If Your God...

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The Greek philosopher Epicurus (9660 H.E. to 9731 H.E.) once posed a series of questions concerning the nature of gods. They went something like this:

Q1: If your god is ABLE to prevent evil, and WILLING to prevent evil, then why does evil still exist?

Q2: If your god is ABLE to prevent evil, and NOT WILLING to prevent evil, then does that mean that your god wants evil to exist?

Q3: If your god is NOT ABLE to prevent evil, and WILLING to prevent evil, then does that mean that your god is not all-powerful?

Q4: If your god is NOT ABLE to prevent evil, and NOT WILLING to prevent evil, then why does that mean that your god is not worthy of worship?

I'd like to see the god-believers of this website answer those questions for themselves.

Thank you.

Let me answer for them
"God works in mysterious ways, blah blah blah, don't pretend to understand a superior intelligence, yadda yadda"

Oo ee oo ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang?

Exactly. (Shame I can't get a youtube adress of that video, it was a good song.

At least that was what I was always told in church.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Perhaps because the prevention of evil will cause a larger evil to occur, and that notwithstanding the means and the will, good sense stays your god's hand.



No. It is just as reasonable to conclude that your god's will has been influenced by considerations beyond the simply question of whether or not your god wants evil to exist.



Of course it does--it's practically axiomatic. If your god lacks the ability to do something, then it is clearly impossible for your god to be all-powerful.



Of course not--because your god may exist to perform some purpose other than the prevention of evil.



I may not be a believer, but I can still see through such a facile exercise. Belief in a supernatural deity--even in a supernatural deity that is capable of interference in the affairs of people--is not necessarily predicated on a believe that a deity will exercise such interference. Belief in a deity provides a framework for moral conduct. It provides a unifying cultural code of belief and practice for a community. These things are valuable in and of themselves, whether or not the deity actually exists.

But logic dictates that, because evil still exists, whatever gods may exist want evil to exist.

The only other explanation is that gods do not exist.

Evil serves God. It is part of His plan. Therefore Evil=Good?

God killed vastly more people than Satan in the Bible. Fact.

Who's meant to be the bad guy again?

Lou Cypher was framed.

Logic dictates absolutely nothign of the sort.

We have the cability of nuking North Korea out of existence. Does our forebearance mean that we want North Korea to exist? Or does it mean that we know that destroying North Korea is not the correct approach to take? And far from being, "the only other explanation," your premise is only one of a range of possibilities.

Perverting logic to support your prejudice is an empty exercise.

According to most of the religions I have any understanding of, god is capable of doing whatever he wishes at any time.

By refusing to remove evil (which according to the religion he can do) he is showing one of two things:

1.He wants evil to exist
2.He is incapable of destroying evil.

If 1 is true, god is hardly the type of being you would want to worship, is he? If 2 is true, then why is he god? How else are his powers limited?

Personally I don't think god is a he or a she, if there were an in between gender term I would use that to describe god, and I would also call it intelligent energy. I don't think what we have called god for thousands of years works how most people think it does, there's a lot of misconceptions about god. I don't understand god or how it works, either. But I do know god isn't some humanoid figure sitting on a throne surrounded by singing angels in a pure white room assigning missions to people on Earth, which is what I imagined when I used to be a Christian, I know a lot of Christians have similar concepts of god too.

I don't think it would be about want or capability. Evil is one of his creations and serves his greater purposes. To a being of that magnitude I doubt concepts of good and evil are meaningful in the way they are to us. He cannot "destroy" evil or will it out of existence as it is necessary for the functioning of the universe he created. So God is a morally ambivalent figure.

Ultimately I think if I were theistically inclined I would come to the conclusion that god is a disinterested, detached entity, and that the Bible/Koran/etc are a bunch of garbage made by Humans in an effort to control other Humans. An entity no more worthy of worship then the laws of physics

Thankfully, I think the supernatural is nonsense

That still boils down to god wanting evil to exist, or being unable to destroy it.

The old logical problem of evil. It has been a debunked arguement for decades now. Very few major interlectual atheists defend it anymore.