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.
The problem is in the first line. Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Why would God prevent evil from happening? If God prevented evil from happening, that would be a direct intervention with human free will. Now, the reason that God created humans was so that he could have beings to choose to obey him,
choose. If humans are going to choose to obey God or not, then there is one crucial thing that needs to be: a choice.
Now in order for humans to know that something is evil, you need something that isn't evil in order to make a comparison or judgement. We can call this other good. Similarly, if all things everywhere were always good, then we wouldn't know what good even was.. This can be exemplified by someone who has only eaten chocolate their entire life, and nothing else. If you ask this person if they like chocolate, the only response they could give truthfully would be "I don't know, what's good taste like?".
If God were to intervene upon our free will, disallowing us to commit evil acts, then we really wouldn't be able to rebel against God -because rebelling would fall under this category of evil. The only option for a human would be to obey God, since he wouldn't be allowing evil to happen -defeating the purpose of creating humans in the first place.
I'm gonna be lazy here. Everything that happens is God's will. God set us up to fail.
I've often heard this point of view before. Now according to the bible, Adam and Eve had the choice to either eat the fruit or not. If Adam and Eve did not eat the fruit, but still had the option to, would they still have free will? Absolutely. They would still be filling God's objective of creating beings to obey him out of free will. Now, would it be fair of God didn't allow for the option of eating the fruit in his plan? No, hence the reason that Christianity has a Savior to atone for mankind's sins, all of them. So either way, the plan succeeds. How is that setting us up to fail? We chose to eat the fruit, and as such we chose to take the path of sin. I don't want to go off onto unnecessary tangents, so my point is that God didn't set us up to fail, we have to choose to fail in order to fail.
It's also possible that God was omnipotent at first, but in creation of the Universe, he was trapped in the celestials and could only speak through the words of (I haven't studied the Bible, so correct me) the Prophet, Jesus.
And in that case, we only call him God because we are fearful that he will send us to Hell, but in reality, that's all he can do. He cannot truly smite* evil, but only punish them once they already die.
Ironically, however, the way he smites evil is by saying he smites evil. Paradox, heh.
In the first sentence, if God were omnipotent, he wouldn't have become trapped.
That depends on whether or not the definer of evil is infinite or not. If God really did define evil, evil is whatever he says it to be. Now, if humans define evil, then the definition of evil is subject to change. Since God's existence hasn't been proven or disproven, it is impossible to say whether or not evil is relative or not.
We can't really know if we have free will or not.
The only way that I have been able to come up with to prove that we all have free will is to come across the same exact choice twice and choose different options each time. This, is impossible as of now. Of course, I haven't met anyone yet that says we all don't have free will.. That would mean I could punch the guy who said that right then and there and blame God. If someone wants to try to say none of us have free will, well, I find that a rather easy argument to win.. There are so many ways to counter that claim. I have already provided one example.
Are you serious? If you join an argument on Christianity, the Bible is THE ONLY PRIMARY SOURCE.
If you have only one source, then you can not prove or disprove anything in that source without using that source. Example: Your argument is invalid, and this is true because this sentence is true. Anyways, he was arguing about Epicurus.
Edit:
I am an animal.... You are an animal too. More specifically we can be classified as Mammals. It's not a pity. Being an animal in my opinion is much more preferable than being something like a PLANT.
Which is exactly what the plants are thinking of us, RIGHT NOW
Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Oct 1 2009, 1:22 pm by CecilSunkure. Reason: Quoted wrong person
None.