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Atheists
>Adam and Eve? A beautiful story. What free will do you have if God
>knows what you will do in all situations? So, He knew we would fall
>when He created us?
>>>>>So in other words, you see nothing wrong with saying
>>>>>to somebody, "you have free will to do this or that,
>>>>>but if you do that, I will punish you."
>If you could create a world and were able to freely choose the
>conditions therein, would you allow evil(i.e. maybe the baby born all
>deformed, pain, suffering, etc)to exist? If so, why? Satan is a cop
>out.
>>>How many loving good parents do you know who kill and
>>>torture their children for all eternity if the kid doesn't do
>>>everything exactly the way the parent wants?
>I believe in a Creator, and am a former Christian, but the Christian
>explanation of things falls well short of reason today. This is true
>especially when we talk of the all-loving, all-powerful God who is
>unwilling to change the despair in the world. .... See Ya, JS
WHOA! Let's slow down here and try to lay out the basic Christian
teaching about evil and free will and then let the discussion procede
from there.
I) God wants creatures to freely love Him. Therefore they must not
be forced to love Him, they must choose to do so. Love which is
forced or necessary is meaningless. The same way you might program a
computer to print "I love you" or imagine your Teddy Bear to say "I
love you." Nice, but since there's no choice, there's no true love.
Ia) God is Goodness (a statement which remains true, despite different
opinions on the exact relation). The absence of God, therefore, is
evil. (Again, the nature of 'evil' bears investigation.)
Ib) To love God means, in part, to obey Him. God's will for us = to
love Him = to become the perfect and sinless creatures He longs for us
to be. As mystics and theologians throughout the centuries have put
it, to love God means to be 'conformed' to Him (in the literal sense).
II) Freedom requires choice. And, therefore, at least potentially,
different alternatives.
III) Since Man is created to freely love God and since true love
requires free choice, there is, necessarally, the potential for evil.
Ie the potential to disobey God = the potential to sin.
IV) Man has clearly chosen to disobey God, with disasterous results
for himself and Creation (this message of the story of the garden of
Eden -- be it history or myth. Leave that discussion for a different
thread!)
Okay. Given these brief statements, how do we deal with the various
questions which have been raised?
1. How can an all-powerful God allow evil to exist?
This is fairly straight forward. Free love of God requires choice.
Free choice requires the potential for the opposite. The opposite/
absence of God is evil. Man, in choosing not to love God, brings evil
into being. (See St. Thomas, for example, on a discussion of how God
can know 'evil' without it being actualized but that Man, in trying to
know evil, brought it into existence [whatever that means!].)
2. How could a loving God condemn people to Hell?
Again, there's the problem of free-will. How could God *force* some
one to be saved, which means [ultimately] to force them to love Him?
Again, this violates the freedom which is a definitive part of a human
being. And suppose God did, when someone who hated Him died,
transport them to Heaven, whether they liked it or not. Is He then
going to force them to stay there for all eternity?
A better way to look at the issue is to realize it's not that God
condemns people to Hell, but rather that He lets them condemn
themselves. One can imagine God saying "I love you child; love you so
much that I died for you in order to offer you salvation from your
sinful condition. I want more than anything for you to choose to
accept that salvation and love Me. But I cannot force you to do so,
for to take away your free will would be, ultimately, to uncreate you.
In the end, though I love you, if you insist on rejecting me, I must
let you condemn yourself."
3a. How can a loving all-powerful God allow there to be all the
suffering in the world?
This is the stickiest of the questions raised, and I won't try to
answer it from a purely rationalistic perspective. Rather, I'll
summarize the traditional Christian answer.
Man is, in some sense, the head of the physical world -- by his
combination of the rational/spiritual and the physical he is it's
king. Man's fall into sin has, somehow, involved all Creation in that
destruction, and wounded Creation is a reflection of wounded Man. At
the End, when we are resurrected, judged and redeemed, Creation too
will be made anew, and plagues, earthquakes, mosquitos (well, at least
I hope so) will be no more.
3b. That's very nice and pious, but it doesn't answer the question.
God is all powerful and good now; these nasty things exist now. Why
doesn't God do something about them? -- I mean, it wouldn't violate
Man's free will to stop earthquakes, and that freedom is the issue
here, right?
Fair enough. But realize something -- plagues, earthquakes,
disease, etc -- even death -- *aren't evil*!! Yeah, they're
unpleasant, but that's something very different. And Christian
teaching has always been that these things are used to further our
salvation -- to chastize the wicked and to teach the virtue of
patience and trust in God.
So it's not impossible that (a) there should be these unpleasant
things in creation and (b) that the good all-powerful God exists. You
might argue, "well, if *I* were God, I wouldn't run things that way."
Fine. But the Christian answer is that clearly God *does* run things
that way, so it must be for the best, and who am I to second-guess God
anyway?
What this comes down to is that neither the existence of evil
(properly speaking) nor the presence of unplesant physical situations
proves that God does not exist, or that He is not good, or that He is
not all-powerful.
>Interesting. Doesn't an all-powerful being who can forsee suffering and
>does nothing to stop it qualify as evil?
See my previous post, questions 3a and 3b. They deal with exactly
this. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough? Let me try to summarize that
section:
3a. How can a loving all-powerful God allow there to be all the
suffering in the world?
Christian postulates and conclusions:
-- Man was created to love God.
-- True love requires freedom.
-- Freedom includes the possibility of opposites.
-- The opposite of loving God is sin/evil/imperfection.
-- This is the meaning of the Fall -- Man chooses/creates evil.
-- The resulting corruption also effects creation.
-- Therefore there is such suffering.
This actually doesn't deal with the issue of things like war. Let me
get to that below.
3b. That's very nice and pious, but it doesn't answer the question.
God is all powerful and good now; these nasty things exist now. Why
doesn't God do something about them? -- I mean, it wouldn't violate
Man's free will to stop earthquakes, and that freedom is the issue
here, right?
True. However, plagues, earthquakes, death -- they aren't evil. In
fact, suffering isn't even evil. It's unplesant, yes, but not *evil*.
So God is not evil for allowing them. Sure, it's not how *you* might
run things if you were God, but that's not the point [at least, not
immediately]. Rather, the point is that faith in a good, all-powerful
God and the existence of suffering are not incompatible.
3a-2) What about war, murder, etc?
This is actually easier to justify than plague/disasters. Part of
Man's freedom is for people to be able to affect each other. Indeed,
that's the second commandment ("Love your neighbore as yourself") and,
in fact, Christ teaches that to love each other is one way to express
love for God. This, again, brings in the issue of free will. If we
are able to freely love each other, than we are free to hurt/hate/
harm each other. And that's exactly what happens in war, murder, etc.
Also, in a way, with starvation etc, because though other people might
not be the immediate cause of the suffering, they fail to love by
helping each other.
Laurence A. Pittenger
CSNET : pittenger-laurence@cs.yale.edu , 44pittenger@cua.edu
BITNET : pittenger-laurence@yalecs , 44pittenger@cuavax
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