Summations Only

So, according to you, even if you thought there was a God, He didn't create evil anyway. We only brought it upon ourselves.

I should point out that's hardly a response. At issue is not what Yaro believes but what he thinks you believe, i.e. that God is all-powerful and good. It doesn't matter what Yaro thinks. What matters is whether or not the world we observe is consistent with the idea of a moral, omnipotent God.

First of all, we don't even know that God USED his ability to see into the future.

That hardly absolves God of culpability. Consider: You as a human have a reasonable ability to make guesses about the future.

Now, lets say that you leave a loaded gun near a child, who injures themselves. The fact that you may not have bothered to think ahead about what might have happened is not a defense - in fact it makes your crime worse.

God has the ability to see ahead and the ability to prevent suffering. He's morally negligent if he decides not to use those powers.

Secondly, even if he DID look ahead and see that it was going to happen, that does not mean the blames on Him, or that our actions don't determine our future.

Try that in a criminal case, sometime. You'll discover that if you have the ability to prevent a crime and don't, you become an accomplice. By his inaction, God becomes an accomplice to every evil act.

For example, God cannot lie, and God is love.

Love protects. Love doesn't throw it's hands in the air and give up. Love doesn't sell you the shovel you use to dig your own grave. If God is love then he's ten times as negligent.

Therefore, if that's your statement, you have to be ready to admit that God intentionally chose this system, because it was possible, and it already is the best system.

That's faulty reasoning. You conclude this is the best possible world because you assume God must be good. But you have no basis for that belief other than what you believe to be God's own words. On the other hand, an evil God would claim Himself good, and this couldvery well be the world of an evil God. How would you tell the difference?

If evil wasn't so prevalent in the world today, you'd be saying, "Wow, I couldn't have done it any better myself. Everyone follows God's laws, and evil isn't even a problem.

Circular reasoning. Of course if evil didn't exist we'd hardly complain about it. Nonetheless, evil exists. The question is why a moral God with the power to do something about it allows evil to persist.

"Free will" doesn't cut it. There's an infinite number of ways to do the right thing. Evil is not required for free will.

I have the right to make my own decisions,

You'd still be able to without evil.

Finally Yaro points out that if God has the ability to know everything that is going to happen (whether he exercises this ability or not: see Crashfrogs post above) then we don't actually have free will

I don't know that that has to be the case. From our perspective, there's no difference volition-wise between there being no pre-destination and there being a pre-destination that we're not aware of.

Even with a God who knows the future, we have as much free will as without such a God - so long as He keeps his foreknowledge to Himself. All of our choices are just as real to us either way. I mean, regardless of whether or not the future is fixed, we know that the past is, and we hardly think that reduces our free will, right?

Personally I'm much more concerned about losing even the appearance of free will by being the victim of a murder who chose to kill. Why does his single act of free will trump all the free will I would have used in the life that was taken from me?

[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 01-27-2004]

Which one? I made a couple points in two different posts. And I seem to recall coming down on Yaro's side, mostly, not yours. (I differ with him on the subject of free will, which I think is not relevant to the discussion of evil.)

Remember that you can reply to specific posts using the "reply" button directly below that post. That makes it a little easier to know what you're responding to.

It confirms one of my arguments that regardless of whether or not God knows the future, we are still in control of our own lives.

Err, no. See, to us, there's no difference between real free will and illusory free will, because we don't have foreknowledge.

God does have foreknowledge, by definition. He can tell the difference between real free will and illusory free will. If he has foreknowledge, we don't have free will to Him. We pretend that we have free will, but we really don't. We all have to act like we do, but God doesn't.

His foreknowledge makes him culpable for our evil deeds, because He could have stopped them but didn't.

If God existed, and was in my power to indict, I'd put him on trial before Hitler.

It just means that person can see the actions you took that led you into that position.

And it means that if that person doesn't take action to stop you, he's an accomplice to your deeds.

[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 01-27-2004]

Ok, what if He just had foreknowledge and not the ability to do something about it.

Then no, he wouldn't be responsible. But he wouldn't be all-powerful, either. If you're comfortable with that, I guess that's fine. I don't see what the point of such a God would be.

