If there is a God, why is there evil?

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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Sy Borg
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by Sy Borg »

GrayArea wrote: May 17th, 2022, 6:31 amOn the other hand, God approves existence itself, thus why he made it (If he exists, that is). To him, all of existence is the definition of "good". Everything good and evil to us must all be good to God.

This could also be why serving God is the good above all good when it comes to Christianity or Islam.
Your post works well with this Pelegrin's:
Pelegrin_1 wrote: May 17th, 2022, 12:32 pmHere's what I would ask: If there's a God, why is it so evil?
Consider what God would see as good: Torture, murder, rape, enslavement, nuclear bombs, factory farming, poaching, theft, animals in the wild being eaten alive ...

Then again, a being at such a scale - be it the pantheistic universal God or the panentheistic uber God - such events might be not noticed at all, or are considered insignificant. That is, God would have an attitude towards human suffering that adults often have towards circumcision - that it's no drama and the child will get over it.

Of course, there's no reason to believe that Middle Eastern Iron Age mythology is any more reliable than myths from other regions and eras.
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GrayArea
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by GrayArea »

Sy Borg wrote: May 17th, 2022, 9:56 pm
GrayArea wrote: May 17th, 2022, 6:31 amOn the other hand, God approves existence itself, thus why he made it (If he exists, that is). To him, all of existence is the definition of "good". Everything good and evil to us must all be good to God.

This could also be why serving God is the good above all good when it comes to Christianity or Islam.
Your post works well with this Pelegrin's:
Pelegrin_1 wrote: May 17th, 2022, 12:32 pmHere's what I would ask: If there's a God, why is it so evil?
Consider what God would see as good: Torture, murder, rape, enslavement, nuclear bombs, factory farming, poaching, theft, animals in the wild being eaten alive ...

Then again, a being at such a scale - be it the pantheistic universal God or the panentheistic uber God - such events might be not noticed at all, or are considered insignificant. That is, God would have an attitude towards human suffering that adults often have towards circumcision - that it's no drama and the child will get over it.

Of course, there's no reason to believe that Middle Eastern Iron Age mythology is any more reliable than myths from other regions and eras.
Well, it's more like this: Every act of evil like the ones you have mentioned and much more, are fully approved by God, just as much as he approves good deeds, because those are all components of existence. God would see everything within existence as fully significant, no matter how big or small their scales are.
People perceive gray and argue about whether it's black or white.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by EricPH »

God created good and evil, and we have been given the knowledge of good and evil. it's up to each one of us how we use that knowledge.

A company might produce a top quality range of kitchen knives. Do you hold them responsible if one is used as a murder weapon?

If God truly desires evil, we would have laws like don't bother working, kill your neighbour and take what you want.

But we have commands from God to love our neighbours, to help the poor and oppressed. If we could all obey God's laws, there would be no evil. Why do we blame God for all the evil that happens, when we know it is our desire to go against God.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by GrayArea »

EricPH wrote: May 17th, 2022, 11:20 pm God created good and evil, and we have been given the knowledge of good and evil. it's up to each one of us how we use that knowledge.

A company might produce a top quality range of kitchen knives. Do you hold them responsible if one is used as a murder weapon?

If God truly desires evil, we would have laws like don't bother working, kill your neighbour and take what you want.

But we have commands from God to love our neighbours, to help the poor and oppressed. If we could all obey God's laws, there would be no evil. Why do we blame God for all the evil that happens, when we know it is our desire to go against God.
God doesn't just desire evil, I would think that he desires both good and evil. He creates the oppressors, but he also creates the ones who fight against them. He creates poor people, the ones who help them, as well as the ones who don't.
People perceive gray and argue about whether it's black or white.
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Sy Borg
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by Sy Borg »

EricPH wrote: May 17th, 2022, 11:20 pm God created good and evil, and we have been given the knowledge of good and evil. it's up to each one of us how we use that knowledge.

A company might produce a top quality range of kitchen knives. Do you hold them responsible if one is used as a murder weapon?
Aside from the initial baseless and unjustified assertions - based on on Iron Age superstition - if a company is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient then, yes, it is 100% responsible for any misuse of its products.

You can always talk about God's mysterious ways, but it's a cop out.
EricPH wrote: May 17th, 2022, 11:20 pmIf God truly desires evil, we would have laws like don't bother working, kill your neighbour and take what you want.
No, all social animals have rules, just that ours are written down.

If God does not approve of evil, then why is it necessary for all but autotrophs to kill in order to survive? I note that autotrophs also regularly kill each other in competition and they also kill herbivores with various defences.

If God exists, as posited, then it sees evil and good as the same, a la the Hindu models. BTW, have you noticed how much more sensible and less reliant on superstition the religions of east and central Asia are than those of west Asia?

EricPH wrote: May 17th, 2022, 11:20 pmBut we have commands from God to love our neighbours, to help the poor and oppressed. If we could all obey God's laws, there would be no evil. Why do we blame God for all the evil that happens, when we know it is our desire to go against God.
Let's check this unsubstantiated claim.

