An Argument from Evil

If God is omnibenevolent then he would have prevented the occurrence of any evil. If a wholly good being exist then this being could not not prevent evil, that is it would be impossible for such a being to create evil or let evil occur. Then we could not ignore the glaring problem of omnipotence-there is something God can not do. This argument in standard form may look something like this:
P1) If God is all powerful then he could create evil.
P2) If God is all good then he would not have created evil.
P3) There is evil.
C) Therefore, either God is not all powerful or all good or God does not exist.

Does anyone see any flaws in this logic?

As a Christian, I would point out that your argument doesn’t critique the Christian God.

But, I’m certain that I’ve demonstrated that in one of the other 400 or so threads on this same topic here at ILP.

In what way does it not critique your God? I did not realize the traditional Christian God ceased to be omnipotent and omnibenevolent…my mistake. Maybe you can explain this to me as I don’t have time to read all 322 of your posts.

perhaps it is not good to go preventing things you think are evil…

i don’t know, that’s my input…

Zein…

The common “pop” notion of omnipotence is directly refuted by explicit statements in the Bible.

There are many things the Christian God cannot do…He cannot lie (Titus 1) and by implication of His holiness, He cannot refute Himself.

So, the question, “Can God kill Himself” is answered. No, He cannot.

That’s just the starting of the problems with the argument you’ve stated. As I tried to convey in my previous post…this ground has been covered repeatedly at ILP…many posts containing the exact same set of premises you’ve listed here.

OK…That still doesn’t change the fact that the Christian God is supposed to be all powerful and yet there are many things he can not do. Not only has this type of argument been posted here many times but this same type of argument has been going on for thousands of years. You still have not given me any reasons why this argument is not valid. Are any the premises false? If not the argument must be true.

The classic answer from Aquinus is that Evil doesn’t actually exists. Evil is just a term for the absence of Good, the absence of God. Similar to the way cold is just really the absence of heat. So Evil exist simply because God isn’t everything.

Then there was Spinoza who said God is everything. To him Evil is an illusion. He claims that if we had the total perspective we’d see how it all must fit togehter. I call shenanigans. It sounds like a “no true scotsman” to me.

Another line of argument is that Evil is a nessisary consequence of free-will, but that dening Man free-will would be more evil. So, Evil exists nessisarily, and this is the best of all possible worlds… at least until the second coming or somesuch.

All in all there are better arguments agianst the existance of God. I mean this argument has no weight with Maltheist who think God is Evil.

LostGuy…

Aquinus has some good arguments doesn’t he? All I can say to that is because something is not good doesn’t necessarily make it evil. For example, selfishness may seem evil to the observer, but all acts of selfishness are certainly not evil. My point is evil should not exist or have began to exist if God is all good.

If God is omniscient and omnibenevolent and has the foreknowledge to know that evil will come from free-will then he could not give man free-will.

Your right there are many more arguments against the existence of God, I was just reading some of my old Philosophy of Religion text books and it brought back memories.

Zein, I’m going to do this with you just because I need the practice.

I’ve already shown that your idea of “all powerful” does not describe the Christian God. I demonstrated this by showing the ignorance implicit in your “pop” notion of omnipotence.

However, even though the Christian God is not “omnipotent” in the popular sense, He is still omnipotent in the Christian sense (He can do all that is possible), and thus, premise one would be valid if and only if the Christian assumption of omnipotence is assumed. This may not seem like an important distinction at the moment, but it saves us from needless controversy in the long run.

Implicit in premise 2 is a non-sequitur arising from more ignorance of the Christian position.

Why would an “all good” God not utilize evil to bring about good ends? It is not prima facie true that a good god would not…and when it comes to the Christian God, the Bible explicitly states that He does indeed utilize evil so that good will result. See Romans 8. (This naturally raises questions about human responsibility vs. divine sovereignty. Those questions are adequately answered by the Christian as well. The point to note here however, is that premise 2 is a non sequitur.)

As for premise 3…the Christian would agree with it, though you’d have problems demonstrating it’s validity in any secular or pagan way. If the Christian God didn’t exist as the standard of “good” in the first place, there would be no objective way to claim “evil” existed.

My statements here savage the argument you’ve made…and if it is at all valid (and it may be) it is ONLY valid if describing some god other than the Christian One.

argument presented in song:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk41Gbjljfo[/youtube]

There is ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Every sentient being has the free will to choose. Satan and his minion made their choice. People make their choices. The Angels of God who still abide with Him made their choice. If all these entities did not have the choice to decide, then they all would be nondescript beings without purpose and the chance to have value. That in my opinion is it in the basic sense.

[quote=“Zein”]
If God is omniscient and omnibenevolent and has the foreknowledge to know that evil will come from free-will then he could not give man free-will.

[quote]
To continue the argument. The contension is that by not giving man free-will, God would be commiting even more evil. That making robots or slaves of mankind is even worse than the evil they will do.

Of course, interstingly this makes Evil quite powerfull. It exist no matter what God does. A sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

I’d also like to point out Shotgun is giving a valid response. It’s easy for many religious people to deny God as omnipotent. God as creator obviously has to be very powerfull, but he dosen’t have to be omnipotent. In fact, the omnipotent God is probably the invention of the Occasionalist who conclued that God had to personally do everything. That when I think “I want to pick up an apple,” God moves my hand and makes it bring the apple to my mouth. It was one of the sillier excesses of rationalism.

So the argument from Evil mostly works on people (rationalists) who no longer exists.

