Why Can't We Freely Make Only Good Choices?

Question.Everything said:

The "God is not real because evil exists" argument is probably the most popular and most argued atheist assertion, and rightly so.

The Christian response is always "Because God gave us free will, so we must have the choice to choose evil." This doesn't make sense to me.

If God is all powerful and can create anything, could he not create a world in which we all are free to make only good choices, and are morally perfect? Eliminating evil does not eliminate choice...you can still choose what to wear, what car to drive, what job you hold, etc. "Evil" just wouldn't be a part of our moral vocabulary or comprehension.

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Have you read Meditations by Descartes? Judging by your username, I feel like you would enjoy it

Free will does not have to be invoked to explain evil. Evil is not a thing in itself; it is not created. I share the opinion of Descartes who thought that evil is more like the absence of good, similar to how darkness is the absence of light. You cannot create darkness. The opening lines of Genesis are not "Let there be darkness", darkness was already there. God had to create light.

You cannot have good without evil. If you remove evil then you are left with no standard to judge the good. The good loses all value and all meaning if it has no opposite. How would you know when you're happy if you have not also been sad?

I don't think God would create a world with all-good because the good would lose all meaning and value. It would be like living in a country where the government produced endless amounts of money and handed it out free to all citizens in truckloads. The money quickly becomes worthless and a meaningless currency.

I also think there's a huge distinction between evil and suffering, but that's just my opinion. Landslides aren't evil. A lion killing an antelope isn't an evil act. Evil is a human phenomenon only. Why people die in landslides or starve during a famine is one of the most perplexing questions but I don't believe these things to be evil acts. I find suffering to be far more perplexing than humanity's evil nature.

Is that not what God is?

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God is all-good. He is the source of good. Good emanates from him and him alone. Goodness needs a source just as light needs a source. Evil is the ground state just as darkness is the ground state.

Angels (aside from one bad apple)?

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I don't believe in angels in any sort of literal sense. Metaphorically, maybe. Manifestations of God, maybe.

Question.Everything said:

If you can see it and it doesn't contradict, and God is all powerful, it follows that God should be able to create it. Comparing a perfect society to a square circle is irrelevant because you can't even imagine what a square circle looks like. You can imagine exactly what a perfect society would be like.

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Yeah, I can only imagine a perfect society in terms of controlling all the citizens so they will not do anything evil. What God creates is not actually God Himself, so if God creates man, man is not God but far different. Only God is truly perfect. Thus, creation cannot be perfect.

What God begets is perfect (Christ), so as we are not begotten but made we cannot be perfect. What you're trying to describe is generally a world full of people just like Christ to the tee, and yes, that is very hard to imagine. Again I really cannot fathom that idea.

Question.Everything said:

It's not about absolutes. Heaven is a place with a 99.9999999999% success rate, that's close enough to a perfect society for me.

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Okay? Still doesn't mean freedom would exist with no choice of evil.

Question.Everything said:

Yes. You seem to be having trouble imagining this world, evil does not exist, it is not a part of anybody's vocabulary. Evil is like a Kddafdkfjwehohasd in our reality...it's nothing. So all other choices would be genuine, as they would be the only choice would has a true desire to make.

Evil can exist, but we would be hard-wired to neglect all desire to do evil out of love for our creator and existence (much like angels). If a husband asks his wife to do something, his intentions are not evil and his wife would have no reason not to give a genuine response (he wouldn't command her around like a robot, that's immoral and evil).

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Yes, it is hard to imagine a world in which a concept and word that we understand and speak of now doesn't exist. I don't know why it is so hard for you to understand that.

So are you saying evil doesn't exist in your scenario or that evil can exist? There's a huge difference between the two and if it is the latter, to which you seem to saying in this post, I see no reason why if evil is possible to exist that at least one would not even begin to recognize it and then capitalize on the possibility. I'm not saying the request of the husband would be immoral but is something the wife may prefer not to do. My point in the Stepford analogy is that this 'perfect' world could only exist under controlled beings who only do good, like you said "hard wired." We would be the Stepford creation.

Question.Everything said:

There's no solution because you can't prove that such power exists. Infinity is only a definition for something we don't understand, it's not an actual object. That's why we can only use it in mathematics, we can write it on paper and try to understand it, but we can't demonstrate it.

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Just because I cannot prove something of God's nature doesn't mean we cannot define omnipotence. This is why as I keep saying infinity should keep it's place in mathematics and out of theology. Think about it: what other created thing could over power or be more powerful than an omnipotent Creator?

