Didn't God Create Evil, Too?

[GUNWOUNDS]

Didn't God Create Evil, Too?

 

 

 

    Dear Lenny,

I am a non-believer in the Christian faith. I have read some of the discussions in your "Come Let Us Reason Together" web site. Your answers to questions posted there still do not convince me of the existence of God. One discussion under the title of "The Problem of Evil" prompted me to raise this point with you: If evil exists and God created everything then by inference God created evil.

Christianity teaches that God who is all-powerful and all-loving created the universe. By the Christian definition everything is created by God. Everything includes evil and sins. So it is a logical deduction that evil and sins are creations of God.

The usual argument against the above claim is that God created human and gave him free-will. It is the free choice of human to do bad that results in evil and sin. However, I think this sort of argument is not sound at all.

Now we must distinguish between free-will (or freedom) and capabilities. For example, humans were created without being able to fly, dogs can hear sound frequencies that human cannot hear. These are examples of human inability (or lack of capability). I don't think anyone would regard God as having restricted our freedom by not providing human with these capabilities. Capability and freedom are two unrelated, separate issues.

Now when it comes to our mind, the same argument applies. Human are capable of greed, hatred, self-righteousness, jealousy and many more evil deeds. These are also capabilities just like we can walk and talk. Now the important question is that when God created human why did he let us have these bad capabilities? God could have created human so that human is not capable of thinking and doing bad. Not giving human the capability to think and do bad is not a restriction on human's free-will. Yet God not only chose to create human who is capable of doing evil but also gave him the free-will to choose to do evil. It does not make sense that a all-loving God would create something which is capable of evil and let him harm innocent people. If God is all-powerful and exists beyond time (as you have said in your web site) he must know the future. He must know the consequences of giving human such bad capabilities. Yet God chose so. Therefore I don't believe there exists such a God as the Christians have described. If such a God exists he deserves no worship.

What do you think?

Yours disbelieve,

Thomas

 

 

 

  Hi Thomas,

Your letter is interesting. You make a distinction between abilities and free will, which I believe is proper. However, you have mis-interpreted the problem and that is what

[nemafakei]

Even if evil is an absence, God still knowingly and deliberately left bare patches.

[GUNWOUNDS]

here is another letter asking if God created evil...

Doesn't Isaiah say God made Evil?

[GUNWOUNDS]

Even if evil is an absence, God still knowingly and deliberately left bare patches.

you are making an unfair assumption...

Quote from Lenny Eposito

"you might as well ask why God gave us joints that could be broken"

[nemafakei]

I am not saying he made it, just that he didn't fill it out.

"you might as well ask why God gave us joints that could be broken"

Yes? This a mediocre world at best. God neglects to prevent harm coming to thiose he supposedly loves.

[GUNWOUNDS]

I am not saying he made it, just that he didn't fill it out.

"you might as well ask why God gave us joints that could be broken"

Yes? This a mediocre world at best. God neglects to prevent harm coming to thiose he supposedly loves.

so now you have a problem with man possessing a  mortal body ?  i would say thats an entirely different issue altogether

[nemafakei]

Well, you indirectly brought it up. The point is that if I am painting a wall and leave a patch of the old colour when I could easily have painted it too, then I am just as much to blame as if I painted a different coloured patch in myself afterwards. The effect is the same, it is my choice whether the effect occurs - it doesn't matter if it came from my paintbrush or was there already.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Well, you indirectly brought it up. The point is that if I am painting a wall and leave a patch of the old colour when I could easily have painted it too, then I am just as much to blame as if I painted a different coloured patch in myself afterwards. The effect is the same, it is my choice whether the effect occurs - it doesn't matter if it came from my paintbrush or was there already.

yes but you are ignoring the fact that these things do not exist autonomously .... they are not

[nemafakei]

In terms of the analogy, the important thing is that it's not the product of my actions. My point is that if you could change something for the (holisticallly speaking) better, not doing so is just as bad as making the completed situation worse

If I build the wall and leace out a big gap, it's no different than knocking out a gap when I've finished.

[GUNWOUNDS]

In terms of the analogy, the important thing is that it's not the product of my actions. My point is that if you could change something for the (holisticallly speaking) better, not doing so is just as bad as making the completed situation worse

If I build the wall and leace out a big gap, it's no different than knocking out a gap when I've finished.

come now it is different.... there is a big difference between active influence

[nemafakei]

"there is a big difference between active influence  and something existing to the absence of something"

Not really. Think of it in terms of criminal negligence. If a man in a nuclear power plant is facing a meltdown, and he alone can drop the control rods, he can choose either to act or to fail to act. In the latter case, though he does not cause the meltdown - the pre-existing scenario, the 'default' as it were, he is able to stop it with the expense of only a short nudge of his finger. If he does not, he is responsible for the deaths of everyone in the surrounding area. He won't have killed them, but he was responsible.

"Saying that evil is the absence of God is different from saying God is the author of evil."

So no, I wouldn't say that god is the author, but that he is as just responsible for evil as if he were.

[Cyborg]

I think I must say that Nema has the best points here...

Why couldn't God have, for example, removed the snake in the tree in the garden of Eden... He would know what it would try to do, he should know that the humans would be teased to do eat from it.

