In about 300 B.C., Epicurus eloquently summed up the problem of the existence of evil. It has come to be known as the Riddle of Epicurus or the Epicurean paradox. It was translated by David Hume in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion:
If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to
Then He is not omnipotent.If He is able, but not willing
Then He is malevolent.If He is both able and willing
Then whence cometh evil?If He is neither able nor willing
Then why call Him God?
Christopher,
They way you phrased your critique entails an underlying assumption that Good and Evil are a priori properties rather than consequences of choices and that suffering and pleasure are somehow predetermined as part of the package of living. While I can agree with the second, the first I do not. The "necessity" of suffering, as you phrase it, would have to be wired in as if it were like a test each of us must pass (or fail) in order to "complete" ourselves.
There is, in my view, no necessity for suffering any more than there is a necessity for pleasure (or fulfillment or however you choose to label the antithesis of suffering). Both are consequences of choices and neither do any good or (which itself is a kind of redundant fallacy—what, suffering is "good for you" just as pleasure is "good for you"? What then is "bad for you" if both conditions result in the same positive result? Which then makes the dour casuists of Christian determinism right in that, if suffering is good for you, pleasure is necessarily bad for you, which has its own logical flaws…) bad without further choices of how to respond. In other words, suffering is not "good for soul" unless one is capable of transforming experience into positive consequence—which is a choice. Otherwise, suffering just destroys and denigrates. The assumption that without suffering there can be no good conveniently bypasses the fact that without a good will, no experience is of benefit.
Unless you are born again in Christ you are not going to figure God out, and even then you know pretty much nothing so stop trying. Here's a bone for you though…Could God make a boulder big enough that he can't lift it? The answer is no, because he sets limitations on himself. Yet he is omnipotent…how can you limit omnipotence? By being even more powerful then omnipotent, is the answer. Can't understand that? That's because you, as I am, are a human being. We are unintelligent creatures and cannot for one second fathom God's power or holiness.
As for this "paradox" God IS going to put an end to evil. But he's going to do it when HE wants too and when he does, being a perfect being himself, it will be the perfect time to do so. Who are we (being ignorant, sinful humans) to question the ways of a God so infinitely wiser then the smartest human? Epicurus speaks out of ignorance.
Smoke DMT and find out for yourself
If you don't mind my jumping in, I'd like to add my thoughts to something.
"…which itself is a kind of redundant fallacy—what, suffering is “good for you” just as pleasure is “good for you”? What then is “bad for you” if both conditions result in the same positive result? Which then makes the dour casuists of Christian determinism right in that, if suffering is good for you, pleasure is necessarily bad for you, which has its own logical flaws…"
From what I understand, you're assuming that the statement was that all suffering is good for you, which, of course, is false. However, your following comment is actually, in a way, arguing against this.
"…In other words, suffering is not “good for soul” unless one is capable of transforming experience into positive consequence—which is a choice…"
In the end, that's exactly the point. Suffering doesn't bring about good unless we make a choice to take that negative experience and learn/grow from it. But, if we do that, then, the suffering has had reason.
Sometimes, maybe, a bad experience might be necessary, in order to swing a person in a different direction. For example, many parents whose children have committed suicide have gone on to do form programs that have saved hundreds of others from committing themselves to the same fate. Was the child dying a good experience, or, in and of itself, a good thing? No, of course not. However, the parents was able to take what happened and choose to bring good about because of it.
In the end, suffering can cause a good effect in a person that maybe happiness could not have brought about.
"…Otherwise, suffering just destroys and denigrates…"
The important part about that above statement is that it precludes the possibility of a person taking the suffering and simply withstanding it until it goes away, which does happen sometimes, like if one has a virus. The fact is that suffering won't bring about bad, either. The suffering person can choose the make bad from the situation, or good. Again, it's all choice. It comes down to the fact that neither suffering nor complacency/happiness will bring about either: it's how the person reacts to them. Also, the effects will be different, depending on each situation. Like stated above, maybe that person, to choose to do a lot of good, needed some suffering first.
"…Because in order for good to exist evil must coexist…"
Sorry, I forgot to add this.
Just out of curiosity, why must they coexist? Obviously, one gives definition to the other. But, if we think of "God" as a sentient, omnibenevolent and omniscient being, would the existence of evil even be necessary? In God's own perfect knowledge of him/itself, couldn't there also be the understanding of the fact that ht/it could create, with free will, something that acts towards goals other than his/its own? And then, therefore, does the evil even have to actually exist, if we're defining evil as something contrary to God? Could the notion of contrariety in said sentient, omnibenevolent being's mind be enough to give definition to itself?
