Christians kind of put themselves in a box when they decided God is a benevolent sky daddy whatever because they could never escape the problem of evil whereas Muslims, Jews, pagans etc never had that issue since they were freely willing to accept the idea that God can be vengeful and not necessarily your buddy.
>>18552557The problem of evil is escaped in its fourth line: "then whence evil?". It's meant rhetorically but reveals that wonder is a completely reasonable response. You don't have to pretend to know everything.>whereas Muslims, JewsThey face the "problem of evil" too because God is by definition Good for them. Vengeful? Harsh? Sometimes. But benevolent.
>>18552557Evil is lack of good, kid getting cancer is not evil, kid's parents not instilling in kid belief that cancer = 5 years of pain then happy eternity/other kids calling the cancer kid a bald freak/other humans not doing everything to alleviate kid's suffering = lack of goodness on their part = evil. Tornado wrecking your house and killing your wife is not evil, other humans not helping you rebuild/you not believing your wife is happily waiting in Heaven is lack of goodness/evil. Gay serial killer cutting up your genitals = unrestrained sadism and sexual desire and whatever = lack of restraint/compassion/purity/whatever = lack of goodness = evil.Evil isn't created, it's humans failing to do their duty.Questions?
Ultimately the problem of evil is merely human linguistics shifting responsibility.
>>18552681>kids getting cancer isn’t evil LOL and you have the balls to call gay people immoral
>>18552557The problem of evil is not a problem Christianity created. It is a problem monotheism created. If God is one, all-powerful, and good, then evil requires explanation. Polytheists avoided the problem not because they solved it but because their gods were not good. A god who is not good does not need to explain evil. He causes it. That is not a solution. It is a capitulation.>God can be vengeful and not necessarily your buddyThe Muslim Allah is arbitrary. He is not bound by goodness. He can deceive (Quran 3:54), he can lead astray (Quran 14:4), he can punish whom he wills and forgive whom he wills without any principled basis. That does not solve the problem of evil. It abolishes it by abolishing the goodness of God. If God is not good, evil is just His preference. That is not an answer anyone should want.The Catholic answer to the problem of evil is the only honest one: evil is real, God is good, and the two are reconciled through the cross. God did not explain evil. He entered it. He suffered the worst of it. He absorbed it into Himself and defeated it through resurrection.Augustine's answer: evil is not a substance. It is the privation of good. It is what happens when a good thing turns away from its proper end. A parasite is not evil in itself. It is doing what parasites do. The evil is in the disorder, the brokenness of a good creation that has fallen from its original integrity.Aquinas: God permits evil because He can bring a greater good from it. The crucifixion is the supreme example. The worst evil in history, the murder of God, produced the greatest good, the redemption of the world. If God can do that with the worst evil, He can do it with all evil.You do not have to like this answer. But it is not a box. It is the only framework that takes both evil and goodness seriously without dissolving one into the other.
>>18552557The problem of evil can be formalized and proved to shows that there literally can not exist an omnibenevolent god.
>>18553215Why is it evil?
>>18552681Heaven does not exist.
>>18553215god gave us free will knowing we might turn against him
>>18553774There is more evidence in favor of Heaven than against it
>>18553868How so?
>>18552557Evil is reframed when you consider that all things are aligned towards the good of every individual's eternal soul. That's hard to see within time. Very hard in some cases.The maximal good is divine love; recursively willing the best of others.The mind cannot grasp light in the absence of darkness. It is fundamentally unable to conceive of a concept in the absence of the contrast that makes it perceptible. From our point in space, we can see both the darkness of empty space and the sun. If you could somehow survive inside that star, you would be unable to see the darkness.So it is with character and actions that lack goodness. If evil was something you could not see, goodness becomes unseeable also. If the concept cannot even be grasped, it cannot be freely chosen. To not freely choose God's goodness is to make it something other than love, for love requires a both a lover and a beloved both willingly engaging in the process.
>>18553891Evidence against existence of Heaven: brain-mind dependence, very poorly understood, might be wrong, crucially - not direct evidence anyway.Evidence for existence Heaven: personal NDE and religious testimony, unreliable, but direct evidence.
