(May 24, 2013 at 12:12 am)Drich Wrote: Don't hurt yourself trying to pat yourself on the back ryan, because if you thought you tore this argument to shreds then you did not understand what was being discussed.
That thread predates my joining here, so I could not be patting myself on the back.
Quote:The primis is simple. The paradox fails because Epricus could not have known the God of the bible as He wrote his supposed paradox before the Bible was compiled, thus giving him the knowledge needed to establish the paradox in the first place.
The response is even simpler: If God created the universe and everything within it, and evil exists within the universe, then God either directly created evil, or created the conditions which allow evil to happen, and it follows that all evil is God's fault. God could have made evil impossible but chose not to, so. God could have created humans to be incapable of evil, but chose not to. Even if he gave mankind free will to commit evil, the evil created as a result of that is still his responsibility, as it only exists as a result of his choice to offer free will. With ultimate power comes ultimate responsibility. It all comes back to him in the end.
If Epicurus had the chance to read the Bible and saw how God was depicted, he would have known that his paradox was unnecessary, because God himself is a thoroughly evil character.