"No gods before me". Prosperity gospel evangelists worship Mammon, believing that wealth is a sign of righteousness and poverty the
mark of sin.

Graven images? Again, religions are replete with worship of Mammon (even Trump!). How about going to our souvenir shop to buy plastic White Jesus on the cross?

Taking the God's name in vain. Tell me how obeying this would save the world.

Remember the Sabbath. Do you think obeying this would save the world? Anyway, it's right wing theistic politicians who fought the unions and forced ever more people to work without taking adequate leave.

Honour father and mother. What if parents that sell their children into prostitution and slavery? What of the violent, the drunkards, the mentally abusive? Do they deserve honour? Honour must be earned. Most parents are worthy of gratitude, but there's a minority who are not. To make a blanket rule is a recipe for accepting abuse.

Killing? We must kill to eat, and don't give me that anthropocentric excuse about only human lives mattering. Many animals we kill to eat are intelligent and sensitive, vastly more sentient that sleeping foetuses (noting that foetuses only become conscious at birth). Further, we must kill other humans to protect ourselves at times, unless you posit that Ukrainians resisting Putin's invasion are evil sinners and they should just lay down and let Russia take over.

Committing adultery? That didn't work out for theists, did it? Like these eighteen homophobic leaders caught having same sex relations out of wedlock? https://www.advocate.com/politicians/20 ... -gay-or-bi

Not to mention the millions of theists routinely committing adultery on the sly. It's hardly something that is ruining the world, though, unlike nature-destroying theistic anthropocentrism. I could speak of religious institutions facilitating child abuse and covering up the abuse to protect the perps.

Stealing? Churches continue to claim their tax exempt status - for all of their operations - when the exemption was designed to cover charitable activities. Churches have thus been stealing from people for decades, at least. How about Paula White and others telling believers that they will buy themselves a place in heaven by sending money?

As for bearing false witness, no one bears false witness like theists criticising atheists. The lies and misrepresentations come in a constant flow. Or how about the amazing lies of US's most beloved theist, Donald Trump? Remember the Mexican "murderers and rapists"?

Coveting? Christianity covets power like no one else.

So, why would theists expect secularists to take their commandments seriously when so many of their own number treat those rules with contempt?

Surely we can do better than following Iron Age Middle Eastern mythology. The religions of the far east are already more sophisticated, although still infused with much woo.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by Pelegrin_1 »

GrayArea wrote: May 17th, 2022, 10:52 pm Well, it's more like this: Every act of evil like the ones you have mentioned and much more, are fully approved by God, just as much as he approves good deeds, because those are all components of existence. God would see everything within existence as fully significant, no matter how big or small their scales are.
IF there is a God, and that's a BIG IF because we really have zero rational justification to believe there is, then that God created the conditions for evil to exist, or let's just say 'horrible things' that cause suffering to occur. And that horrible suffering can happen to anyone, even the most innocent. A so-called God that created the conditions to allow for that suffering and continues to still allows it can only be considered as evil. Now of course there's the retort that the innocent who suffer during their "lifetime" will be rewarded or receive recompense later, but that doesn't mean that the suffering then never occurred. It still did occur, but it seems almost like one needs to suffer in order for this God to eventually be good to you. Still sounds damn evil to me.

So, if you really want to believe in, follow and worship and evil God, then that's your choice. Personally, I certainly wouldn't follow nor worship such an entity and, since there's no real reason to think that it nor any other humanly conjured up God actually exists, I don't really have anything pressuring me to offer any such worship.
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Sy Borg
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by Sy Borg »

Eric, what do you make of the false prophets in this video? They start off fairly mildly but they build up steam as their prophesies fail.

I suspect that they will horrify you at least as much as they horrify me, maybe more, but it's best to check.

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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by Belindi »

EricPH wrote;
If God truly desires evil, we would have laws like don't bother working, kill your neighbour and take what you want.
Some people already have laws that allow that, or if they don't then they change their laws to allow aggressive killing and theft of property.

The reason God does not intervene in our lives is that He is not all powerful and cannot do so. The responsibility is ours not God's.

Besides moral evil there is also natural evil that nobody can be blamed for. God cannot work miracles and it is superstitious to think He can do so.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by EricPH »

[
quote=GrayArea

God doesn't just desire evil, I would think that he desires both good and evil. He creates the oppressors, but he also creates the ones who fight against them. He creates poor people, the ones who help them, as well as the ones who don't
.

God desires for only good to happen. Why would God desire evil? Oppressors have the choice to oppress, they don't have to. God does not command us to oppress others today.

If we are lucky enough to earn more than $2 a Day, then we earn more than about seven hundred million people.
If we are lucky enough to earn more than $10 a Day, then we earn more than about five billion people.

