Elimination of "evil" and "suffering" the ultimate goal?

[Overaged]

...You frame a great red-herring and leading question here; which has no basis in fact, Biblical or otherwise. God's character will be "vindicated" because He is under accusation from all kinds of people. Not because he needs an excuse for all the evil and suffering that happens.

[ad hominem commentary and quotes removed]

[Overaged]

Well; it is a religion - so is atheism and agnosticism

[Overaged]

...The more I read of the Bible; the more I want to be a Christian.

[ad hominem commentary and quotes removed]

[Sonny]

1] Good point, but unlike "rape" the "love of self" (iniquity) doesn't sound "evil". The only way for God to prove it was evil was to allow Lucifer to test out his theory. Adam & Eve fell for him and made him Lord of this world.

2] God can't sin. Sure He has a free will. God is agape, it's not just an attribute. It's who He is.

Lucifer was dependent on God - especially His agape. God is the source of agape. When Lucifer separated himself from God, the source of agape, he became bent to himself. He is the father of iniquity. How could a sinless being sin? We don't know, but we do know that he rejected his dependence on God.

[fccool]

Well, according to you... God does, although there's no shred of evidence of such statement in the Bible (i.e. that God needs to be vindicated in front of all kinds of people) ... it does not stop you to explain why evil exists.

YOU frame a red herring argument by making it about free will and God being vindicated . I then simply show you that's it's a herring argument by drawing a human parallel.

If it's not ok to let rapists to rape people, or killer to kill people in order to prove that evil is evil and bad... then why is it ok for God to do the same. Isn't it obvious? Where's the line?

Perhaps there's other explanation, but it's certainly not "God needs to be vindicated" or "Because people have free will"...

BTW none of the two explanations are outlined in the Bible. In Job God does not give the reason why He lets Satan do those things.

Neither it states anywhere that evil exists because of free will.

[fccool]

Explain how either atheism or agnosticism is a religion?

Is not playing soccer a sport?

[cardw]

My wife and I were thinking about the ridiculous notion that not believing something is considered a religion. We came up with a funny sitcom situation.

John: "You copy everything that I do"

Matt: "No I don't!!!"

John: "Do you tame Lions?"

Matt: "No"

John: "Neither do I. Copy cat!!"

[Overaged]

Even soccer can be a religion to some people. It's not rocket science

[Overaged]

In the OP; I am not sure why you need to inject words like "dishonesty." Many Christians/Most Christians are quite honest in their beliefs, just as you are in yours.

[fccool]

Yes, in the hind sight it may not be the best thing to do. I guess I've meant dishonesty in context of simply making up explanation that does not make sense, and not found in Biblical narrative.

[Overaged]

I guess that's my only point here. That people are not fundamentally dishonest when they talk about their religion. And usually, when they say that something is in the Bible; and you say it isn't; it is just a matter of perspective. They actually do see it there, because when they look at the text; they see it through a different "lense" than you do. There are many external and internal factors which affect what kind of "lense" (apriori) we see a given text through.

You seemed to question the belief that "evil and suffering" is not the ultimate evil in the OP. Can you explain why; if that actually is so? i would be interested to hear more on that.

[Woody]

EXCELLENT

OVERAGED.

You really outdid yourself this time. RIGHT ON. We certainly need to get that ingrained in our heads.

[Overaged]

I guess that one of the things I had in mind when I posted that Woody, is that God knows and understands all the "lenses" that we use in discerning His Word; but He who knows the end from the beginning; our Alpha and Omega, also UNDERSTANDS, and He waits with patient longing to help us and bless us in even the smallest of ways. No "job" is too little or too much for the Lord...and applying this to the predicament of evil and suffering; He is a God we can turn to when it is dark. (see Micah 7:8) and this is whether or not we can "explain" all the evil and suffering. This is where my hope lies.

[Woody]

Woody likes

[cardw]

And NOT playing soccer isn't a sport or a religion. That's not rocket science either.

[Overaged]

It very well could be in some cases...certainly you have not been able to prove otherwise.

[cardw]

Having hope that god will explain it all means that you don't no. Hence ag-nosis (Literally not knowing) There are a number of agnostics who are Christian believers, but they don't claim to know god from a rational knowing position.

So technically you are an agnostic.

I am agnostic for the idea of god in general and an atheist when it comes to the god of the Bible. I am reasonably certain that the god described by most Christians and the Bible does not exist.

