The problem of evil is the problem of suffering which is the problem of meaning. An accident is a breakdown of meaning. There is also no meaning without God.
The A, B, C Formula of Divine Creation with Emphasis on Certainty... God the creator by willingly creating A, knowing with certainty that B and C will obtain (as a result of creating A), did in effect willingly create B and C by willingly creating A.
There are two major things I don't see brought up in discussions about the problem of evil. 1. Evil would not exist if God would have simply not created anything. Since it was God's decision to create, this makes him both the necessary and sufficient cause of all evil that exists. This observation means any appeal to theodicy or human sacrifice as an explanation actually ends up making God provide a solution to the problem He created in the first place. Apply this to any other real world situation to see how absurd it is. 2. Any appeal to a "greater good" theodicy paradoxically ends up being a denial of evil. They are basically saying it was "better for the evil to occur" or it was "for the best." But if that's actually the case, then they can't actually call it "evil" anymore. It's now "good." Obviously, no one actually thinks things like the Holocaust were "for the best." But the "greater good" theodicist is necessarily committed to this position. Since no one actually believes this, that tells us we should reject any sort of "greater good" theodicy on practical grounds.
Do you know this thousands of years old philosophical dilemma that all the theologians and philosophers have been pondering about: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” - Epicurus. I was pondering about this dilemma as well for quite some time, thinking that if God truly is all good then He must desire to create an all-good universe without any evil pain or suffering at all, and if He is truly all-powerful then He must have the powers/ability to create such universe. Then what is going on? Why don't we see such a perfectly good universe? Later I got it. God clearly gave me the understanding that He truly is all good meaning that He truly does desire to create an all-good universe where nobody does any evil and nobody suffers at all and that He truly is an all-powerful God meaning that He does have the powers and the ability to do it, to create perfectly good universe. Yet then comes the catch; because even God Himself must act according to the laws of logic, this means that to be able to accomplish such a task and create a perfectly good universe, a hard, time-consuming, and painful process must take place first where the eruption of evil and suffering was inevitable and unavoidable but only for finite amount of time. In other words, if we have an all-powerful and an all-good God, why don't we see an all-good universe? It is because we have not yet reached that time. God said in the Bible that He will make all things new; this is literal, all will be made new and in that new order no evil no pain no corruption will exist at all.
The problem of evil from my point of view does not have a relation to the question if God exists. Atheists assume that a loving god would not allow for evil at all. From this point they conclude that the existance of evil rules out a god, at least the existance of a loving god. Evil is a quite abstract term. What does it mean when we say that evil exists? I would say that people act wickedly or tend to do evil things. Now there are two different ways of dealing with people who do evil things. God can eliminate them or he tries to transform them into people who are doing good. Transformation is a process that takes time and requires the allowance for evil to happen - at least temporarily. So a loving god would be recognized by allowing time for evildoers to repent and turn back to him. That is what the Christian gospel is about. It is comparable to parents whose child does bad things. They will not try to get rid of the child, but rather train it to do good. God as our father is doing the same with us. At least that is my take on the question.
Well said, but you are completely leaving out natural evils and the suffering of animals. And, in fact, the very process of bringing about life (i.e., evolution) is a process of savage brutality. For hundreds of millions of years, this was a process of savage death, starvation, illness, disease, parasitism, and predation. One simply cannot comprehend the degree of misery and pain that beings were forced to endure during this process. If a loving God exists, then we have good reason to believe he would prevent such a painful process. We should expect that if God creates life, then he would bring about life in the least painful way. The very process of evolution itself seems far more likely on naturalism than theism. On naturalism, we should expect abject misery and pain through such a process since reality is ultimately impersonal and therefore wholly indifferent. It is totally reasonable to suggest that God could have, and probably even *should* have, brought about life in some alternative way. For instance, God could have employed some special process of creation-one that would entail the least amount of suffering as possible. It seems that we could be transformed by God, as you say, in a world with far less suffering.
@@consciousphilosophy-ericva5564 Thanks for your reply, Eric. I have some questions on it. What do you consider as painful and what is not painful? Where exactly would you draw the line? What is the "least painful way" God should have created life? How do you conclude that the current situation is not the one of least pain possible?
@@Thomas_ZscheileGreat questions. I’d say that higher goods can still be obtained without the presence of cancer, 4200 or more genetic diseases, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, animal suffering, the very process of suffering in bringing about life itself as I mentioned, and much more. We don’t need these things to obtain higher goods. They appear to be gratuitous. I have no way of knowing whether or not this is the *least* painful possible world, but it seems that it is, indeed, unnecessarily painful. The Christian tradition sees these things as completely contrary to God’s creation. In other words, we should not celebrate evil or see it as necessary. Rather, it is a contingent (impermanent) part of existence. We should hate death and suffering. Character and virtue growth is strictly the increasing capacity to receive and return love.
