Why God allows evil

[MyChainsAreGone]

Actually even as adults, we don't have authentic, unrestricted free will, the law prevents it. Children are prevented from breaking the parents rules, adults are prevented from breaking society's rules.

Wrong.

"Free will" means that we can act in ways that determine the course of history, even if only in our own lives. Free will does not mean that our actions have no consequences. The fact is that laws/rules do not prevent anyone from acting contrary to them, they only ensure that there will be specified societal consequences if they do.

 

[MyChainsAreGone]

My attitude towards what you ask of me is that if it's going to have any longer term affects on my daughter, then I'll step in. Stepping on a thorn, or being stung by a bee, or being called names by other children are unlikely to have a long term effect. And before you talk about the effects bullying can have, I wouldn't let my daughter spend time with another child who is constantly teasing and bullying her.

OK... so, you're saying that you have your own subjective ideas about how much "bad" is "too bad"... and you are--unintentionally, perhaps--establishing your own subjective judgment as the "standard" by which others (including God) are to be judged.

God is more wise than any of us. It is not our place to--in our utterly and profoundly limited understanding--judge Him.

I just noticed, however, that you are an atheist. If that is your position, then it means that you have even less basis for judging God, for you don't even believe that He is.

Furthermore, without a God (by whom all that is "good" or "evil" can be measured), there's absolutely no basis for any moral judgment about anything...

Evolution--as a context for causation of all things living--gives us only one foundation for "morality"... and that is "Survival of the Fittest." Only the "fittest" has the "right" to survive. The unfit--in order to advance evolution--actually must not survive.

Consequently, even your judgment about what is "good" or "evil" is of no consequence, because it is often an "evil" thing (the killing of one life at the action of another) that determines which life form is the most "fit."

Now, let me ask you the same question. How "bad" does something have to be for God to step in and prevent it? Will he stop children being rounded up and separated from their parents like the way the USA is doing now? Will he stop humans from destroying the environment and wiping out countless different species? Will he stop brutal regimes from executing innocent people?

Well, the pretty obvious answer is that God very often opts to not step in and stop such things. And He does not answer to me (or to you, for that matter). He doesn't have to satisfy your atheistic standards for how a deity must act, nor is he compelled to gain your stamp of approval on how He chooses to run the universe.

You would use the existence of evil as some sort of "proof" that God cannot exist, but you cannot even define "evil" unless God exists (evolution does not allow the concept of evil... for ALL is natural process and natural selection).

If evil exists--and it does--then God must exist. So the question cannot be: "How can God exist if there's evil?" but rather "Why does God allow evil?" And it has to be a question spoken in search of understanding about God, not spoken in judgment upon God.

Because so far he hasn't done a thing to stop this. Are we to assume that this is acceptable to God?

What a ludicrous thing to suggest!

Think of this in business terms...

A company (creation, including mankind) has a CEO (God). The CEO has put various employees (people) in place in the company to carry out the functions of the company. He has given His employees the authority (free will) to act on behalf of the company's business purpose (life on earth).

As it turns out, when those employees do something as a part of their role as employees of the company (live their lives), whatever they've done is done so with the full authority of the company.

However, the CEO does not micromanage every employee. He's assigned them their responsibilities and given them the freedom and authority to act.

If an employee abused that authority and does something completely contrary to the intent of the CEO (something wrong, or even "evil"), that action still carries the full authority of the company (it really happens). But it does not stop there. The employee is still accountable to the CEO for his/her actions in the name of the company. And, completely at the CEO's discretion, that employee may be stripped of all the delegated authority they had been given (death) and be sanctioned with any penalty deemed appropriate by the CEO (eternal judgment).

The fact that the CEO has allowed His employees to act on behalf of His company does not equate to "approval" of every act by every employee. It just means that an individual employee has acted contrary to the values and standards established by the CEO for the company.

Keep in mind, that according to God's "business" practice, "stopping" someone from acting contrary to the company's standards or behavior is death.