[Overaged]

How does having hope that God will explain something make one "agnostic?" That doesn't compute. There are a lot of weird religions in the world. if I want to worship some rock on the bike path that I travel on, who are you to refute it? You are the one who freely admits that he doesn't know.

I actually don't even feel the need to know everything and to have all my questions answered. I know enough about Jesus to stick with Him for the rest of my life.

[Overaged]

Both Christians and agnostics have a lot of things they don't know. This, in and of itself is not the base criteria for defining "agnostic."

The Psalmist relates well the experience of not knowing, for the Christian - See Psalms 88.

Even while the Christian sits in darkness; the Lord can still be their Light: Micah 7:8

[Dr. Shane]

The only way for God to eliminate evil was for Him to expose it. That is what has been revealed to us. We can choose to accept that or question it. In the book of Job God warns those that would second-guess Him. I choose not to be one of those. Others think it is better for them to do so.

Religion places God in a place to direct the believers' life. This is true of every religion I am aware of. Not all "believers" follow what they believe God wants them to do but at the base of their belief is that God or some philosophy for living knows better for them than they themselves do.

Atheism and agnosticism relies on self to direct their lives. This is often in the form of reason. In essence the person is placing themselves in the position that religious people place God. While the atheist or agnostic may pridefully claim they have no religion, in actuality they belong to the religion of self with reason being their holy scripture.

[Dr. Shane]

Of course we all use reason to a great degree. We use reason in many decisions from when to use the toilet to how much to eat and which side of the road to drive on. However reason is not the guiding principle in the lives of most people who claim to be religious. The God factor guides them and reason is simply used under that direction.

God clearly tells us in the Bible that He does not think as we think nor are our ways as His ways. This contrasts relying on self to direct our paths and relying on God to direct our paths.

[Overaged]

"reason" is in an unfavorable light, whenever it is someone's god.

When reason is someone's God; they can still believe different things than other atheists, using reason as one's God is not a belief; it is a religion and comes under many forms both old and new.

[fccool]

I think both Shane and Overaged go way to far with the metaphor here. It may be fine to define reason as "god" in metaphorical meaning, but it does not really work in real world.

Religious people use just as much reason as non-religious people do. They reason differently. Reason is simply put... an explanation. Most Christians (like Shane) choose to go with explanation that's presented to them in the Holy Books of old, and they are fine with it. If there's a seeming problem, then for them it is extremely dangerous to "question God", because by questioning the problems in the books one inevitably questions God ... and that's their reason.

But there are people who don't outright dismiss the possibility that

1) Biblical narrative is a human parable

2) It was written our of lack of understanding... not out of abundance of understanding.

3) Perhaps there could be other explanation, especially when the former collides with logic by contradicting itself.

If there is a God, he is very much REASONABLE God. He would not do something JUST BECAUSE. Yet, we have either clashing, or illogical explanations that seem to be made up to patch up the holes in "unknown". I simply point out that these explanations do not work.

For example, Shane can't answer the questions that I posed, because He does not have the answers. He chooses to cling to the generic explanation of existence of evil, which I've demonstrated not to work really well in terms of both nature of God and nature of human beings.

One of the mistakes that I observe Christians commit repeatedly is to confuse knowledge, belief and truth. In epistemology knowledge = truth. If you know something by faith... that's not knowledge. That's called a belief. It may or may not overlap with objective truth, but I don't think one should be so impudent to say I KNOW, when there are very few ways of knowing.

Yet, what most Christians (and other religious branches) end up doing is saying I KNOW because:

1) They've read it in a book from 1000s of years ago... which perhaps not even intended to be taken literally, but as metaphorical fiction with some bits of reality.

2) Because the organized religion tells them what is true and what is not, without proving any substantial objective support for the claims outside of <I've prayed and God gave me the money> type of "proof". That's not proof at all.

I call it dishonesty not because of lack of sincerity. Most of religious people truly sincere in their belief. I call it dishonesty because of the outright refusal to properly evaluate the evidence against and admit that some things outright don't fit in.

Here's a simple way of demonstrating the logic at work:

1) There's a question that conflicts with what I believe

2) I know I'm correct, because my Holy Books tell me so, so the obvious explanation is to find something that both does not conflict the Holy Books, and something that can't be disproven.

3) If such thing is not found, then it's better not question the Holy Books because it's arrogant. We don't have capacity to reason with God.

How can one ever stumble on any sort of truth with such mentality? At its base it devices a mechanism to cut off any verification or test of its veracity. It establishes itself as the truth, yet it redefines what "knowledge" is. It equates knowledge with belief. It's not very honest to do so. I can say I believe about certain things being so, but I can't honestly say I KNOW.

