I dont see a problem with God being good and allowing a choice that caused evil considering the problems that no choice would cause.
Reply to Ned Flanders:
[b]Tell you what Ned…go back through the main article above…and cut, paste and show ANY part of that article that actually claims that I stated that Christians believe that God is omnibenevolent. I don’t think you can. Because the article DID NOT SAY SO----NOR IS IT THE POINT OF THE ARTICLE (although the failure of Christians to believe that God is omnibenevolent is an important yet tangential factor to the point of the article as we will see below).
You read the article above and made the ad hoc assumption that somehow I was stating something about Christians and Christianity that wasn’t true due to my “ignorance”, rather than my simply attempting to honestly understand existence with a theistic bent.
The argument IS important. Do you know why?[/b] Because of the arguable absence of an a priori necessity for the existence of “evil” or “sin” in the first place.
Let’s take a look at a statement you made near the end of your post, shall we?
[b]Now I ask ya, from the time before God created anything at all, way back in the day when “the earth was without form and void”-----did “sin” exist then? Did God have a cause to be hostile toward us then? If God created everything, then what exactly is the meaning of the term: “everything”, then, IF SIN IS EXCLUDED? Did it magically pop into existence the moment Eve decided to buy into the serpent’s spiel?
The point being, the problem of evil takes into account the absence of the a priori (“before the fact”) necessity of the existence of evil (in layman’s terms, that it is arguable that there is nothing that made it so that evil must come into existence BEFORE it actually existed—in the sense that sin was somehow COMPELLED to come into existence before the fact with absolute inevitability), and the assumption that God, being omnipotent, possessed the power to prevent evil from EVER coming into existence before the fact…but didn’t.
You’re describing a God that possesses a form of “all-goodness” that consists of such an alien conception of right and wrong (compared to the concept as possessed by a rational on-the-street human being) that the God can be, in your words:[/b]
[b]In terms of the aforementioned absence of an a priori necessity for the existence of “sin” or “evil”, your statement doesn’t even bother to take into account God’s omniscience—his foreknowledge of past, present, and future. Why create beings whom you know are going to hell anyway, and to whom you know you’re only going to be hostile to? (Forgiveness aside, there are beings that God KNOWS is going to hell no matter what due to the infallibility of his foreknowledge. Why create them in the first place?)
However, a concession is in order here.
Obviously, David Hume, Epicurus before him, and all the other GREAT PHILOSOPHERS before our time, having stated the problem of evil thus (in whatever form each philosopher borrowed from Epicurus below):[/b]
“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?” — Epicurus, as quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief
—have obviously never either listened to you, Ned, or really studied the Bible to learn of the simultaneity of God’s goodness AND his hostility toward sinners, nor the fact that God is NOT omni-benevolent. The problem of evil as stated by these philosophers simply assumes that, if God is “good” in a way that agrees with “goodness” in it’s ordinary-language meaning (Dee), then God SHOULD be omnibenevolent, and would express that omnibenevolence in an a priori sense, not allowing the very thing that he is hostile towards to exist in the first place.
Thus, you stated:
Why, most everyone does, if they’re smart. Particularly those logical enough to consider the absence of the a priori necessity for the existence of the very thing that produces God’s hostility, given his omniscience and omnipotence.
[b]Really? Then look again, and this time take off those rose-colored sunglasses in the desperate attempt to defend God’s (supposedly) alien perception of “goodness”. If you apply reasoning to the whole mess, you’ll see that any God that is NOT omnibenevolent is NECESSARILY AN EVIL GOD.
But, as the main article explains above, there are two ways to be “evil”: Let’s go to Webster’s Dictionary to find out how:[/b]
evil /e-vel/ [Middle English, from Old English yfel:akin to Old High German ubil evil]
1 a: Morally reprehensible: SINFUL, WICKED (an evil impulse) b: arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct (a man of evil reputation)
3 a: causing harm…b: marked by misfortune..something that brings sorrow, distress, or calamity
[b]The argument of the main article above, following from the observations of Hume and Epicurus and others, is that any God that is NOT omnibenevolent IS evil—but this evil can logically be either Webster’s evil (1a), (3a) or both. My argument is that the Christian God is (3a) but not (1a).
Why?
Because God is “harmful”-evil (not malicious-evil) by not preventing the existence of “sin” and “evil” FROM EXISTING IN THE FIRST PLACE (if one assumes that God possesses omnipotence, which is easily defined as the ability to remove evil from the universe at a whim, or to prevent it from existing in the first place)
You see, it does not matter if God had “higher-order” good intentions (like the allowance or the granting of free will) in the allowance of the existence of evil, he is still nevertheless harmful in the decision to allow it to exist (those four boy scouts taken by the tornado in Iowa can attest to this harmfulness—their misfortune arose due the decision of God NOT to prevent evil from existing in the first place).
It does not matter that “we are all sinners” and that non-sociopaths and sociopaths are all equally as “evil” in the eyes of God barring forgiveness by faith in Jesus Christ. God could have created a world in which sinners did not exist.
On that note, here’s a nice little quote:[/b]
Yes it does. Just not the Webster’s (1a) type of evil, but Webster’s (3a).The existence of sinners and God’s hostility toward them implies that God is “harmful” by not preventing the situation from arising in the first place.
[b]Well, we certainly know that the word: “non-sociopath” or “non-sociopathic” is not in the bible, but the bible contains verses that describe the behavioral qualities and personality traits of sociopaths and non-sociopaths, so it doesn’t seem out of the question to use modern terms to describe psychological and moral qualities that are described in archaic terms in old books like the Bible.
I would like to know one thing, Ned. The verses I enclosed in my last post (which it seems you’ve ignored):[/b]
“The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them;
he delivers them from ALL their troubles.”
