Answering the God is Evil argument

[Furen]

Cause that's too long to say in a conversation where you need to refer to it constantlly

[That Dude]

Ehhhhh...like I said, whole other argument.

I also said that was a whole different argument.

Also, I really don't like that phrase. "Judeo-Christian." It's kind of insulting to Jews in my opinion, since they don't want to be associated with us because they think we're wrong about Jesus being the Messiah, as well as having a slightly different view of God than we do. I mean if we're going to mention them why not go all the way and say "Islamic-Judeo-Christian God."

I say Judeo-Christian because it's an easily accepted, common "theological" term that most people can relate to. Sorry for the offense.

[Nate]

It's fine, you didn't know how I felt about the term. But I really do take offense to it, and I know a lot of Jewish people do too. So I'm not upset that you used it, just was making my distaste for it known. ^^

[That Dude]

Ok. That's cool. I'll try and put it in different terms than...

[Nate]

"Christian God" or just "God" would seem to be just fine, I don't see what's wrong with those. *shrug* Especially since a devout Jew would type "G-d" out of respect.

[Syreth]

C.S. Lewis, while an absolutely gifted Christian writer, is not exactly the strongest of philosophers/apologists. As Atria said, he does tend to create straw man arguments and stuff.

Yeah, I agree. While admirable, it was probably too ambitious of him to address philosophy and apologetics to the degree that he did.

[Kunoichi]

I haven't read any posts so this may have been said. Rather I'm responding to the first post.

The ironic post in some who is atheist stating that God is evil..has to believe in a god in the first place. Actions by man do not dictate God's actions. So in that case it becomes no more than if they do not believe in God, how can they state that God is evil. That would mean they are either agnostic or believe in one God but view Him as evil. Seems to be a loop in logic. In my opinion, that could be the first argument.

Secondly, perhaps THEIR God is evil. That doesn't mean the one true God is. By stating as such, they would have to believe that one true God exists. Goes back to the first thing I stated. I used to have the concept that God was evil and uncaring, especially after being raped, beaten and endured torture from several people and for several years. I later was able to realize that perhaps the God who I was worshiping WAS evil. That being said, I also had to change my views on who God was and realize who the true God really is: A loving Father who sent His Son to take ultimate evil, suffering and death from me. As I tell people who say such things to me, My God is not evil, but loving. If your god is evil, perhaps you aren't worshiping the True One.

Just my own thoughts, take it as you will.

[Fish and Chips]

The ironic post in some who is atheist stating that God is evil..has to believe in a god in the first place.

I think you're misunderstanding the argument.

The root of the question Is God Evil can probably be traced to the writings of classical Greek philosopher Epicurus. To wit:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

Christianity claims that God is omnipotent, all powerful, which raises the very natural question of why evil is then allowed to exist in any form, but usually particularly in regards to bad things happening to good people. A man lives a moral life, judges no one, cheats no one, trusts in God, and comes home to find a thief raping his wife before turning to shoot the man dead. The atheist wonders, very reasonably, how the God of Christianity, supreme over all, can allow such a thing to happen. Yes, it was a second man's will leading him to destroy the first man, but God still permitted it to happen]seemingly[/I]) trivial things or other unexplained reasons.

To the atheist, who doesn't believe in God, the question is relatively meaningless; but posed to a Christian, who does believe in God, it is our responsibility to be able to account for this. It is a direct challenge, one many of us are not very well equipped to handle very satisfyingly I should add.

[Nate]

Fish explained it excellently. It's not that atheists are admitting God exists. The atheist is saying "Even if God DOES exist, why would you worship Him when, by reading the Bible, you can clearly see He is evil by the things He does?" The easy response to that is "If God was so evil, He wouldn't have sent His son to die for us and redeem us." But it isn't a satisfying response to the atheist, who would then go on to mention things such as the flood, Lot's wife, the plague on the firstborn, God's commands that say "Slaughter all the men, women, and children, and babies of these people, and even kill their animals." Why would a loving, kind God command or directly Himself kill infants through a plague? That is where the "God is evil" question comes from, though the "If God exists and is omnipotent and good, there should be no evil" is another favorite.

[Furen]

I havn't read all of the posts yet but I just want to let Fish know that that was very well put, thanks for the insite!

There's so many different angles that this question can come, so it's hard to get a specific answer unless we know what specific we are dealing with, so my question is:

Do we have a specific or just a broad topic?

