For many years now, it has been a tradition in my family to watch Cecil B. Demille's The Ten Commandments during the Passover/Easter season. While watching the movie this evening, two of Charlton Heston's lines as Moses underscored one of the favorite arguments of atheists to disprove the existence of God: The problem of evil.
The lines just referenced:
1) Moses to Joshua: "If your God is Almighty, why does he leave you in bondage?" and
2) Moses to the old grease woman (his biological mother) trapped beneath the stone: After the woman tells him that God has renewed her strength and lightened her burdens, "He would have done better to remove them."
Notice that the existence of a better choice is implied in both statements. In other words, if your God really existed, "He" wouldn't do this/that or allow things to happen that way.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides a simplified model of the basic argument:
1) If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2) If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3) If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4) If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5) Evil exists.
6) If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn’t have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn’t know when evil exists, or doesn’t have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7) Therefore, God doesn’t exist.
As this model uses obvious logic, ignoring or dismissing it without addressing the points made would seem to justify the view that this argument validates the conclusion that there is no god/God. After all, it is fairly standard Christian theology to characterize the Christian God as being omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect.
Likewise, most Christians would readily concede that evil exists. After all, the existence of evil is one of the fundamental premises of the Christian faith. Moreover, we have abundant evidence (both past and present) that bad things happen with regularity and that suffering is a constant among the living.
However, as we have pointed out in previous posts here, how can we be sure that everything that we characterize as evil/bad would be viewed in the same way by a deity? A polar bear catches a seal and rips its guts out. After a few minutes of suffering and wallowing in its own blood, the seal dies, and the bear eats it. Is that bad? An asteroid or meteor crashes into the earth and incinerates some dinosaurs. The dust it produces suffocates others and cuts off the food supply of the rest - causing them to slowly starve to death. Is that bad? Lightning strikes, starts a forest fire and thousands of animals suffer a horrible death! Is nature bad/evil? Wouldn't an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being have designed a better system?
We could also cite numerous instances of human suffering due to "naturally" occurring phenomena: A child develops Leukemia and suffers all of the debilitating symptoms associated with that disease and dies. A woman develops rheumatoid arthritis and suffers the pain and deformity associated with that condition for twenty years before dying. A man develops idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and struggles to breathe for the next three years before his lungs finally cease to function at all. A tornado touches down and kills a couple's beloved daughter who is within weeks of graduating from college.
And we haven't even begun to address the things that we humans inflict on each other. I'm thinking of things like sexual abuse, murder, war, genocide, slavery, etc.
All of these things should generate many questions and a great deal of thought on the part of serious theists. Does the designation of some behavior as good of necessity make its nonperformance evil? Does good demand an evil counterpart? And what about approaching this from the negative? Does the presence/existence of evil demand/prove the presence/existence of good? Is it possible that disease, storms and death serve some good/positive purpose?
What does it mean for God to be omnipotent (all-powerful)? If God is incapable of evil, can we truly say that "He" is all powerful? If God cannot change, does that mean that there are some things that God cannot do? What does it mean for God to be omniscient (all-knowing)? What does that mean for the concept of free will? Does omniscience demand predestination? What does it mean for God to be omnipresent (everywhere at once)? Does that mean that God doesn't really live in heaven? Does moral perfection mandate the immediate elimination of all evil?
Bottom line: Evil is a problem that serious theists must be willing to confront, but it does not constitute proof that God doesn't exist. If God really cannot be contained, then there is a strong probability that most of us still haven't gotten to the bottom of the questions that confronted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden - What constitutes GOOD and EVIL? and Who gets to decide?
The lines just referenced:
1) Moses to Joshua: "If your God is Almighty, why does he leave you in bondage?" and
2) Moses to the old grease woman (his biological mother) trapped beneath the stone: After the woman tells him that God has renewed her strength and lightened her burdens, "He would have done better to remove them."
Notice that the existence of a better choice is implied in both statements. In other words, if your God really existed, "He" wouldn't do this/that or allow things to happen that way.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides a simplified model of the basic argument:
1) If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2) If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3) If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4) If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5) Evil exists.
6) If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn’t have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn’t know when evil exists, or doesn’t have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7) Therefore, God doesn’t exist.
As this model uses obvious logic, ignoring or dismissing it without addressing the points made would seem to justify the view that this argument validates the conclusion that there is no god/God. After all, it is fairly standard Christian theology to characterize the Christian God as being omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect.
Likewise, most Christians would readily concede that evil exists. After all, the existence of evil is one of the fundamental premises of the Christian faith. Moreover, we have abundant evidence (both past and present) that bad things happen with regularity and that suffering is a constant among the living.
However, as we have pointed out in previous posts here, how can we be sure that everything that we characterize as evil/bad would be viewed in the same way by a deity? A polar bear catches a seal and rips its guts out. After a few minutes of suffering and wallowing in its own blood, the seal dies, and the bear eats it. Is that bad? An asteroid or meteor crashes into the earth and incinerates some dinosaurs. The dust it produces suffocates others and cuts off the food supply of the rest - causing them to slowly starve to death. Is that bad? Lightning strikes, starts a forest fire and thousands of animals suffer a horrible death! Is nature bad/evil? Wouldn't an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being have designed a better system?
We could also cite numerous instances of human suffering due to "naturally" occurring phenomena: A child develops Leukemia and suffers all of the debilitating symptoms associated with that disease and dies. A woman develops rheumatoid arthritis and suffers the pain and deformity associated with that condition for twenty years before dying. A man develops idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and struggles to breathe for the next three years before his lungs finally cease to function at all. A tornado touches down and kills a couple's beloved daughter who is within weeks of graduating from college.
And we haven't even begun to address the things that we humans inflict on each other. I'm thinking of things like sexual abuse, murder, war, genocide, slavery, etc.
All of these things should generate many questions and a great deal of thought on the part of serious theists. Does the designation of some behavior as good of necessity make its nonperformance evil? Does good demand an evil counterpart? And what about approaching this from the negative? Does the presence/existence of evil demand/prove the presence/existence of good? Is it possible that disease, storms and death serve some good/positive purpose?
What does it mean for God to be omnipotent (all-powerful)? If God is incapable of evil, can we truly say that "He" is all powerful? If God cannot change, does that mean that there are some things that God cannot do? What does it mean for God to be omniscient (all-knowing)? What does that mean for the concept of free will? Does omniscience demand predestination? What does it mean for God to be omnipresent (everywhere at once)? Does that mean that God doesn't really live in heaven? Does moral perfection mandate the immediate elimination of all evil?
Bottom line: Evil is a problem that serious theists must be willing to confront, but it does not constitute proof that God doesn't exist. If God really cannot be contained, then there is a strong probability that most of us still haven't gotten to the bottom of the questions that confronted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden - What constitutes GOOD and EVIL? and Who gets to decide?
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