From: hartigan@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: The problem of evil (God ain't what you think!)
Date: 26 Aug 92 15:35:44 -0300
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

In article <adams.714835421@spssig>, adams@spss.com (Steve Adams) writes:
> hartigan@ac.dal.ca writes:
> 
>>Now - this means that God KNOWINGLY created a universe in which babies
>>die in burning cars, children are beaten to death, etc ad nauseam.
> 
>>And in which people choose evil.  If he wanted to, he could have created
>>people who had free will but no DESIRE to choose evil. That is, people
>>with the ability to choose evil, but no desire to. People who found evil
>>too ugly to even contemplate seriously. There are some people like that now.
>>Why not everybody? 
> 
>>Voila! Problem solved! A universe with free will and no evil! 
>
> No, not at all.  For if there were no possibility for them to chose evil,
> then there would be no free will!  In order for a person to freely chose
> not to do evil, the real, logical possibility of evil must exist.  Thus, in
> order for free will to truly exist, evil must truly exist.  And there must
> be a real chance that it can be chosen.

Point 1.

No, evil doesn't have to exist - people just have to have some concept of
what an evil act WOULD be, if anyone wanted to do it.  This is enough to
allow free will. 

For example. No one has climbed the tree in my backyard. Do I have free will
to climb it or not? Yes - it doesn't matter if I never do it, or if no one ever
does it. The fact that I can imagine doing it is enough to make give me a
free choice. 

See what I mean? God could tell our hypothetical people: "Look, if you do
X, Y, Z, that will be evil. Don't do it. "  They now have the choice to do
X, Y, Z, or not.   BUT - do they want to?   God created these hypothetical
people in such a way that they DON'T. So they freely choose not to. 
Evil remains an unrealized possiblity in this world. 

(Note: if you smell a fish here, you're onto something...!)

> 
>>Because God did NOT do that (apparently), he MUST want evil to exist.
>>He must WANT people to sin, and fail, and be separate from Him. 
>>Because that is the kind of universe he created. And omnipotent beings
>>ALWAYS get what they want. 
>
> Clearly evil was created by God, along with everything else. 

Thank you! I thought I'd never hear a Christian admit this inescapable 
conclusion of their doctrine. Glad to be wrong, for once...:)
 
> It is a
> product of God's desire for freely given love and worship.  Unless there is
> the real, true possibility that these would not be given, then there is no
> free will...I don't believe God wanted automotons.

See above. Actual evil need not be created for free will to exist. Only
a concept, which properly created free agents would have no desire to choose.

God, being omnipotent, could create ONLY people who would freely love and
worship him. To deny this is to deny his omnipotence. BUT - he didn't. 
He created people who he knew would freely chooseto reject him. 
Since he CHOSE to do this - God must WANT this to be the case. As far as
I can see, there is no way out of this, except to revise your theology.

> 
>>BTW, on alt.atheism about 8 mos. ago, we had a contest to see who could
>>dream up evil-less creations given God's reputed powers. We came up with 
>>several nifty ones - any ideas out there?
> 
> Was this a 'best of all possible worlds' type discussion?  The point is,
> that in order to have free will, there will always be some person who is
> slightly less good than the others.  By scales, this person is 'evil', even
> though by our scale he/she might be nearly perfectly good.

This doesn't follow. God, being omnipotent, could easily have created 
a universe full of wonderfully varied, charming, interesting, happy beings
who would freely choose to worship him and enjoy him forever. 

"I'll create a being who will, of his own free will, choose to worship me.
I know that this being will do that, because I am omniscient. I'll give him
some concept of evil, which in my omniscience I know he will reject. Yes,
I can conceive of beings who would freely choose not to worship me, but it
would be pointlessly cruel to create them, as my Just nature would require
that I torment them for all eternity."

- God

NOT! (unfortunately)

Better accept it - either God is not omnipotent, or he's not omniscient,
or he's not very nice, or he's so far beyond our comprehension that your
theology is worthless, or he is just a flawed rational construct.



Sean Hartigan
hartigan@ac.dal.ca
Xref: sparky talk.religion.misc:14890 alt.atheism:15918