[rocklobster]

broad, please. I'm thinking of posting this on a message board where I suspect the general public has misconceptions about Christianity, so I want to set the record straight.

[Kunoichi]

I think you're misunderstanding the argument.

The root of the question Is God Evil can probably be traced to the writings of classical Greek philosopher Epicurus. To wit:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

Christianity claims that God is omnipotent, all powerful, which raises the very natural question of why evil is then allowed to exist in any form, but usually particularly in regards to bad things happening to good people. A man lives a moral life, judges no one, cheats no one, trusts in God, and comes home to find a thief raping his wife before turning to shoot the man dead. The atheist wonders, very reasonably, how the God of Christianity, supreme over all, can allow such a thing to happen. Yes, it was a second man's will leading him to destroy the first man, but God still permitted it to happen]seemingly[/I]) trivial things or other unexplained reasons.

To the atheist, who doesn't believe in God, the question is relatively meaningless; but posed to a Christian, who does believe in God, it is our responsibility to be able to account for this. It is a direct challenge, one many of us are not very well equipped to handle very satisfyingly I should add.

Thank you for explaining this more thoroughly for me. I probably should have put more thought into my original post.

I don't know if this is relevant, when I first started my recovery, there is a book by Randy Alcorn that goes into this question (If God is good: faith in the midst of pain and suffering). It was a great comfort to me. Just something I thought of tonight, that I'm not sure if it would be of any help to you rocklobster.

[Kunoichi]

Fish explained it excellently. It's not that atheists are admitting God exists. The atheist is saying "Even if God DOES exist, why would you worship Him when, by reading the Bible, you can clearly see He is evil by the things He does?" The easy response to that is "If God was so evil, He wouldn't have sent His son to die for us and redeem us." But it isn't a satisfying response to the atheist, who would then go on to mention things such as the flood, Lot's wife, the plague on the firstborn, God's commands that say "Slaughter all the men, women, and children, and babies of these people, and even kill their animals." Why would a loving, kind God command or directly Himself kill infants through a plague? That is where the "God is evil" question comes from, though the "If God exists and is omnipotent and good, there should be no evil" is another favorite.

As with Fish, thank you Nate for explaining this more thoroughly to me

[Lynna]

So, all the debtors here have thoroughly discussed and at long last come to the conclusion as to why an atheist would make such a claim, and yet we still haven't answered the original question.

Fish explained it excellently. It's not that atheists are admitting God exists. The atheist is saying "Even if God DOES exist, why would you worship Him when, by reading the Bible, you can clearly see He is evil by the things He does?" The easy response to that is "If God was so evil, He wouldn't have sent His son to die for us and redeem us." But it isn't a satisfying response to the atheist, who would then go on to mention things such as the flood, Lot's wife, the plague on the firstborn, God's commands that say "Slaughter all the men, women, and children, and babies of these people, and even kill their animals." Why would a loving, kind God command or directly Himself kill infants through a plague? That is where the "God is evil" question comes from, though the "If God exists and is omnipotent and good, there should be no evil" is another favorite.

yeah. just a little while ago I saw a post on a blog saying that God must be evil because of all the people that were killed in The Old Testament. I've heard explanations for this that would satisfy a christian, but not an atheist.

[Nate]

So, all the debtors here have thoroughly discussed and at long last come to the conclusion as to why an atheist would make such a claim, and yet we still haven't answered the original question.

Pretty much because you stated the reason for that yourself.

I've heard explanations for this that would satisfy a christian, but not an atheist.

And that's why we can't answer the original question.

[Peanut]

So, all the debtors here have thoroughly discussed and at long last come to the conclusion as to why an atheist would make such a claim, and yet we still haven't answered the original question.

You mean the question where we were asked how we would go about responding to the God is evil argument? I think most of us did respond to that along the way. In fact the entire argument between me and Nate stemmed off of my answer to that question.

I've heard explanations for this that would satisfy a christian, but not an atheist.

Depends on the atheist and the Christians view of the inspiration of scripture. Most atheists I've read and talk to seem to be fine with people who just take the Bible to be the words of man and nothing else. They would likely not even bring up that issue about the Old Testament and God killing people because those individuals wouldn't believe that God actually did it or ordained it. When I see this, it makes it evident to me that their are explanations out their that most level headed atheists will accept. Now a large number of Christians on the other hand hate the idea that scripture could be partly or fully man made and you should be able to see where the problem arises. Anyway, this post is getting off topic even though I would love to talk with people about various ideas of inspiration.

