The Philosophy of Evil and Why God Cannot Possibly Exist
The Free Will Defense, My Counter-argument, Care to Debate? (I Received a B+)
In a world where god is benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient, why would evil exist? Surely, if God being all knowing, knew of evil, being all powerful, had the power to stop it, and being all loving, loved all good, evil should not exist... yet it does! Either an aspect of god is flawed, or his existence cannot be congruent with evil unless somehow there is an explanation. And so many explanations have been brought about by theists in attempts to brush aside this congruence, one of which is the free will defense. The free will defense is based upon the idea that since God is all loving, He wanted to make people with free thoughts; after all, a slave is not the most loved of beings. Unfortunately along with freedom comes the ability to cause evil, pain, suffering, etc. Although a strong defense for theistic views, I will now prove to you why the free will defense can only go so far.
Evil can take many forms and generally speaking, bad forms. When evil is mentioned, the first thing that pops into a person's mind is likely a bad act caused upon a person by another person, such as assault or theft. Evil also extends into other areas too, areas where we might not so quickly place into the "evil" category, such as a natural disaster, or AIDs, where the evil does not have its source at any human perpetrator. I doubt that you would want any of the above to happen to you, or a loved one, and since god is supposedly all loving, then why does the problem of evil still exist?
With the contradiction that both God and evil exist simultaneously, and visual and personal proof that evil does indeed exist, that only leaves the question or explanation that God does or does not exist; the two should not be able to coexist. Therefore, the theists, to present reasoning to support that their god does indeed exist, fall upon the free will defense theory, stating that evil exists even though God is benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent because god allows we as people to have free will, since he is so benevolent. Of course, along with free will comes the possibility that we as people have the power to commit evil acts, hence the existence of evil. God is supposedly benevolent, or all loving, and therefore should have our free will in his intentions. The free will defense would be quite a solid defense for the existence of god, except for two dilemmas.
As stated previously, most people's conception of evil is a wrongdoing caused by one individual to another, such as theft. Because of this assumption of evil, there is a very obvious flaw that is overlooked by the free will defense: evils not caused by anyone, but rather nature, such as a hurricane. Surely, theists would not bother to argue that God bid that nature herself should have free will, so just because God, in His love, wished to give His people free will does not in any way explain the evils we know as natural disasters, or just suffering in the world not caused by people. That would be the first dilemma of the free will argument. The second problem is that considering God, in addition to being all loves, is also all powerful! All powerful should be quite absolute, if you believe in omnipotence, then surely, god can do such things as making 2+2=5, or have the ability to create a rock so great, that even He cannot lift it but somehow manage to lift it. So being all powerful, God should have the power to create free people that have no intentions of causing evil, people that have the ability to contemplate doing wrong, yet are so repulsed of the thought of doing evil that they choose to do right instead. Why not? It was the theists themselves that stated God were all powerful, and being all powerful, there is no reason why god cannot do anything.
All you have to do is look around to notice that there are still millions of people preaching that there is a god, so there must have been a response from the theists to the free will defense. Though there is no reasoning that I know of as to how the free will defense deals with natural suffering, there is a cliffhanger resolution to the fact that God could have created free people that do not wish to cause evil. Theists back up the free will defense by the notion that if God were to create "free" agents that were able to cause evil, yet choose not to, then essentially, those "free" agents are not free at all. Through this reasoning, we fall into the same category that has struck the abortion debate: The two sides cannot even debate because they are not on the same page of understanding. Just like how pro-choice does not even see a fetus as a life while pro-lifers have decided that a fetus is, in fact, a life, atheists believe that God can create free agents who do not wish to cause evil who are still free, while theists believe that those same agents would essentially not be free. No argument can continue because the two sides are not even on the same page of understanding.
Theists have no response that can counter the criticism against their free will defense. Not only do the theists they completely disregarded the part where people having free will has nothing to do with natural suffering, they give a very weak "back-at-you" criticism that should not even be considered a comeback in the debate. The free will defense is flawed on two full levels.
Though the free will defense started off as a potentially strong defense that God and evil can in fact coexist, there is too much proof against the theory to completely shoot it down in a debate. The theists themselves stated that their god was benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent, now it is coming back to prove itself incorrect. Though the free will defense fails, there are still many theories debating God and evil's coexistence, so this debate is still at a stalemate.
Published by Kev07
You are now reading the voice of a chronic over-analyzer. View profile
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9 Comments
Post a Comment"With the contradiction that both God and evil exist simultaneously"
No contradiction, at all...
"the two should not be able to coexist"
Says who? Your Godless philosophy instructor who gave you a B+ for this drivel?
"Theists have no response that can counter the criticism against their free will defense. Not only do the theists they completely disregarded the part where people having free will has nothing to do with natural suffering, they give a very weak "back-at-you" criticism that should not even be considered a comeback in the debate. The free will defense is flawed on two full levels."
Why? Because YOU say they have no argument? (And you certainly didn't get your B+ for sentence construction!)