@@consciousphilosophy-ericva5564 Well, I consider myself a Christian, even though I don't agree with all of the traditional beliefs. I think your perspective is valuable. I personally would say that love embraces both good and evil (or duality in general) and manages the transformation of it into something better. Of course, the process is not always easy. God himself endured death in order to save us from it. That is what I mean with love embracing the evil, too. I realized for myself that my personal sufferings teach me empathy. The quality of love is different when it was trained by suffering or pain, but I don't want to say that we have to suffer to be loving. From my perspective God had to choose between two options. 1. creating humans under perfect conditions without the ability of choosing evil. But then there would be no free will. And if you cannot choose between good and evil, nothing you may do happens out of love, but out of a programmed force. 2. The other option was taking the risk of evil but creating human beings with the capacity to love and of course also to hate. I believe God wants all of us to do anything we do out of love, basically Out of love for others and not just for ourselves. And I am sure he leads us on that path. So I see God's goal not in that he makes the process easier, but the result more sustainable and lasting. He is focused on the goal, whereas humans are more often looking at the way. We thus create something together with God. And I think he invites us to think about how to make a better world. Of course, my response does not give an answer to all your concerns, like illness, natural disaster or animal suffering. And I don't want to claim I can answer them. On the contrary. Sometimes I am asking myself the same questions. What let's me stay with my belief in God are a lot of personal experiences on how God listened to and answered some of my prayers. Maybe someone from outside would say these were coincidences. But there were too many of them. That is how I know that God loves me. Best regards Thomas
@@consciousphilosophy-ericva5564if I may share a thought or two. Or twenty. I've been tinkering around with this problem for a while and trying to examine it further than surface level "evil exists so God doesn't, or he isn't the Christian God". I'm a glutton for punishment, so I'm trying to take the hardest possible approach. Addressing the problem of evil with the Christian context of God. Where on the causative chain does the problem of evil begin? Obviously the easiest answer is at the point we exist, and can observe, and most strongly define. Misuse of free will moral agency that leads to harm/negative effects (physical, mental, psychological) on ourselves and others, and on the physical spaces we inhabit. But from your other comment, it seems like the evil that is the problem could go as far back as the creation of biological life itself, in that it leads to pain and suffering, which can be defined as an evil of sorts. If that is the case, then, by implication, wouldn't non physical conscious sapient sentience be the most moral creation? Outside observers separate and distinct from their creator who (presumably) would remain unaffected by all the apparent laws and rules that govern the physical material universe as we know and observe it, being esentially ageless and immortal. Some form of "living" aware self perpetuating energies that can both interact with and observe their own existence and/or their creator? That would remove pain and suffering, at least, in the most conventional sense of biology. They would neither age, grow up, grow old or change whatever it is they were made up from, existing outside of time and entropy. Assuming the physical universe still existed in this hypothetical. Whatever or however they exist, their existence would be something entirely different from our own, and I'm not sure how that would work, neccesarilly, but then I'm not writing a scifi book, and having to explain the mechanics of non material existence, since the objections raised by the problem of evil don't have to explain mechanics either. Simply postulate that things could be different and better. That said, if they are separate observers distinct from their creator, if they have free will moral agency, they could still misuse it, could choose to not want anything to do with their creator, couldn't they? They could always say "no", couldn't they? Could choose not to love their creator back, no? So then we're right back to free will moral agency and choice. If they can't voluntarily independently choose, then their choices aren't meaningful, at least by our understanding of meaningful and choice. There is a certain irony in us having the capacity to speculate on how a creator could and should have created everything (up to and including us) differently and more morally consistent, better. Only at the end of the causative chain do we even have the luxury of existing to make these hypothetical scenarios in the first place. That which doesn't exist can't speculate about how it should exist, at least as far as we know. Yet us existing can offer up hypothetically how and why we couldn't and shouldn't exist. While still existing and continuing to exist. Thanks for reading, if you made it all the way to the end.
This isn't that big of an issue. As long as you just be brutally honest and bring ALL of the various teachings of the Bible into focus. 1) God is love. BUT 2) God also has the capacity for hate. And God does hate PEOPLE. He hates the SINNER...not just their sin. "The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence." -Psalm 11:5 The whole "God loves the sinner but hates the sin" idea is one of those Christian myths that are not found in the Bible but gets bandied around in Christian circles. It's like the whole "God helps those who help themselves."
