»Why doesn't god stop evil?«

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yea and look how it has thrived... Silly and stupid, that's how I feel

posted by The ONEder Man

in-my-opinion.org -> Religion and Mysteries, from worship to werewolves -> Religious & Philosophical Topics -> Why doesn't god stop evil?

God doesen't stop evil because God does not exist lol.

posted by seraphim

God did not create evil, He created choice. Choice is why Lucifer fell, choice is why Adam and Eve sinned. Realizing that would only take five minutes of reading the Bible. God is perfect and cannot be around sin, that is why Jesus had to die for us. He was perfect so then when God looks at us, he'll only see perfection and not all the crap that we've done.

posted by hellow212

sorry if someone already has said this but I don't have the time to read all the replies to this topic.
Alrighty, God gave people the choice of free will, otherwise He could've made us all listen never rebel and we'd still be in Eden but then we'd be like mindless robots so thus since he loved us so much bam! free will was given to us. Now as for the evil part, i suppose you can call it a growing experience to those of us who believe in spiritual growth and such. God still hurts when we suffer through it but then again we caused it upon ourselves and for him to stop it would go against what he already set up. I'd go along with life even if it had pain than being ignorantly obedient and not being able to make my own choices. A good example of free will in action is America, where the sayings have been,"it's my life i get to do what i want to do""You're not the boss of me" etc.
Now an addition. Supposedly it is Satan to blame for the evil if God is all good, but there's an adjustment to that, Satan also doesn't take any action. All he does is set up temptations and sits back to see if we take the bait. or as my teacher crudely illustrated,"It's like putting a fat lady in a candy store going,' oh i *munch*really shouldn't be *chomp* eating all this'" while her arm "involuntary" reaches for that pile of caramel.

posted by sunnyxrain

hic spiro spero

God didn't do shit because god does not exist. Stop this silly crap about gods and whatnot lol, grow up.

posted by seraphim

Hypothetical

seraphim:

God didn't do shit because god does not exist. Stop this silly crap about gods and whatnot lol, grow up.

I think that in an environment like this, nonbelievers (like you and me) should think hypothetically and rationally point out either the connections or the disparaties.

Personally, I think that most everyone here is forgetting that after death, a soul going to heaven might be able to remember their time on earth. If this is the case, a heaven without "evil" is perfectly possible, since the so-called neccesary contrast to the good is the evil that is still recalled from lifetime experience.

Now, about "good" and "evil"... no matter what, these terms rely on at least one central defining loyalty. If this is God, "good" refers to everything promoting God's will, and "evil" refers to everything going against it. Also, I just don't see it practical to classify individual humans as good or evil.

However, If God exists as described in the Bible, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. A God who creates humans knowing they will sin has essentially doomed them to sin. This God made humans evil. The very first humans, virgin to all "wrongdoing", chose to sin. The source of the evil is obviously not the tempter, but the creator, who literally completely set them up. From this fundamental flaw onward, the entire Christian scape of belief falls apart. Why should an omnipotent God be bound to a system in which he must sacrifice someone to atone for the sins of all, when he could simply forgive everyone? That's the real question: the need for Jesus to abolish evil, and why God doesn't.

posted by astrofrank128

controversal thought -

if god loved us he would have never given us religion -

therefore -

religion is evil?

posted by clearandcloudy

To believe that God is sovereign and created all things, then one has to believe that God created both good and evil. The reason He did this is so we would have a choice to either love and follow Him (who is good) or turn away from Him. He gave the angels the same choice (i.e. Lucifer, the most beautiful and highest ranking angel choice to serve himself and 1/3 of all the angels followed him). The reason God did this is because if we had no choice then our love for Him would not be genuine. Without a choice He would basically be forcing us follow Him and do His will. Think of any of your own relationships. Do you want to force people to love you or would you rather they do it because they want to?

