1. a perfectly good God, by definition, would want to create a perfectly good world
2. an all-powerful God, by definition, would be able to create a perfectly good world
3. and thus if a perfectly good, all-powerful God exists, we would exist in a perfectly good world, a world with no evil (think of the idea of Heaven)
4. and yet evil exists in our world in tremendous quantity, and includes both physical evil (the suffering caused by the blind catastrophes of nature: disease, flood, drought, etc.) and moral evil (the suffering caused by the intentions of wicked people: murder, adultery, rape, deception, theft, etc.)
Thus it seems we must conclude the following: Either (v) God exists, but is not perfectly good, and/or (vi) God exists, but is not all-powerful, or (vii) God does not exist.
It should be noted, however, that the problem of evil only arises for those who claim that God is both all-powerful and perfectly good. Those who believe either that God is very powerful but not all-powerful, or that God is very good but not perfectly good, can avoid the problem of evil by saying that evil is either out of God’s control or is somehow part of God’s plan. But if one wishes to maintain that God is both all-powerful and perfectly good, the problem exists.
But there have been attempts to formulate a theory which justifies the perfect goodness and absolute power of God in the face of evil. Such attempts are called ‘theodicies’, and they have traditionally taken three general forms:
- the most common theodicy is the ‘free-will defense’, which answers the problem by claiming that evil is not caused by God, but rather by humans abusing their free will. God, it is argued, wished to create a world containing moral goodness, but could not do so without creating people possessing genuine free will, for only if the good is freely chosen can it be a case of genuine moral goodness. The unfortunate corollary of this, however, is that our possession of free will gives us the capacity to choose evil – and choose it we have, to our great detriment. In this scenario, evil is an unfortunate side-effect of God’s justified desire to create free beings capable of genuine moral goodness; and all evil existing in the world is said to be caused by those free beings (we humans), and not by God.
(See Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, New York: Harper & Row, 1974, pt.1a)
By Mark Piper /The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 01/06/2003
Mark Piper says:
SvarSlett----
1. a perfectly good God, by definition, would want to create a perfectly good world
2. an all-powerful God, by definition, would be able to create a perfectly good world
3. and thus if a perfectly good, all-powerful God exists, we would exist in a perfectly good world, a world with no evil (think of the idea of Heaven)
4. and yet evil exists in our world in tremendous quantity, and includes both physical evil (the suffering caused by the blind catastrophes of nature: disease, flood, drought, etc.) and moral evil (the suffering caused by the intentions of wicked people: murder, adultery, rape, deception, theft, etc.)
Thus it seems we must conclude the following: Either (v) God exists, but is not perfectly good, and/or (vi) God exists, but is not all-powerful, or (vii) God does not exist.
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To this is to say:
1. This starting premise is false - what is a "perfectly good God" and why should God be perfectly good? The idea of a "perfectly good God" is a human invention. There is nothing is the Universe that points to the "perfectly good God" as a necessity. There is nothing "perfect" in the world, simply because the world is living, pulsating and moving back and forth and to every side all the time. There is neither room nor any need for perfection. Something perfect cannot exist in a living, moving world.
2. Since the first premise is false because it is based upon human self-centeredness and desire for short-term comfort leading to contempt for everything that is not immediately comfortable, this conclusion (2) is fallacious.
3. We have no way of knowing exactly how powerful God is, and what is under God's domain. God may be the all-pervasive principle - a power permeating all of Universe(s). More importantly, what is a "world without evil"?
4. Here an all-encompassing definition of evil is provided in a few arbitrary lines. First; "the suffering caused by the blind catastrophes of nature: disease, flood, drought, etc" This understanding is so problematic as to be untenable in the very large picture - that is, the picture necessarily seen and related to by God. Flood and drought are not evils, instead they are natural fluctuations. All sorts of organisms, bacteria, virii, insects, mammals, fish, reptiles and birds, together with numerous plants, have developed adaptations so that they can successfully meet these environmental changes. Nor is disease evil, since all known organisms susceptible to disease have developed strategies to combat disease. Moreover, it is proven that this incessant combat, this evolution of defense mechanisms to meet natural environmental challenges, is instrumental and indeed indispensable to develop the qualities needed to live in a living, fluctuating universe. To hold the view that these phenomena are "evil" is to hold that Life itself is evil. Lastly, "suffering" is an entirely human concept - some have determined that there are something called "the blind catastrophes of nature" that causes suffering. Firstly; one has to have a rather limited knowledge of natural processes in order to view the natural events as "blind." These fluctuations are always reversible, repeatable and they are repeated whenever conditions dictate their occurrence.