In Britain we won't work for less than £9 an hour. We oppress the poor by demanding this minimum wage. We spend billions on diet products, addictios, enertainment and the military. The poor go hungry.

God created us to be fair and just to each other. There are many passages in the Bible telling us to share our wealth with the poor, and not to exploit them. The problems in this world are created when we go against God's law.

We get caught up in the ways of the world, both theists and atheists.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by Sy Borg »

EricPH wrote: May 19th, 2022, 12:22 amGod desires for only good to happen. Why would God desire evil?

How do you know God exists and how would you know what a universal deity would want? What you think of as "evil" might be trivial collateral damage to an existent deity.
EricPH wrote: May 19th, 2022, 12:22 amGod created us to be fair and just to each other.
How do you know that God created us? Why would you think this deity created humans to be fair when history destroys that argument?
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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In the spirit of the thread title, you would need to believe there is a God. It might help if the title was,,,

If, and only if there is a God, why is there evil.?

If you start from the assumption there is no God, then the thread title might be....

If there is No god, why did god create evil?
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by Sy Borg »

Haha, touche Eric! I just find unsubstantiated assumptions made with complete certainty unphilosophical, even antithetical to philosophy. It's one thing to believe oneself, another to expect others to accept unproven and unqualified claims made without attracting a critique.

Okay, let's say there's a universal being. Let's say it exists because life in the billions of Big Bangs before ours reached something like an Omega Point, and it can now survive, or even shape the nature of, Big Bangs. It is not a He. A reproductive organ at that scale does not bear thinking about. It is an It. If humans were made in God's image, then God must be both.

An entity of such magnitude, that has existed for countless aeons beyond anything we can imagine, is not going to worry about the "growing pains" of its infants. What do we care for the death of a cell in our body? Microbes and cells are (usually) too little for us to worry about. So that would be the dynamic. Just as we wish our cellular and microbial communities well in a very general sense, demonstrating this with exercise, good food and happy thoughts. Billions still die every day and, without their deaths, we would ourselves die. The system would break down. So this hypothetical God did the same - providing us with a fairly quiescent star, a suitable sized rocky planet that's lightly coated in water and has a stabilising satellite.

"Evil" to humans would, to God, be utterly trivial collateral damage, not to mention that death is essential to keep the overall system growing. Evil to us would be infinitely less than a flea bite to God.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by Belindi »

Sy Borg wrote: May 19th, 2022, 3:34 am Haha, touche Eric! I just find unsubstantiated assumptions made with complete certainty unphilosophical, even antithetical to philosophy. It's one thing to believe oneself, another to expect others to accept unproven and unqualified claims made without attracting a critique.

Okay, let's say there's a universal being. Let's say it exists because life in the billions of Big Bangs before ours reached something like an Omega Point, and it can now survive, or even shape the nature of, Big Bangs. It is not a He. A reproductive organ at that scale does not bear thinking about. It is an It. If humans were made in God's image, then God must be both.

An entity of such magnitude, that has existed for countless aeons beyond anything we can imagine, is not going to worry about the "growing pains" of its infants. What do we care for the death of a cell in our body? Microbes and cells are (usually) too little for us to worry about. So that would be the dynamic. Just as we wish our cellular and microbial communities well in a very general sense, demonstrating this with exercise, good food and happy thoughts. Billions still die every day and, without their deaths, we would ourselves die. The system would break down. So this hypothetical God did the same - providing us with a fairly quiescent star, a suitable sized rocky planet that's lightly coated in water and has a stabilising satellite.

"Evil" to humans would, to God, be utterly trivial collateral damage, not to mention that death is essential to keep the overall system growing. Evil to us would be infinitely less than a flea bite to God.
Christians like Eric believe God does care about us and sparrows too. Eric and others also think God is all powerful in a physical sense. But God is not a physical force He is a spiritual force. Some Christians forget God is spirit not extended matter. A spiritual force is psychological not material . It's human psyches that care about other men and sparrows too.

God is a product of human psyches. Unfortunately for materialist Christians like Eric science has such power over their imaginations that they have to make God, Who is all-spirit, into an unimaginably enormous physical thing.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by Pattern-chaser »

I suspect that God knows that the question in the title of this topic is just a childish misunderstanding, not answerable in the form in which it is asked. ... But who am I to know the mind of God?
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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GrayArea wrote: May 17th, 2022, 6:31 am Because we define "good" wrong. Because the human definition of "good" is only what human beings approve. Thus it is finite and subjective to a set point of view within existence.

On the other hand, God approves existence itself, thus why he made it (If he exists, that is). To him, all of existence is the definition of "good". Everything good and evil to us must all be good to God.

This could also be why serving God is the good above all good when it comes to Christianity or Islam.
This is why scriptures have God saying that he created good and evil for his pleasure.

We have to dither our what pleasure God would get from creating evil.

That is likely also why Christians sing of Adam's sin being a happy fault and necessary to God's plan.

Do you see the necessity for evil and sin in reality?

Regards
DL
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