(Psalm 34: 17 NIV)
“A righteous man may have many troubles,
but the Lord delivers him from them ALL;
he protects ALL his bones,
not one of them will be broken.”
(Psalm 34: 19, 20 NIV)
To whom do you think they refer? Who is “the righteous man”? or the “righteous”? Is it ONLY those who accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior----or is the the non-sociopathic? And if God is hostile to ALL men, sociopaths and non-sociopaths alike (because all are sinners), and if God is NEVER inclined to be benevolent, and I quote:
[b] -------then what are the above verses EVEN DOING IN THE BIBLE??? Why should anyone expect Psalm 34: 17, 19, and 20 TO BE TRUE?
Is it right for God to not care about the 7 schoolchildren in France who died on a nice little fieldtrip (due to their schoolbus being T-boned by an oncoming train) because the children failed to accept Jesus as Lord and Personal Savior? Are they in hell now? Or doomed to hell? Did Psalm 34: 17, 19, and 20 apply to these children? If not, then WHY?
(Is Super-Logic, even now, running to change clothes in the phonebooth?)
And then there’s this:[/b]
[b]Really, “omni” MUST mean “universal” as in “everything without exception”? You mean one can’t shrink “omni” to mean “all without exeption within a group” (without necessarily having to include the whole blamed universe)? I did not know that. Goodness me.
Let’s look at Websters again:[/b]
omni- combining form [Latin, from omnis]
: all : universally (omnidirectional)
[b]Now I ask ya, is the first term: “all” inextricably synonymous with the second term: “universally”? If so, why, because YOU believe that it is? Because it is USUALLY synonymous?
Note: Of course, the great ole’ philosophers who first proposed the “problem of evil” assumed that God is omnibenevolent (without consulting their Bibles to discover the horrific truth(that God is not really omnibenevolent)! Shame on them!) or that in ordinary human logic, being “all-good” should entail omnibenevolence. Their assumption is not so much mistaken as grounded, and it is grounded in the absence of the necessity for evil or sin (or evildoers or sinners) to exist in the first place, given God’s omniscience and omnipotence.
If God is that hostile and opposed to evil, then the question of Epicurus stands (let’s look at ole’ Epie’s statement again, shall we?):[/b]
“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?”
This is the main focus of the article above: and it goes above proving whether or not Christians “love sliced cheese”:
b Even if God is not truly omnibenevolent, “all-goodness” to ordinary human logic entails omnibenevolence. The only reason one would disagree with this is through one’s inference that “God is good yet not omnibenevolent” because it is implied within the Bible.
(2) God is hostile toward sin and sinners, yet if God is omnipotent, he could have prevented the very existence of the thing that continually riles him up in the first place.
(3) If God is omniscient (knowing past, present, and future), then God knew he could potentially (as he has yet to create the world) be riled up by sin, that sin could potentially exist, and that sinners could potentially exist. God’s omniscience is infallible, if it were not, then God could not reasonably “declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times, that which is to come”–his “omniscient previsions” would only be idle acts of the imagination, with external reality going it’s own way.
Given this, why create beings who are only going to refuse or fail to accept Jesus as Lord and Personal Savior and end up in hell anyway?
(4) This consideration of the arguable absence of an a priori necessity for the existence of sin, sinners, and the hostility toward and punishment of sinners is what fuels David Humes and Epicurus’ logic in the formation of the reductio ad absurdum that is: “the problem of evil”.[/b]
Nuff said?
Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com
i know i have said this before but i would like to take it from another angle…
‘before we can say we are ruled by an evil god you have to state what evil is’.
g?d doesn’t do anything in the world, yet all ‘evil’ is done in the world. imagine the universe before it existed [or before this one existed], there is no possibility of performing evil acts as there is nothing present!
the g?d or given entity that exists beyond the physical [by that i don’t mean separate from it] can only do this…
a) create the laws that bind and shape existence.
b) flow with physical manifestation as it evolves. [perhaps as mind in body, like us {but then there would be two minds in everthing?}]
how can such an entity perform evil? it cannot control existence once the laws are set in place without changing probably all those laws. the fact that those laws do not change means that there has been no divine intervention since at most before the universe began!
if there was divine intervention then how could an entity without body perform an evil act? g?d would have to become manifest in bodily form, yet would ‘he’ even know what evil is ~ in terms of experience of it he would have none.
PG please reply in black text, that blue hurts my eyes 
I don’t “pick on Christians” because they’re a defenseless target, I “pick on them” because I am constantly aghast at their stunning logical contradictions inconsistencies, disconnections, and denial.
And thus defenseless.
I am Christian myself (albeit a mutant strain of Christian)—however, I spend a few seconds here and there to TRY TO GET THEM TO THINK. My arguments concerning the co-existence of God and free will, particularly the suspension and/or punishment of the practice of “free will” is obvious within Christian “theology”.
But a “logical contradiction” nonetheless. I guess my objection is that you don’t present a logical version of God as an alternative to their illogical one in order to “try to get them to think”. Leaving Christianity is scary enough, but especially so if limbo (or Hell) is the only other thing they see.
[b]Your average pulpit minister and your on-the-street Christian will state one thing and in the next breath state it’s opposite, and if called to the carpet on it will swear that both were simultaneously true. My “duty”, I think, is to in my own microscopic way attempt to make them see these logical disconnections and inconsistencies.
If you doubt the existence of the puzzling phenomenon, try talking to a standard-issue Christian on the street (or in a church), you’ll understand where I’m coming from. [/b]
I agree, but most fundamentalist Christians are indoctrinated to some primitive level and beyond help. When faced with contradictions, they just withdraw into their shell labled “blind faith”. I’ve never gotten through to one of them. Then there are the ones who won’t leave their church/religion due to what they consider the necessary social connections it provides. They don’t believe, but they can’t admit it either.