No less problematic is the notion that there is something like "moral evil." Now, moral as such is also a human concept, but the basis for ethics and moral practices is not based upon a human concept. Thus, any behavior that reduces the chances of survival is disruptive to life if prominent enough. That is why we can say that a dominant tendency to "murder, adultery, rape, deception, theft, etc" is non-functional or maladaptive. However, it cannot be justified on any observations in the natural world to say that these phenomena in themselves /are/ evil. An individual act of these may be maladaptive depending on the circumstances, but our capacity to commit murder, adultery, rape, deception, theft and more is a prerequisite to survival even though cultured human in all his immaturity may wish it to be different. Depending on the circumstances in a forever moving world, they may be necessary. If they dominate, so that murder, adultery, deception and theft are committed by an excessively large number of individuals in many situations, then we have a case of maladaptive behavior and a disruption of an equilibrium. This still is not "evil," but is may be said to be "wrong" because it is biologically maladaptive and therefore destructive for the species. The problem is humans' tendency to think that everything is either this, or it is that. Most people understand that if we cannot commit murder, we cannot defend ourselves. That is not the point of the matter, and so the removal of that against which one defends oneself makes no difference in principle. This is the most difficult part to understand. The point is that if there is nothing to defend against, it will be like an absence of gravity: One cannot walk, live or develop without anything to walk on and press against. Our brains are entirely a result of competition and selection where members of the opposite sex have chosen the best partner available. Our brain are not given us by God, and yet it IS in a very real sense given us by God - God upholds the Universe(s) and is therefore also necessarily good since it may surely be called a good thing to enable everything to exist. But God cannot view the world the way some humans do. It is the responsibility of humans to see beyond arrogant anthropocentrism and appreciate that something is not "evil" because it is appears unpleasant to a desire to obtain maximum comfort in the moment. In other words, it is the responsibility of humans to understand that a world where the lamb grazes together with the lion would be a world wherein neither the lamb nor the lion could exist, and far less live.
Mark Piper continued:
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"Thus it seems we must conclude the following: Either (v) God exists, but is not perfectly good, and/or (vi) God exists, but is not all-powerful, or (vii) God does not exist."
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To that is to answer:
The fallacy here is the human tendency to project (distorted) human-cultural values onto the Universe. There is no need for God to be "perfectly good" because that concept is devoid of meaning outside of human immature wishes. The very existence of the world is the best and eternal testimony to God's existence as well as God's grace. Because there is and can be no greater good than to uphold everything. Hence, it can be concluded, albeit not proven, that God most certainly exists even if God does not need to fulfill some human ideas of being "perfectly good."
Per Inge Oestmoen
If you look in the Bible at the Garden of Eden in the book of Genesis, there you find a situation where God does indeed create a perfectly good world. But through the exercise of agency, the humans who were placed here introduced death and evil into the world.
SvarSlettGod's intention in creating the world was to provide a mechanism whereby his spirit children could progress, potentially becoming as he is. This requires the acquisition of a physical body -- not that spirits are not physical, but of a different class of matter. Here we choose between good and evil in a situation where we are equally enticed by both. Those who figure it out and choose wisely will progress, those who don't won't.
Because a perfect world doesn't include enticement by evil forces, the perfect world he created therefore included a mechanism for becoming the domain of both good and evil, but that mechanism had to be triggered by the voluntary acts of free agents who were explicitly instructed not to trigger it. Eve was beguiled and disobeyed, triggering the mechanism. Adam followed suit, realizing that after much suffering, trials, and tribulation, the ultimate result of it all would be a far greater good than would result if he and Eve were to persist in their then-present state.
Because of the fallen nature of this world and its inhabitants, it was necessary to provide a Savior who would voluntarily shoulder the punishment deserved by all of us for falling short of perfection, as well as to provide a means of regaining physical bodies after death, which, because of Christ, is but a temporary separation of our spirits from our bodies. If we seek Christ and follow his example, he will freely forgive us and bless us with direction and meaning in our lives.
Back to the original point -- God is perfectly good, and he did create a perfectly good world. What we humans have done to it is another issue, but we profit by the fall of Adam and Eve in that we have the opportunity to leave the presence of God, obtain a physical body, grow through our choices and mistakes and experiences, and return to live with him if we are wise enough to make the right choices and continue progressing in this stage of our existence.
