil is mainly a problem for atheists and also for those missionaries who feel obligated to convert the atheists to their particular religion. For the normal theist the problem is solved.
Today many of us have a large number of religions to choose from as well as political freedoms and mobility that allow us to exercise such choices. That was not the case even 100 years ago. Add to that our 21st century knowledge about what our universe is through quantum physics, the big bang, evolution, as well as historical studies of the world religions and we also have an enormous amount of information.
From our perspective the problem of theodicy is best presented as a problem of cosmodicy. Do we believe the universe is good or not? Is it good that we are here at all? That is our real starting point.
There are some who say the universe is not good. Consider the recent movie Melancholia where a psychic, of all people, is presented as taking a moral high road of being glad the earth will crash into the flyby planet Melancholia so all life in the universe can cease. Consider people who think the best thing we should do ethically is to stop reproducing so that suffering will cease. Or consider the people who think their suicides should be coupled with the deaths of a classroom full of 5 and 6 year old children.
Theodicy reformulated as cosmodicy presents us with a choice: Is life worth living or not? Is the universe good enough for us to live with each other or should our lives be best spent destroying it?
After we make the only sane choice, given the fact that we are, that the universe is good, then we can search the world religions and philosophies, picking and choosing what makes sense, to help us understand. We might start appreciating our world cultural legacy more. It is not something to dismiss with arrogance. The problem of evil is not trivial, but we are not the first people who have had to answer it.
By "solved" you must mean "ignored."Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I think you've got things a little backward in your argument. The believer is the one who has to acknowledge the reality of evil and suffering and rationalize it. If the believer says God loves us, or the universe is good, then the existence of evil becomes a problem: why does God permit the innocent to suffer? What's the function of evil in a good universe?
The nonbeliever has no such baggage. We expect the universe to seem ugly and brutal as often as it seems beautiful and fair. We don't ascribe intent or moral meaning to natural phenomena. We don't handwave away the suffering of the innocent, or pretend it's all part of a cosmic plan.