However, because He is omniscient, He knew good and well that we would fail the test and choose to “become like God” as Satan said to Eve in the garden (which was a lie be the way). So in a since, yes, it was a set up. But knowing we would fail, God also had a plan for us to get back into His good graces. This is obvious in the fact that the Old Testament is filled with scripture pointing to a messiah (a savior). This savior who came to earth in the form of Jesus Christ is Gods gift to us. Jesus took on the punishment that every person on this earth should get. In order for us to go be with God in heaven, we have to be perfect and sinless and so far, I have never met anyone who is. So basically, no one of us deserves to be saved, but God sent His Son to die for us because he still loves us and wants us to love Him.

But this salvation from God is not something we can work for or buy. It doesn’t matter how many times someone goes to church, how many widows and orphans they help or how much money they give, they can’t earn salvation. It’s a gift, the gift of Jesus Christ…so like with any gift, you can only choose to accept it or reject it. And in the end God will respect this choice that YOU make.

posted by ytoldi

he chose me

and I choose him . .

posted by clearandcloudy

ytoldi:

The reason God did this is because if we had no choice then our love for Him would not be genuine. Without a choice He would basically be forcing us follow Him and do His will.

First, you're saying that genuine love cannot exist without sin (since sin only exists because of free will, and genuine love cannot exist without free will). Is that really the definition of genuine love you want to use? If so, how can genuine love possibly exist in heaven, where there is no sin?

Second, you're saying that god acts like a bratty child --- that he needs all the love in the world. Why? If he's all-powerful and all-superior and perfect, then why is he so desperate for our love? He sounds more like a clingy, emotionally unstable ex-girlfriend that you should run screaming away from.

ytoldi:

Think of any of your own relationships. Do you want to force people to love you or would you rather they do it because they want to?

In my own relationships, I don't send anyone who chooses not to love me to a torture camp, to remain there for the rest of their natural lives. However, this is exactly what the bible says god does. This is incontrovertibly true by anyone who believes in god and hell.

Do you think that if I exhibited this tendency --- to send everyone who chooses not to love me to a torture camp --- that you would call me all-loving? Kind of funny, then, that you call your god all-loving.

posted by Tiefling

Who or what created god? And who or what created the god that created god blah blah ... but ok, if god exists, he is an evil motherfucker, through and through.

posted by seraphim

seraphim:

Who or what created god? And who or what created the god that created god blah blah ... but ok, if god exists, he is an evil motherfucker, through and through.

evil? i can't say for sure he isn't, but i find it much more likely that if there is a god, he is filled with more apathy than evil.

posted by CustomerDisservice

If *any* god exists, I'll bet it doesn't care about humans any more than humans care about ants. To quote one of my favorite movies, »Fallen« ...

Hobbes:

I find it hard to believe that we are part of some great moral experiment conducted by some superior being. If he is so great why should he care about what we do? Do we care about ants - from a moral perspective?

However, if a god reminiscent of the one depicted in Christian mythology exists, then we have to deal with the fact that god created everything. There is nothing that exists that cannot be attributed to god, including evil. The immediate Christian response to this is, "God didn't bring evil into this world; man did." However, god created free will in such a way that it could be used to perform evil, and defined evil in such a way that most means of exercising free will would readily contribute to the spread of evil. He created humans as ignorant creatures, and let them wander without constant supervision, such that they were susceptible to other influences. He created a means by which humans could perform evil, and placed it within easy grasp of these original, ignorant humans. He also created a being named Lucifer and filled him with such pride/ambition that Lucifer sought to take control of god's creation. After creating all of these elements, he threw them all in a pot together, let them simmer, and was then "surprised" when humans committed a sin.

If god is omnipotent, then there are infinitely many universes he could have created, each with its own distinct set of outcomes. If humans have free will, then our actions are non-deterministic, or "random". However, if god is omniscient, then god knows what every human would do even before he created this particular universe. He knew, when he created this universe, that humans would perform evil. So there are only two possibilities --- (1) Of all the infinite universes that god could have created, not a single one was logically possible in which humans did not perform evil, or (2) Of all the infinite universes that god could have created, he purposefully selected one in which humans would perform evil. In either case, it was entirely god's decision to create a universe in which evil exists, since he could have either not created the universe, or created one without evil.