Francis,
Well-argued, well put.
I think, though, the question is whether or not suffering, however one may describe it, exists for a reason. The divide may seem minor, but with major ramifications, and is thus:
There is a difference between saying of suffering “I needed that” and saying in some objective sense “it was necessary.”
The suffering who manages to turn it to advantage and taken it and remade it, whatever it may have started out as. Responsibility for the outcome is his.
That’s not the same as saying he needed the suffering in advance, which suggests a conscious universe that meddles.
If you take that stance, then you can posit the argument this way: two people who suffer the same calamity and have completely different outcomes. One turns it to advantage and is in some way better for it. The other just crumbles under it and is destroyed. Now you would have to say of the presumed “god” that did this to them that he/she/it “got it right” in the one case and “got it wrong” in the other. Which suggests something less than omniscience. Or you can say that the “evil” let loose by this god was indiscriminate, a wave of mal-intent, and that those who survive benefited and those who do not…what? Collateral damage? Or maybe this god had it in for those who couldn’t handle it?
There’s an old saying that god only sends as much as we can handle, but obviously that depends on who you ask.
In short, the purpose of evil is a bad syllogism from the start—assuming you see evil as something like a fog or a condition of the environment, objective and lurking and waiting for someone to mess with. Evil does not exist—evil happens, and in all instances it is our choices that bring it about.
If God was not truly God, a mere human like you or me would be able to understand him. The fact that we cannot goes with the idea that he is incomprehensible. If we could understand or do what he does, then he would not truly be God.
Sarah S: So by definition God is capricious? If there is any consistency, we (humans) can understand and model it. Everything carefully observed over time behaves consistently according to relatively simple mathematical rules that we've invented over the last few centuries (science).
Apparently God has no effect on anything we can observe.
Sarah S: You've just disproved God!
hahahah whata a silly metaphor. the answer to all this is that god created only good and not evil, because evil doesnt exist. as like turnung off the light and not turning on the dark apply, so does good and evil. all evil is is a lack or absence of good, as cold is a lack of heat. btw im high as ass
What evidence is that that "good" and "evil" exist independent of human thought?
Sarah,
According to Genesis, there were only two things that separated Man from God, and both were contained in the fruit of two trees. When Adam and Eve ate of the one tree, they became like God.
Genesis 3:22 "Then Yahweh God said 'See, the man has become like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil. He must not be allowed to stretch his hand out next and pick from the tree of life also, and eat some and live forever.'"
A lot of things are going on in that passage, but there are two things relevant to our discussion here. One is that Yahweh explicitly concedes that humans are like gods and it is in their knowledge and potential knowledge that we are. So to say that we simple-minded humans can't understand God is disingenuous for anyone who actually believes what is written in Genesis, since by your own lights you have to take it seriously and right there your assertion that we can't fathom God is denied by God himself.
The second thing going on is the admission that evil already exists, but humans up to that point were ignorant of it. Which suggests that it is a made thing already wired into the universe, and objective substance rather than the consequence of conscious living. This lays it squarely at the feet of this god, who has made this thing and then won't do anything about it, which supposedly he could if he chose to.
But the passage taken as a whole goes further and suggests that this god is also not all-powerful and is in fact just a little fearful. What would happen if humans were immortal? With endless life and their new knowledge, could they in fact challenge God?
Humans have created immortality for themselves, because of the ability to encode and store knowledge. Long life for any individual is beside the point, then, because the accumulation of learning over millennia is each generation's birthright, and, ironically, we have come a place where we can challenge God—or at least the notion of god.
The fact is, we can understand, and claiming we can't is pointless.
We, inteligent products of time, matter and space, are able to imagine. Our intelligence lies within a spectrum, parts of which are visible to us. At the infra red end are people with in the moment abilities, who have limited capacity to comprehend others, and consequences in the near future. Then, most of us move in our own footsteps through our lives aware of a rational arena of existance which includes others, and which refers to future events. And there are some, at the untra violet end, who have the capacity and leisure to include sentience of an intangible need to comprehend an unreachable other, anthropomorphism, spiritual hunger, artistic expression, faith driven vision beyond the hear and now. From these come the dreams and ambitions that from time to time the many move towards, whether or not they fully share the hunger, in order to not miss out. These types of thinkers look to the distance, for the unseeable, and try to rationalise using concepts that communicate with and refer to more immediate agenda. This is done for reasons of survival (cut back so the tribe can survive, trust that no-one will get away with it, because you will be rewarded and they will be retarded, leaders are only using their gifts to take the tribe ahead of competition, so they need material support disproportionate to their wordly efforts, and finally, great supernatural power is our advantage, so we should focus on keeping it on our side). These thinkers need to think their great other Spirit exists because we are not enough, just like autistic thinkers find it hard to understand that those around them exist in a relevant way, because they are too many. What would be open to us if our mental capacity could read the information about existance and all of this, if we could develop instruments that could show us in our limited field, beyond the visual spectrum? Until then, we only have words and concepts and visceral motivations that begin with Om.
