This is an interesting question I saw on quora.
The existence of evil is fatal to a specific type of god, the all loving, all knowing all powerful kind. But for those who believe in a god that suffers with us, or a god that is not all loving nor powerful nor knowing is not affected by the presence of any amount of evil.
There are theodicies that try to explain the compatibility of God and evil as we experience in the universe.
There are for example the argument that this is the best of all possible worlds, or that freewill can explain the evil( though this doesn’t explain natural evil), or that this is a place for preparation or learning or that we don’t have the understanding necessary to know why evil exists.
Random thoughts 
Well, if I may, the existence of freely evolving, forever compounding evil does indeed point to a little chap we may call TOOAIN.
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Buy the book. I reviewed it here (hopefully without too much misunderstanding) as ‘Laconic Sesquipedalian’:
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You’re a gem!
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Nice work! It is amusing that the reviews are so bimodal: 59% *****, 41% *!
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Are you talking about me behind my back again?
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Heavens no. You’re more a coffee table book than a book book ๐
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I’ve rarely read a better description!
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Haha Pink!
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This theory does have some weight.
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Teleological weight, certainly… the rest is just nonsense ๐
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Hahah well, you can day that
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Was just thinking that as I read this post. Best solution for why there’s evil is that “God” is evil and likes it this way. Absolutely PERFECT answer for this issue.
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It lacks the warm-fuzzy for a sale ๐
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Solves many problems
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I know that you meant your books as an amusing thought exercise, John. But dammit, I am totally a convert to your rather…Lovecraftian…view of things!
Could TOOAIN simply be another name for Cthulhu? Or better yet, Azaroth:
[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinityโthe boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.
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His book provided an alternative that seems to make so much sense
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http://www.debunking-christianity.com/2019/10/st-peters-magic-spell-healing.html#more
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Regarding the ultimate expressions of Good and Evil, one cannot exist without the other. And, if there is no evidence of either, then the entire dichotomy must be seen as logically fallacious.
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Trying to assign human value categories to the mechanistic doings of a cold and uncaring universe (i.e. nature) seems to be a fallacious endeavor? As human beings existing in human societies, we do of course assign “values” to human actions. But that evolves over time as well. I would agree with the theists that the definition of universal morality is really difficult if you try to base it on secular logic. But they, of course, ignore that their own unchanging, God-given moral codes also evolve and are completely socially derived and defined.
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Yes, the dichotomy is fallacious because it relies upon the absolute concepts of Good and Evil which evidentially exist nowhere other than within the human mind. Here’s a thought experiment:
Imagine a hypothetical Earth exactly as it is today except that Homo sapiens never evolved. Would Good and Evil, or even gods and religion for that matter, exist at all?
However, do people and all creatures exhibit a complex mix of constructive and destructive behaviors? Yes, of course they do. But, are individuals exclusively one or the other? No, of course they aren’t.
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However, do people and all creatures exhibit a complex mix of constructive and destructive behaviors? Yes, of course they do. But, are individuals exclusively one or the other? No, of course they arenโt.
Hitler loved animals and was a vegetarian! !!!!
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The sages have said no man is wholly good nor wholly bad. I think even the psycho has some positive attributes
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Good and evil do not exist in the manner that we could say Brian is real but are, in my view, results. An act is good if it promotes life and bad if it is detrimental to life or good social living.
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How do you know I am real, Maka? I could be some kind of Russian Bot designed to stir up the evil sinners and atheists against the One True Church!
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A bot would not be as interesting as you are. I see spam regularly I would know a bot๐
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What other values would we assign if not human concepts. Do we have an alternative way of understanding the world? Because language is a human construction and without which we are unable to make sense of the world.
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True. But the mistake is conflating human concepts and language with reality. The human mind looks for causality and causal agents, but sometimes things just are…or just happen.
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You are right
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It is argued that were there a god responsible for the universe, she could organise things such that our choices were limited to degrees of good.
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GOD created evil when he gave us choise
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But since God supposedly exists outside of time and knew at the beginning what each one of would โchooseโ, free will is a meaningless and contradictory concept. How can the omniscient creator of all give his creation anything like โfree choiceโ. Logical fail.
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It is like the question “Can GOD make a rock so big that he cannot lift it?” The correct answer is ,”If he says he can, then he can.” A logical fail only exists on levels below the Devine. He (I am not comfortable with GOD having a gender) makes the rules as is not required to always obey them.
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I think this is more cleverness than illumination, Pat. Sorry. It illustrates the inherent contradictions in the nature of your god as well. Is god “omniscient”? Then that means he knows what will happen. He knows at the beginning what our choice will be. Saying “he makes the rules so if he says we have free will, we have free will” is not very useful unless one is falling back on Divine Command theology. The Calvinists understood this (predestination)…and I have never been very convinced by other Christian attempts to handwave and sidestep the issue. There are a few who sidestep the issue by claiming god willingly chooses blindness w/r/t human free will. But then that does not answer how much we know about how human will and decisions are influenced by culture, by family, by history, by circumstances. So free will is, again, a very weak sauce to base an eternity of punishment on.