Remember also that in God's eternal perspective, life for humans on this planet is very short, and not the entire history of a person's existence... when a person passes on, they persist... and He will continue to "enjoy" their presence for the rest of eternity. It's what was behind Jesus words when he told His followers:

Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

To us in this world, we can't think of any "evil" more unacceptable than one person killing another. Yet, to Jesus, such a victim was not totally destroyed by that wicked person, and therefore being killed bodily was not the greatest "evil" or danger. Rather, the real One to "fear" is God Himself, and finding oneself so in conflict with the values and purposes of the "CEO" that HE is compelled to "fire" that person and exact the just penalties for the wrong decisions.

 

[ruthiesea]

This does not address the issue.

I used the example of my daughter getting kidnapped because I let her walk off by herself, not wanting to stop because to stop her would interfere with her free will to walk off.

Could I defend myself by saying to the police, "I taught her how to be safe and not walk off." Of course not.

So I'm not quite sure how your response was actually meant to answer my question. Why is it that when God lets bad things happen to people, his followers say that it's because God doesn't want to interfere with our free will and they say it's good, but if I let something happen to my daughter because I don't want to interfere with her free will, I can't defend myself the same way?

Let me make it simple for you.

X kills Y. Z saw it and could have stopped it, but decided not to because Z doesn't want to interfere with X's free will, even if that means X will commit murder. Can Z justifiably defend their inaction with the claim that they didn't want to interfere with X's free will?

You used your free will to allow your to be kidnapped. You allowed that to happen, not G-d. He did not decide for you. That you think that you can justify you action, or lack there of, is also a result of free will.

No, you can’t justify what you did. You gave your daughter free will, but free will does not mean there won’t be consequences. In you example, the mothers decision resulted in harm to her daughter. That decision is on the mother, not G-d. That is why free will came with intelligence that allows us to differentiate, hopefully, between good decisions and bad ones.

Again, G-d did not allow harm to come to harm. The mother, armed with intelligence and knowledge, ignored both and allowed it to happen.

 

[zippy2006]

Why should I stop them?

Because murder is an evil and it is good to prevent evil.

I simply do not think that God is a parallel example. He is the creator of everything who also created the "rules" of the natural world. One consequence of the "rules" is the possibility of a misuse of freedom for evil. According to Christianity God's end-game accounts for and transcends evil.

 

[Ken-1122]

What makes you say that God did not make man "completely good"?

As I read Genesis 1:31, I see that God pronounced all that He had made as "very good."

It's possible that you have a different definition of "good" than God has.

In post #70 you defined God sinless because he is Completely Good. I was going by your definition of completely good. Are you saying God and mankind are equally good?

Wrong.

"Free will" means that we can act in ways that determine the course of history, even if only in our own lives.

Actually I was speaking about unrestricted free will. That’s a bit different than free will.

Free will does not mean that our actions have no consequences. The fact is that laws/rules do not prevent anyone from acting contrary to them, they only ensure that there will be specified societal consequences if they do.

By definition, laws and rules are restrictions. It is a contradiction to claim unrestricted free will within the rules and restrictions of the law.

 

[Kylie]

@Kylie
But just because you permit something, doesn't mean someone has to exercise that option.

And just because I allow something, doesn't mean that someone has to exercise that option either.

You are still not explaining what the difference between allow and permit is.

I like cookies too, usually if someone offers me a drink or cookie. I think it would be perhaps rude to say no, unless I don't like the flavour, which is usually never. But that's more about the culture, and being English.

We're not talking about offering, we're talking about allowing and permitting.

If it's an allowance it's either a set limit or somekind of honesty box. But either way responsibility is abdicated. ex Giving children an allowance to buy their own clothes.

Now you're just muddying the waters. Allowance has nothing to do with the verb "allow".

 

[Ken-1122]

Think of this in business terms...

A company (creation, including mankind) has a CEO (God). The CEO has put various employees (people) in place in the company to carry out the functions of the company. He has given His employees the authority (free will) to act on behalf of the company's business purpose (life on earth).

As it turns out, when those employees do something as a part of their role as employees of the company (live their lives), whatever they've done is done so with the full authority of the company.

However, the CEO does not micromanage every employee. He's assigned them their responsibilities and given them the freedom and authority to act.