God isn’t necessarily the “cause” though. Henry Ford created plenty of cars and trucks, and unfortunately, there are many people who have stolen Fords, crashed and died in Fords, and so forth. But he didn’t *cause* this evil so to speak. Similarly, God created persons with free will and we chose to abuse it. So in a sense, Ford and God didn’t create any sort of evil. They merely created something good, knowing that something bad may happen from it. They took a chance, it seems. Thoughts?
@@consciousphilosophy-ericva5564 Again, no creation = no evil. By deciding to create, God is the cause of all evil and with foreknowledge of the evil humans would do (if created) makes him morally culpable for their actions. No natural _or_ moral evil would exist if God would have simply refrained from creating. Henry Ford was not omniscient or a "morally perfect" person so that is obviously not analogous to God in the Christian sense.
@@resurrectionnerd Well, of course he wasn’t. I’m drawling an analogy, which is how we always speak about God-in an analogical sense. That said, would you say that parents cause evil? Did Ted Bundy’s mom cause his evil? Or did she merely create with the idea in mind that *perhaps* her son may do bad things but having him alive is more beautiful than him never coming into being?
@@consciousphilosophy-ericva5564 Again, parents are not omniscient (like God is). Rather, God caused Ted Bundy's murders because, under Christian theism, God decided to instantiate the soul of Ted Bundy when he didn't have to do that. Again, all of this could have been prevented if God would have just not created anything at all. There would be no sin, suffering or evil.
Satan was giving power over this world, that why evil exist. If you believe evil exist, you must believe Satan exist... if you are tired of evil... live a life in order to get back to heaven.
I would say that all objections to Christianity originate in the problem of evil in one way or another.
The problem of evil is the problem of suffering which is the problem of meaning. An accident is a breakdown of meaning. There is also no meaning without God.
The A, B, C Formula of Divine Creation with Emphasis on Certainty...
God the creator by willingly creating A, knowing with certainty that B and C will obtain (as a result of creating A), did in effect willingly create B and C by willingly creating A.
There are two major things I don't see brought up in discussions about the problem of evil.
1. Evil would not exist if God would have simply not created anything. Since it was God's decision to create, this makes him both the necessary and sufficient cause of all evil that exists. This observation means any appeal to theodicy or human sacrifice as an explanation actually ends up making God provide a solution to the problem He created in the first place. Apply this to any other real world situation to see how absurd it is.
2. Any appeal to a "greater good" theodicy paradoxically ends up being a denial of evil. They are basically saying it was "better for the evil to occur" or it was "for the best." But if that's actually the case, then they can't actually call it "evil" anymore. It's now "good." Obviously, no one actually thinks things like the Holocaust were "for the best." But the "greater good" theodicist is necessarily committed to this position. Since no one actually believes this, that tells us we should reject any sort of "greater good" theodicy on practical grounds.
Do you know this thousands of years old philosophical dilemma that all the theologians and philosophers have been pondering about: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” - Epicurus.
I was pondering about this dilemma as well for quite some time, thinking that if God truly is all good then He must desire to create an all-good universe without any evil pain or suffering at all, and if He is truly all-powerful then He must have the powers/ability to create such universe. Then what is going on? Why don't we see such a perfectly good universe?
Later I got it. God clearly gave me the understanding that He truly is all good meaning that He truly does desire to create an all-good universe where nobody does any evil and nobody suffers at all and that He truly is an all-powerful God meaning that He does have the powers and the ability to do it, to create perfectly good universe. Yet then comes the catch; because even God Himself must act according to the laws of logic, this means that to be able to accomplish such a task and create a perfectly good universe, a hard, time-consuming, and painful process must take place first where the eruption of evil and suffering was inevitable and unavoidable but only for finite amount of time.
In other words, if we have an all-powerful and an all-good God, why don't we see an all-good universe? It is because we have not yet reached that time. God said in the Bible that He will make all things new; this is literal, all will be made new and in that new order no evil no pain no corruption will exist at all.
Absence of light is darkness, absence of heat is cold, absence of Yeshua is Evil.
what yeshua?
Why do some Americans speak with a forced lower pitch? It can be really annoying at times 🤷🏻♂️
Or maybe that is his real voice? You do not even know Eric. That is his real voice. What a strange comment to make
This just seemed like vocal fry. The content itself is amazing.
I guess you never heard a deep voice, my friend.