And, if you don't truly KNOW, then my friend... you are an Agnostic to a certain degree... as there are not may ways to KNOW some things that are beyond ourselves.

[fccool]

The essence of the God vs Evil explanations is mere observation of reality. Book of Job was in and out of Tanakh(Jewish canon) for obvious reasons of how it approaches evil and the reality of God. Essentially the problem of evil is that it is inconsistent with God's nature. So, the attempts to explain evil were either..

Redefining God... i.e.:

- God does not exist because evil does

- God is not all powerful or not all-knowing... so he merely reacts to some decisions

- God is not all good, whatever it may mean

or these resort to redefining evil:

- Evil is a result of Free Will

- Evil serves a purpose of good God

- there is no evil, because it's all in accord with purpose of God.

All of the above merely attempt to patch holes in original narrative and definitions. These explanations create more problems than these solve. Let's take the argument from free will, for example:

- It sort of makes God as a reaction force, rather than the driving and creative ones which can solve problems before they even happen. I.E. It's like a father saying to son, <I have a rule that anyone who steal from me will have his hands cut off. I know you are my son, but the rule is greater. And I know that I could have stopped you and reasoned with you before you got into this predicament... after all I stood and watched. But, I have to let you make your choices. Give me your hands, son.> This view makes paints God who doesn't have free will, as oppose to humans that do. I.E. God can't do bad things, but everyone else can... because of "free will". Don't anyone see a problem here?

- This view overlooks sources that are outside of humans that create what we understand as "evil". People who lived and died in Haiti are not responsible for the earthquake, which punished everyone unilaterally ... Christians or Atheists, or Voodoo. Such events have don't result from free will.

Of course, the typical response is that the ground was cursed by God. Yet it's contrived response because

a) In context, the passage refers to the soil being hard to cultivate... nothing about earthquakes

This point makes no sense in term of "free will". It's inconsistent. It's like saying that Johnny suffers because of Peter's choices. It may be true, but it's not a reflection of Johnny's free will or reflection on proper justice being served. If God is just, then this idea does not fly too well.

That's usually when God is merciful idea is also injected, and it becomes even more twisted. If God is merciful enough to give evil people time to repent, why wouldn't He be merciful enough to alleviate the suffering caused by the same evil people?

The book of Job does not give any explanations neither for existence of evil, nor for the solution of the problem of evil. It simply states that good people suffer, even thought they committed no wrong, and God allows it for some reason. It's an observation. It provides no explanation of why evil happened. It's just a mere statement that innocent do suffer

[fccool]

Overaged asked me as to what I believe the ultimate goal is, if it's not elimination of evil.

First of all, I think it's important to point out that the problem of evil is posterior to existence of God if we view those objectively. We know that suffering and "evil" exist. We don't know or understand (in epistemological sense) the nature of God. We indirectly deduce it from the scripture or the prophetic writing. God does not come to us in the dream and declare that eating pork is evil. We believe it because we read it in the Bible. On the other hand, God does not declare killing an animal as an evil act. I.E. There's nothing essentially "evil" about slitting the throat of a lamb, let it drain blood ... sprinkle it on the door post and then eat it as a symbol. I.E. if God himself commanded such act, then it can't be evil.

The above is called a subjective morality. Which Christians argue moral objectivity, they at the same time prescribe to moral subjectivity. You can't have both. Death ether evil in all forms of it, or it's not. Ask any hardcore vegetarians (not an Adventist one), and they'll explain their reasons.

But, getting back to the idea of evil being posterior to idea of God in reason. We can establish that evil is objective. We can't do the same with God. We've seen plenty of evil, yet we've seen none of God in terms of direct revelation. Perhaps God is humble enough not to reveal himself and he respects human will enough not to chastise people personally for every single mistake, but we don't have direct knowledge of God. So, the reasons why the evil exists is largely unknown. We can speculate, but that's about it.

Maybe, the simplest explanation for existence of evil is in fact that evil is a natural occurrence, as I've pointed out before. It occurs due to lack of understanding on behalf of moral agents, or it can occur as act of nature itself. I.E. A volcanic eruption killing all life on the island is hardly good. So, subjectively it can be called evil. Yet, blaming Adam for volcanic eruption is a bit of a stretch... don't you think?

I think the common mistake is to think that these questions are asked because people want to disprove or insult God... and make Satan feel good. Those are valid questions. I do feel for Job. He had no reason to for suffering, and he got no explanation.