But no one can fault you for trying, I still do too if the situation presents itself.
BTW, what is you mutant strain of Christianity? If there’s any residual element of the supernatural, aren’t you open to the same accusations of illogic? If not, is it anything other than a political position? I think almost all of what we call Christianity is actually Paulism, but for the major exception of Jesus’ glorification of poverty and condemnation of wealth.
I am feeling so neglected, No replies? I am wounded to the core. :-"
Reply To Quetzalcoatl:
Evil, as I define it, possesses two properties:
-
The psychological and emotional dispositions and behavior that seeks to impose/imposes experiences upon others that one would not wish to experience if one were in the position of one’s victims (typically performed by individuals that are evil in the (1a) sense of the Webster’s definition above.
-
Negative experience itself, regardless of whether or not it produces positive results (this is “evil” in the (3a) sense of the Webster’s definition above.
Granted, there’s lots of room for growth here, and people will claim that the definition is valid/invalid, but the referents of the term “evil”, as I understand them, exhaust to the two properties above.
Exactly. Except, in my view, the “God doesn’t do anything in the world” part. Before the universe existed, evil did not exist–when cometh evil? By itself independent of any action from God whatsoever…or the opposite? (This is the question posed to those who, like myself, believe that God created everything).
But these limitations: (i.e “g?d can only do this…”) [b]are merely conceivable limitations that you’ve given to God. If God is an aspect or part of existence, how can God create the laws that bind and shape existence? What existed before such laws?
What if the physical does not exist? We have faith that there exists a mind-independent physical reality which consciousnesss more or less “mimics”. Yet we have no proof that the physical even exists. If everything is mental, then one might conceive of a nice, smooth, phenomenal monism of which God is a part and through which God can interact (control) a conceivable world. But here again, the same thing obtains. I’m doing the same thing (granting God a particular “quality” that may, within the objective reality, be false).[/b]
Your seeming belief in the nonexistence of divine intervention seems to fuel the conceptual induction that God cannot control existence “once the laws are set in place”. This limitation does not seem to follow from the very act of “creating laws of existence”, the limitation seems to be an ad hoc supposition that proposes that God cannot intervene in human will and natural affairs.
I think that God knows what evil is simply by reason of instantly possessing a basic understanding of what it is and the behavioral/emotional dispositions that intuitively constitute it. This : “intelligence by fiat” is perhaps a ground-level ability contained within omniscience itself. My argument that God is “evil” holds that God is harmful (temporarily) by his decision to create an all-good world out of a world containing pain and death.
A confession: The decision for God to go at it from such a starting point despite mitigation of pain and zombification (if the Heroic Override [b]is true) violates the Golden Rule and is an aspect of a lack of full omnibenevolence. From our vantage point “in the trenches”(being susceptible to emotional/physical pain and death), this is a BIG DEAL for those who believe in God and that God is good to a degree (ranging from “all-good” to more “good” than a human being).
Easy responses such as “God is aloof to human beings” and the notion of “good evil” (that evil yields positive psychological results that a person can carry with them into heaven) aside, this decision (if the relevant concepts are indeed fact), in making sense of God’s desire to create an all-good world in the first place (or to himself evolve into Type-3 Omnibenevolence) is something that I am still trying to figure out (although in the meantime one may “absolve” God by invoking the default position that even the mind and intention of God is a part of and obeys the higher laws of Existence itself and the naturally-selective nature of it’s flow). It’s an interesting mental challenge, and I sincerely hope that any satisfying conclusion obeys logic.[/b]
Once again, good stuff Q.
Jay
Reply To Paineful Truth:
I have presented a logical version of God as an alternative, in my earlier posts here within ILovePhilosophy and within two e-books that I have written: The Adventures of Captain-Jeezus: Enter…SUPERCHRISTIANITY, (an introductory “101”) and Advanced Superchristianity: The Machine of Existence.
They were common staples of my now-defunct website, (One day this century, I plan to scrape together enough pennies to re-create the website 
)but my version of God and an explanation of “superchristianity” is now contained within my Myspace blog, the URL presented below)
[b] This “mutant strain” denies the existence of the supernatural, proposing that there exists only a phenomenal monism (that only consciousness and the “substance” that makes up subjective experience exists, causally interacts within itself, and produces or inexplicably contains God as a primal and accidentally anthropomorphic mind that is composed of the substance and controls every other aspect of it). “Superchristianity” is defined here: blog.myspace.com/superchristianity
Christianity, I agree, is more or less totally wrapped up in Paulism, yet I think that Jesus’ “glorification” of poverty entails an opinion that the poor are more in tune with reality and the nature of things than the rich, who are distracted (for the most part, and not in every case) with materialism, ambition, and greed.[/b]
Jay
Reply To Kriswest:
Sorry. I was distracted by Ned Flanders and his strange insistence that the main article above somehow was created only to say that “Christians believe that God is omnibenevolent” as opposed to the notion that it is the very absence of this omnibenevolence that fuels the notion of the “problem of evil” as presented by the philosophers of old. I’ll reply more in the future.
Jay
don’t sweat it, PG I was just teasing. Ned can be distracting but, he is a good guy over all and more flexible and intelligent then a couple of others that hang around… No Ned I am not trying to soften you up, I have one hard zealot oddball so called christian here that is a pain right now, so I am appreciating your posts more and more and Bob’s. Yours are done with thought and kindness.
I believe the only way to redemption is through repentance as John the Baptizer taught, and, I believe, also Jesus taught. The salvific shedding of blood was Paul’s way of selling his brand of Christianity to the pagans.