Seems to me, he didn't even define what evil is. So I guess I'll have to write a book to explain it. 😁
The problem of evil from my point of view does not have a relation to the question if God exists.
Atheists assume that a loving god would not allow for evil at all. From this point they conclude that the existance of evil rules out a god, at least the existance of a loving god.
Evil is a quite abstract term. What does it mean when we say that evil exists? I would say that people act wickedly or tend to do evil things.
Now there are two different ways of dealing with people who do evil things. God can eliminate them or he tries to transform them into people who are doing good.
Transformation is a process that takes time and requires the allowance for evil to happen - at least temporarily. So a loving god would be recognized by allowing time for evildoers to repent and turn back to him. That is what the Christian gospel is about.
It is comparable to parents whose child does bad things. They will not try to get rid of the child, but rather train it to do good. God as our father is doing the same with us.
At least that is my take on the question.
Well said, but you are completely leaving out natural evils and the suffering of animals. And, in fact, the very process of bringing about life (i.e., evolution) is a process of savage brutality. For hundreds of millions of years, this was a process of savage death, starvation, illness, disease, parasitism, and predation. One simply cannot comprehend the degree of misery and pain that beings were forced to endure during this process. If a loving God exists, then we have good reason to believe he would prevent such a painful process. We should expect that if God creates life, then he would bring about life in the least painful way. The very process of evolution itself seems far more likely on naturalism than theism. On naturalism, we should expect abject misery and pain through such a process since reality is ultimately impersonal and therefore wholly indifferent. It is totally reasonable to suggest that God could have, and probably even *should* have, brought about life in some alternative way. For instance, God could have employed some special process of creation-one that would entail the least amount of suffering as possible. It seems that we could be transformed by God, as you say, in a world with far less suffering.
@@consciousphilosophy-ericva5564 Thanks for your reply, Eric.
I have some questions on it.
What do you consider as painful and what is not painful? Where exactly would you draw the line? What is the "least painful way" God should have created life?
How do you conclude that the current situation is not the one of least pain possible?
@@Thomas_ZscheileGreat questions. I’d say that higher goods can still be obtained without the presence of cancer, 4200 or more genetic diseases, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, animal suffering, the very process of suffering in bringing about life itself as I mentioned, and much more. We don’t need these things to obtain higher goods. They appear to be gratuitous. I have no way of knowing whether or not this is the *least* painful possible world, but it seems that it is, indeed, unnecessarily painful. The Christian tradition sees these things as completely contrary to God’s creation. In other words, we should not celebrate evil or see it as necessary. Rather, it is a contingent (impermanent) part of existence. We should hate death and suffering. Character and virtue growth is strictly the increasing capacity to receive and return love.
@@consciousphilosophy-ericva5564 Well, I consider myself a Christian, even though I don't agree with all of the traditional beliefs.
I think your perspective is valuable. I personally would say that love embraces both good and evil (or duality in general) and manages the transformation of it into something better. Of course, the process is not always easy.
God himself endured death in order to save us from it. That is what I mean with love embracing the evil, too.
I realized for myself that my personal sufferings teach me empathy. The quality of love is different when it was trained by suffering or pain, but I don't want to say that we have to suffer to be loving.
From my perspective God had to choose between two options.
1. creating humans under perfect conditions without the ability of choosing evil. But then there would be no free will. And if you cannot choose between good and evil, nothing you may do happens out of love, but out of a programmed force.
2. The other option was taking the risk of evil but creating human beings with the capacity to love and of course also to hate. I believe God wants all of us to do anything we do out of love, basically Out of love for others and not just for ourselves. And I am sure he leads us on that path.
So I see God's goal not in that he makes the process easier, but the result more sustainable and lasting. He is focused on the goal, whereas humans are more often looking at the way. We thus create something together with God. And I think he invites us to think about how to make a better world.
Of course, my response does not give an answer to all your concerns, like illness, natural disaster or animal suffering. And I don't want to claim I can answer them. On the contrary. Sometimes I am asking myself the same questions.
What let's me stay with my belief in God are a lot of personal experiences on how God listened to and answered some of my prayers. Maybe someone from outside would say these were coincidences. But there were too many of them. That is how I know that God loves me.
Best regards
Thomas
@@consciousphilosophy-ericva5564if I may share a thought or two. Or twenty.
I've been tinkering around with this problem for a while and trying to examine it further than surface level "evil exists so God doesn't, or he isn't the Christian God".
I'm a glutton for punishment, so I'm trying to take the hardest possible approach. Addressing the problem of evil with the Christian context of God.