grumpypilrim,
I would define good and evil as joy and suffering, respectively. As emotions they clearly only exist as the product of feeling minds.
If God were to prevent all evil in people then free will would not exist; we would be merely puppets. We are on this earth for each other; when that benevolence is destroyed by another human being, an even greater opportunity arises for us to help one another.
I suspect that the logical paradoxes of the ancient philosophers were intended to expose the fallacies of thinking in terms of binary opposites. Some like to define Evil as the opposite of Good, but in purely logical terms, the only attribute of the opposite of Good is that it is not good. The logical opposite of good includes everything that is not good. This can include evil, bad, and awful things, but also includes a host of neutral things, such as a rock, a duck, or a worn out bronze coin.
Evil is nominally defined and being without morals, it's antonym is "righteous". These are both concepts of morality. Morality is defined by adherence to a set of rules or social norms. So it follows that the righteous are those that abide by the rules and the evil are those who ignore the rules
Therefore, Good and Evil, Righteousness, and Sinfulness are all defined within the rules and laws imposed on societies by their rulers and leaders.
Law-abiding = moral = Righteous(a.k.a. Good)
Unlawfulness = amoral = Evil
Question? Where do objects of neutrality fit in this scheme? Is a rock good or evil? What about a bathtub?
Another question? What does this say about the law-givers who except themselves from the laws they impose on others?
What has God to do with this?
Nothing.
Mankind is one of many species that can modify the environment to its needs. We can easily see the intelligence behind the various complex things we make, from computers, and cars to music and literature. For the most part we have developed a prejudice that complex things require intelligence, it is easy to buy into a belief of an intelligent force behind everything. Maybe we have it backwards, but arrogance inhibits many people from acknowledging that complexity just happens. Intelligence appears to be a possible result of complexity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbS7fHuiHbE
Einstein God is evil
As much as I like this, and understand the paradox, I also understand, from a purely philosophical view that evil must exist for good to be appreciated. For an analogy, a person who has nearly starved to death appreciates food more than a man who has eaten food from the best chef on the planet. A person who has never known evil will not appreciate good as a person who has taken sh*t their whole life and was given a good deed by a perfect stranger. Thus god is both benevolent and omnipotent and also intelligent.
Cassi,
Many people definc good and evin in a self referencing manner. An old short story published in "Amazing Stories" in 1930 Illustrates this concept.
The storie features a declaration in parts of the story that is considered patriotic. The declaration is, "The gostak distims the doshes!".
This sentence makes no sence since the words "gostak", "distims" and "doshes" are undefined to the reader.
A little later in the story, the words are defined as such:
gostak – the distimmer of the doshes.
doshes – that which the gostak distims.
distim – what the gostak does to the doshes.
This is an example of a cyclic reference. In this case the definitions are logically accurate, if we assume the phrase to be true, but with the terms of the statement defined only within itself, the terms and the statement remain meaningless. So it follows that good and evil can on;y be meaningfully defined by society.
In a philosophical sense, you can know good without knowing evil, if you acknowlege that most of the world is neutral. Consider a large rock on a sunny day. The rock is neutral, but if you've ever known the simple pleasure of relaxing on a sun warmed rock during a cool autumn day, you can say "This is good".
The concept of free will for Christians is problematic and riddled with paradoxes, so let's set that aside for the moment.
It seems clear to me that by simply observing the universe, which, if there is a God, is His creation and therefore must reflect His nature, we can see that God is neither good nor evil but in fact always both.
There is no good without some bad contained within it. No good without the seed of bad. No event, however catastrophic or beneficial which does not also help or hurt to some extent.
By observation we can also see the the good and the bad seem to happen in equal inexplicable measure to both good and bad people alike. From this we can draw the conclusion not only there there is no God/Satan separation but also that God (if He exists) is indifferent to either our joy or our suffering.
The alternative explanation is that God simply doesn't exist. Which of the two explanations you find more unsettling, if at all, depends on your psychology.
