From: hartigan@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: The problem of evil (reply to Steve Adams)
Date: 27 Aug 92 20:52:56 GMT
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

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?"
 
(note -  we work with kids, so we know these things are true. If I die 
today, it will be true that I ALWAYS chose the "right" way in this
circumstance - and I assure you, the possiblility for an evil choice 
existed! :-)   

* 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?
 
> 
>>> 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. 

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. 
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"
 
> 
>>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? 

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."

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...).

I know every bone in your body is screaming "No!" at this point. But if
you are convinced that a loving Creator DOES exist, than you are stuck
with the conclusion that Christian doctrine is wrong, big-time.
The Loving Creator and Hell have never been easily matched concepts. 
How you handle this unpleasant fact is up to you, of course. 
Every bone in my body says "No - no God that could create this beautiful
world would create beings whose fate was eternal torture."  That's just me,
though.
 
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.
 
>>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. 
 
> 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!  :)

>  -Steve


Sean Hartigan
hartigan@ac.dal.ca

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.