I think Jesus’ target was the corrupt powerful, and back in his day that usually meant the rich. And like today, he used class warfare to his advantage. But as the man who wouldn’t give up his wealth was close to the kingdom of God, not all rich are evil–nor all the poor good or more in tune with reality, just the opposite and thus more gullible in many cases. The good we contain is directly proportional to the degree to which we pursue the Truth (God) via the myriad paths to discovering natural law, justice, love and beauty, and people doing so can be found in all walks of life.
Greed is a very hard word to define.
Reply To Paineful Truth:
[b]And here I mistook you for atheist. What do you mean when you state that “the only way to redemption is through repentance”? I hold that redemption comes through Christ and the sharing of Christ’s mind and experiences.
I believe that the “shedding of blood” is more than just a marketing strategy: it is symbolic of Christ’s painful reactions to his re-enactment of the negative aspects of God’s omniscient foreknowledge. But herein lies the rub: interpretations will differ due to the fact that we’re dealing with concepts not amenable to verification through empirical knowledge.[/b]
[b]How did Jesus use class warfare to his advantage? It seems to me that he was simply stating psychological and moral truths concerning materialism and the character it tends to generate. It is true that there are good rich people, the adage “there’s an exception to every rule” is a given.
While there are many poor that are not in tune with reality and gullible, there are many that are loving, hardwarding, and moral people struggling under the morass of social and economical Darwinism, which rules over the fortune of American citizens (and individuals the world over) to this day.[/b]
Jay
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity
Reply to Kriswest:
Who’s version of God are you challenging if not the Christian God. You already said in this thread…
Therefore, you’re claim that you’re not attacking a Christian understanding seems a little hard to swallow.
It popped into existence when beings with free will chose to rebel against their creator. God did not create sin.
The Christian understanding is that God did not create evil but evil is a result of the fall of man and the rebellion of satan. Of course God had the power to prevent this but chose not to. There is no “a priori necessity for sin or evil”.
I don’t know for sure, but it’s not a strong argument to say that because you can’t think of a good reason a good reason must not exist.
Well, what if God WANTS to and WILL abolish evil, but has decided to do so at a time that suits him? Thus, He remains both POTENT and HOLY. I don’t see any problem with this approach except maybe that you’re impatient for God to show his hand.
On what basis? On the basis that you can accurately predict what God would do? Goodness does not mean omnibenevolence even in our everyday understanding. If a man or woman is described as “good” does this mean that they will be benevolent to everyone they meet? Must it necessarily be so? I don’t think so.
I think you have a strange view of God and an elevated view of humanity.
Why, because you say so. Your argument is weak. You have not demonstrated an a priori necessity for evil or a requirement that good is the same as omni-benevolent.
So, using the same logic, if I loan a baseball bat to my neighbor and he decides to not play baseball but instead go on a killing spree, I am somehow responsible? This doesn’t make any sense.
But you’re assuming that human beings somehow deserve something from God, when they don’t. The bible teaches that human beings deserve nothing more than a painful death. This being the case, if you happen to receive death you have nothing to complain about. If you receive life, you should be grateful.
Except that you previously stated the opposite was true.
I’ve already explained why this is stupid. Free will is free will. God is not to blame if you decide to sin. It’s your choice to do so.
You quote selectively from the bible to make your case. The new testament is very clear that people do not earn their salvation by works yet you claimed they did. If you’d like to retract this position that’s fine.
It’s the former. Not the latter. Read the New Testament.
They are in the bible as an example of the old testament covenant God made with the Jews. They were a people chosen as God’s people. Their relationship with him was based on heredity. He asked that they be righteous and in return he would be their God. In the New Testament, the relationship of gentiles with God is based on GRACE/FAITH. He still asks that we be righteous. But at no point does God say that good people are accepted and bad people are rejected. Which was what you suggested. It’s wrong, and it’s about as wrong as you could be in understanding Christian salvation.
The issue of children is not explicitly dealt with in the bible. But adults that do not have relationship with Christ will be doomed to hell. Whether the age of the individual makes any difference is speculation. But one thing is for sure, it doesn’t depend on whether they were sociopaths or not.
Give me an example of the use of omni NOT meaning universal OR of universal NOT applying to everything. If you want to invent new meanings for words then go ahead but “selective omni-benevolence” is not a term with any meaning.
Applying selectivity to a universal term means that it is no longer universal. What’s so hard to understand about that. It’s just how the english language works. Do you also believe in the existence of omnivores who only eat meat?
Because God has not abolished evil YET. Simple.
Maybe it does in your mind but thats not what Christian theology has stated about God for centuries. If people like you want to confuse the terms then go ahead and knock yourself out, but it doesn’t change the fact that Christianity sees them as different issues.
Sure he could, but he chooses not to. So what?
I don’t know for sure. Maybe because this way some people will accept Jesus by their own free will.
J
this does not mean that there is such a thing as ‘evil’ of course, we could say that bosses generally do exactly that, so it is not necessarily evil. different things for different people means that one person is adept at a given thing whilst another is better at something else… but i get what you are saying, it just isn’t ‘evil’.
sure, something of growth also. …and the comparative nature of spiritual, societal and psychological evolution.
that is just my point; evil does not come! g?d creates a set of laws that govern and manipulate energy to form the universe, and by which it changes/evolves. there is no such ‘entity’ as evil, only misdirection and delusion etc. nothing that is created is evil and that goes for the entire expanse of the creation in time.
in short he created our playground, if we fight and mess with each other, that is our freedom that he gave us. a wise god would not take that from us even if we begged him [which we often do].
if we don’t accept that evil is not an existent thing, then we are left with the duel scenario of god and satan co-existing throughout eternity. the problem with this is…
a) there can only be one whole and hence one being of the whole.
