God is Perfect and Can Do No Wrong

I felt a personal touch to it, and almost a feeling of sorrow. I really hope that my response here helps answer some of the questions, but I'm not naïve to assume that it certainly will. I also want to reiterate my earlier apology for using "he" instead of "she". That was unintentional and presumptuous of me. So I sincerely apologize for that error. My opponent stated that God is imperfect because suffering and inequality exists in the world. Let me add to the list of evil in the world: rape, murder, bigotry, hatred, theocracy, greed, jealousy, genocide, the holocaust… I'm not helping my case, am I? My opponent also asked very valid questions. Is God not willing to prevent evil but able? Or is He willing but unable? My opponent believes in the latter and therefore concludes that God is simply not omnipotent. She (I used "she" correctly here! ) also claimed that "For God to be perfect according to my opponent's definition, He must be both able and willing. So I should therefore ask my opponent, 'Then whence cometh evil? '"Give blame where it's dueI have a little girl and I love her very much… so much you couldn't possibly imagine. I would do anything for her to be happy… But if she does a dangerous thing (grabs a knife or a sharp object for example), I would stop her without any hesitation. She would cry, and feels very hurt. I would try to explain to her why I did what I did, but she would give me a crushing look and say: I want it back… daddy. She sometimes goes into a tantrum and gets very mad at me. She doesn't understand why I am being evil to her! But was I evil? or was I loving? Now what about diseases? Are they necessary? Do people have to suffer? I'll use my little son for the rescue here! (I'm exploiting my kids apparently! ) When the doctor gave him a vaccine shot… it really hurt, and he cried. My son thought it was evil and gave my wife an astonished look… My wife cried when she saw her son in pain. Was my wife evil for not saving him? She had the power to prevent him from this pain, and she definitely didn't want him to go through any pain… so whence cometh evil? The moral of the story is that we don't understand this world. We are very tiny in the grand scheme of things. The universe is 13.74 billion years old, and our average life span is around 75 years. It may appear to us that God could have done better… He could have prevented evil. But just like how my kids thought that we wronged them when we didn't, we often blame God for evil when we shouldn't. We may think that there must exist a better option… But how can we be sure? Remember, my daughter and son thought that there much exist a better option, didn't they? Whence cometh evil? I strongly believe that most people don't fully understand the meaning of omnipotence (all powerful). Just because God is all powerful, it doesn't mean that He can create or do what's logically impossible. God can't make something that He won't be able to understand… He can't make 3 smaller than 2. .. He can't make something so strong He couldn't possibly break…etc. Now what about evil? Is god unable to stop it? The answer is yes and no. Allow me to explain! God gave humans free will. He created us and wanted us to be free. Freedom is an amazing thing. I am free to help the fallen woman, but I'm also free to leave her helpless. Humans have the ability to murder, rape, lie… and do all the evil things I mentioned before. Now you may ask, "If God is omnipotent, can't He stop those evil acts? If He's omnibenevolent, doesn't He want to stop this evil? " The problem is that because God gave us freedom, He cannot prevent us from exercising our freedom. Anything else would be logically impossible. It is not because God doesn't have the power, but if God exercised that power, we would simply be pre-determined puppets or robots with no freedom and no free will. So to respond to your comment: "For God to be perfect according to my opponent's definition, He must be both able and willing. So I should therefore ask my opponent, 'Then whence cometh evil? '" God is not willing to take away our freedom. He loves us so much, that's why He created us free. How about diseases and natural disasters? You may justifiably wonder: What about the evil not inflicted by humans? Why cancer, Ebola and AIDS? Why the suffering? Why the horrible deaths? What about tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes? Wouldn't a loving God, with all His mighty power, stop them? To answer this, let me bring a very peculiar example to illustrate my case. We all agree that killing an innocent person is horrible and evil. But let's imagine that if you kill someone, the person would be resurrected 2 minutes after! But imagine that this time around they'd be stronger and healthier. If that would be true, killing wouldn't be a horrible crime… would it? In some cases, killing might be a virtue! Why do I mention this example? To us, death is considered an end of life… a loss of life. It's hard to imagine losing a loved one. But to God, it's a relocation of a soul from point A to point B. If there was no afterlife, then I would have to agree with you that this couldn't be possibly good. But what if our life here on Earth was simply a journey? An infinitesimal journey compared to eternity? But you might argue and say: But even if it's so little, why is there any suffering of any kind? Wouldn't we better without these diseases and natural disasters? I argue again that this world is beyond our understanding and comprehension. The flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly could potentially cause a hurricane three weeks later (1). I could only speculate why these diseases and disasters could potentially be beneficial for us. For example, I don't doubt that it helps us to be more compassionate for each other. If you recall my earlier example, my son thought that his mom hurt him when he got his vaccine… he thought it was evil, even though the pain of a needle is a little sting in the grand scheme of things. My wife saw that it was good for my son to go through this pain. I argue that my wife could have prevented my son's pain altogether. Couldn't she have? As twisted as this may seem, it is not the case that God allows these terrible things to exist because He doesn't want to help us… He allows them because He loves us. What I mentioned previously is compatible with most beliefs that believe in an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God. But I apologize because this section below pertains to Christian theology. Signs of omnipotence and omnibenevolenceI demonstrated above that we are like little children. We don't understand why God allows evil in this world. But to help us understand, God gave us many signs to demonstrate his omnipotence and omnibenevolence. If God (the Creator of this universe) exists, you couldn't argue that creating this universe, the planets, our Earth and our lives is beyond comprehension and requires amazing power. I argue that this is a sign of God's omnipotence. Also I argue that God showed us signs that He is omnibenevolence. God is very frustrated with the choices that we make! He did almost everything possible to make us change our actions "on our own accord". That's the caveat… It has to be completely done on our own because we are free. He sent messengers to advice us to be good, but we still chose to be evil. But because He's omnibenevolent, He did the unspeakable. .. Jesus Christ came to Earth, lived our lives and professed a life of love, hope, kindness and humility. He was then tortured a terrible torture, was humiliated and then crucified. God shared our pain and our suffering. I argue that if the God of Christianity is true, this is definitely a compelling message to us that He is omnibenevolent. Thank you. (1) Butterfly Effect - . http://en.wikipedia.org...