If an employee abused that authority and does something completely contrary to the intent of the CEO (something wrong, or even "evil"), that action still carries the full authority of the company (it really happens). But it does not stop there. The employee is still accountable to the CEO for his/her actions in the name of the company. And, completely at the CEO's discretion, that employee may be stripped of all the delegated authority they had been given (death) and be sanctioned with any penalty deemed appropriate by the CEO (eternal judgment).

The fact that the CEO has allowed His employees to act on behalf of His company does not equate to "approval" of every act by every employee. It just means that an individual employee has acted contrary to the values and standards established by the CEO for the company.

Keep in mind, that according to God's "business" practice, "stopping" someone from acting contrary to the company's standards or behavior is death.

Are you suggesting that if a person acts according to God's will, that they will live forever?

 

[Kylie]

OK... so, you're saying that you have your own subjective ideas about how much "bad" is "too bad"... and you are--unintentionally, perhaps--establishing your own subjective judgment as the "standard" by which others (including God) are to be judged.

Nah, I'm just pointing out that God gets a free pass for allowing things that, if I allowed them, would get me in a lot of trouble.

God is more wise than any of us. It is not our place to--in our utterly and profoundly limited understanding--judge Him.

I've found that the "God works in mysterious ways" excuse usually means the person can't answer and wants me to stop the discussion because they can't answer.

I just noticed, however, that you are an atheist. If that is your position, then it means that you have even less basis for judging God, for you don't even believe that He is.

Doesn't stop me from pointing out double standards and inconsistent logic.

Furthermore, without a God (by whom all that is "good" or "evil" can be measured), there's absolutely no basis for any moral judgment about anything...

Even Christians can't agree about moral judgements. I've seen stories of Christians who blame the victims for being sexually assaulted by the priests. Don't act like Christians have some sort of hard and fast objective morality, because they don't.

Evolution--as a context for causation of all things living--gives us only one foundation for "morality"... and that is "Survival of the Fittest." Only the "fittest" has the "right" to survive. The unfit--in order to advance evolution--actually must not survive.

Wow, you really don't know what evolution actually is, do you?

Consequently, even your judgment about what is "good" or "evil" is of no consequence, because it is often an "evil" thing (the killing of one life at the action of another) that determines which life form is the most "fit."

Yeah, that's not what that means.

Well, the pretty obvious answer is that God very often opts to not step in and stop such things. And He does not answer to me (or to you, for that matter). He doesn't have to satisfy your atheistic standards for how a deity must act, nor is he compelled to gain your stamp of approval on how He chooses to run the universe.

Okay, and let's say that I did things the same way, and tried to use that to justify why I let my daughter run off and get herself kidnapped. Would this defense work for me?

You would use the existence of evil as some sort of "proof" that God cannot exist, but you cannot even define "evil" unless God exists (evolution does not allow the concept of evil... for ALL is natural process and natural selection).

Where in the world do you think that atheists live by nothing bu evolutionary theory?

If evil exists--and it does--then God must exist. So the question cannot be: "How can God exist if there's evil?" but rather "Why does God allow evil?" And it has to be a question spoken in search of understanding about God, not spoken in judgment upon God.

That is the most strained logic I've heard for a long time.

Think of this in business terms...

A company (creation, including mankind) has a CEO (God). The CEO has put various employees (people) in place in the company to carry out the functions of the company. He has given His employees the authority (free will) to act on behalf of the company's business purpose (life on earth).

As it turns out, when those employees do something as a part of their role as employees of the company (live their lives), whatever they've done is done so with the full authority of the company.

However, the CEO does not micromanage every employee. He's assigned them their responsibilities and given them the freedom and authority to act.

If an employee abused that authority and does something completely contrary to the intent of the CEO (something wrong, or even "evil"), that action still carries the full authority of the company (it really happens). But it does not stop there. The employee is still accountable to the CEO for his/her actions in the name of the company. And, completely at the CEO's discretion, that employee may be stripped of all the delegated authority they had been given (death) and be sanctioned with any penalty deemed appropriate by the CEO (eternal judgment).

The fact that the CEO has allowed His employees to act on behalf of His company does not equate to "approval" of every act by every employee. It just means that an individual employee has acted contrary to the values and standards established by the CEO for the company.

Keep in mind, that according to God's "business" practice, "stopping" someone from acting contrary to the company's standards or behavior is death.

