Why Did God Have to Make Evil?

[TheJackel]

Well, damn. I missed your post and I didn't have to tread over the same ground...

Well, they say you can't reason with the unreasonable ..

[Davin]

Well, damn. I missed your post and I didn't have to tread over the same ground...

Well, they say you can't reason with the unreasonable ..

It seems they have the same view on free will as Henry Ford did on car colours, "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black."

In that they think that free will is good, so long as you only choose what god wants you to choose.

[Gawen]

I just don't understand how Christians can't see this. It's in their very own manual. Even people that don't believe in the Judeo/Christian god have no free will - look at Sodom and Gomorrah, for example. God killed the inhabitants of the city. I would say their free will was severely curtailed...permanently. And then look at Job's wife, who had the alleged free will to look back but was turned to salt for doing so. Why did God make evil? I don't know, but he's a mass murderer and killed at least one witness, Job's wife.

Peter's free will was 'interrupted' by God having him deny Jesus three times.

If a god can affect the lives of people, covertly or overtly, no one can know if it was God that moved them or themselves. In this case, free will is an illusion.

[Voter]

I just don't understand how Christians can't see this. It's in their very own manual. Even people that don't believe in the Judeo/Christian god have no free will - look at Sodom and Gomorrah, for example. God killed the inhabitants of the city. I would say their free will was severely curtailed...permanently. And then look at Job's wife, who had the alleged free will to look back but was turned to salt for doing so. Why did God make evil? I don't know, but he's a mass murderer and killed at least one witness, Job's wife.

Peter's free will was 'interrupted' by God having him deny Jesus three times.

If a god can affect the lives of people, covertly or overtly, no one can know if it was God that moved them or themselves. In this case, free will is an illusion.

It all comes down to definitions of omniscience and free will.

If your definitions lead to the conclusion that god's omniscience causes all of our thoughts and actions, then sure, there's no free will. However, the larger argument then falls apart. Remember, the main argument is that, if we have no free will, god is unjust to punish us. However, if god causes our every thought and action, then we are not autonomous entities and have no right to justice in the first place. By this understanding, we are basically characters in a very complex novel. No one accuses Shakespeare of being unjust for killing off Romeo and Juliet.

[Voter]

If there is no suffering and no evil in heaven, Heaven is by definition, a perfect place. If God created evil because it wanted us to have free will; free will is more important than anything else. If free will is so importance that God creates evil in order to allow moral free will, beings in Heaven must have free will.

What you're missing is that free will is not an end in itself, it's a means to a greater end. The greater end is righteousness. Once people or angels are determined to be righteous or unrighteous, free moral will is no longer necessary.

[lookitsaustin]

I only need to say the following to which invalidates all of that.

Omniscience, Omnipotence, and "All Loving".  All of which are complete contradictions of themselves and of the above quoted post from AnimatedDirt. It simply goes in one ear and out the other with them  

I know. I've been debating this stuff for more than 15 years. They just can't decompartmentalise. It gets old quickly now. My patience wears thin faster. Really, the only thing that keeps me doing it is for the lurkers, both theists and atheists. Many are still learning this stuff and by hearing our arguments that totally refute theirs, I hope that we have been good teachers.

I like reading a lot of this stuff.... well not the ones that might as well be a book.... but a lot of this stuff I like to read because hopefully one day I can talk my parents out of habitually drinking the kool-aid.

Honestly, sometimes I really don't understand why they, my parents or any xtian, love to be in such a Stockholm Syndrome situation.

[AnimatedDirt]

I'm only going to niy pick one thing in this post. The part in red below should be the first item in the list:

I only need to say the following to which invalidates all of that.

Omniscience, Omnipotence, and "All Loving".  All of which are complete contradictions of themselves and of the above quoted post from AnimatedDirt. It simply goes in one ear and out the other with them  

It's amazing how one says one thing and then in the next breath they disregard the whole thing and ignore the rest.
It simply goes in one ear and out the other with "you".

If you're not willing to discuss, stay out of the discussion.

Knowing the created would "fail" and choose unwisely is not failure on the part of God to create a freethinking creature.  Now let that sink in your brain a bit.  Give that a few moments...

Now the omniscience comes in with the "plan", knowing...heh...knowing that without the "plan" the whole offspring of the created will die without it.  To know before hand is omniscience, to make it a gift is omnipotent, to come down and pay Himself is "all loving".

[AnimatedDirt]

free moral will is no longer necessary.