[Nate]

The big problem that atheists have is the way of Christian thinking. They look at evidence and draw a conclusion. They say, "Here are the facts. What can we discern from them?"

This is in stark contrast to Christianity, which goes, "Here is the conclusion. How can we interpret the facts to fit out conclusion?"

In other words, they look at the arguments presented and go "A loving God wouldn't do this, therefore God is evil if He existed." The Christian goes, "Well, God is good and loving, so obviously we have to look at these things God did and try and make them fit the fact that God can't do evil or wrong."

Which to them, is the equivalent of saying "My neighbor is a really nice guy and he's always helpful and loving and wonderful so the fact that he was found covered in his wife's blood and feasting on her entrails means that he must have had a really good reason for doing it."

Now Peanut has brought up a good point, though. If you were to take the approach that "Well, every civilization loves to write history in their favor, so since the Israelites did a lot of stuff and were victorious, they just claimed God was on their side." We can actually see this even today. When football players have a really good game sometimes they'll say stuff like "Well you know, we just went out there and played our best, and God was definitely with us, and He honored that we played so well and so we won." I'm pretty sure God has better things to do than worry about who wins a football game, and besides, was the other team not playing their best? Were they all heathens? Did God just not love them as much? No, of course not. It's just the winners claiming God was on their side. This is why they'll say stuff sometimes such as "God was really guiding that ball when I threw that winning touchdown," but they'll never say "Jesus made me fumble the ball" or "The good Lord tripped me up when I was making that rush."

So if you take that approach, that the Israelites were just attributing their victories to God when God really wasn't that involved, that can be a satisfying explanation...to SOME atheists. To others, it's a foothold to "Well if you don't believe that the Bible is telling the truth about those things then why believe it?" It really depends on the type of atheist.

[Syreth]

Depends on the atheist and the Christians view of the inspiration of scripture.

Good point. It's all well and good to criticize every argument put forward, saying "this isn't good enough," but it's all hypothetical in the end. That's pretty much the point of conversations like this - to weed out weaknesses to strengthen potential responses that a person might give.

[Davidizer13]

Now Peanut has brought up a good point, though. If you were to take the approach that "Well, every civilization loves to write history in their favor, so since the Israelites did a lot of stuff and were victorious, they just claimed God was on their side."

I like this explanation to a point, but there's a flaw with it: if the OT books of history (Kings, Judges, etc.) were written from that point of view, why did they leave in the bits about how they fell away from God repeatedly and then fell into ruin and civil war? (For what it's worth, you can make the same arguments about the Gospels, too - if the disciples made the whole Jesus story up, why would they keep in the parts about how they acted like idiots and deserted their master in his hour of need?)

Some people have theorized that these books were actually written during Babylonian captivity, as a way to rebuild the Jews' traditions as they returned to Jerusalem, and to uphold them by saying "this is what happened when we didn't follow God." This could further explain away that flaw, but I'm not too keen on it, because we have archaeological evidence for some of the kings and cultures described in these books, so at least some of it existed.

[Peanut]

I like this explanation to a point, but there's a flaw with it: if the OT books of history (Kings, Judges, etc.) were written from that point of view, why did they leave in the bits about how they fell away from God repeatedly and then fell into ruin and civil war? (For what it's worth, you can make the same arguments about the Gospels, too - if the disciples made the whole Jesus story up, why would they keep in the parts about how they acted like idiots and deserted their master in his hour of need?)

Some people have theorized that these books were actually written during Babylonian captivity, as a way to rebuild the Jews' traditions as they returned to Jerusalem, and to uphold them by saying "this is what happened when we didn't follow God." This could further explain away that flaw, but I'm not too keen on it, because we have archaeological evidence for some of the kings and cultures described in these books, so at least some of it existed.

Kings and Chronicles, specifically, generally aren't viewed as Israel and Judah's actual historical records. There's several places throughout them (though I'm too lazy to look up an example) that basically says "If you want to read more, go check the court records." There is also at least one specific passage that are in contradiction between Kings and Chronicles too (something about David and the number of people he killed or lead in a battle or something...again I'm too lazy to look it up right now). It seems to me that these are more like theological reinterpretations of history then history themselves. Now, does this mean they are any less inspired? No, it just means the purpose behind them wasn't to be 100% historically accurate.

The archaeology for all of the books of the Old Testament varies. Joshua, for instance, is probably one of the most frustrating pieces of biblical literature for archaeologists because at some sites there is evidence for what is recorded in its pages and at other sites there is no evidence. In other words, some books have much better support while others don't have too much.