And yet, in your analogy, you've got the CEO standing by while marketing is trying to kill the development team, who are attacking the janitors and the accounting department as well. And the CEO is doing nothing.

What an incompetent CEO!

Remember also that in God's eternal perspective, life for humans on this planet is very short, and not the entire history of a person's existence... when a person passes on, they persist... and He will continue to "enjoy" their presence for the rest of eternity. It's what was behind Jesus words when he told His followers:

To us in this world, we can't think of any "evil" more unacceptable than one person killing another. Yet, to Jesus, such a victim was not totally destroyed by that wicked person, and therefore being killed bodily was not the greatest "evil" or danger. Rather, the real One to "fear" is God Himself, and finding oneself so in conflict with the values and purposes of the "CEO" that HE is compelled to "fire" that person and exact the just penalties for the wrong decisions.

You'll find that appeals to some supernatural thing are useless when used to argue them with someone who doesn't believe they exist. You're using Biblical claims to support Biblical claims, and that's circular logic.

 

[Kylie]

You used your free will to allow your to be kidnapped. You allowed that to happen, not G-d. He did not decide for you. That you think that you can justify you action, or lack there of, is also a result of free will.

Then God doesn't have free will?

Because if he does, then God also used his free will to allow my daughter to come to harm.

No, you can’t justify what you did. You gave your daughter free will, but free will does not mean there won’t be consequences. In you example, the mothers decision resulted in harm to her daughter. That decision is on the mother, not G-d. That is why free will came with intelligence that allows us to differentiate, hopefully, between good decisions and bad ones.

Again, G-d did not allow harm to come to harm. The mother, armed with intelligence and knowledge, ignored both and allowed it to happen.

You seem to be using two different sets of reasoning here, one for God to justify why he's not guilty and another for people to justify why they are guilty in the same situation.

Now, I tried to use a simple example, but you completely ignored it. So I shall present it again. Please don't ignore it this time.

X kills Y. Z saw it and could have stopped it, but decided not to because Z doesn't want to interfere with X's free will, even if that means X will commit murder. Can Z justifiably defend their inaction with the claim that they didn't want to interfere with X's free will?

 

[Kylie]

Because murder is an evil and it is good to prevent evil.

I simply do not think that God is a parallel example. He is the creator of everything who also created the "rules" of the natural world. One consequence of the "rules" is the possibility of a misuse of freedom for evil. According to Christianity God's end-game accounts for and transcends evil.

So murder is evil and it's good to prevent evil, unless you're God, in which case you can excuse doing nothing by saying, "God works in mysterious ways."

Well, maybe Kylie works in mysterious ways, and that's why I let that guy steal your car, even though I could have stopped him. You just need to have faith that I have some greater plan in mind.

 

[zippy2006]

So murder is evil and it's good to prevent evil, unless you're God, in which case you can excuse doing nothing by saying, "God works in mysterious ways."

As usual, that's not what I said. God could have created in such a way that evil would not be able to exist. He didn't do that, and as a Christian I believe that it is better the way he did create, though we will not understand fully until the end. And again, it is simply not true that God does nothing.

But yes, you are not God. Atheists have a tough time with that one.

 

[Kylie]

As usual, that's not what I said. God could have created in such a way that evil would not be able to exist. He didn't do that, and as a Christian I believe that it is better the way he did create, though we will not understand fully until the end. And again, it is simply not true that God does nothing.

But yes, you are not God. Atheists have a tough time with that one.

Atheists have an easy time with it. We can see it as an explanation that doesn't hold up and fits in perfectly with our position that God isn't real and believers have a hard time explaining things.

It's the believers who have a tough time with it. Even after all these centuries, the best explanation is that God has his reasons, but we just don't know.

 

[zippy2006]

Atheists have an easy time with it. We can see it as an explanation that doesn't hold up and fits in perfectly with our position that God isn't real and believers have a hard time explaining things.

It's the believers who have a tough time with it. Even after all these centuries, the best explanation is that God has his reasons, but we just don't know.

