Perhaps the most potent argument against the existence of an all-powerful, all loving God is the undeniable fact that there is so much pain and suffering in the world. If there is really a God of love who has unlimited power, why doesn't h put an end to all evil? Christians try to answer this question in several ways.

Firstly, they will say that evil is caused by man not God and that if only ma would follow God's commandments there would be no pain, evil or suffering. However, while it is true that evils such as war, rape, murder and exploitation ca be blamed on humans, they can hardly be blamed for the millions who die each year in earthquakes, floods, epidemics and accidents, all of which are natural; events. In fact, according to the Bible, the germs that cause hideous diseases like TB, polio, cholera, leprosy etc. and all the misery, deformity and suffering to which they give rise, were created by God before he created man (Gen. 1:11-12).

Another way Christians will try to explain away evil is to say that it is God's punishment for those who do not follow his commandments. However this implies that terrible things happen only to bad people, which is certainly not true. We often hear of painful sicknesses or disasters befalling good people including good Christians, and likewise we often hear of really bad people who seem to have nothing but good fortune and success. So it cannot be said that suffering and evil are God's way of punishing sinners.

Next, Christians will say that God allows evil to exist in the world because he wants to give us the freedom to choose good over evil and thereby earn salvation. Evil, they will say, exists to test us. At first this seems to be a good explanation. If a man sees someone being beaten up by a bully he has a choice between turning away (doing wrong) or deciding to help the victim (doing right). If he decides to help then he has been tested and found good. However, as we have seen before, an all-knowing God must already know what choices a person will make so what is the point of testing us? Also, even if suffering and evil exist in the world to test us, couldn't an all-loving God think of a less cruel and less painful way to do this? It seems unloving and unfair to allow pain to be inflicted on one person so that another person can have the opportunity to choose between good and evil.

Some Christians will try to free God from responsibility for evil by saying that it is not created by God but by the Devil. This may be true but again if God is so loving why doesn't he simply prevent the Devil from doing this? In any case, who created the Devil in the first place? Surely it was God.

By this stage the Christian will start to get a bit desperate, shifting the argument from logic to pragmatism. He will say that even though there is suffering in the world we can use it as an opportunity to develop courage and patience. This is undoubtedly true but it still does not explain why an all-loving God allows babies to die of cancer, innocent bystanders to be killed in accidents, and leprosy victims to suffer deformity and pain. In fact the existence of so much unnecessary pain, misery and evil in the world is very strong evidence that there is no all-loving all powerful God.

-LS

I suppose one could then say that either god does not exist or is not all loving. Also if theists claim that god is not an invention of man, then why must they apply to it those things which are (such as good and evil).

I suppose you may be right.

Just to be clear: My reason for my post isn't to bash the Christians. People wonder why I've converted to Buddhism, this is merely an example. There's other factors, like in regards to "Free-will"...

For the religious life to be meaningful we must have free will, we must be able to choose between good and evil. If we do not have free will we cannot be held responsible for what we do.

According to Christians, God is all-knowing - he knows all the past, all the present and all the future. If this is so, then God must know everything we do long before we do it. This means that our whole life must be predetermined and that we act not according to the free exercise of our wills but according to our predetermined natures. If we are predetermined to be good we will be good and if we are predetermined to be evil we will be evil. We will act not according to our will or choice but according to the way God has already foreseen we will act. Although Christians will insist that we do have free will, God's omniscience simply makes this logically impossible. And that people will act only as God determines is verified in the Bible.

-LS

god doesnt destroy evil, for then the "test" would be too easy!

But you see, the test is already done for us (in the christian interpretation of God). Read what Saber said here:

Is this of me sabre, it seems odd too start another thread though the other is far off topic,
Just to patronize you a little, How about This is a mystery of God, the reason why people have faith, They call it divine mystery do they not.