God is beyond the categories of good and evil. He is beyond life and death, e.g. God is called the judge of the quick (living) and the dead. According to Genesis 2, the human race chose the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This is a metaphorical way of expressing that we tend to see things in those categories. Wisdom involves the ability to see beyond duality. According to the Biblical vision, had our archetypal parents partaken of the Tree of Life they would have presumably shared in the divine nature. In the Gospel of John, Jesus opens a clear way for people to participate in the divine life again.

Can you show that? I’ll need an argument before I can concede that the Christian God or any God for that matter is somehow required for an objective notion of evil.

As a related aside: good is not needed to denote evil, and evil is not needed to denote good. We could certainly have things, which are just “ok” (neither good nor evil), and then things, which are simply good or simply evil. The two need not exist simultaneously in the world. We could also think of a paradise where everything is good, or a very bad place where everything is evil. Those worlds need not have the other, nor anything which is merely “ok”.

Good and evil are decided in the eye of the beholder. Your vision of evil could be my vision of good. Whatever the general population believes is wrong is what people tend to believe is wrong no matter what the facts because our species tend to follow what they are told like sheep and do nothing to find what THEY believe in. For instance if you are born into Christianity you will generally believe what your peers tell you is evil to be evil, but if your peers happen to be a pagan cult then you will believe what they tell you to be good and evil. My point being that neither good nor evil exist as a whole but in the mind of the observer. So god could see committing evil acts in your eyes as good in his eyes.

“shotgun wrote:If the Christian God didn’t exist as the standard of “good” in the first place, there would be no objective way to claim “evil” existed.”

I would put that differently because not everyone is christian…If there was no standard of good there would be no standard of evil.

If god is in fact the creator of the universe then he has the ability to manipulate anything in it. If he couldn’t it would be like saying that you know how to make a circuit but you can’t reconfigure the circuit. That is just absurd. So saying that god is not all powerful is extremely contradicting when your belief is that he created the universe.
So if god created everything then he must have created the human mind. This makes me think if god created our minds he must have known how they would work and perceive evil so he must be able to perceive evil and therefore do evil things. If evil does not exist in your mind you would not be able to create it or even the means to create it.

Arguing “god’s” morality is almost futile unless you look for inconsistencies in the bible such as. Thou shalt not kill. Yet the bible says in Exodus 15:3 “The Lord is a man of war.” and in "Psalm 144:1 Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight. "
Those quotes crack me up…god’s morality is very contradictory indeed. Is this the point you were trying to make? That god’s morality, if you can call it that, is flawed?

As always if I am wrong in anyway please let me know in a civil manner and give me proof not just an opinion.<<----That statement will be at the end of all of my posts. Just letting you know so no one gets offended.

Yes.

“Evil” is a term that only exists through religion, as “evil” is relative without absolute value without a religious construct to dictate what the law of Good is for Evil to break, as “Evil” is only that which breaks a religious or moral doctrine or law, especially on purpose.

However, “God” as described above is defined in absolute, while the Evil is left relative.

Negating “God” through this logic would be to say that Because I can break Religious laws of Good, God does not exist.
Of course, the Religious Laws of Good don’t exist without the concept of God or Providence.
If a providence doesn’t exist then the religion doesn’t truly exist either, as a truth.
If it doesn’t exist as a truth, then it’s concepts of God do not exist.
If it’s concepts of God do not exist, then neither do the concepts of the laws of Good.
If the Laws of Good do not exist, then there is no Evil.

If there is no Evil, then Evil does not exist.
If Evil does not exist, then premise 3 is invalid.

Conclusion:
To prove that a providence, God, does not exist is to prove that Evil does not exist.

Wow, no.

Religious Absolutism is only one catagory of many catagories of ethical theory.

I dare say most ethical theorists, even Christian ones, have tried to argue through Rational Absolutism, wherein good and evil can be determined by reason alone.

To my mind, if Good cannot be reducible to the edicts of any intelligent being, even God. For Good to be Good, for should to be should, it has to be above the level of choice, above the level of desire. To say if God wanted puppy hunting to be Good it would be, seems selfevidently absurd.

Seems that way, sure.

But watch:

Evil: The quality of being morally bad or wrong; wickedness.
Morally: with respect to moral principles
Moral: Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character
Principles: The collectivity of moral or ethical standards or judgments
Bad: Evil; sinful
Sinful: Marked by or full of sin; wicked
Sin: A transgression of a religious or moral law, especially when deliberate
Wrong: Immorally or unjustly
Wickedness: Evil by nature and in practice

The only final definition you can arrive at is that “Evil” is that which breaks religious laws.

It can be said that it’s “Moral Laws” also, but moral laws change on perspective.
Religious Laws within a given religion are consistent within itself; they do not change relative to the person according to the theology of a given religion.
They change according to the person, yes, but not according to the theology.

Even the concept of relative sin is still defined; that which diminishes the relationship between a person and their belief/or “moral self-esteem”.

So Evil only exists when placed against Righteousness, not “good” (this is why I capitalized “Good” above).
This is because Righteousness is, Morally upright; without guilt or sin.

Which, if you chase that meaning around will arrive at, Upholding Religious Law; pretty much.

So again, to state that a religious providential power does not exist because there is the ability to violate the religious law does not follow.
This is because one is attempting to show that such a power simply does not exist, but all that can be shown in this is that man has a capacity for breaking religious law’s, of which it isn’t even certain which religious law set is the absolute set or if any are the absolute set of religious law’s by which a given assumed providential power indeed rests upon.

You seem to be arguing that all non-religous moral prinicples are relativistic and changable. I simply disagree, and I think I have Plato on my side. I think Good exist eternally and unchangeably beyond the reach of any of man’s gods.

If that is true, then abortion would be a non-issue.