No, the New Atheists have created a field of strawman that reduces God to base anthropomorphisms, and this is the modern atheist's point of reference. For example, in another thread Nihilist Virus is claiming that if he can't understand creatio ex nihilo then it must not be possible. Atheists simply have no appreciation for the transcendence and otherness of the God of classical theism. A great deal of ignorance combined with a dollop of arrogance results in strange conceptions and facile argumentation.

Your own argument isn't much better. The basic premise is, "I try to stop bad things from happening, therefore God should try to stop bad things from happening." It is a basic anthropomorphism wherein you place God on the same level as yourself. The fuller argument mixes in omnipotence and the existence of evil, but that basic premise is particularly weak and especially symptomatic of the confusion of modern atheists.

 

[Ken-1122]

Your own argument isn't much better. The basic premise is, "I try to stop bad things from happening, therefore God should try to stop bad things from happening." It is a basic anthropomorphism wherein you place God on the same level as yourself.

Of course the atheist is going to proclaim if God is good, he should stop bad things from happening! If you expect us to believe God is good, he has to do things that WE consider good. If you are going to take the position that he knows the big picture that we don’t so often his actions may seem bad, how do you know he isn’t really bad? (akin to Hitler’s dog unaware Hitler was bad) I say unless you really know God, you have no right to judge him as good or perfect, because your judgment is based (by your own admission) on ignorance.

Think about it; according to the Bible, who knew God best? Satan. Satan was God’s #1 Angel, and he rejected God, yet you know nothing about God and you assume he is the best! I will bet if you knew God the way Satan knew God, that you would reject him too!

 

[MyChainsAreGone]

In post #70 you defined God sinless because he is Completely Good. I was going by your definition of completely good. Are you saying God and mankind are equally good?

God is the measure of "good," just as He is the measure of sin. All that God is... is good. All that is contrary to God's nature, God's character, and God's will... is sin.

So, it is impossible for God to be anything other than good, and it is impossible for God to sin, for He never contradicts His own person.

Man was created good. And it was good that man had the ability to "rule" and make decisions (using delegated authority from God). God determined that this is the way things were to be (and His will is, by definition, good), and He Himself declared it to be good.

There's no basis to argue that God was wrong in that assessment because you added the word "completely" to "good" with the added meaning of "inability to sin."

Actually I was speaking about unrestricted free will. That’s a bit different than free will.

By definition, laws and rules are restrictions. It is a contradiction to claim unrestricted free will within the rules and restrictions of the law.

This is something of a straw man argument... because no one was arguing for unrestricted free will. To argue against free will because you define it as unrestricted is to argue a false equivalence.

-----

In both of these cases, you're arguing against a concept by adding meaning to each concept that no one has asserted.

 

[MyChainsAreGone]

Nah, I'm just pointing out that God gets a free pass for allowing things that, if I allowed them, would get me in a lot of trouble.

Of course that's true. Those in authority (responsible for justice and enforcement) always have a "free pass" to do things that everyone else would get in trouble for doing. Think "government" and "police."

I've found that the "God works in mysterious ways" excuse usually means the person can't answer and wants me to stop the discussion because they can't answer.

No. You miss the meaning. The ants do not have the standing in this world to judge the character, motivations, or actions of humans. God is simply so completely beyond our comprehension that if we think for a moment that we can "assess" Him and render judgment upon Him, then we are not talking about the God who is... but some lesser thing coming from our own imagination.

Furthermore, without a God (by whom all that is "good" or "evil" can be measured), there's absolutely no basis for any moral judgment about anything...

Even Christians can't agree about moral judgments. I've seen stories of Christians who blame the victims for being sexually assaulted by the priests. Don't act like Christians have some sort of hard and fast objective morality, because they don't.

Of course they can't agree. They are human, and humans (Christian or otherwise) are not the measures or arbiter's of morality.

But you completely ignored my point.

Tell me... from the standpoint of the claim that there is no God (the definition of atheism), what is the basis for any moral assessment of any kind?

Evolution--as a context for causation of all things living--gives us only one foundation for "morality"... and that is "Survival of the Fittest." Only the "fittest" has the "right" to survive. The unfit--in order to advance evolution--actually must not survive.

Wow, you really don't know what evolution actually is, do you?