[GUNWOUNDS]

"there is a big difference between active influence

[Acriku]

The lifeguard created the water, created the person, and threw the person in the water. He sent down many liferafts, with one only being true, and would not tell the person drowning which one was the real one. I think that's a good enough murder to a prosecutor.

[GUNWOUNDS]

The lifeguard created the water, created the person, and threw the person in the water. He sent down many liferafts, with one only being true, and would not tell the person drowning which one was the real one. I think that's a good enough murder to a prosecutor.

not if the person was told to stay on land and went into the water thru disobedience and then once they went into the drowning depths of disbedience they willfully sank to the bottom not grasping at any of the lifesavers. Especially the one blinking with shiny reds lights and a siren shouting "i am the truth the way and the light, none come to the father except through me"

That would be ruled a suicide.

[Ninja_Sher]

To test the humans, why not?

[Wolf]

God created Arrakis to train the faithful.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Wolfwiz and Ninja your ideas are similar to what is in this thread

http://www.dune2k.com/forum/index.php?topic=14792.0

here is an excerpt...

William Lane Craig in a debate against Dr. Ray Bradley in 1994 , Craig was asked why God didn't just create heaven as the world and forego the rest.

Craig responded:

"No,Heaven may not be a possible world when you take it in isolation by itself. It may be that the only way in which God could actualize a heaven of free creatures all worshiping Him and not falling into sin would be by having, so to speak, this run-up to it, this advance life during which there is a veil of decision-making in which some people choose for God and some people against God. Otherwise you don't know that heaven is an actualizable world. You have no way of knowing that possibility."

Dr. Bradley:

"You're saying, in effect, that when I characterize heaven as a possible world in which everybody freely receives Christ (with no need of earth), I'm wrong insofar as that had to be preceded by this actual world, this world of veil of tears and woe in which people are sinful and the like." (he is asking if Heaven could exist with mankind without mankind having to go through earth as a antecedent world)

Dr. Craig:

"I'm saying that it may not be feasible for God to actualize heaven in isolation from such an antecedent world."

[nemafakei]

The problem with your lifeguard analogy is that evil exists for all irrespective of people's individual efforts. Not all humans choose to go in the water: some are good, but they are still on the receiving end of evil.

It's like someone noticing an obstacle on a train track and giving up on the first attempt at 'phoning the rail company when they couldn't get through: perhaps some (the train company's telecommunications systems) are at fault, but others (the pasengers) suffer: and the passer-by could quite easily try again or call the emergency services or perhaps remove the obstacle.

[GUNWOUNDS]

The problem with your lifeguard analogy is that evil exists for all irrespective of people's individual efforts. Not all humans choose to go in the water: some are good, but they are still on the receiving end of evil.

It's like someone noticing an obstacle on a train track and giving up on the first attempt at 'phoning the rail company when they couldn't get through: perhaps some (the train company's telecommunications systems) are at fault, but others (the pasengers) suffer: and the passer-by could quite easily try again or call the emergency services or perhaps remove the obstacle.

your proposal breaks down When you say "some people are good"

that is a very ambiguous statement.

[nemafakei]

I question how those who haven't/won't have had a chance to do evil are made to suffer for their sins.

But is the punishment in any way proportionate to our sins? Moreover, I maintain that an omnipotent God could simply make us good people, build the wall properly first, and this whole issue would be irrelevant: our own characters are holes in the wall he's forgotten to fill.

[Anathema]

If God is omniscient, he knows everything that ever was and everything that will ever be. Everything is predestined because everything occurs by either his actions or his silent approval. When he created the universe xxxx years ago he knew that with the current state of the universe and all active processes it would result in me doing all the wrongs I did- and it had His silent approval because he didn't create the universe in a different fashion or interfere to prevent me from doing these wrongs.

[GUNWOUNDS]

I question how those who haven't/won't have had a chance to do evil are made to suffer for their sins.

But is the punishment in any way proportionate to our sins? Moreover, I maintain that an omnipotent God could simply make us good people, build the wall properly first, and this whole issue would be irrelevant: our own characters are holes in the wall he's forgotten to fill.

yes Jesus himself said that man's rewards or punishments will vary.

well the scenario you keep bringing up over and over.... is actually what did happen.

God made Adam perfect in a perfect place where sin had never occured.

Despite all of this Adam willfully sinned and disobeyed God.

[GUNWOUNDS]

If God is omniscient, he knows everything that ever was and everything that will ever be. Everything is predestined because everything occurs by either his actions or his silent approval. When he created the universe xxxx years ago he knew that with the current state of the universe and all active processes it would result in me doing all the wrongs I did- and it had His silent approval because he didn't create the universe in a different fashion or interfere to prevent me from doing these wrongs.

the problem is that you are arguing from the wrong attribute.

[nemafakei]

"God made Adam perfect in a perfect place where sin had never occured."

God gave him and us the power to sin, knowing we as we were would use it. As an omnipotent being, he could have made us differently: such that we did not sin.

"To put the blame on a Deity is almost as pathetic as people blaming their parents for when they do crimes"

Except that the deity is omnipotent and can easily make its subjects good people - parents can't choose to have nice children - they can try to discipline them, but it doesn't always work. When parents couldn't have helped their child turning out bad, we don't blame them - but a deity can choose that its subjects not be evil, so their evil actions are by defintion due to its own negligence.