Question 4 for Christians

[Libsmasher]

Why does God permit evil in the world?

Why would God allow, eg, the Jewish or Armenian Holocausts? Shouldn't he have jumped in and stopped it?

 

[Pandora]

As horrible as the Holocaust was, by it happening prophecy was fulfilled. Israel is again a State and is flourishing, just as it was written it would be thousands of years ago, hundreds of years before it fell.

What is Evil? You ask why GOD would allow evil. How do you know what is evil unless you compare it with something else….. Something that is good. You don’t know what is good till you have had something bad. There are degrees of evil. Hitler, Nero was the most evil I know of, but they might be considered teddy bears to a monster that is said to come.

What is great? Something better than just good? Unless you have been through some really rough times, I am not sure you can appreciate fully the really good and blessed times.

This Utopia that is to come…... How would a person really and truly appreciate it, enough to never let it become like the world we live in, without having seen and felt what we actually live in and the consequences that happen because of it.

Unless the Devine Creator made robots, people will have to learn through experience how to become our full potential. And if He made robots, what would be the point.

 

[9sublime]

No Obamanation, that is the opposite to solving the problem of evil.

You are simply saying we don't even know the full extent of evil. Seems to me Gods an idiot, or doesn't exist, from your response rather than convcing me he exists.

 

[Snake1993]

Ok, so the holocost happened because of one mans insanity. The bible prophesised this kind of thing anyway. God didnt jump in and "Save us" because even though he winced at it he knew it had to happen. It was meant to be. Why? i have no idea. But even if it is screwed up, god says everything happens for a reason.

 

[Pandora]

No Obamanation, that is the opposite to solving the problem of evil.

You are simply saying we don't even know the full extent of evil. Seems to me Gods an idiot, or doesn't exist, from your response rather than convcing me he exists.

It is not my job to convince you there is a God. I am not even a Christian.

But really….How exactly do you compare what is evil, unless you compare it to some thing more evil or less evil. The same goes with good. What is good? You have to compare it to something else. So how could we say God should make a place where every one is good only doing good things, we wouldn’t even know what good is unless we had something to compare it to.

Then again you have to add the factor of what is socially acceptable for a given community.

A commune of all vegetarians might think its evil to cut a lamb’s throat hang it skin it and eat it. But a colony of meat eaters would say it’s surviving, and besides it tastes good.

 

[Snake1993]

So how could we say God should make a place where every one is good only doing good things,

He has its called heaven, but the test of it all on earth is for "PEOPLE" to overcome thier "HUMAN" ways from evil and sin and choose to be good, and if you pass the test you go to heaven. But I beleive you HAVE to be "SAVED" before you can even think of going to heaven.

 

[Coyote]

He has its called heaven, but the test of it all on earth is for "PEOPLE" to overcome thier "HUMAN" ways from evil and sin and choose to be good, and if you pass the test you go to heaven. But I beleive you HAVE to be "SAVED" before you can even think of going to heaven.

The whole salvation thing sounds like an exclusive club to me.

A good person is a good person.

 

[Libsmasher]

Ok, so the holocost happened because of one mans insanity. The bible prophesised this kind of thing anyway. God didnt jump in and "Save us" because even though he winced at it he knew it had to happen. It was meant to be. Why? i have no idea. But even if it is screwed up, god says everything happens for a reason.

Why did it "have to happen"? God is all-powerful, and can stop anything He wants to. Why didn't He?

 

[bewitched]

Why does God permit evil in the world?

Why would God allow, eg, the Jewish or Armenian Holocausts? Shouldn't he have jumped in and stopped it?

this makes me think about Islam and their plan to convert the world to Islam. Islam is not pluralistic and does not accept Christianity or Judasm as the right path. So Islam will fulfill God's will and kill all the non-muslims.
happens daily, there have been over 10,000 incidents of Islamic violence since 911... which are evil.

 

[9sublime]

You are aware that Christianity, or pretty much every religion for that matter, is not a pluralistic religion.

 

[Coyote]

this makes me think about Islam and their plan to convert the world to Islam. Islam is not pluralistic and does not accept Christianity or Judasm as the right path. So Islam will fulfill God's will and kill all the non-muslims.
happens daily, there have been over 10,000 incidents of Islamic violence since 911... which are evil.

Christianity doesn't accept Islam or Judaism as the right path either. Islam beheads, Christianity burns at the stake. Nice folks.

 

[numinus]

Why does God permit evil in the world?

Why would God allow, eg, the Jewish or Armenian Holocausts? Shouldn't he have jumped in and stopped it?

And deprive everyone of the very important lessons from these events?

Try imagining yourself going through a tiered path of learning. The mistakes you made in the 1st grade would be an invaluable lesson when you get to 2nd grade, no? That you will never get to 2nd grade until you have learned the lesson of the 1st grade, no? And that you will remain trapped in a cycle of folly until you learn, no?

 

[Libsmasher]

And deprive everyone of the very important lessons from these events?

Try imagining yourself going through a tiered path of learning. The mistakes you made in the 1st grade would be an invaluable lesson when you get to 2nd grade, no? That you will never get to 2nd grade until you have learned the lesson of the 1st grade, no? And that you will remain trapped in a cycle of folly until you learn, no?

Is it possible that people can learn moral lessons without, eg, Dr. Mengele performing his experiments on jewish children?

 

[vyo476]

What is Evil? You ask why GOD would allow evil. How do you know what is evil unless you compare it with something else….. Something that is good. You don’t know what is good till you have had something bad. There are degrees of evil. Hitler, Nero was the most evil I know of, but they might be considered teddy bears to a monster that is said to come.

What is great? Something better than just good? Unless you have been through some really rough times, I am not sure you can appreciate fully the really good and blessed times.

This Utopia that is to come…... How would a person really and truly appreciate it, enough to never let it become like the world we live in, without having seen and felt what we actually live in and the consequences that happen because of it.

Remember, according to Christianity, God is all-powerful, perfect, and most importantly the originator of everything. He made it all. That doesn't just mean he lumped together a whole ton of dirt and rock and suddenly we had a planet; that means that he invented things that can't be seen or felt, metaphysical concepts like "good" and "evil" (if you believe those two concepts even really exist at all).

What I'm getting at is, God made the Earth, man, and the concepts of "Good" and "Evil." He's all-powerful; if he'd really wanted, he could have made "Good" recognizable without the presence of "Evil," which tears your argument to pieces.

 

[vyo476]

Is it possible that people can learn moral lessons without, eg, Dr. Mengele performing his experiments on jewish children?

Anything (literally anything) can and must be possible for a being of infinite power. God may have created happiness, but he created despair as well. A being of infinite power does nothing by accident (or any accidents would later be corrected through the usage of that infinite power - think of it as God having an infinite number of "retries," like the near-zombified kid in the arcade who keeps feeding quarters to his favorite, unbeatable, video game), which means that God knowingly, consciously, and deliberately created the scale of positivity vs. negativity.

Every time you feel pain, that is God's way of making you appreciate the times when you feel joy. However, God created the pallette on which all these things are painted; if he'd really wanted, he could have given us the ability to appreciate positivity without the existence of negativity simply because, allegedly, he can do anything.