Consequently, even your judgment about what is "good" or "evil" is of no consequence, because it is often an "evil" thing (the killing of one life at the action of another) that determines which life form is the most "fit."

Yeah, that's not what that means.

I know perfectly well what Evolution is. But I dare say that you do not realize the inescapable implications of any assertion that God is not and the accompanying assertion that life must have evolved (for there's no other option to explain the existence of life).

I assert that the only moral foundation that Evolution has to offer is "survival of the fittest." You have not offered any other option, so my assertion still stands uncontested. All you offered was an insult about my knowledge with no "correction" demonstrating any greater or more complete "knowledge." That's no argument at all.

Well, the pretty obvious answer is that God very often opts to not step in and stop such things. And He does not answer to me (or to you, for that matter). He doesn't have to satisfy your atheistic standards for how a deity must act, nor is he compelled to gain your stamp of approval on how He chooses to run the universe.

Okay, and let's say that I did things the same way, and tried to use that to justify why I let my daughter run off and get herself kidnapped. Would this defense work for me?

False equivalence.

It IS the responsibility of parents to care for their children and prevent them from self-destructive actions while they are young.

It is not God's responsibility to prevent every human from doing anything self-destructive. Only those looking for some reason to judge-and-convict God make such a presumption.

Where in the world do you think that atheists live by nothing bu evolutionary theory?

Oh, I didn't claim that atheists live by nothing but evolutionary theory... They often claim all sorts of moral values. But it is logically inconsistent and slightly hypocritical to claim any sort of moral bearings at all while also claiming there there is no objective measure (i.e. God) by which any moral value may be a measured or asserted.

If evil exists--and it does--then God must exist. So the question cannot be: "How can God exist if there's evil?" but rather "Why does God allow evil?" And it has to be a question spoken in search of understanding about God, not spoken in judgment upon God.

That is the most strained logic I've heard for a long time.

Wow... then you really haven't thought through what it truly means to assert that there is no God.

What can you possibly offer as any objective basis for any assertion that anything is "good" or "evil" in a system that does not include God?

There's nothing in naturalistic thinking that can give any sort of tenable answer to that question.

Consequently, if you assert evil exists, then you are by the simple assertion presuming that there must be some objective standard by which evil may be recognized as "evil." Which means there must be some sort of "God."

Atheists simply do not recognize the how absolutely illogical it is to claim there is evil, but there is no God.

You're welcome to attempt to demonstrate otherwise. But simply claiming that you've never heard the argument before is not an argument.

And yet, in your analogy, you've got the CEO standing by while marketing is trying to kill the development team, who are attacking the janitors and the accounting department as well. And the CEO is doing nothing.

What an incompetent CEO!

Here you go again... presuming to judge God...

But remember, all analogies fail at some point. And you're not responding to the point I was trying to make with the analogy.

You had claimed that if God allowed something, that He must "accept" it. I gave the analogy to demonstrate that when someone exercises delegated authority (free will) it does NOT mean that the one who delegated that authority "accepts" or "approves" of every decision that person makes. That's the only point I was making with the analogy.

But if you want to go down the road of "bad CEO," I'll just remind you that God can and will bring full justice to all human activity... but that time is not yet.

2 Peter 3:9 - "The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance."

God delays the execution of justice in order to give people the opportunity to repent and find forgiveness through Christ. And I hope that you too find that forgiveness. Then you will know how truly "good" God is.

You'll find that appeals to some supernatural thing are useless when used to argue them with someone who doesn't believe they exist. You're using Biblical claims to support Biblical claims, and that's circular logic.

It's circular reasoning to use the Bible to support biblical claims? Are you kidding? Of course it's not! If I use the Bible to assert a Biblical World View, that's not circular reasoning.

Again, you missed or ignored my point.

My point was that from a biblical standpoint--from GOD'S standpoint--the scope of things that happen on this planet are NOT the beginning and end of all things... including human life. So, if we--in our limited perspective--make assessments about God, or God's action (or inaction) and about what is important thinking only in terms of the scope of human experience, our conclusions will undoubtedly be wrong, for that's not all there is. God sees all things from an eternal perspective. We cannot judge the eternal from a temporal point of view.

