This is actually a huge topic so if anyone wants me to I can write up a longer post or maybe even a page under the Philosophy section. In a nutshell, the problem of evil is only a problem for people who believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and wholly benevolent deity exists. This is one reason that many people don’t believe in any god or gods. Pick any example of evil, like a child dying of cancer, and ask yourself how could this happen if a deity with those attributes existed? As Epicurus (~300 BCE) put it:
Like this enough to share? Use any combination of these:
Like this:
Like Loading...
About TheStevenator
My name is Steven Zuber. I am a 23 year old college student, studying cognitive science and whatever else catches my fancy at CSU. In my free time, I study subject that either aren't tought well in school, like math, or aren't covered at all in real classes, like interesting physics and psychology, play video games, and whatever else it is that people do. I'm dating an amazing woman who is currently getting her Master's degree at Columbia University.
Personally, I feel/think that “evil” is a shared condition across the race on this planet. No idea why anyone would come close to thinkking about doing this to you.
I’m not sure if I understand what you mean. Like, you don’t know why someone would ask me to write up a full exegeses on the problem of evil?
Also, I’d define evil in more than just the moral sense. I think that if anything happens in the universe in a way that has more suffering involved than is necessary, it’s evil. This includes, but is not limited to, predator and prey relationships in the animal kingdom.
In the following I’m presenting an attempt of an answer to the Problem of Evil, which may be called “Theodicy from divine justice”:
- God’s perfect justice prevents Him from relieving people with unforgiven sins from their sufferings (see Isaiah 59,1-2).
- Unlike God Christians are not perfectly just. Therefore, unlike God, they are in a position to help people with unforgiven sins. By doing this they may make those among them who haven’t yet accepted God’s salvation receptive of it (Matthew 5,16, 1 Peter 2,11-12, and 3,1-2), which in turn frees these persons from suffering in the afterlife.
- The greater God’s beneficial power due to His love, the greater God’s destructive power due to His justice (see Matthew 13,27-29). Striving to prevent as much suffering as possible God can only interfere to such a degree that the beneficial effect of the interference is not neutralized by the destructive effect of it.
- Someone who dies before he or she reaches the age of accountability, i.e. before he or she can distinguish between good and evil (see Genesis 2,16-17, Deuteronomy 1,39, and Isaiah 7,16) faces no punishment in the afterlife, as he or she would not have been able to commit sins. So, God may not be inclined to prevent such a person’s death.
- A person’s suffering in this life may have a redeeming effect (Luke 16,25) and consequently contribute to a decrease of the respective person’s suffering in the afterlife; the amount of suffering in this life is so to speak subtracted from the amount of suffering in the afterlife. So, God may not be inclined to relieve this person’s suffering.
- A person’s suffering in this life may make the person receptive of God’s salvation (Luke 15,11-21), which in turn frees this person from suffering in the afterlife.
- There are degrees of punishment in the afterlife depending on one’s moral behaviour (Matthew 16,27, 2 Corinthians 5,10), one’s knowledge of God’s will (Matthew 11,20-24, Luke 12,47-48), and, as mentioned before, one’s amount of suffering in this life (Luke 16,25).
- Those people who suffer more in this life than they deserve due to their way of life are compensated for it by receiving rewards in Heaven.
Discussions of this theodicy can be found in the following threads, in which my comments have been sent under the names “Patrick” or “Patrick (Christian)”.
http://www.daylightatheism.org/2011/07/they-have-no-answer.html#comments
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=15584
This is one of the roughly twelve responses that can be made to the problem of evil. It’s a happy accident that I had my next post, the Russell On Afterlife Theodicy scheduled for this morning already. My next post will be up in about an hour and it deals with the parable of the twelve officers.
My conclusion of from observing evil in the world is that, if you want to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of God, you have do drop at least one of the three characteristics that God is said to have. After all, if God didn’t have the power to intervene, one can hardly blame him. If he doesn’t know about it, then he can’t be held responsible. If he is evil himself, then one can only expect evil in the world.
While it is clear that you and I disagree on this issue, I want to say that I really appreciate the way that you expressed your disagreement. As I’m sure you’ve seen, many people can’t seem to keep a cool head when they encounter something that they disagree with. Please feel free to comment on either the Russell passage or my post on the twelve officers, or you can always to email me.
Also, I hadn’t heard the afterlife theodicy defended in quite this way before. I’ll give it some serious thought. Cheers!
“In a nutshell, the problem of evil is only a problem for people who believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and wholly benevolent deity exists.”
I want to put a question to those who claim that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and wholly benevolent deity exists: How did they come to know that this deity is all-powerful, all-knowing, and wholly benevolent? Or, was it all simply their imagination? Will they please describe to us in detail by which means they came to know absolutely correctly what attributes this deity did actually have? Did they possess some supernatural power that common people does not normally possess? Or, were they also all-knowing like the deity they believe in? .
“Will they please describe to us in detail by which means they came to know absolutely correctly what attributes this deity did actually have?”
No, they won’t. I when I was younger, I first really noticed this problem when considering the individual arguments for god. Namely, even if they did prove the existence of a deity with one of their lame arguments, how do they justify the further leap to their god of choice?
David Hume wrote a short book called “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” that contains a lot of discussion on this issue. Look into it for some follow up.
Pingback: Logical Fallacies 101: The Appeal to Ignorance | Think That Through
Pingback: My “De-Conversion” Story | Think That Through
Pingback: Logical Fallacies 101: Special Pleading | Think That Through