Ps. God tends not to test us

undermine, it has nothing to do with you personally. Don't be so self absorbed. I was speaking of the Christian faith in general, I was once a Christian, if you hadn't known.



God wants us to believe in him so that we can be saved - but if this is so why doesn't God simply appear and perform a miracle so that everyone will see and believe? Christians will say that God wants us to believe in him out of faith, not because we see him with our eyes. However, according to the Bible, God in the past performed the most awesome miracles and often intervened dramatically in human affairs so that people would know his presence. So if he did so in the past, why doesn't he do so now?

I'm not pastronising, these are legitamate questions non-believers wonder, and if Christians get offended then I'm sorry. What happened to, "Seek and ye shall find"?

-LS

Ah, and I'm not fooled either. I asked my mom the question above and she said that God does perform miracles today. She went on to say about "Healing, solving personal problems, etc...." She said I am stubborn and Satan had a hold of my heart and I was refusing to believe.

However, those so called miracles are individual and minor and leave much room for doubt. If God performed a really impressive miracle which could have no other possible explanation, then most people would certainly believe.

-LS

Saber I don't want to sound like a Christian fundamentalist (I'm not). However a literal reading of the bible and an honest reading of it's imagery can only lead to a few conclusions. Some of the most important conclusions are these,

1) That God no longer 'presides' over earth.
2) That Satan is responsible for all the bad and evil.
3) That this has to be so as Satan defied God and told him that humans worship God only because they were afraid of him.
4) Satan was cast down to earth for an age to 'prove' or 'disprove this theory'.
5) God believes that although Satan will cause misery on earth humans will still love God.
6) When Jesus returns to destroy Satan (Book of Revelation where Jesus comes back as Michael) Then harmony and paradise will once more be restored.

You see most 'Christians' don't actually realise this and Satan himself has taken control of the 'organised' churches (Satan offered 'everything' to Jesus, remember when Jesus sat atop the mount? Well Satan could only have offered everything to Jesus if Satan actually controlled them. Jesus did not say 'they are not yours to give' He simply said 'Get behind me Satan'). So in conclusion (Upon my reading of the bible) We are all in the grip of Satan and awaiting the return of the Prince of Light.

Ben

I suppose. though it still doesn't answer all my questions. It's a start, but I'm not buying it.

-LS

I wasn't selling it

Ben

Well, I know that, just saying.


-LS

I always thought Kurt Vonnegut may have been on to something when he came up with his "Church of God The Utterly Indifferent" in The Sirens Of Titan. The basic premise is that God created the universe and all of the rules by which it is governed. But now that the work of creation is done, He is sitting back and letting it work.

I think we tend to pin the word "evil" on events that should not be judged in ethical terms. Take, for example, the recent tsunami. There are those who would show this as evidence of evil in the world. Even though many tens of thousands of people perished, I submit to you that the tsunami was merely a confirmation of the physical laws by which the universe is governed. It is was only by human ignorance or arrogance that people found themselves in harm's way last December.

Now, there may very well be true evil in the world today but I don't think we should automatically equate "evil" with "when something bad happens to a human being." That is that height of arrogance in that it assumes that everything is about "us". The fact that a tornado exists is neither good nor bad. Likewise, the fact that a person is killed while standing in the tornado's way is neither good nor bad. It is merely confirmation that God's universe continues as it always has.

The American Indians understood the wisdom of respecting nature and living in accordance with it. Modern civilization has chosen to live in defiance of nature for which they continue to pay a heavy price.

S

Yeah but hang on a minute Skeppy....lol If we all want to avoid Tsunami's, Earthquakes, Volcanoes and a host of other natural disasters then everyone is gonna cram into where I live. Do you see my problem here? I don't have space for 5 billion!!! Anyway the day they all crammed in would be the day lightning finally decides to hit the little Black Isle that I call home.