 

[Kylie]

No, the New Atheists have created a field of strawman that reduces God to base anthropomorphisms, and this is the modern atheist's point of reference. For example, in another thread Nihilist Virus is claiming that if he can't understand creatio ex nihilo then it must not be possible. Atheists simply have no appreciation for the transcendence and otherness of the God of classical theism. A great deal of ignorance combined with a dollop of arrogance results in strange conceptions and facile argumentation.

Your own argument isn't much better. The basic premise is, "I try to stop bad things from happening, therefore God should try to stop bad things from happening." It is a basic anthropomorphism wherein you place God on the same level as yourself. The fuller argument mixes in omnipotence and the existence of evil, but that basic premise is particularly weak and especially symptomatic of the confusion of modern atheists.

Once again, your argument boils down to, "God works in mysterious ways," which seems to be code for, "Stop asking difficult questions and just blindly accept this story that doesn't actually make sense."

 

[MyChainsAreGone]

Once again, your argument boils down to, "God works in mysterious ways," which seems to be code for, "Stop asking difficult questions and just blindly accept this story that doesn't actually make sense."

So... in other words, the only retort you can give for any claim that "God knows more than you do" is "That's just 'God moves in mysterious ways' and that equals 'shut up.'"

Kylie, like it or not, God knows more than you do. To assert otherwise would be a falsehood.

And to dismiss an argument simply because it asserts that you cannot fully comprehend the God who is... well, that's not any argument at all.

You are literally judging God's actions (or inaction) based upon what your actions would be. That was zippy's point, and it's a fair observation. It is not an inappropriate thing to point out that you have no basis for making such assessments.

 

[Kylie]

Of course that's true. Those in authority (responsible for justice and enforcement) always have a "free pass" to do things that everyone else would get in trouble for doing. Think "government" and "police."

And that usually points to corruption in the government and police, when there's one set of rules for them, and another set for everyone else.

No. You miss the meaning. The ants do not have the standing in this world to judge the character, motivations, or actions of humans. God is simply so completely beyond our comprehension that if we think for a moment that we can "assess" Him and render judgment upon Him, then we are not talking about the God who is... but some lesser thing coming from our own imagination.

Circular logic. Your source for the claim that God is beyond our comprehension and therefore unjudgable is the Bible, and it is also the Bible that is your evidence to support this claim.

Of course they can't agree. They are human, and humans (Christian or otherwise) are not the measures or arbiter's of morality.

But you completely ignored my point.

Tell me... from the standpoint of the claim that there is no God (the definition of atheism), what is the basis for any moral assessment of any kind?

There is no such thing as objective morality.

I know perfectly well what Evolution is. But I dare say that you do not realize the inescapable implications of any assertion that God is not and the accompanying assertion that life must have evolved (for there's no other option to explain the existence of life).

Argument from incredulity. Just because you can't conceive of an explanation other than God doesn't mean there is none.

I assert that the only moral foundation that Evolution has to offer is "survival of the fittest." You have not offered any other option, so my assertion still stands uncontested. All you offered was an insult about my knowledge with no "correction" demonstrating any greater or more complete "knowledge." That's no argument at all.

I was pointing out that you don't seem to understand what survival of the fittest means. It's not like the Hunger Games where only one survives. Fitness refers to the ability for an organism to survive in its environment. Or, more specifically, the genes within its DNA. If there are two variants of a gene and one conveys a reproductive advantage, then that gene is fitter and that is the one that will get passed on and survive in the population.

False equivalence.

It IS the responsibility of parents to care for their children and prevent them from self-destructive actions while they are young.

It is not God's responsibility to prevent every human from doing anything self-destructive. Only those looking for some reason to judge-and-convict God make such a presumption.

Yeah, it's not like the Bible describes God as a father...

Oh, I didn't claim that atheists live by nothing but evolutionary theory... They often claim all sorts of moral values. But it is logically inconsistent and slightly hypocritical to claim any sort of moral bearings at all while also claiming there there is no objective measure (i.e. God) by which any moral value may be a measured or asserted.

Even with God, I don't see how you can claim there is any kind of objective morality.

Wow... then you really haven't thought through what it truly means to assert that there is no God.