Death is highly overrated -- it is not the end of existence, but a transition. All who die will find this is true. Don't be surprised when you die and discover that you really haven't died at all. There will be others there-- those who have passed on before -- to take care of us and help us adjust to the next phase of our existence. If we have done well in this life -- loved deeply and lived honestly -- we will be privileged to rest in a joyous and peaceful place, surrounded by our loved ones who have already departed, and perhaps occasionally graced by the presence of Christ, which is in itself an astonishingly wonderful experience. We will all eventually be reunited with physical bodies in perfect and immortal form, and be privileged to live in a place consistent with how far we were able to progress in mortality, which at the minimum will be glorious and wonderful beyond anything we can imagine. We truly are the offspring of God and he loves us as such, and we will see that it is true when we leave mortality.
The wounds and suffering we experience in this life will be healed by Christ. Once we get through it and look back on it, we will see that it has helped us become better persons if we have borne it well -- it increases our compassion, our love, and our humility.
God bless us all in our quest for truth and goodness.
The question of the precise nature of this "perfectly good world" still remains as open as ever.
SvarSlettMuch more importantly; if we, for the sake of discussion, accept the thought of a perfectly good world we are also compelled to accept the idea of a "fallen world" since the existing explanation of Eve's and Adam's "fall" is the only coherent account of the events that supposedly led to the introduction of evil on Earth.
With that as a starting point, one may then ask how it is that wounds and suffering are allegedly real whereas death is not.
Of course, the insight that "death" is but a transition to another place, another step among the countless ones in all of Eternity has probably been with humans ever since the emergence of "higher" mental faculties. To our knowledge, every old human culture has taken for granted that death is merely a seeming end - and that there is no end. How then is it that wounds and suffering are said to be important?
* Is it not rather the case that what some perceive in ways that lead them to use words like "suffering" must necessarily be equally transitory? It seems that it follows logically from the awareness that there is in reality no death that everything one might fear or dislike is not important either.
* To that one might add the not insignificant point that "suffering" in an entirely human concept. One may subjectively say that "I suffer," but there is and can be no objective suffering. Thus, the very idea of suffering is problematic. Even more so is the notion that "suffering" is rampant in the world.
Where is all this suffering to be found and observed?
Even the cells in bodies are the result of cooperation, and everything in the observable world is permeated by deep care and love. If one is saying that the world has fallen, one also have to explain on what ultimate grounds such an allegation is made.
For every phenomenon that can remotely give us reason to call it suffering, there is an equal amount of love, honesty, grace, compassion. Look at the world, and see that it really is so.
What poses the gravest problem for the idea of sin, fall (those two are inextricably connected because the one would be meaningless without the other) and the resultant "suffering" is the existence of virtually countless and unlimited life forms brought about by evolution, that is incessant adaptation that has resulted in all the species we know have gradually developed in response to a living, moving and forever loving world.
What kind of monumental arrogance is it, if we first state that the world is full of suffering and evil, and then go on and claim that one single species is responsible for that? We certainly need an awakening, a profound spiritual awakening if we believe that two single members of the human race have caused the existence of suffering, and that this "fall" is the reason why humans and every other living organism is mortal.
Christ needs not forgive us; there is nothing to forgive. There is only an ongoing movement that will not and cannot cease. Every step entails different possibilities, and the effects of these steps are independent on whether or not one is aware of the consequences.
People may however create unnecessary pain, and that is most commonly done by harboring an idea that they deserve punishment or need to be forgiven. There is no need to forgive anything, no reason for feeling guilt. If a wrong or mistaken step is made it is just to take another and better one the next time. The opportunities are always there, they are there all the time, and they are many more than any human can imagine.
There is no suffering because unpleasantries, pain and privation are always transitory like the nonexistent "death" itself. Our loved ones will always be there - because they never departed in the first place.
There is no "sin" either - because the only question worth asking is "what do you want?"
If you carry within you a concept of suffering, then make the choices that are going to deliver you from it. If you cling to the notion of sin and suffering, that is what you bring upon yourself because you believe in it.
Let us all accept that we do live forever, but that there is no "Savior" since nobody is in need of being saved. We alone are responsible for our actions, and there is no judgement - only consequences. So one has to be acutely aware of what it is one wants.
What may be the hardest of all, is to realize that there is no such thing is "perfection." It cannot be, when the world moves, pulsates and adapts every second. Yet perfection there is: It is precisely the incessant movement that at the same time precludes perfection and ensures it - the movement is the perfection in itself.
We do not have to wait for a moment or stage when we have "progressed" enough to reach "perfection." The opportunities for honest living and deep loving is here now. It is up to us to see this possibility instead of inoculating ourselves with ideas of sin, guilt and punishment.