Where on the causative chain does the problem of evil begin?
Obviously the easiest answer is at the point we exist, and can observe, and most strongly define.
Misuse of free will moral agency that leads to harm/negative effects (physical, mental, psychological) on ourselves and others, and on the physical spaces we inhabit.
But from your other comment, it seems like the evil that is the problem could go as far back as the creation of biological life itself, in that it leads to pain and suffering, which can be defined as an evil of sorts.
If that is the case, then, by implication, wouldn't non physical conscious sapient sentience be the most moral creation? Outside observers separate and distinct from their creator who (presumably) would remain unaffected by all the apparent laws and rules that govern the physical material universe as we know and observe it, being esentially ageless and immortal.
Some form of "living" aware self perpetuating energies that can both interact with and observe their own existence and/or their creator?
That would remove pain and suffering, at least, in the most conventional sense of biology. They would neither age, grow up, grow old or change whatever it is they were made up from, existing outside of time and entropy. Assuming the physical universe still existed in this hypothetical.
Whatever or however they exist, their existence would be something entirely different from our own, and I'm not sure how that would work, neccesarilly, but then I'm not writing a scifi book, and having to explain the mechanics of non material existence, since the objections raised by the problem of evil don't have to explain mechanics either. Simply postulate that things could be different and better.
That said, if they are separate observers distinct from their creator, if they have free will moral agency, they could still misuse it, could choose to not want anything to do with their creator, couldn't they? They could always say "no", couldn't they? Could choose not to love their creator back, no?
So then we're right back to free will moral agency and choice. If they can't voluntarily independently choose, then their choices aren't meaningful, at least by our understanding of meaningful and choice.
There is a certain irony in us having the capacity to speculate on how a creator could and should have created everything (up to and including us) differently and more morally consistent, better. Only at the end of the causative chain do we even have the luxury of existing to make these hypothetical scenarios in the first place.
That which doesn't exist can't speculate about how it should exist, at least as far as we know. Yet us existing can offer up hypothetically how and why we couldn't and shouldn't exist. While still existing and continuing to exist.
Thanks for reading, if you made it all the way to the end.
The problem of evil isn't in any way a good justification for atheism is literally a non sequitur
This isn't that big of an issue. As long as you just be brutally honest and bring ALL of the various teachings of the Bible into focus.
1) God is love. BUT
2) God also has the capacity for hate. And God does hate PEOPLE. He hates the SINNER...not just their sin. "The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence." -Psalm 11:5
The whole "God loves the sinner but hates the sin" idea is one of those Christian myths that are not found in the Bible but gets bandied around in Christian circles. It's like the whole "God helps those who help themselves."
it's only a problem for theists
God is the cause of all evil because he decided to create. If he didn't create anything, there would be no evil.
God isn’t necessarily the “cause” though. Henry Ford created plenty of cars and trucks, and unfortunately, there are many people who have stolen Fords, crashed and died in Fords, and so forth. But he didn’t *cause* this evil so to speak. Similarly, God created persons with free will and we chose to abuse it. So in a sense, Ford and God didn’t create any sort of evil. They merely created something good, knowing that something bad may happen from it. They took a chance, it seems. Thoughts?
@@consciousphilosophy-ericva5564 Again, no creation = no evil. By deciding to create, God is the cause of all evil and with foreknowledge of the evil humans would do (if created) makes him morally culpable for their actions. No natural _or_ moral evil would exist if God would have simply refrained from creating.
Henry Ford was not omniscient or a "morally perfect" person so that is obviously not analogous to God in the Christian sense.
@@resurrectionnerd Well, of course he wasn’t. I’m drawling an analogy, which is how we always speak about God-in an analogical sense. That said, would you say that parents cause evil? Did Ted Bundy’s mom cause his evil? Or did she merely create with the idea in mind that *perhaps* her son may do bad things but having him alive is more beautiful than him never coming into being?
@@consciousphilosophy-ericva5564 Again, parents are not omniscient (like God is). Rather, God caused Ted Bundy's murders because, under Christian theism, God decided to instantiate the soul of Ted Bundy when he didn't have to do that.
Again, all of this could have been prevented if God would have just not created anything at all. There would be no sin, suffering or evil.
@@resurrectionnerd I don’t know any serious philosopher or theologian who would say that God caused evil in the sense that you are saying it.
A hot philosopher! 😍
Your comment would only be sound if I had a Nietzsche stache.
Satan was giving power over this world, that why evil exist. If you believe evil exist, you must believe Satan exist... if you are tired of evil... live a life in order to get back to heaven.