I disagree.  I hope you don't mean that come heaven, we, the created no longer have free will.  Quite the opposite IMHO.

The new creature, Adam and Eve, had freewill and knowledge of right and wrong.  However they didn't have the knowledge of Evil...that being what comes from doing wrong.  Now, with that knowledge and being created new, the new and perfect creature armed with the knowledge of good and evil, now has the FULL capacity to freely choose righteousness and freely leave evil alone now knowing the cost.

So I hear the skeptic saying, "Why not just create with the knowledge?"  I'm not certain.  I suppose it is much like our children born to us here.  They need nurturing and gradually learn the system within the family and then the society in which they live.  Much like  a child being told not to play with fire.  You tell him/her over and over, but they don't listen and somtimes find out the hard way.

[Voter]

free moral will is no longer necessary.

I disagree.  I hope you don't mean that come heaven, we, the created no longer have free will.  Quite the opposite IMHO.

I mean what I said. God's goal is righteousness, not free will. To say that free will is not necessary does not imply that it does not exist. Personally I think that God's sustenance is necessary to prevent sin, but that's neither here nor there for purpose of the position I was addressing.

[TheJackel]

I'm only going to niy pick one thing in this post. The part in red below should be the first item in the list:

I only need to say the following to which invalidates all of that.

Omniscience, Omnipotence, and "All Loving".  All of which are complete contradictions of themselves and of the above quoted post from AnimatedDirt. It simply goes in one ear and out the other with them  :drool . Now you are just intentionally playing ignorant :shake:

For sake of argument, I have written a paradox that explains why Omniscience and Omnipotence self-collapse, and why they are logical fallacies:

Logical Fallacy:

In logic and rhetoric, a fallacy is incorrect reasoning in argumentation resulting in a misconception. By accident or design, fallacies may exploit emotional triggers in the listener or interlocutor (e.g. appeal to emotion), or take advantage of social relationships between people (e.g. argument from authority). Fallacious arguments are often structured using rhetorical patterns that obscure the logical argument, making fallacies more difficult to diagnose. Also, the components of the fallacy may be spread out over separate arguments.

The Paradox:
Can an Omnipotent and Omniscient Entity design and create something that can do or think that which it would not already know in complete infinite detail before it was created, during it's entire existence, and after it's existence?

If someone say yes, they fail utterly at comprehending the definitions of Omniscience and Omnipotence. These attributes are self-collapsing and self-contradictions to which make them utter logical fallacies. Anyone that tries to argue otherwise either doesn't get it out if innocent ignorance, is intentionally playing ignorant, or is trying to circumvent logic and reason for a plea at someone's ignorance in order to further their own ideological agenda. This Paradox is exactly why free Will under just Omniscience alone is a logical Fallacy, never mind the complete self-cancellation of both Omni's when in conjunction with each other as attributes being assigned to some entity. It annoys people when theists purposely ignore or invent such impossible and nonsensical concepts, ideas, notions, or self-invented arguments in order to attempt to circumvent commonsense, logic, rationality, knowledge, or even someones intelligence.

[TheJackel]

free moral will is no longer necessary.

I disagree.  I hope you don't mean that come heaven, we, the created no longer have free will.  Quite the opposite IMHO.

I mean what I said. God's goal is righteousness, not free will. To say that free will is not necessary does not imply that it does not exist. Personally I think that God's sustenance is necessary to prevent sin, but that's neither here nor there for purpose of the position I was addressing.

More asserting the Will of a deity to which does not speak for itself.  And I can't believe you would actually argue that free will is not necessary . It's like arguing that all people should be dumb sheep and just follow what you believe in Voter. Talking about pleading for avocation of brainwashing in to obedience of your ideological construct. And do you have any evidence to support such a claim that there is no "Free Will" in this supposed magical wonderland you call Heaven? And how do you get righteousness out of hypocrisy? Only someone that doesn't understand or ignores the definitions of these will rationalize or equivocate them. It's almost if you do absolutely no critical thinking on your own. And I'm starting to think that you are only here to preach to the point of it being considered spam.

Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie.

And your problem is that you believe this crap is "Righteous" or Justified, and basically because you have been programmed not to question what you consider power, and authority over your very soul. Most likely so out of fear and emotional attachments driven into you since you first became a Christian. Hypocrisy of murder, death, ect are apparently OK with you so long as it's your Authority figure doing the Killing ect. That's a pretty good sign that you are in a cult son!.