b) evil is very finite, given a lengthy amount of time and certainly an eternity, it simply destroys itself.
perhaps a reasonable objection to ‘b’ is that evil never exists by itself, there is always a balance betwixt it and ‘good’.
i don’t believe that a god of the whole is dualistic nor that dualism can be fundamental. in every case it is always resultant or secondary to the subtler nature of things.
a given ‘x’ by any definition as is the creating factor, would be previous to to all things even law. they are not ‘my’ limitation but the only way to get form one set of definitions to another, g?d is both existential and non existent just as we are i.e. is both physical [in that physicality is his creation and ‘from him’] and not physical because he is before and greater than it [is the whole]. we cannot define the whole by any means in science can we! if we try to imagine what the whole is we tend to arrive at g?d, i mean it has to be at least everything that we are right? and yet it is more that the physical world which is contained within it rather than it being contained in the physical.
we may call it what we want, let us imagine that reality is mental only, then energy would be mental the material general would also be mental. yet it would be exactly the same, mental gravity would still be a force acting upon mental bodies.
by any definition the primal truth is that there is reality.
given that the only other option is that everything is an illusion, then g?d would [as you alluded to, i think] also be an illusion, even nirvana would be. then what would be the difference?.. 2+2+ would still equal 4 etc.
i do think he can interfere with things of the mental plain, he has a vast mind and we have mind ~ minds interact! my reasoning concerning laws is that they are all intimately interconnected [ask any physicist {my brother is one btw}] , thus to introduce a new law would effect everything in existence.
to contradict this, i wonder if it may be so that the very essence of creation would be like hmm golemic [for want of a better term], a universal golem that can change into anything. one would thing that god must have this nature and hence would be able to change things whilst keeping everything else preserved. if that makes any sense!
would a wise being intervene even given that he has the ability? quite another question eh! i have yet to see any evidence, so i will presume that either g?d cannot or does not want to intervene.
interesting. if being harmful is being evil? that is a bit like saying entropy is evil. ‘harm’ is a latter function of change and control [a function of balance]. i would say that god does not create a ‘good’ world out of suffering, more that we do. i cannot see how a completely good world would occur in or out of the universe, it is more probable/possible that this realm is like a school by which we are finally released into a good eternity.
indeed. or that god creates 1 then 2 must follow if he is to create further. so god is subject to his own creational elements and laws [which he of course knows]. creation would not be linear [if i may] the whole thing would be ‘made/designed’ before it is produced - so to say, yet each and every function would have to work in respect to one another.
we can only imagine the immense intelligence it takes to build a universe. logic is natural and in-built.
interesting stuff J. 
Repentence, change of heart, is the only thing that makes sense. Not even God can die for your sins because he gave you free will for that specific purpose. Do you deny John’s message?
Verification is unnecessary. Repentance is not only logically obvious, it was preached by Jesus’ associate and probably by Jesus himself.
Then you’ve answered your own question.
Some rich/poor are bad, some are good. Judge a man by the content of his character, not the color, or amount, of his money. Now here’s a question: what’s the difference between economic Darwinism and an economic/legal system that establishes an elite class. Merit perhaps?
Reply To Quetzalcoatl:
Hello once again Q. You’ve really put down some thought-provoking stuff. A few responses, if I may?
And on that note, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to ask…you continue to claim that “evil” does not exist. If it is not to be defined as: “behavior that seeks to impose/imposes experiences upon others that one would not wish to experience if one were in the position of one’s victims”…then what is YOUR definition of evil? It seems ambiguous to simply state: “evil does not exist” without one’s audience knowing or understanding exactly what it is that you deny exists (Or is it capable of being defined?)
[b]I never accepted dualism either. My argument is that God created everything and that (that which I call evil) is temporary due to the fact that it is limited in it’s behavior to biological organisms (in terms of malicious “evil”)
However, I adhere to a view of[/b] theonomous determinism, in which free will does not exist in it’s strongest form (will that exists independent of antecedent cause), so the “wisdom” of allowing free will, in the wake of the possibly existential “that’s the way it is”-ism of the nonexistence of free will, is lost on me. I don’t see that it is a necessity. But to each their own.
[b]I think that I understand what you’re saying. Laws, particularly physical laws, are observed (by humans) in the presence of some cause and effect relation. Something affects something else, and does it over and over without fail (at least within the sphere of our constant observance), and we infer the existence of a natural law. The absence of causation or causal relationships may entail the absence of law, and in the absence of law there is only Being.
Given this, God can be argued to have created the laws of nature, with those laws first substantiating as an aspect of the mind of God (knowledge by fiat, an aspect of omniscience).
You are correct, the whole is at the least everything that we are. Yet it is much more than the (physical?) world contained within it.[/b]
[b]The notion that the world is only mental empirically follows from the nature of our experience. It is generally believed that the physical brain somehow creates a simulated reality of the world around it, in the form of the subjective experience of the world. Yet the underlying “physical” reality cannot be experienced (nevertheless most have a quasi-religious faith that it exists). Solipsism aside, it is not out of the question that reality is purely subjective in aspect (consisting of both conscious and proto-conscious entities).
As for the notion that “everything is illusion”…as David Chalmers notes in his paper:[/b] The Matrix As Metaphysics:,
The Matrix presents a version of an old philosophical fable: the brain in a vat. A disembodied brain is floating in a vat, inside a scientist’s laboratory. The scientist has arranged that the brain will be stimulated with the same sort of inputs that a normal embodied brain receives. To do this, the brain is connected to a giant computer simulation of a world. The simulation determines which inputs the brain receives. When the brain produces outputs, these are fed back into the simulation. The internal state of the brain is just like that of a normal brain, despite the fact that it lacks a body. From the brain’s point of view, things seem very much as they seem to you and me.