What can you possibly offer as any objective basis for any assertion that anything is "good" or "evil" in a system that does not include God?

There's nothing in naturalistic thinking that can give any sort of tenable answer to that question.

Consequently, if you assert evil exists, then you are by the simple assertion presuming that there must be some objective standard by which evil may be recognized as "evil." Which means there must be some sort of "God."

Atheists simply do not recognize the how absolutely illogical it is to claim there is evil, but there is no God.

You're welcome to attempt to demonstrate otherwise. But simply claiming that you've never heard the argument before is not an argument.

As I've stated several times now, there is no such thing as objective morality.

There is SUBJECTIVE morality, and most people agree with many parts of that - rape is wrong, helping people is good - but that near universal agreement doesn't mean it's

Here you go again... presuming to judge God...

Well, it followed from the analogy.

But remember, all analogies fail at some point. And you're not responding to the point I was trying to make with the analogy.

And it seems that believers always say it fails when it leads us to not let God off the hook for doing things we wouldn't let people off the hook for.

You had claimed that if God allowed something, that He must "accept" it.

Could you quote the specific part of whatever post where I made that specific claim?

In any case, I fail to see how God would allow something if he refuses to accept it, considering that there's nothing that could prevent him from stopping it if he so desired. And if he doesn't want to accept it, then it sure seems like there's sufficient desire there.

I gave the analogy to demonstrate that when someone exercises delegated authority (free will) it does NOT mean that the one who delegated that authority "accepts" or "approves" of every decision that person makes. That's the only point I was making with the analogy.

But if the person who delegated the responsibility sees that the person he gave the responsibility to is constantly misusing it, wouldn't the smart thing to do be to say, "Well, I can see you're not ready for this level of responsibility, therefore I'm not going to let you have it anymore."

But if you want to go down the road of "bad CEO," I'll just remind you that God can and will bring full justice to all human activity... but that time is not yet.

Oh, of course not.

Funny how God's plan seems to be indistinguishable from there being no God at all...

God delays the execution of justice in order to give people the opportunity to repent and find forgiveness through Christ. And I hope that you too find that forgiveness. Then you will know how truly "good" God is.

Well, what's he waiting for? I mean, you can use that logic to delay things indefinitely. Hey, God, you gonna do something about the people doing horrible things in the Holocaust? I've gotta give those soldiers killing people a chance to repent first. Later: Hey God, there's more atrocities going on now, are you going to do anything about them now that those soldiers from the Holocaust are dead? Well, I can't, there's new soldiers now, gotta give them a chance to repent as well!

It's circular reasoning to use the Bible to support biblical claims? Are you kidding? Of course it's not! If I use the Bible to assert a Biblical World View, that's not circular reasoning.

Yes, it is circular logic, just as it would be circular logic to claim that the claims made in the Harry Potter books are supported by the Harry Potter books.

Again, you missed or ignored my point.

My point was that from a biblical standpoint--from GOD'S standpoint--the scope of things that happen on this planet are NOT the beginning and end of all things... including human life. So, if we--in our limited perspective--make assessments about God, or God's action (or inaction) and about what is important thinking only in terms of the scope of human experience, our conclusions will undoubtedly be wrong, for that's not all there is. God sees all things from an eternal perspective. We cannot judge the eternal from a temporal point of view.

But you are assuming the a Biblical standpoint is the correct one. You must first demonstrate that it is correct.

 

[Kylie]

So... in other words, the only retort you can give for any claim that "God knows more than you do" is "That's just 'God moves in mysterious ways' and that equals 'shut up.'"

Kylie, like it or not, God knows more than you do. To assert otherwise would be a falsehood.

Actually, to make that assertion the way you just did is just an assertion. You've provided no evidence to support that claim.

And to dismiss an argument simply because it asserts that you cannot fully comprehend the God who is... well, that's not any argument at all.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to dismiss that which appears to be nonsense if those presenting it can't provide sufficient support for it.

You are literally judging God's actions (or inaction) based upon what your actions would be. That was zippy's point, and it's a fair observation. It is not an inappropriate thing to point out that you have no basis for making such assessments.

Well, if I was in God's position, I'd be out there stopping murders and rapes. God is not. What does that tell you about the difference between me and God?