From: adams@spss.com (Steve Adams)
Subject: Re: The problem of evil (reply to Steve Adams)
Organization: SPSS Inc.
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 00:28:47 GMT

hartigan@ac.dal.ca writes:

>In article <adams.714863266@spssig>, adams@spss.com (Steve Adams) writes:
>> hartigan@ac.dal.ca writes:
>> 
>>>In article <adams.714835421@spssig>, adams@spss.com (Steve Adams) writes:
>> 
>>>> 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.
>> 
>>>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...!)
>> 
>> I do smell a fish! ;-)  In your logic again.  If God created people who
>> would ALWAYS chose the right way, they aren't truly free!

>Why?  My friend M. will ALWAYS choose not to murder a child who annoys her
>mildly.  I personally will ALWAYS choose not to brutally beat a child who
>steals my hat, and runs away, taunting me.  Am I not "truly free?"
> 
>* WHY will I ALWAYS make the same choice, seeing as how I'm truly free?
>Or, assuming I'm dead by the time you read this, why DID I always make
>the same choice, since, according to Christian doctrine, I'm truly free?

Your freedom does not imply that you will do these things.  The point is
that they are actually possible, and you freely chose not to do them.
Ever.  The point is that you truly could and are able to do them.  Note
well that some people do.

The specific idea of 'evil' is not simply horrible, terrible things.  All
sin (that is, that which separates us from God) is evil.  I would be
willing to bet loads of money that you sin (whether you happen to be
Christian or not).  Thus, you do, occasionally, chose to seperate yourself
from God.  The evil may appear to be minor, but that's not the point.

>>>> 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...:)
>> 
>> Hey, I read the owner's manual.  Isaiah 45:7 is darn clear.  And Job backs
>> it up 100%, as does ex-nihilo creation.  God *MUST* be responsible.

>And since God is omnipotent, and therefore BY DEFINITION always gets
>what he wants,  he WANTS evil to exist, he WANTS people to fail, be separate
>from him, etc. 

No, I disagree.  He wants freely given love and worship.  A byproduct of
this is people separating themselves from Him.  But, God has provided a way
for all of us to reconcile ourselves to Him - Jesus Christ.  I do not claim
that it is an 'unintended' or 'unforseen' consequence.  God knew *exactly*
what would happen, but chose to create anyway.

>This is the other side of the omnipotence/evil question. More below.

>> Are you new around here?  I've been saying this for over a year on the net
>> now...;-)

>Yep!  I'm interested to see if you are as flexible in your thinking 
>WRT the next step in this logical chain. This one is a little nastier, 
>I'm afraid, because, as I explained before, and will again now, a God
>who is omnipotent and omniscient knew beforehand who was going to be
>saved and who was going to be damned - but he created the ones who 
>were going to damn themselves ANYWAY.  Again, you can't run from this one. 
Nope.  I won't run from it at all.  You are truly correct.  Omniscience
requires this stand.  I can't deny it.  To do so would be to contradcit
what I'm trying (note well, trying!) to defend.

Although reasonably well formed, and seemingly (at least to me) consistant,
they aren't carved in stone...

>Calvin, the theologian who is perhaps most responsible for modern 
>conservative Protestantism, freely admitted this. He was a hard-nosed
>cuss who didn't object to a God who would knowingly create beings
>who would condemn themselves to eternal torment. Today, we're a little
>more decent, I'd say - such a God seems repugnant to us. Alas - the
>God described by hellfire and brimstone Christianity is just such a
>being. There is no escape from this conclusion, as Calvin knew - except
>one:

>"That's the spirit, Blackadder! When all else fails, irrational stubborness
>and a thick-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will carry us
>through..." - Gen. Melchet, "Blackadder Goes Fourth"

Well, I don't happen to agree.  I don't see that God is to blame for this.
Sure, he is *responsible*, but the individual is to blame.  Remember, God
alone knows the final result.  It may well be that Iraneus is correct, and
that ALL souls eventually end up with God.  Iraneus didn't believe in a
literal fall.  He thought that life was learning and growing, and that this
continued even after death, and that all souls eventually came to God.
John Hick is a modern proponent of this idea.

Any comments on the resolution of this are purely speculation.  It is
within God's purview to do as He pleases.  And it is not my position to
complain.  Eschatology and theodicy are unclear and undefined.  I believe
Calvin himself said that God didn't want us to know too much about it...

>>>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.
>> 
>> If there was no real chance of turning away, then there is no real free
>> will.  There must be a real, logical possiblity that the person will turn
>> away for there to be free will.  If there is no such possibility, then
>> there is no free will.  Your version of creation has no such *real*
>> possibility.
>> 

>I think you might be missing the point of this particular passage: 
>God KNEW before he created us which of us were going to return to Him
>and which of us were going to reject Him. Right? 
Yes.