[Davidizer13]

It seems to me that these are more like theological reinterpretations of history then history themselves. Now, does this mean they are any less inspired? No, it just means the purpose behind them wasn't to be 100% historically accurate.

Right, and I wasn't suggesting that they weren't inspired in some way, just explaining one of the views I've read about the books' origins.

As a side note, he epistles of the New Testament can also fall into this question about what's actually inspired, what's just the writer's opinion and what parts are advice relevant only to the church/group that is receiving the letter. That's not to say that it can't be good advice in general, but it was addressed to a specific church about a specific issue they were having, or at least, that's how I read it. But all this is besides the point.

Kings and Chronicles, specifically, generally aren't viewed as Israel and Judah's actual historical records. There's several places throughout them (though I'm too lazy to look up an example) that basically says "If you want to read more, go check the court records."
[...]
The archaeology for all of the books of the Old Testament varies. Joshua, for instance, is probably one of the most frustrating pieces of biblical literature for archaeologists because at some sites there is evidence for what is recorded in its pages and at other sites there is no evidence. In other words, some books have much better support while others don't have too much.

Joshua and Judges use a form of internal evidence that pops up every so often, something like "this happened at this one place, and you can go see the monument there," almost like a travelogue. ("When you're in the beautiful land of the Hittites, go visit the city of Luz!") Well, that'd be great evidence if you didn't live 3000 years in the future and thousands of miles from a country that's been reshaped by a dozen or so empires. It's the same problem as the references to these books and records that have been lost, and it's the same problem that all archaeologists have. But all this is neither here nor there.

Anyway, somewhere closer to the topic, I've been reading up on these theories and views of God beyond simple mono/polytheism and atheism - things like pandeism (God became the universe), henotheism (I worship one god, but others exist), etc. They can be interesting, in their ways - it makes for good thought exercises, at least.

More relevant to our interests, though, there is dystheism and maltheism, which state that God is actively malevolent towards humanity (or at least indifferent to our suffering). This links back to the Gnostic concept of the Demiurge - this low-ranking god who created the universe and messed it up, failing to capture the essence of the true God's reality. Anyway, just something to keep in mind - this has probably been stated before, but there is a difference between an atheist saying that the Christian God (if he exists, which he doesn't) is a jerk, and a theist saying that God exists, and He's out to get us.

[Nate]

As a side note, he epistles of the New Testament can also fall into this question about what's actually inspired, what's just the writer's opinion and what parts are advice relevant only to the church/group that is receiving the letter.

Paul, at least, is pretty good about separating his personal opinion from God's commands. In the part where he talks about marriage (which we already had a thread on), Paul says in one verse, "To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord)" and then later on he says "To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord)." So at least there, he's differentiating between his opinion and God.

There are some other areas that are a bit less obvious, but that's outside the scope of this thread.

As far as the archeology goes, it's like Peanut said. Some stuff archaeologists have said "Yep, this part of the Bible is pretty accurate" and other stuff it's like "Nope, this isn't really the case." One of the biggest ones I remember is that apparently the wealth of Israel during Solomon's reign is pretty exaggerated and embellished in the Bible, as digs have shown that pottery dated from Solomon's reign is actually a lot less advanced than from other areas at the time, and despite the fact that we know exactly where Solomon's great port town should be, it literally just isn't there...no remains or anything. Building structures from Solomon's reign also aren't particularly impressive or grand.

And while it's true that they haven't found any remains of the great temple to God Solomon built, that has more to do with the fact that the place where they think the ruins might be, they kind of can't dig there.

[Peanut]

And while it's true that they haven't found any remains of the great temple to God Solomon built, that has more to do with the fact that the place where they think the ruins might be, they kind of can't dig there.

Actually, though this is off topic, they kind of are digging there. Well, not directly, but because of a mosque that was built in what is known as Solomon's stables, a bunch of material from the temple mount was removed and was being thrown out. Fortunately, the Israeli government intervened before it was all lost and there is, currently, a group of archaeologists sifting through it. I can't remember if they are finding stuff from Solomon's Temple, but they are finding stuff from Herod's temple which is still very interesting. Also, there is some evidence as to where Solomon's Temple would have been located based on the gates that are still standing and historical accounts of Herod's Temple. Actually, come to think of it, the location is the Dome of the Rock in this theory. It's not definitive evidence but it is interesting. Anyway, I'll stop getting horribly off topic now...