Ben *Go find yer own cave!*

Another thing is, when you ask a Christian to prove God's existence, they will open the Bible and say "The bible says God exists, so must." The problem is that if we ash a Hindu, a Muslim, a Sikh or a Jew that same question they will people to their respective holy books as proof of the existence of their Gods.

Now... Why should we believe the Bible but not the holy books of all other religions? Using the Bible to prove God's existence is only valid if we already accept that it alone contains God's words. But, we have no evidence that this is so. In fact, there is strong evidence that the Bible is a highly unreliable document.

In their attempts to prove God's existence, Christians will sometimes say "The universe didn't just happen, someone must have made it and therefore there must be a creator God." There is a major flaw in this argument. When it starts to rain do not ask "Who is making it rain?" because we know that rain is caused not by someone but by something - natural phenomena like heat, evaporation, precipitation, etc. When we see smooth stones in a river, we do not ask "Who polished those stones?" because we know that the smooth surface of the stones was caused not by someone but by something - natural causes like the abrasive action of water and sand.

All of these things have a cause (or causes) but this need not be a being. It is the same with the universe - it was not brought into being by a God but by natural phenomena like nuclear fission, gravity, inertia, etc. However, even if we believe that a divine being is needed to explain how the universe came into existence, what proof is there that it was the Christian God? Perhaps it was created by the Hindu God, the God of Islam or one of the gods worshipped by tribal religions. After all most religions, not only Christianity, claim that their God or gods created the universe.

-LS

Saber - As a person of science who also believes in God, I don't ask "who made it rain?" Instead, I ask, "who is it that devised the untold number of processes that are required to make it rain?" While rain is wondrous enough, it its even more wondrous to consider the one who devised a universe in which rain is possible.

Ben - I know the way I feel appears heartless. Still, after being hit by an untold number of tsunamis over countless ages, don't you think someone would have said, "Hey, this might not be such a great place to live."? Don't you think some leader somewhere along the way would have said, "I love my people. Let's construct shelters on high ground where they may survive."

The same thing happens year after year on the East Coast of the United States. Hurricanes will flatten large areas and the government will come in and help people rebuild in the exact same spot. Then two or five or ten years later, it gets flattened again. At some point, it's natural to stop feeling quite so sorry for these people. If you choose to live in harm's way, why should you be at all surprised when harm comes knocking on your door?

Again, I'll cite the example of the American Indian tribes. They left vast areas of coastal America unoccupied because they knew they were no match for the periodic wrath of nature. I'm simply suggesting that, if you're outgunned by the elements, it may be wisest to beat a hasty retreat.

S

PS: Nice cave you've got there!

My argument wasn't solely based on rain, etc, that was an example to a larger point (Which you're seemingly missing). Many religions claim that their God created rain, etc... so, this leads to confusion, who should we believe?

You commented on the rain, now, work on explaining everything else...

-LS

This is a major resurrection, and for that I apologize but I was going to post pretty much exactly what LS posted at the start of this thread, albeit with a bit less waffle. All I would like to know is what the Christian view is (i.e. what's taught by the church/theologists) on who created the devil (and since it's essentially the same question, who created evil). Did the devil exist before God, at the same time as God or did he come after? Did God create the devil, or was he always there, as God was always there? What about Hell? Who created that?

By the way Skep, I like your point on the idea of natural 'disasters' being our own fault and not an evil, though I apologize for the poor timing of the comment due to the recent events in New Orleans.

Also, Ben (since I've been reading this thread), you said there isn't room for 5bn people in the safe places of this planet. Well, then maybe there shouldn't be so many people in the world. Skep pretty much already said that though.

the way i see it if god truley exists like any other leader of people he is a business man. his business is collecting souls so to speak and business is good. with all the horrible things that happen he can weed out the good souls from the bad ones.basically like checking fruit at the supermarket.who knows maybe when we die he eats the good ones and throws the bad ones in the perverbial garbage disposal.

The above portion of your post has a particular irony and poignancy to it Skeppy in the light of recent events.

Ben