The brain is massively deluded, it seems. It has all sorts of false beliefs about the world. It believes that it has a body, but it has no body. It believes that it is walking outside in the sunlight, but in fact it is inside a dark lab. It believes it is one place, when in fact it may be somewhere quite different. Perhaps it thinks it is in Tucson, when it is actually in Australia, or even in outer space.
Neo’s situation at the beginning of The Matrix is something like this. He thinks that he lives in a city, he thinks that he has hair, he thinks it is 1999, and he thinks that it is sunny outside. In reality, he is floating in space, he has no hair, the year is around 2199, and the world has been darkened by war. There are a few small differences from the vat scenario above: Neo’s brain is located in a body, and the computer simulation is controlled by machines rather than by a scientist. But the essential details are much the same. In effect, Neo is a brain in a vat.
I think this view is not quite right. I think that even if I am in a matrix, my world is perfectly real. A brain in a vat is not massively deluded (at least if it has always been in the vat). Neo does not have massively false beliefs about the external world. Instead, envatted beings have largely correct beliefs about their world. If so, the Matrix Hypothesis is not a skeptical hypothesis, and its possibility does not undercut everything that I think I know.
(Chalmers, David J: The Matrix As Metaphysics, consc.net/papers/matrix.html)
That is, experience can be argued to be reality, and that everything is not an illusion even if a mind-independent physical world does not exist.
I don’t think that a new law is to be introduced in order to allow God to intervene. It can be argued that God and all non-God entities possess a causal nexus between them as an ipso facto aspect of their existence. Given that (presumably) all non-God entities are mainly collocational in aspect (leggo-blocks waiting to form “cars”, “planes”, “DNA”, etc), if such causal nexus exists God’s potential to intervene (following as an irremovable aspect of his ability to create through collocation), is intrinsic to the nature of the world.
Pehaps rather than “no evidence” of intervention, there is indistinguishable evidence of intervention that appears as “no intervention”.
[b]“Harm” qualifies as “evil” from a subjective point of view (But here, as always, it is a matter of semantics).
(Like the prose: " this realm is like a school by which we are finally released into a good eternity" by the way [/b]
I think it comes down to the possibilities inherent within the “jigsaw puzzle” or “pile of Lego blocks” that make up a world or a possible world. God could simply take apart the Lego configuration of this world and build up an all-good world. From our conceivable point of view, it would be like falling asleep and waking up to a wholly different paradigm of existence.[/b]
I agree. It is logical that God is, in turn, affected or subject to laws of existence which govern what he creates and how it appears, with causal feedbacks between all entities governing how each piece of the jigsaw puzzle fits.
Once again, good head-stretching stuff, Quetzl.
Jay
Reply To Paineful Truth:
Repentance is possible within a world in which free will does not exist. It would be an aspect of the re-enactment of God’s omniscient foreknowledge of the events within a possible world.
Verification is unnecessary in most cases, yet in others it is impossible (due to the fact that many of our beliefs concerning God, Christ, salvation, and so on are not perceptible by the senses). Repentance is logically obvious in the sense that it is a necessary and meaningful (a constructed meaning if free will does not exist?) aspect of change between two different states.
Ahh. I’ve answer my own question in the sense that Jesus’ “advantage” was to teach the (common) difference in character between rich and poor.
[b]Merit is the “above the table” rule for the establishment of an elite class. But economic Darwinism seems to be the darker truth. You need garbagepersons and waiters and waitresses, and not everyone can be a CEO. Forces will align to make sure that some humans, despite their ambition and aspiration, are pressured into being the former despite their striving to be the latter.
Or so it seems.[/b]
Jay
hi J
i don’t have one. this is in part due to my understanding of god as whole ~ he is the only ‘existent spirit’ hence there cannot be an evil spirit. then because all evil can be explained, mainly as like a broken machine, a person who commits evil is not functioning properly on the mental level. or that people may act like nature, as like an animal may do so in a given situation ~ animals rape and kill on a regular basis, my pet dog would eat my children in nature but is not inherently evil etc etc.
that is not to say that ‘evil’ does not have a spiritual force in the world, but that is cause by us, some of our thoughts are connected to universal mind [as i see it] and hence have an effect. for example; chanting works by repetition of meaning, if that meaning is connective [or in part is] then the words have a ‘power’ in the world which may affect others susceptible to it.
in short an evil of the mental/spiritual realm comes from us and not god. it is not created nor a force unto itself.
or that god created the blueprint and let us say, its primary form. do we see any evil in science - no. no laws or rules directly make evil in the world, it exists purely in the holistic realm. god created [note; on the primary level] the universe and set in motion all evolutions that lead up to his more wondrous creations like us, this i call ‘the humanative’. within this notion we have universal human nature, we see something of ourselves in animals and they do have spirit, hence spirit tries to take human form where it can. the problem is that we have to get from ‘a’ to ‘b’, hence evolution.
freedom is comparative, our wills rarely want the same thing exactly so there would be conflict resulting in the lack of free will to some degree. however i think we should take this to a different more direct level; let us say that god has property ‘x’ then creates property ‘y’, whatever the latter is, it is, and god remains god whilst ‘y’ is of him yet its own entity also.
whatever ‘y’ is has its own properties and whatever they are they are its own. hence free will is a latter-day expression of this primary truth, it is not necessarily desired it just happens.
…but i would say that is exactly why god is wise in wishing for free will within the act of creation.