When you consider the presence of the Tree of Knowledge and Lucifer in the Garden of Eden, it seems unlikely that a universe could not have been created without evil. After all, had god not placed either the Tree of Knowledge or Lucifer in the Garden of Eden, then humans would not have performed evil. Thus, god purposefully created a universe in which humans would perform evil. (Therefore, Lucifer furthers god's purposes, since god created this universe knowing there would be evil, and since Lucifer encourages the spread of evil. This implies that Lucifer basically does god's dirty-work --- since god's self-proclaimed goodness prohibits him from directly spreading evil, he created a sentient being to spread evil for him.)

I don't buy the idea of all creation being a moral experiment. Experiments are performed by humans in order to test hypotheses, due to a lack of knowledge. If god is omniscient, then god doesn't need to perform experiments. So why, then, does evil exist? If God's whole purpose was to produce creatures who loved him faithfully, he could have created those exact beings from the start, since he has always known exactly who those people would be, and skipped the whole Earth/damnation part.

Given that there's really no good answer based entirely on Christianity, it would seem that some assumptions are wrong. Perhaps god isn't omnipotent, or isn't omniscient. Perhaps humans do something that god cannot do, or know something that god cannot understand. Perhaps the act of creation itself transformed god into a less-than-perfect entity. Maybe Descartes was wrong --- maybe existence in thought alone is more perfect than existence in reality, and maybe by transforming his thoughts into reality, god fuc ked up.

Or maybe Judaism/Christianity just didn't consider all this stuff when it was founded, and has changed over time to encompass such concepts as omniscience and omnipotence, and is in fact a load of bullshit.

(As a brief, off-topic analogy to Christian mythology --- God brought home a hungry dog, and put a steak on the floor, and told the dog not to eat the steak. He then called a friend to watch the dog, knowing that this friend would encourage the dog to eat the steak, and then left for the day. When he came back that evening and found that the dog had eaten the steak, he was shocked and appalled, and beat the dog senseless. From that point on, he took out his anger at this incident upon all dogs that were born afterward, beating puppies senseless wherever he saw them as punishment for the one hungry dog who had eaten a steak. Much later, he felt that the only way he could forgive dogs for having eaten a steak was if he allowed a dog to kill him, so God went ahead and let a pack of wild dogs kill him. This made God feel much better about dogs.)

posted by Tiefling

I Can Prove the Christian God Does Not Exist

Free Will is always used as an explanation as to why God cannot stop evil since he is omnipotent, omniscient, and good.

I can prove this argument to be false. There is no such thing as Free Will. Human beings are already slaves. We are slaves to our genetic programming (the combination of the sperm and egg from our parents) and our environmental programming (experiences and nutrients from conception until death).

These two elements dictate who we are and the choices we make in life. We cannot make decisions that defy this programming. At any one moment in our lives when faced with a choice the decision we make is completely dependent on our genetic programming and environmental programming which has been layered on top of the genetic programming chronologically.

Ergo we are slaves to that programming, ergo we do not have Free Will.

So if God exists as Christian thought has defined him and he is good, omnipotent, and omniscient, then he would be compelled to step in and stop evil. We are already slaves and have no free will, his stepping in would make us slaves to his will for that moment but we are already slaves with no Free Will as I have just shown. How can he be said to be denying us Free Will when we are already slaves and have no Free Will? He can't.

So either the God of Christianity is Not Good and in fact Evil or he just does not exist. Either way he is not the God that Christianity has defined.

posted by rfrancis1980

Re: Why doesn't god stop evil?

knn:

If god is ominipotent (= can do everything, can stop evil) and omniscient (= knows everything, including the evil that is about to occur) and infinite good (= wouldn't let anything bad happen) then why doesn't he do anything against evil in the world?

ba-ba-ba-bake your noodle...

posted by Michael S

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