Atheism Talk: The Problem of Evil
There was an ancient philosopher dating back to 300 BCE named Epicurus who is credited with being the first to raise this dilemma. In it's most basic form it goes a little something like this:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
It raises the contradiction that a supposed creator god cannot be omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent if evil exists. If you consider the needless suffering in this world to be evil then one of these pillars has to go. Otherwise you are defining your god from the outset as a logical contradiction or absurdity.
Omniscient
: knowing everything : having unlimited understanding or knowledge
Omnipotent
: having complete or unlimited power
Benevolent
: kind and generous
Evil
: morally bad : causing harm or injury to someone : marked by bad luck or bad events
If god is benevolent does he not know evil exists? Then he isn't omniscient. Does he not have the power to end evil and needless suffering? Then he isn't omnipotent. If he can stop it and knows about it yet allowed it to exist and in fact made it so then he can't be considered benevolent.
What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below?
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If you are serious about wanting a more carefully crafted answer to this question, I have provided it here:
God's World View Might Be Different From Yours
Wow. He did a really good job of summarizing the questions and the very answers I would give better than I could give them myself. Key bullets:
I would add these missing concepts:
We play lots of excessively violent video games in which we wreck havoc to other avatars and have havoc wrecked on our own - for fun! It would seem horrible to be in such a game except that we know that the avatar is not really "us".
Assuming all these additional points are true as the Bible claims (in less modern language), then it is not possible to logically deduce that God can't exist because he wouldn't make a world like we are in.
The Problem of Evil argument is defeated by coming up with just one plausible scenario where it would make sense for the God we know to act the way He acts. This scenario doesn't even need to be the actual right answer. If we can come up with a plausible good reason, it is certainly possible that God has another even better reason.
If this world is all there is, then this question might make sense.
If this world is, for example, a simulated bootcamp to determine and train elite officers for service in a higher reality, then what happens here cannot be used to presumptuously critique and understand God.
We know the military intentionally makes boot camps painfully difficult to weed out weak recruits and toughen up the rest. This life is no different. Getting your flesh and blood "avatar" killed or hurt here is nothing if your immortal spiritual self is all that matters.
You just need to think BIGGER, Pinky. :o)
Military boot camps are not benevolent.
That's for sure - while you are going through them.
But after you get the battle or Big Game, you understand that your usefulness and chances of survival have been greatly enhanced. So your drill sergeant or football coach was actually benevolent after all. Just like your mom making you eat spinach and do your homework.
But they accomplish their purpose - simulating stress expected to be encountered in another realm.
Testing the strength and reliability of those who can get through it.
Its a synthetic environment designed for a purpose and you can't deduce anything about the creator of that environment while you are in it.
What about all those that the boot camp weeds as unfit to serve? Why would a benevolent god create entities too weak to pass the training? If he knows they will fail and has the power to create them in such a way that they won't fail yet still chooses not too and instead chooses to construct them in a way that will have them tortured for eternity then he is not benevolent. I'm sorry but either omnipotence or benevolence has to go in order to match a reality in which evil exists. I guess you could just say evil doesn't exist but that wouldn't reconcile very well with most religious teachings.
"you can't deduce anything about the creator of that environment while you are in it."
Will you then admit that one can not deduce that such a creator even exists while inside that environment?
I did indeed enjoy the Harry Potter series.
I don't claim you can deduce Him.
I claim he has showed up in person and revealed Himself.
I don't claim to be smart enough to figure out why He does what He does.
It has something with wanting children to choose Him of their own free will.
He could have made robots that would behave robotically.
But where is the challenge or reward in that? His plans appear to call for raising a family that choose to love Him for who He is.
And evil occurs because most of us would rather pursue our own will instead of His.
He wants the one thing He can't use His omnipotence to create:
Children to love Him without being forced to.
LOL nice story. Have you ever read the Harry Potter series? You'd probably like those books too.
It's quite easy to resolve; there is no god.
Evil is subjective and comes from the observer's interpretation of events.
In the absolute sense, power and knowledge are incompatible. Benevolence is subjective. By definition an omniscient God is objective, and to the individual, benevolence may appear in a short time scale, to be malevolent.
But steel is forged by fire and diamonds are made by pressure. Faith means assuming that in the longer term than our individual lives, the best outcome must come, on the basis that evil by its nature is not durable.
I think the original concept of God is misconstrued.
I don't believe the ideal of an omnipotent power was ever supposed to be held within the construct of one being. I believe it was originally an attribution toward a collective energy that is consciousness.
The word God is derived from the word Divine, according to ancient greek etymology. The philosophers of that era, arguably some of the most inventive critical thinkers, agreed that a divine collection of spirit & thought shaped the outcome of all things and was the purest example of divination. They believed this because of how collective thinking between peers changed shaped outcomes, and how collective thinking was a necessity when moving forward together to achieve goals inside of societal communities.
I don't think any entity controls the multiverse, and if anything in this reality is to be considered omnipotent it would be the universe itself. In saying that, I believe the philosophers of old were onto something. They knew, more so than we do now, that God is everything coming together to deconstruct, construct, and evolve. God, or divination, is most easiest found when observing the Sun. We revolve around it, it controls time & space around us, and it is omnipotent compared to our minuscule existence because we have no control over it. Then, there are many more suns that behave the same, just in this universe. So as to attribute these intricate workings to one man or woman would be ludicrous without having factual evidence to suggest otherwise, and that obviously excludes hearsay. And, if someone were to have control over such a vast quantity of matter, they'd be too large for you to possibly comprehend, whilst possibly being minuscule within their own reality.
We've proven through particle physics that we live on just one plain of existence. If an almighty omnipotent being controlled ours, I would suggest that they'd be far less omnipotent within their own plain of existence.
I think I missed the point about evil and benevolence, though I consider evil to be subjective to the person that sees it that way, just as @l0k1 suggests. An individual could consider anything as evil, but when it comes to there being some omnipotent force that controls evil, I think that's an arrogant misconception created by the same people that have misconstrued the concept of divination.
@l0k1, It takes a diamond between 1 to 3 billion years to form by pressure. So are diamonds really formed my pressure? Or they were created by God 5000 and something years ago?
You can make diamonds in an instant, all you need are carbon and pressure (lots and lots of it).
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The argument itself necessarily presupposes a Christian worldview. Please refer to the late Greg Bahnsen.
The problem with your argument is Epicurus lived about 300 years before the New Testament was even written.