I posted this in another thread. But it's so awesome, it deserves it's own. If god is willing to prevent evil, but not able? 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? -Epicurus Atheists: winning since A.D. 33
What is evil? It is only an idea known to humans. Bad and good are relational to humans. If nothing is either good nor bad, only as it shoudl be, than what of your question? And I'm not trying to be aggressive...
Those who believe in (a Judeo-Christian) God would probably say that there is a definitive "good" and "bad" so that good is whatever is in keeping with their god's way. I believe they would say that god gave humans the ability to act freely, so that they choose for themselves whether or not to follow his wishes. so any evil on earth is generated by people, not by him. the only way for a person to be a good person or bad person is if they act purposefully, without intervention or being forced by god, so god therefore does not interfere - so people can prove themselves
Then I think an important question to ask is this: Can you be inadvertantly evil? Can You be evil by passively avoiding going out of your way to do good? If god does not recognise good and evil and allows evil to occur, is this in itself malevolent? As for Epicurus.. well I think you need to understand that good and evil have been heavy assumptions within mankind (particularly western philosophy) for most of history. Epicurus makes a very important point and people of religion simply cannot respond to him. His concept of god/gods was that if they were trully omnipotent, they would not really give a rats arse about what was going on amongst moral men. They would have more important, heavenly matters to care about.
I'm with you so far. I'd say that good and bad are words used by humans to describe certain conditions or outcomes they judge to be desirable or undesirable. You lost me there. Lots of things are good or bad, i.e., those which are considered desirable or undesirable to humans--more specifically, the humans doing the judging. [/quote]
I think that quote above is far from "winning" the argument. As other people pointed out, you have to define all of those words to make that quote mean anything or even be valid. I am apatheistic and also apathetic about a lot of other ideas... philosophizing just passes the time.
Evil comes from us not him. If he prevented evil there would be no freewill and we would be sub-human. He is creating good in the world through those who obey his command to love and serve others.
As far as I can tell that quote from Epicurus proves beyond a doubt that there can not be an all knowing, all powerful, wholly good god in this world. Of course throw out any one of those three attributes and there is no problem, but then why worship or obey such a being?
Maybe everything "evil" that happens in the world is necessary for the world to be the way it is. For example cancer exists as a result of dna replicating itself the way it does, and it replicates itself the way it does for life to exist. Maybe it was impossible for god to create a system where dna could exist and behave the way it does, without cancer existing. My belief is that this principle carries on into supposedly every "evil" thing that occurs in the world. It makes perfect sense to me becuase I cant think of any examples of unnessasary evils in the world, even those commited by man.
There is no logical contradiction in imagining a world without evil. Also if god is all powerful then he could make DNA that didn't replicate in such a way as to make cancer a possibility. To say that he could not do so is to say that he is not all powerful. Also if in creating the world god knew that people would have to suffer horribly out of necessity then he probably should not have created the world. In choosing to do so god is responsible for all evil. The idea that evil exists because man has free will is bogus as well because you would have to say that god values the free will of a rapist more than he values the free will of the victim.
maybe hes not all powerful Thats a very big claim, and very opinionated, plus he gave us the free will to kill ourselves, he isnt forcing this world upon us. I never said evil exists because man has freewill
Pref, that is the point of the original quote. The idea is to demonstrate that the state of the world is incompatible with a god who is all knowing all loving and all powerful. The conclusion that Epicurus wants people to reach, I think, is that one of the following four statements must be false: 1. God is wholly good. 2 God is all powerful. 3. God is all knowing. 4. Evil exists. As for the second point that I made about god being obligated to not create the world, I don't think it is a very big claim. We often expect people to abstain from actions that will lead to great suffering so why not expect that of god as well? As for the free will thing I wasn't saying that you were arguing that evil exists because of free will, I was just throwing that in there because that is the reply people usually give me and I don't think it even comes close to refuting the argument from evil.
Process theologian Charles Hartshorne deals with some of these issues in Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes. For a long time, theologians have recognized that omnipotence doesn't mean God can do things that are logically inconsistent, like make something all black and all white at the same time. Non-Calvinists also believe in free will, which comes about when God sel-limits His powers. Hartshorne argues that humans aren't th only beneficairies of free will. Other species and material objects enjoy it as well. That certainly would blast traditional concepts of omnipotence to hell. So by the time Hartshorne is through, God is "omnipotent" only in the sense that S(he) is more potent than anything else in the universe and can do anything that isn't ruled out by the free will limitations. If you think Epicurus is hard on God, check out the books of Job and Ecclesiastes. And considering that fundamentalists believe this is God giving dictation, we end up with an enigmatic Entity that would tax the faith of any thinking person.