Question.Everything said:

That's a baffling and troubling statement. God created a material planet, universe, and human race in the first place. Adam and Eve were material beings from day 1. He made this all for nothing? No point?

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Only if you take it out of context like you just did. God created the universe and earth and all other life yes and these things are physical and material but again I do not believe He intended any of this earthly experience to be materialistic needs such as cloths, cars, or jobs. God wanted to be in everlasting fellowship with man, and in order for that to happen man must be faced with the desicion to also want to be in everlasting fellowship.

Question.Everything said:

And I retain that the difference between humans and angels only seems to be negative things. We suffer and they do not. We die and they do not. We feel greed and lust and they do not. Why aren't we just created as angels that love God? Why the need to create a being that endures so much suffering?

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If you want to retain that go ahead but that just ignores the more relevant significance of the difference between the two. My answer isn't going to change as to why we were not created angels -- I do no know. I just don't. All I know is that suffering, greed, and all that was not intended as part of the original creation but to avoid it man must have done so, not God.

God just has to put up with a lot of moral and natural evil by creating a world in which evil and sin is possible, but perhaps a world like this is the only one in which man can come to know God and His salvation as to preserve in Heaven. Did you ever consider that?

Question.Everything said:

The "God is not real because evil exists" argument is probably the most popular and most argued atheist assertion, and rightly so.

The Christian response is always "Because God gave us free will, so we must have the choice to choose evil." This doesn't make sense to me.

If God is all powerful and can create anything, could he not create a world in which we all are free to make only good choices, and are morally perfect? Eliminating evil does not eliminate choice...you can still choose what to wear, what car to drive, what job you hold, etc. "Evil" just wouldn't be a part of our moral vocabulary or comprehension.

Is that not what God is? Angels (aside from one bad apple)?

Thank you for helping me understand this problem.

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Evil equals not-God.
God did not "create" evil like evil would be a "thing".
This is not a question of "good things" versus "bad things".
It is a question: Do you want God?
If you do not want, it is evil.
Or did you want that God would force us to want him, like force-feeding a patient?

razeontherock said:

Actually we are both wrong in our statements. I don't believe either of us have actual data to back up any claim of "most atheists." You may conclude that most atheists you have observed have such and such a perception, and I will not challenge that. I will point out I do not watch debates, for Spiritual reasons. I should have said most atheists that I see comment on this argument of evil on CF, will step up to the plate readily admitting it is a weak argument.

I will further assert that debating this topic, "heavily" or not, is futile. It is solved, and very simply. (Takes a lot of steps and a lot to write out though)

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Sure, we can agree that we are both wrong on this topic. While I at least provided some evidence (used a sample of the most popular and well-respected atheist debaters), you pulled your assumption out of thin air (and more truthfully, personal bias and wishful thinking). While we both aren't certainly correct, you should at least note how we each draw our answers.

Yes. Bingo! And, you get it. "God's reality" is the realm of the spirit, and we are inescapably involved in spiritual warfare. This is something we do not have a choice about, but is part of the human condition.

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"Bingo" as in God's reality is evil and destructive (it is evil because it is destructive). "Warfare" is a necessity? How are these loving and good characteristics?

1) We know no home other than this present life.

2) The fakeness of your first question in this snippet is ridiculously transparent. It is a good question; why do you toss it aside in favor of unlearned assumption? this is not consistent with your username, but jumping to conclusions, armed with no info. Most unwise!

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You spoke of "homesickness". What home are we sick from?

Your often repeated idea the ONE lone angel out of millions rebelled is off by a factor of millions, at least. Fully 1/3 of heaven rebelled. (Just as a FYI)

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You're right, Lucifer was cast out with all his minions (my mistake). 1/3 of the angels in heaven rebelled.

1) No, you really can't.

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You've never offered a legitimate reason why.

3) Can we "freely choose to love God w/o suffering?" I honestly don't know, nor do I see how you could possibly answer that question. If I ever "arrive" at the goal of truly loving God like I'm supposed to, I might comment on this.

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I think we can both answer the question. Can a child not love their parent for raising them with nothing but love? A perfect parent is something very hard to come by, but there are many parents who do not inflict massive suffering on their children, and their children seem to be able to choose to love them or not.

elman said:

Wrong. The ability to love requires the ability to not love. If one cannot refuse to love then the choice to love is not a choice but simply a programed response.

