The Ultimate Why There Is Evil in the World Thread.

[Cyberman]

Are you capable of reading comprehension, or are you deliberately trying to muddy the water? In the context of the exchange, a selected part you chose to quote, the phrase "initial request" refers to chad's "show that a better world is possible without resorting to speculation".

Incidentally, your breach of Rule 14 on my quote, reinstated above, has been reported.

The thing's getting so cluttered with posts quoting other posts that it's hard to follow. That was a real question. The answer's clear at this point.

The context was perfectly clear. Only by cherrypicking could you confuse the issue.

Although I don't follow the numbered rule list,

Not my problem. Start doing so. Like everyone else does.

it is ordinarily permissible to use ellipses .... to indicate that part of a quoted source is left out. There's an arrow button to go back to the source. It looks neater that way. I don't think omitting the words "malformed" and "dishonest" and leaving "set up to fail" materially misrepresents what you said.

Then there should be no reason to omit them. The Rules are explicit. Follow them or find the door. Your choice.

[Hatshepsut]

@ Stimbo

I accept that my presence here is probably unwelcome, and that I cannot contribute meaningfully to the kinds of discussions preferred on this bulletin board. I did not come with the intention of creating hurt feelings. If I have done so, please accept my regrets. I will not use my account further and you may close it if you wish. Thanks to everyone who has responded to my posts and to the staff who provide this public forum.

Best Wishes.

[Cyberman]

And all you had to do was stay within the Rules like everyone else. Bye, then.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I'm still waiting on an apology from Chad.  Chad, are you going to be honest for once and admit you were wrong?  Doubt it, but It would be nice.

Oh, and W'ist, that will be a cold day in hell.

Yes, I apologize. I did think you were responding to me because I was quoted. It was my mistake. And actually, I did try to post the apology earlier; it just didn't take for some reason.

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I would prefer I had never been born.

The only reason I don't end myself is because of the effect it would have on those who love me.

I imagine a world infinitely better than this every time I close my eyes.

I really do not now how to reply to this without sounding either patronizing or cold-hearted. I will only say that I myself struggle with depression and have had my share of difficulties, but I am still glad to have the life I have even if that is only how I feel about it.

[rexbeccarox]

Thank you.

[Neo-Scholastic]

...no reason to omit ...The Rules are explicit. Follow them ... Your choice.

Other than to make the posts more compact and easier to follow. I use ... all the time. He retained the meaning just fine. The rules were not in any way violated. You are being over zealous in your mod role.

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...it means that heaven...cannot possibly exist, because no world can be better than the best possible world.  To be better than the best possible ...logically impossible.  ...then heaven is ...logically impossible.  Thus, ... to prove the ... hypothesis that this really is the best of all possible worlds, ... would be proving that heaven does not exist!

Heaven is not a separate reality but rather and extension of this one. People become more of what they are. The decisions you make on earth set your direction. The righteous in Heaven have good habits that only get better unto eternity. The wicked continue to get worse because that is the direction they have set for themselves, which is to increase their slavery to the obsessions and compulsions they loved during life. The righteous however are freed from these compulsions and have the liberty to rejoice in God's love and truth in whatever manner they choose. Beside people can retain their freewill choice without needed to commit evil. People choose good and better options all the time.[/quote]

The conflicts typically perceived are based on conflating moral with natural evils, not accepting finite knowledge as part of the human condition, ignoring the utility of pain, dismissing the role of our attitude while suffering, and limiting God’s justice to the earthly existence. Taken individually, these mistakes appear to present a conflict between a just God and a fallen creation. A complete picture of the human condition reveals a different story, one in which He, brings justice to the wicked, restores the losses of the innocent, and redeems the suffering of the righteous.

Conflating moral with natural evils: A moral evil is when one person wrongs another. Fraud, murder and fornication are all moral evils. A natural evil is when natural events harm an unsuspecting person. Examples of natural evil include hurricanes, disease, famine, and wild animal attacks. Most people agree that when a villain or deviant suffers as a result of their own bad behavior (like my informed smoker example) they are getting their just desserts. Likewise, most people consider the suffering of the innocent at the hands of a villain (like the pedophile victim), morally equivalent to a wild animal attack, a natural evil.