But at least "tell it as it is..." agrees with you.
Kev, you have a bright future...as long as you can say "You want fries with that?"!
Mary E Tilley, you are one sorry ..s person for being so ignoramous and a sheep minded nutcase like any other schizophrenic,dellusional psychos out there...
Actually, (regardless of what christain sects may claim) the bible contains clear instances of god performing evil acts.
example 1st samuel chapter 8 (king james version) god orders (through his chosen prophet Samuel) the massacre of the Amalekites, a neigbouring tribe to the Israelites. Were the Israelites to just make war, subject these people. no. they were instructed to leave no one alive, kill all men women children babies even the animals, also to cut down the trees and spread salt. (these last instructions were to starve out survivors who would have hidden from the soldiers.) so there would have been many children babies and pregnant woman slaughtered, genocide. ( if you want to see what it would be like then watch the new rambo movie, the village raid scene.) the bible actually attempts to provide a reason for this killing, apparently the amalekites are related to the israelites, (both peoples desended from abraham) but when israel was on its 40 year journey in the desert t
Another quick note, a B+ doesn't make you an expert in the field...faith does!
came into being. We do it to ourselves now every single time we Choose. As far as your arguement, you've not really provided anything coherant. I have a bible and living proof that God exists. What do you have except your analytical viewpoint that goes nowhere except in circles. It all comes down to the same thing...Faith...and it seems unless you have faith, unless you've really asked God himself to prove to you that he is alive and well and is existing this very moment, that he created you in his image...I'm afraid friend...there's not much else he can do. Your arguement is weak. Read the bible, ask him to prove himself and be contrite about it and he'll move heaven and earth to prove to you his existence. I don't claim that weakly, I promise you he will in his time show you his glory. Until then, you have nothing to stand on and never will because I know my God, he's your God too and he WILL reveal himself to you if you ask. Watch him work!
Another thing, God's perfect intent was true. He created Adam and Eve and the rest of us with the choice of free will. Did he know by being God that we would choose wrong. I'm sure he did but it still didn't make any difference to him as his love for us was bigger than just letting us off the hook by not giving us a free will. We can certainly give our children choices and just "know" they aren't always going to choose what we'd like for them to do or say but if we stepped in every single time we "knew" they were going to choose the wrong way, then we really do them a disservice. Well, that's how God operates. Of course he knows when we are going to choose unwisely, but he can't just walk in and let us off the hook because then we wouldn't be able to learn anything from the mistakes we made...same as us and our children. You're talking in circles really because as far as "natural" suffering...there wasn't "natural suffering" to being with but because Adam and Eve chose poorly, that
have created beings that were perfect to begin with doesn't hold water. He DID create human beings in the beginning and they did have free choice just as we do. Unfortunately, they chose to do the opposite of what God told them not to do. A simple task such as not eating of the apple tree (or whatever tree...it isn't explicit what kind, but that's not the issue). That simple task should have been an easy one to adhere to but nooooo...they chose to eat that fruit anyway and because they did, we as their children suffer the consequences of their actions. It would be like a parent who chooses to smoke crack while she's pregnant and then has a baby with severe disabilities and disfigurement. Who would she blame for that? God? No! She should be blaming herself because now although this innocent little baby didn't do anything wrong, he/she has to suffer the consequences due to the fact that its mother decided smoking crack while living la vida loca was okay! That knocks your second theory.
Being a "good" God has nothing to do with what choices we make or don't make. That's like saying, you're a terrible parent if your daughter gets pregnant at age 15, right. Well, if she chooses to get pregnant at age 15 (and trust me I've had a 15 year old, you only have so much control over them...the rest is their choice and they love to play with those choices!) does that make YOU evil? No! It doesn't make her evil either but what it does do is cause a lot of difficulties in her life because now she has to choose whether or not she wants to keep that baby. Whatever choice she makes, be it she chooses to abort or keep the baby or give it up for adoption. Any one of those choices are not evil but they sure are going to cause a lot of upheaval in her life. She can't very well look at her parents and say it's all their fault, after all they were 15 once and "knew" what she would be thinking as a teen herself. She has to CHOOSE for herself! BTW, your arguement for saying that God should
Kev, it exists because we've CHOSEN for it to exist. From the beginning of time. God IS benevolent, if he weren't, he wouldn't have given us a free will...yes free will...free will doesn't cause evil, it's the choice we make because we have free will that causes evil. Nothing else. So,because there is this beautiful gift of choice we've been given by Almighty God himself, unfortunately those who wish to do harm also have that free will. Now, you speak of this congruence one of wihci is the free will defense...well...my friend, that's what it is! Everything you've said is right on but you speak of Aids as being evil. Who says Aids is evil? Oh, you're speaking of homosexuality right? That's not evil. Of course, my belief is that whatever causes someone to be attracted to the opposite sex is between them and God and none of my business. God is loving and evil exisiting has nothing to do with him except for the fact that he lets it happen. If he didn't than he would't be a good God.