But no worries, under Omniscient being you were Planned to be right down to your every thought and feeling before you ever had them. Just as I under your Omniscient being was put here to argue with you in every infinite detail before we ever had begun this discussion.. It must be fun to be puppets! This is the worst and most boring drama TV show ever as well because your Omniscient Entity already knows the outcome in infinite detail.

Edit:

God's goal is righteousness, not free will.

(bold being related to this thread)

This right here verifies the very argument I was making earlier as well. Your religion is the programming of blind unquestionable servitude to power, control, and authority. You prove this every time I see you post this. That is the actual underlining message and context of the entire bible! And it's done through logical and emotional manipulation of the weak and vulnerable, the mechanics of brainwashing, and subliminal programming. It uses the Seeding process, Fear tool, and the Carrot to engineer blind devotion by virtue of blind faith. Which is fine until it becomes an excuse to control everyone else, used to manipulate others into the ideology, used to spread false information, used disingenuously, used to attack others in social dogmas for the purpose to force them emotionally into the ideology, used to assert assumptions ans self invented arguments as magical truths(Facts) from a Carl Sagan position, used to spread subliminal messages, used dishonestly in discussions,  or used to target easily impressionable and vulnerable minds, or put forth into legislation and government to force everyone to conform to it.

[Whitney]

Jackel and also anyone else who this should apply to:

I haven't kept up with this thread but it has become apparent that it's heading in an uncivil direction.

Reminder there that ideas such as omnipotence and omniscience are not "stupid" and are seriously discussed by even modern day religious philosophers and that if someone is unable to discuss without throwing in ad homs then they should just bow out of the topic.

Also, please remember that it is not okay to call for the banning of a member or tell a member they should be banned simply because you disagree with them.  If you don't like how a member is acting and you believe they are breaking HAF rules you can report them or thier post to a moderator.

If you post something to the forum which you think you shouldn't have, while you have the ability, it is bad manners to edit out the comment.  If you must edit out the comment you should throw in an apology at the same time so you don't' appear to be hiding something.  I allow users to edit their posts because most don't abuse the system and need to edit out typos from time to time...let's not allow a few bad apples to ruin it for everyone.

[TheJackel]

Jackel and also anyone else who this should apply to:

I haven't kept up with this thread but it has become apparent that it's heading in an uncivil direction.

Reminder there that ideas such as omnipotence and omniscience are not "stupid" and are seriously discussed by even modern day religious philosophers and that if someone is unable to discuss without throwing in ad homs then they should just bow out of the topic.

Also, please remember that it is not okay to call for the banning of a member or tell a member they should be banned simply because you disagree with them.  If you don't like how a member is acting and you believe they are breaking HAF rules you can report them or thier post to a moderator.

If you post something to the forum which you think you shouldn't have, while you have the ability, it is bad manners to edit out the comment.  If you must edit out the comment you should throw in an apology at the same time so you don't' appear to be hiding something.  I allow users to edit their posts because most don't abuse the system and need to edit out typos from time to time...let's not allow a few bad apples to ruin it for everyone.

Don't worry Whitney, I'm not going to personally attack them, but I will point out their dishonesty. Or at least what appears to be dishonesty, preaching, or spam. But I will try keep it more civil. I will keep that in mind though not to call out for the banning of someone, so I will edit that out along with other things that I agree are borderline uncivilized due to frustration. And I thus apologize for any of those comments. Such as giving out the ban hammer for circular spamming arguments.

I'm also fully aware that philosophers have been seriously discussing those things  

Cheers!

[Whitney]

One thing I left out was that if someone finds it hard to respond with a civil and thoughtful tone the best course of action is to not respond at all...one can even post that they aren't going to respond because they feel they can't do so without acting emotional if that helps them be able to actually not respond emotionally.

[TheJackel]

One thing I left out was that if someone finds it hard to respond with a civil and thoughtful tone the best course of action is to not respond at all...one can even post that they aren't going to respond because they feel they can't do so without acting emotional if that helps them be able to actually not respond emotionally.

The problem with that though is when someone tries to be direct, stern, or blunt to avoid circular arguments as it is often viewed as uncivilized vs constructive criticism, or keeping things on topic.    Hence, I don't highlight things with the intent to be rude, but rather to point out important things that need to be focused on to which either are being ignored or not addressed by someone repeatedly. But I'm not sure if that is against the forum rules though.