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This doesn't make any sense.

Do you have the ability to speak English only because you also have the ability to not speak English? If English were the only language, are you forced to speak in English, or can you choose to not speak at all? There is still a choice. Similarly, we have the choice to "not love" God as you mentioned, but that has nothing to do with suffering. The absence of love is not suffering, it is nothing.

Question.Everything said:

The absence of love is not suffering, it is nothing.

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Instead of chasing you all over the map with all the various ideas on the table right now, this ONE idea needs to be discussed and understood. You posit that the absence of Love = nothing. Essentially everyone here is telling you that the absence of Love = evil.

What you should draw from this is that the consensus from amongst such a diverse group is significant, and we are using these words to mean different things than you are. We need definition of terms! Otherwise no communication will take place.

Just to get things started:

G-d = the source of Spiritual Light,; i.e., everything good. (Regardless of our perception)

evil = what G-d is NOT.

razeontherock said:

Just to get things started:

G-d = the source of Spiritual Light,; i.e., everything good. (Regardless of our perception)

evil = what G-d is NOT.

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I would say evil = something God is not. God is also not finite, not powerless, not physical, etc.

Let me try to put it this way: a circle is not a square. If a circle stops being a circle, is it a square? It could be, but it could also be a triangle.

Good is not evil. If something stops being good, is it evil? It could be evil, but it could also be indifferent/neutral. If I sit in my room all day every day and do nothing but eat to survive, I'm not really doing anything good OR evil.

So I argue that we do have a choice, even if evil doesn't exist. We can choose to love God, or we can choose to be indifferent/neutral. The theistic side only seems to work with absolutes (ie "If you're not good, you're evil") and as we all have learned from Star Wars Episode III, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes."

Question.Everything said:

This doesn't make any sense.

Do you have the ability to speak English only because you also have the ability to not speak English? If English were the only language, are you forced to speak in English, or can you choose to not speak at all? There is still a choice. Similarly, we have the choice to "not love" God as you mentioned, but that has nothing to do with suffering. The absence of love is not suffering, it is nothing.

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The absence of love is no love. It may be hatred or indifference but it does not necessary mean it is nothing. Speaking English and loving others is not the same thing. If I do not have the choice to refuse to be compassionate for someone in need, that means someone else, not I, are chosing to help them. If I am being forced to help, that is not love on my part.

Question.Everything said:

I would say evil = something God is not. God is also not finite, not powerless, not physical, etc.

Let me try to put it this way: a circle is not a square. If a circle stops being a circle, is it a square? It could be, but it could also be a triangle.

Good is not evil. If something stops being good, is it evil? It could be evil, but it could also be indifferent/neutral. If I sit in my room all day every day and do nothing but eat to survive, I'm not really doing anything good OR evil.

So I argue that we do have a choice, even if evil doesn't exist. We can choose to love God, or we can choose to be indifferent/neutral. The theistic side only seems to work with absolutes (ie "If you're not good, you're evil") and as we all have learned from Star Wars Episode III, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes."

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Look at the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Priest and the Levite were indifferent--they walked around and did not help. That is evil--failure to know to do good and to not do it.

Question.Everything said:

I would say evil = something God is not.

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An evil thing is something G-d is not. What makes being human difficult is things don't appear to be evil by themselves, and one thing a person may do, in another context another person may do that same sort of thing and it's not evil at all.

So I'm forced to disagree with your premise, and point out the Truth lies deeper: what G-d is not has always been, and G-d never gave it any physical existence via Creation until the "tree of knowledge of good and evil." That was it's most limited possible form, while still faithfully representing reality. And He made a good way to keep evil limited to it's dormant state.

Question.Everything said:

Good is not evil. If something stops being good, is it evil? It could be evil, but it could also be indifferent/neutral.

The theistic side only seems to work with absolutes (ie "If you're not good, you're evil") and as we all have learned from Star Wars Episode III, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes."

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No, not all of us. Some of us only saw the original when it came out in theaters. (What was that, '79? '76?) From now on you can refer to every Christian as "Lord Sith." Funny that poster "SithDoughnut" posited the exact thing you do here, concluding he will just be a bystander in life. That is not an option any human has! We are in the middle of a spiritual battle, whether we recognize it or not. I'm not one for theological terminology and such, but I think this might be what is referred to as "moral agency."

I can point you to Scriptures that make this much plain, if you like.