‘the greatest wisdom of god, is in the way everything adds up to the greatest wisdom of god’.
whenever we properly understand something there is great wisdom in it. i cannot see how creating a matrix world is any different to watching a film that is generated by code that you made ~ it seams pointless. however i agree; each to their own, i just think it is impossible and pointless, but your former post on the matter was very interesting.
good way of putting it! may i add that if you wanted to create a model for the universe, it would be impossible to have anything other than what there is. the universe is a perfect logic quite apart from our subjective observations of it. we could also go on to create a set of logic that states that there has to be all this stuff, again without us having to verify it by observation.
~ it is just handy that god gave us a mind to perceive and eyes to observe.
alas we cannot quite see the entire blueprint, but it is being slowly revealed unto us, just as it would do so by the way of it [the higher humanative]. this is where evolution meets revelations and invention all on one plain.
indeed; existence in the main is a set of communications, upon which energy is moulded. perhaps for god it is like driving a car is to us, once we know it, it becomes second nature & mainly subconscious. or something like that.
energy is only physical in its forms as observed by us, we can imagine though that before law [and dimension etc] it is not physical as we normally see it because it has no limits by which to define it. i used to think it was infinity, but that to strangely is a limit.
thence; ultimately the physical reality is not physical/the spiritual is physical.
at most as far as we are concerned ~ we may determine that this is the case. that subjective world is however still real in a sense. take us away then it is logical to say that ‘it’ exists, we may call ‘it’ what we wish. this then follows logically; ‘it’ is there, ‘it’ is more than it, in the least that we are an it observing it. i call ‘it’ reality so as to name it.
brain in the vat…
if we add ‘it’ to the earlier above note on the logical wisdom universe, we may follow it all the way down the line to us and our thoughts. nothing is separate! all things are ‘it’ within ‘it’.
‘it’ is my universal integer of philosophy lols.
- i agree, this was where i was going with the golem thing.
- again, i agree.
what about the wisdom logic of god and his creation, why intervene when perfection has created existence??? hmm perhaps our imperfection in not being able to look after what is made with perfection [the earth], would ask of him to intervene.
the immense implications of an intervention in this time blows my mind. this is one of the main reasons why i don’t think he would unless there was literally no other option, or he would be subtle about it. again this is the freedom thing we differ on.
quite so! it annoys me when science finds one explanation and says thats it there is not more.
ha, ha ok. just pointing out that good is learned but a wholly good place is not existent [nor can be] in the universe.
i can see your analogy on how such a world would be created, i just struggle with its nature, and how would it change without conflicting the perfect state ~ don’t we end up with a kind of nirvana [the good eternity i mentioned].
a perspectile analogy; ‘if we lift up an arm we are subject to it in its lifting, but it is us who desired the arm to lift’. perhaps then, god is not subject to the laws of existence as they are him being the laws of existence.
thank you for another hours worth of mind bending yoga.
Translation, life rewards effort and innate ability, ergo life isn’t fair. If all you’re qualified to be (or all you’ve prepared yourself to be) is a garbage person, do your best at that–without the attitude.
Reply to Ned Flanders:
Once and for all (I hope), let’s come to an understanding of the nature of the “disagreement” here. Despite the main article above (the central article of the first page of this thread), you came in like a bolt out of the blue and made this ad hoc assumption concerning the point of the article:
This got the ball rolling. However, you misunderstood the aim of the article: it was not written to prove that Christians believe that God is omni-benevolent; it hypothetically [b](key word here: don’t forget) proposed God’s omni-benevolence as a function of an reductio ad absurdum of David Hume and Epicurus that demonstrates that the existence of natural and deliberate evils is incompatible with an omni-benevolent God.
There are Christians, however, that believe that God is omni-benevolent:[/b]
“As many of you know, I am a Christian. I have been a Christian all of my life, and hold strong to my faith at all times. My Christian walk, I feel, has been a completely beneficial choice in my life (beyond “getting out of hell,” of course). It has given me strength, hope, and taught me how to be a better person.”
Bradley’s response to a correspondent who claimed that God was not omni-benevolent:
“No, omnibenevolence still holds true, since has valued our free will above all else. If you say that for God to be omnibenevolent, He must always ensure that everything is perfect, then He would, as stated elsewhere, simply brainwash us all and make us all perfect. He puts too much value on freewill to do that.”
(Bradley, Noah: What would it take for you to believe? noah.newsvine.com/_news/2007/05/ … to-believe)
[b]In the Dec. 2003 issue of the Conservative Theological Journal, Tony Hines refers to omnibenevolence as “a key characteristic of the theistic God” (p. 323).
In the Trinity Journal (Fall 1980), Paul Feinberg wrote an article entitled “And the Atheist Shall Lie Down with the Calvinist: Atheism, Calvinism and the Free Will Defense.” In the article, a reference is made to “theistic systems that hold to omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and evil” (p. 144), but there’s no elaboration on the term itself.[/b]
“Omnibenevolence. The quality of being completely good. Omnibenevolence is one of the traditional attributes of God and is thought to be necessarily possessed by a God who is perfect.”
The IPV Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics and Philosophy of Religion, ed. by Stephen B. Evans.
(Note the ambiguity of the definition of omnibenevolence above. “The quality of being completely good” seems to smack of a moral or psychological condition that can exist wholly independent of the requirement to “be good to everyone all of the time without exception”. This ambiguity is addressed in the main article of this topic above)
[b]You got me. The main article indeed points toward the Christian God (rather than aiming exclusively for Zeus, Odin, Quetzalcoatl (not the Ilovephilosophy correspondent), Shiva, etc.). However, the main article does not “challenge” or “attack” the Christian God. Rather, it seeks to demonstrate a conceptual truth about the God (and any god that is NOT omni-benevolent (i.e that any God that is not omni-benevolent is necessarily an evil God–with “evil” meaning either malicious and/or deliberately/unintentionally harmful to others).