Not accepting Man’s finite knowledge: Cities get built on fault lines and in flood plains. Food gets tainted with poison. Yesterday’s cures become today’s malpractice. In each of these examples the victims have no fore knowledge of what awaits them. You, non-believers, wonder why God made a world with such hazards and placed us in it. Or at the very least give us the infallible ability to avoid these hazards. This objection is met with a three-part response.

First, “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” God gave us the gift of life. It may be long or it may be short. Nevertheless it is life. To complain about the inequality of His blessings, shows a lack of gratitude, i.e. looking the gift horse in the mouth.

Second, in themselves, naturally occurring processes hostile to humans are neither good nor bad. The believer considers them a net good, because they are part of the providential order. Forest fires clear the land for new growth. Earthquakes produce islands and mountains that serve as niches for various types of wildlife. Etc. Only our ignorance places us in harm’s way, which takes you to the next part of the response.

Mankind lacks the omniscience that would allow him to avoid these hazards. God cannot be blamed for failing to make us equal to Himself in this regard. For God to create equals to Himself is logically impossible, like squaring the circle. Any created being must of necessity be less perfect than God. But could we not be made sufficiently aware? Perhaps, except that brings you to the next two mistakes.

Ignoring the value of pain & dismissing the role of our attitude while suffering: I like the proverb that, “Pain is a given; suffering is optional.” Pain serves as a warning of harm and signals injury. As such it is a net good, because it helps protect and inform us about dangers to our health and well-being. Suffering relates to whether the pain we endure has value or is in vain. Athletes willingly endure pain to increase their strength and stamina. Patriots risk life and limb to protect the liberties of their country. It is only when your pain seems senseless that you suffer. It is at this point that you pray to the Lord for comfort and to give you strength. This is how you grow spiritually, by recognizing His authority and trusting that your suffering has purpose.

“But why must suffering even exist?” you ask. A life without hardship would thwart your spiritual growth and personal development. A life of perfect ease* would not provide you with the opportunity to attain the spiritual maturity necessary to partake in the blessings of Heaven. The only reasonable objection to this of which I can think is this: still-born infants and the untimely death of small children seem not to allow enough time for such spiritual development. How do I account for this? I don’t know. In my denomination, children in the afterlife are raised by angels to become citizens of heaven. I suppose they can build on whatever small amount of suffering they experienced and observation of earthly injustice. I don’t know. To me this is a very minor objection.

Finally, the mistake of limiting God’s justice to this world: Anyone can see that wicked people literally “get away with murder”, lie, cheat, and steal with impunity. Meanwhile, good people are hurt, abused and killed through no fault of their own. The problem of evil is only a problem if the wicked go unpunished and restitution is not made to their victims. If you only allow God to work his justice in this earth, then of course you find Him ineffective. You cannot forget that reward and punishment in the afterlife corrects the failures of our species.

In conclusion, people have no justification for claiming that the “Problem of Evil” is a reason to not believe. The only defense is to retreat into your incredulity. That's fine. None of what I have presented makes any sense without taking God as a given, nor have I presented any of this as proof of God's existence, only to show that free will, local/temporary injustice, and natural disasters are not incompatible with a just and all-knowing God.

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... stay within...Rules like everyone else. Bye....

What's up with you lately?

[Cyberman]

Yeah, it's all about me. Let's pile on and dismiss me through insinuations of bias and personal issues.

[Cyberman]

Incidentally it may be of interest that the report I made was given full consensus. There was not a single voice of dissension.

[Ravenshire]

First, God has no wants or needs. He is perfect in and of Himself.

Pure, unadulterated bullshit. If gawd has no wants or needs, why did it create anything at all?

[Randy Carson]

First, God has no wants or needs. He is perfect in and of Himself.

Pure, unadulterated bullshit. If gawd has no wants or needs, why did it create anything at all?

From the Catechism:

293 Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: "The world was made for the glory of God."134 St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things "not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it",135 for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: "Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand."136 The First Vatican Council explains:


This one, true God, of his own goodness and "almighty power", not for increasing his own beatitude, nor for attaining his perfection, but in order to manifest this perfection through the benefits which he bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of counsel "and from the beginning of time, made out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal. . ."137


294 The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created. God made us "to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace",138 for "the glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man's life is the vision of God: if God's revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word's manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God."139 The ultimate purpose of creation is that God "who is the creator of all things may at last become "all in all", thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our beatitude."140