>If so, he could simply have created those of us who were going to 
>freely choose GOOD. And not created those who were going to choose
>evil. He could, as it were, figure out that "If I create this particular
>person, he will reject me, given the conditions of the universe I am 
>making. How cruel it would be to create him and let him damn himself!
>I will not do such an abhorrent thing. I will create only those who 
>I know will freely choose to accept and love me."
But since (and boy are my fundamentalist friends going to have fits) none
of us knows the mind of God, none of us can know who will be saved, and who
will be damned (if anyone).

Thus, since I am not in a position to judge a persons salvation, I'm not in
a position to judge God on His plans.  I simply accept the situation as it
is.

I do believe, though that if God only created people who would ALWAYS chose
the correct way, then they wouldn't truly have free will.  Where would the
possibility of evil come from?  I maintain that with no acutal possibility,
there is no free will.

>Foreknowledge makes this possible. We are stuck - given the state of things
>as they are (according to Christain doctrine), we must acknowledge
>that either God does NOT have foreknowledge (i.e. not omniscient), 
>does NOT have the power to do whatever he wants (i.e. not omnipotent), 
>or that he WANTS some of his children to be separate from him, damned,
>tormented in uspeakable ways forever (i.e. he's not loving, 
>to say the least...).
This is exactly the problem of theodicy.  How to affirm the attributes of
God:
   1. Omnipotent
   2. Omniscient
   3. Omnibonum

yet recognize that evil truly exists.  There are various schools that
attempt to explain this.  They do so by denying in some way one of the
contentions (or, as Chistian Scientists do say there is no real evil).
For example, Process Theology denies God's omnipotence, and denies
ex-nihilo creation.  John Hick holds Iranean philosophy in universal
salvation.  Etc.

I affirm, as did Augustine, that we are products of our own actions and
free will.  I do not affirm Augustine's view of salvation, nor Calvin's
concepts of predestination.

As you can see, what I'm saying in lots of words is that I don't have an
answer to this.  I'm tending more and more to Hick's position.  My problem
with it has to do with actions having consequences.  In this case, our
actions have no real consequences, as we gain salvation no matter what.

Perhaps, someday, I'll have a good, strong answer for it.  Who knows.

>However, I have no committment to remaining in ignorance. If my logic
>is flawed (I don't think it is - why do you think the "problem of evil"
>has persisted for 2000 years as THE stumbling-block for generation after
>generation of would-be believers?) I will humbly eat my words and
>repent myself in dust and ashes.
I agree with you.  That's why theodicy is where I expend a lot of my
effort.  I want an answer that works, is logical and is supported by
Scripture.  No one has got it yet.  I fall back, at the moment, finally to
"My ways are higher than your ways, my thoughts higher than your thougts"
and do not claim to be able to explain everything about God.

Intellectual honesty is one of my prime requirements for myself.  And
probably the biggest stumbling block there is.  I could fall into one 
of the fundamentalist schools and just ignore it.  But that would not
answer my own questions in any way that I found satisfactory.

Yep, that's right.  I'm trying to answer the questions just as many
theologians have for centuries...

>>>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.
>>
>> He's so far beyond comprehension that my theology is effectively worthless.
>> But it's all I've got to work with based on the witness of Scripture.

>Wait! Your theology is the work of 2000 years of HUMAN interpretation and
>reasoning. Here's what you have to work with - the scripture, the theology,
>(which is a bit of a mess), your noodle (which hopefully isn't! :) and
>your non-rational feeling about your life. Of all of these, the theology
>is the least trustworthy. Scripture MAY be inspired - I doubt that 
>the Council of Nicea was! Especially since some of the members of that
>crucial council bitterly repented their decision to give assent to the
>anti-Arian motion, and felt that they had betrayed God. 
My theology is, as you say, a product of 2000 years of human interpretation.
But, I've already rejected a lot of what I was taught when I was younger,
based on what I've read in the Bible.  I have disagreements with most
Christians I know on this topic.  My theology is a hodge-podge of various
ideas, gleened from what I read.  I should have a huge 'under construction'
sign on my statements...

>> To quote Him: "My thoughts are higher than your thoughts, and my ways are
>> higher than your ways"
>> 
>Yeah, well, MY daddy can lift DUMP TRUCKS!  :)
:-)

>The ultimate disclaimer:

>The above opinions are not my responsibility, but Yahweh's, since he created
>me in such a way that I would feel that they are correct. Complaints should
>be directed to Him, not me, bub. 
YHWH is responsible, but you would be at fault...that's the implication I
find...since you have the ability to chose!

 -Steve
--
 The opinions expressed above are those of the author and not SPSS, Inc.
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     adams@spss.com                           Phone: (312) 329-3522
     Steve Adams                              Fax:   (312) 329-3558
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