Mike,
The philosophy of existentialism is built on the foundational belief that every choice we make, however small, determines our future. Our choices also affect and influences others in their choices. This is a concept that ties responsibility to free will.
The Freewill Baptists believe that god is a guiding force, not a dictating one. They tend to interpret the bible as detailing god's tests of mankind, to determine that men can make good choices. They have found a way to reconcile their belief in a divine creator with the concept of free will.
From an existentialist POV, what can be named evil, is the result of choices made without consideration of possible negativge impact on others. For example, if a businessman makes a decision that increases his profis and improves the lives of people around him as a side effect, that is good. If the same businessman makes a decision that increases his profits, but has a negative impact on others, I would call that evil.
This entire matter reduces down to whether or not God can actually be considered to be Omni-benevolent, this reveals what our understanding of what that term might mean to ourselves and to others as well.
Many specific values and standards have been provided to man from either God or the culture in which they live, or both. Most people can somewhat imagine what it might mean for God to possess the characteristics of omniscience, omnipotence and a few other omni’s as well, but the term omni-benevolent is not one of the character traits that we should use, because to do so is not logical or reasonable from a human point of view.
We should not use this concept unless we hold the same values to be good as God does. We should not use this term unless we somehow consider our values to be as good as God's. We should not use this term unless the values we think a possible conception for God might possess will provide an inductive framework from which to logically reason properly in a deductive manner.
There is always the option that you may think you are God or a god or even an atheist, then of course you can assume you can make all manner of judgements and comparisons of your values to what believe God's values might actually be.
Even Jesus stated – "There is only one that is good, why do you call me good?" I believe that since Jesus did not know everything about the details of God the Father, and that Jesus knew that his own consciousness and Spirit resided in a limited and perishing physical body it was foolish to consider this limited perspective capable of logically verifying the goodness of God.
So any time you believe you can fully place what you believe to be good along side of what God’s view of good is, it will be revealed that someone is either a liar, not good, or does not understand the correct use of the term.
Nearly all language and knowledge that is values based will return to you (a spiritual being in a physical body) questions about God’s will, goodness, love and acceptance. We must learn to realize that the physical limitation of our bodies (which will one day perish) can do nothing but return questions, doubts and fears about God's goodness, especially if we believe that our life in our physical bodies is the full and entire extent of a transitory existence.
One day we will better understand God's goodness, but we will never arrive at the point where we can fully agree from personal experience that God is omni-benevolent because we do not know what that fully means in either a Physical or a Spiritual sense, and to say we did would be an outright fabrication.
We have no other choice, if we say we believe in both God and in the Goodness of God, we must take it by faith that God really and fully is omni-benevolent according his character, values, plan, and will.
.
As my rhetoric teacher said the first day of class:
"Just because something is logical, does not mean it is true."
Paraphrased from an installment of "Howard the Duck".
Howard finds himself aboard the startship "BoobyPrize" and is being given the grand tour of the ship by Capn Kook, (may it was Capn Kork, Iv'e always hada problem with names). The pause while Capn Kook intorduces Howard to the logical Mr Spork.
Howard asks Mr Spork why, considering that Spork is motivated by logic, does he remain on the crew of the Boobyprize.
Spork's answere is sonting like "The Captain said I am logical. He did not say I am intelligent."
Logical conclusions are only as good as the original assumptions. Garbage in = garbage out.
Ex
All Girls have blonde hair.
Gracie has brown hair.
Therefore Gracy is not a girl.
This is logical, but the assumption that All girls have blonde hair is wrong. This is an obvious example. Less obvious example of ill logic abound.
Karl wrote
"We have no other choice, if we say we believe in both God and in the Goodness of God, we must take it by faith that God really and fully is omni-benevolent according his character, values, plan, and will."
Most of us here are non-believers. We don't believe in God, or Gods. Considering this, you should be able to understand that we can find no inherent goodness in something which has no existence. To simplify you statement. "if someone truly believes God exists and is good, then they must believe that God is completely good because he is god."
I was clear to include the "if" it was not an attempt to sneak one by anyone.
I do not believe God should be associated with "All Things Good". Its too biased towards it and generally makes some of us HAVE to create a "source" of all things what would be categorized on the "not good" shelf". The "two sides to every coin", "rule" of duality, and semi-tunnel vision is only thought of by people who want the quickest way out.
I am glad we've bestowed collected morals on ourselves. God was a REALIZATION. So in some ways "created". But none the less, the light was worshiped before there was fear of darkness.
And with that, I say adieu, it is time for me to retire. I love you all 🙂