To me, even if we grant human beings this mythical, illogical free will, we then get into issues of the monstrosity of God allowing the birth of human beings, many of whom he knows (generally speaking) will face damnation. If the vast majority of us are to be damned by our creator, what does that say about a creator that allows our birth? You must once again fall back upon the Divine Command Theory, and my response will be YOUR god is a monstrous God. Even if in the face of such a deity I am but a microscopic molecule, I cannot accept that this is morality.
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Can god die?
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How else would god justify sending you to hell if humans can’t be blamed for how things have turned out?
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So god is responsible for evil?
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If God created that which God detests, then the blame ultimately lies with God — not with man.
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Exactly.
It is gods problem
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I have quoted this before, but one of my favorite black metal bands has interesting lyrics on this topic:
A testimony
from the dimension of regret.
This voice comes
from the second right after the disaster
when all there is left to say
in a distressed whisper is
It is too late.
The irreparable has been carved in stone
and those made accountable for it are you.
Standing, shivering in cold dim light
waiting for the sentence of the Holy Dead
like Adam and Eve at the end of time.
One may argue that it was flawed
since the beginning
that the dice were loaded
that God had it all within
that He is the Source.
O heavenly Father!
pathogenic agent of contamination.
harbringer of catastrophe,
icon of the impending Fall:
but what difference does it make?
Altitudines Satana
the vertigo of Liberty
tipped the scales.
A shadow of horror is risen.
This will not be redeemed
no matter how sincere the genuflection
and ardent the confession.
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I like this
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Yes….and this:
A testimony
from the dimension of regret.
This voice comes
from the second right after the disaster
when all there is left to say
in a distressed whisper is
It is too late.
Their vocalist is NOT a nice man. But then, I would venture few heavy metal musicians are. The lyrics in their newest album CAN be interpreted as rather…fascist. Although I also personally read them as a very emphatic warning of such tendencies. In either case, they are both disturbing and fascinating:
http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/deathspellomega/thefurnacesofpalingenesia.html#1
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This
makes so much sense. Only we can give this world meaning.
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well, Pat, this god didn’t give humans choice, but nice try. The bible has repeatedly where this god is controlling people.
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One wonders why god stopped coming down in the cool of the afternoon for some bbq.
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now that would be a god I could consider.
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A god one could get behind
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Why is the deity always referred to as omnipotent yet he/she is powerless to eradicate evil? ๐ Naked hugs!
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Or, being “omniscient”, how can he give his playthings “free will”. Incoherent!
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You have freewill so you can be a candidate for hell
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I wish I knew
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I’ve often wondered about this. Enjoy your weekend! ๐
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If one accepts all the “omni” whatever of “god” – then, is he also evil?
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Of course! Bubbling away at the heart of chaos dancing to the crazed whining flutes played by the Silence of Minds of the Universe!
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Most likely
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The only thing that cleanly solves the problem is divine incomprehensibility. Most folks are not satisfied with that God however, and prefer a Guy who thinks about their business.
The free will defense is pathetically weak, as are most of the other counterarguments in support of the Guy + evil. Boring.
Most of the flying fur surrounds what constitutes evil. That is a harder and more interesting question, I think.
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Oh yes, what constitutes evil is a far more interesting question. Would say a fawn with a fracture caught up in a forest fire constitute an example of a natural evil?
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I think someone could see their way to a ‘learning’-type argument tor our witness to the suffering of others. I have heard the kind of contingency argument that you mention – we must have these ills in the name of greater goods – applied.
But there is a realm beyond where the fire touches the fawn and begins to consume it, which is hard to account for. Such things often go on to destroy the creature before the creature ceases to be.
Other examples would be intractable and unbearable pain and inexorably deteriorating mental illness. There comes a point where the observers have said, “I get it.”, and the subject has long since become the pain or the madness, yet the process goes on. What do we make of that territory?
That realm is where all rationalizing arguments fail.
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No greater good can possibly be served by the fawn burning. I am aware of those who have made the argument for greater good as being the reason for evil and so much suffering. I don’t buy it. I think anyone intelligent enough will not buy it either
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C. S. Lewis begs that question in his book about pain. The problem isn’t that we can have pain, but that pain must have this peculiar ability to consume us completely in the right situation.
There seems to be no functional answer, in psychology, physiology or philosophy. We are left with, “the Lord works in mysterious ways”. Once you admit that, of course, all bets are off.
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The god works in mysterious ways is a to put a stop to conversation.
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This is the argument of the comfortable and protected (a well-fed British academic and popular writer like Lewis) or arguably the psychopathic (Mother Teresa)
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You are probably right
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