That’s the point of the main article above. It does not attempt to prove that every Christian on the face of the planet and that has ever lived unanimously believes that God is omnibenevolent (in the “good to everyone all the time without exception” sense)
I stated that I “pick on” (note the apostrophes) Christians for the reasons given in the quote. These aren’t attacks, but humanly logical “wake-up calls”.[/b]
“Eye of newt, wing of bat”, right? Sin magically popped into existence when beings with free will chose to rebel against God? Then what are we to make of the following biblical verses?
“Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” (John 1:3 NIV)
[b]What is the meaning of the “all” in this verse? Is human will and sin excluded, and if so, why did the verse not state these exclusions? What is the true meaning of the “all” in the above verse? Does a proposed “true meaning” come only from one’s imagination?
Then there is the problem of God’s omniscience: surely God foreknew that beings would chose to rebel against him even before he created those beings (remember, omniscience in terms of foreknowledge of the future is only true “omniscience” if it is infallible: that is, it cannot be falsified or disappointed by future action or choice).[/b]
“All the days ordained for me were written in your book, before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139:16 NIV)
The verse above implies God’s control over human will (which biblically supports an argument for theonomous determinism which denies the existence of free will) as do the following verses:
“A man’s steps are directed by the Lord, how then can anyone understand his own way?”(Proverbs 20:24 NIV)
“There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord.” (Proverbs 21:30 NIV)
[b]But then again there are the verses above. And God’s having the power to prevent the existence of evil and not choosing to logically implies that God is harmful to human beings by not preventing the existence of evil–then point of the main article above.
The statement: “there is no a priori necessity for sin or evil” means that there is nothing that makes it so that evil or sin must come into existence by some inexplicable or predictive law.[/b]
Thus, God is HARMFUL to human beings by “deciding to do so at a time that suits him”. Thus God is evil (harmful) in the decision NOT to prevent the existence of evil in the first place (and this applies even if God did NOT create sin) and by not acting immediately. There is suffering, misery, deprivation, and horror in the world due to this “deciding to do so at a time that suits him”. Children and loving, caring human beings have suffered the ravages of predatory malice and died due to this decision to “wait for a suitable time”.
1. A reasonable definition of “goodness” is in order here:
Goodness (Good"ness) (?), n.
[AS. g¿dnes.]
The quality of being good in any of its various senses; excellence; virtue; kindness; benevolence; as, the goodness of timber, of a soil, of food; goodness of character, of disposition, of conduct, etc.
(Dictionary Information: Definition Goodness, selfknowledge.com/40964.htm)
[b]A “good” man or woman will behave benevolently to everyone to the best of their ability (unless given cause to act otherwise for the sake of self/other defense). Goodness is not necessarily exhausted to “benevolence” if one invokes alternative descriptions of “goodness” such as excellence, “goodness of timber, of soil, of food”, etc. But when one speaks of God’s goodness (if one is not invoking absence of malice, purity from predatory desire, etc.), what is usually meant is “benevolence”.
-
One does not need an elevated view of humanity to note that God possesses an inherent responsibility for the nature of man in God’s creation of humans, particularly given God’s omniscient foreknowledge of the nature of human beings before their creation.
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Omni-benevolence is goodness (the aspect of “goodness” that means benevolence from the definition above) taken to a universal (or whole group) level. Once again, an a priori necessity for evil is the notion that there is a predictive law that states that evil MUST exist even before it does.[/b]
It makes sense in the sense that you are responsible if you are in a position, like God, to stop the neighbor from using the baseball bat to go on a killing spree in the first place.
And THAT IS WHY GOD IS EVIL in the pertinent sense(!) This alien perception that supposes that beings deserve nothing but a painful death NOT ONLY due to their possession of predatory malice (as one can argue that this is the only type of evil that might deserve a painful death),but due to their lack of a level of an inaccessible “holiness” possessed by God (particularly in light of omniscience and God’s decision to go forward to create beings that “deserve a painful death”) implies that God is evil in the lack of prevention of the circumstances leading to the existence of “beings who do nothing but deserve a painful death”.
Pay attention now…ready? I did not “previously state that the opposite was true”, I stated as a truth that according to most humans, non-sociopaths and sociopaths are NOT equally evil. They are ONLY EQUALLY EVIL IN THE EYES OF GOD.
However, Proverbs 20:24 and Psalm 139:16 (if one applies Norman Swartz’ “the problem of foreknowledge” to free will) seems to deny the existence of free will. God is to blame if one sins due to God’s omniscience and the decision not to prevent it’s existence.
I’m going to end here for now. Let’s call this response: Response to Ned Flanders Part One.
I’ll respond to the remainder of your post (if not tomorrow, then before the end of this week). The response above (and in the future) hopes to demonstrate that God IS responsible for the existence of sin by reason of his omniscient foreknowledge and omnipotence, which enables God to prevent the existence of sin in the first place. God’s inability or unwillingness to do this implies that God is evil in the sense of Websters (3a) definition defined above.
Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity
Notice To Quetzalcoatl:
Responding to Ned above took a lot of time (extremely long posts on both sides, so to speak). I’ll respond to your post hopefully on the morrow, but I like what I’ve seen so far.
Jay
AFTERLIFE SURVIVAL =D> 
What sort of god wouldn’t have a great person like me exist for an enternity , not one i can belive in… [-o<
There is no evil only stupidity and god= The child and the father.
The asumption of evil is nothing more than stupid(-) and the asumpition of god is nothing more than intelligence(+) 
that’s quite a good point mulfa, any kind of divinity would surely not want death to be the end ~ just the end of ego perhaps
J
i am glad you have not replied yet as it takes hours to reply back lols. perhaps we should stick to one area of debate at a time.
.