But he'd really have to be unable, not just bound by some rules or something. He'd literally have to lack the power to stop evil in the world. The only God that is consistent with the evidence is one that is either immoral or powerless. Are you comfortable putting all your faith in that God?

It was not some baby that He tricked.

Actually, by definition, that's exactly what it was. What else would you call somebody who didn't know the difference between good and evil?

Who appointed a mere man as a judge over anything?

Hey, I'm just using the power to distinguish between good and evil. You know, the power the Bible says I have, the power God says is just like his:

quote:

---

Genesis 3:22:
And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil

---

and even if we dare call Him an evil God, it looks like we are stuck.

Well, if you don't like God, try not believing in him. It's not like God is going to do anything about it. He's apparently either powerless or totally uninterested. If he even exists, that is.

except that little action of giving up His Son to redeem us for OUR initial BAD choice.

No, he's accomplice to that too, because he didn't have to put the tree there. He's God, remember? He knew what was going to happen, and he could have done something about it. If that's what brought sin into the world, that's at least partly his fault, too.

so what would we sentence God to?

You know, not everything is about judgement. Also, we're talking about something that doesn't even exist. Would it be in our power to punish God? Well, God must want something that we have, right? Or why else would an evil God have created us? Whatever it is, we can just not give it to him.

What do ya want Him to do? Give us the option of being unable to make our own choices?

There's plenty of situations where our choice is restricted for the greater good. They're called "laws." I notice that nobody ever accuses Congress of trying to restrict our free will.

No human can do an infinite amount of any choice. We are finite.

Sure, we are. But the choices are infinite, even if you take away evil. Every choice has ultimately one outcome. But there's infinite potential each time, even if you just count the good" choices.

I was giving a hypothetical situation as to some comments that were made by Yaro.

That's not what you appeared to be doing. What appeared to be happening was that Yaro was pointing out how your position lead to a ridiculous conclusion. You responded by pointing out that, under what Yaro believes, he'd never come to that conclusion.

Can't you see that's a ridiculous way to argue? It's like you're making Yaro's points for him. It's like if I told you "if you keep driving so fast, you'll drive right off a cliff" and you countered with "Oh yeah? Well, with the way you drive we wouldn't ever drive off a cliff."

It's like you tried to prove him wrong by totally agreeing with everything he said. Suicide as a debate tactic. It's funny to watch, I'll tell you that.

Yeah, well Yaro shouldn't have been arguing about something he didn't believe in the first place.

It's called "sarcasm." Maybe you've heard of it. (Self-referential sarcasm!

I thought atheists believed that evil only existed in our mind?

What does it matter what atheists believe? We're talking about what theists believe.

You aren't trying to change the subject, are you?

[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 01-27-2004]

Since God's attributes are already goodness personified, of course the opposite of these things is going to be wrong or evil.

But they're also going to be equal in power to God. That is to say that if the devil personifies the opposite of God, the devil must also personify evil power in equal measure to the good power of God.

Which would basically make him the God of evil, making Christians polytheists.

Who says they're going to be equal?

That's the definition of opposite. Two vectors are opposing when they're equal in magnitude but opposing in direction. Opposites have equal absolute value, in other words. 2 and -2 are opposites. 1 and -5 are not.

Love is much stronger than hate.

Now you're just making stuff up. How do you propose we measure these quantities?

Chocolate is the opposite of Vanilla

On Planet Roboto, maybe. On Planet Earth they're both flavors. They're not opposite. You have to add vanila to make chocolate. How could they be opposites if one of them contains the other?

but that doesn't mean they're total opposites, or equal to eachother.

Look, I really don't feel the need to argue with somebody who can't be bothered to use sense. Opposites means that things are opposites! What the hell else would it mean?

This is the problem with talking about theology. There's absolutely no difference between talking about God and just making things up. If you're going to redefine words wholesale, then I guess God can have whatever contradictory qualities you want him to. It's just that you won't be able to communicate absolutely anything about God to anybody.

[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 01-29-2004]