After the mosque shooting, some of my atheist friends have debated with me about the classic problem of evil, as in why an all-loving GOD allows what appears to be unnecessary suffering, and I'm curious as to how to approach this issue without having said friends become hardened from the glory of GOD.
Solving The Problem of Evil
Nathaniel Reed
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Jaxon Walker
The answer lies in the Resurrection.
One of the forgotten tenets of Christianity (thanks to the Reformation) is the very fact that every single life has already been bought and paid for the life, death, and return of Jesus Christ.
Every victim, every murderer, every babe, and every crone will return. There is not a soul that has been lost, everyone will be resurrected and returned to their corporal body, even the ones who have died in the womb. What will happen to these souls is another topic, but in Christianity - authentic, apostolic Christianity - this is the answer.
Evan Allen
It's a hard one I admit, but here's how I think is best to consider it.
By direct manifestation, I mean to exclude the Christ, who was made manifest in a body.
Henry Morales
Do you mean universalism? Or do you just mean the general resurrection?
Asher Fisher
No. Everybody will be resurrected, but all will be put in either Heaven or Hell, at the direction of Christ.
yep.
the problem of evil is impossible to answer if you throw out original sin/general resurrection.
Lucas Robinson
im sorry what?
Matthew Rodriguez
physical body, as opposed to the "spirit", which is our body-less spirits.
and even as another distinction from the "spiritual body", which is what St. Paul more or less refers to as our "perfected" forms post Judgement, where we no longer suffer from the effects of original sin and we get to enjoy the New Earth with Christ forever present.
Connor Phillips
Watch this, friend:
Joseph Watson
This is an easy problem. If you accept God is perfect then anything different from God (such as the universe) is imperfect by nature and therefore contains evil.
Joshua Miller
God didn't create evil
Levi Scott
A classic problem with a classic answer. Ever hear of Boethius?
Luke Ortiz
Isaiah 45:7
Evan Carter
Thread/
Justin Sanchez
oof. it's not even some meme translation.
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David Stewart
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Aiden Wilson
It's pretty clear from that passage that evil there signifies destruction which is the opposite of peace. Of course God has full control over the wellbeing of us, here, read some:
Deuteronomy 32:39
See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.
Zechariah 11:9
Then said I, I will not feed you: that that dieth, let it die; and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let the rest eat every one the flesh of another.
Samuel Rogers
Some thoughts:
1. Evil does not exist in a Manichean distinction with the good, rather evil is simply the privation of one good or another and does not properly have any existence of itself. This is to say an evil which we observe is simply the undoing some good, for example the evil of death is the undoing of the good of life, however death is not a thing that exists independently of life, where as life could hypothetically exist without death. And so evil is purely parasitic of the good and as such evil does not exist, it is simply the degradation or end of some good or another.
2. When we call God good, that has specific theological meaning, that is that God's goodness is not necessarily what we humans may always find subjectively pleasing, rather it refers to God's nature as the source of all being and thus the source of all goodness in an objective sense.
3. We're not nor is any part of God's creation entitled to any more good than they're given by him, I'm not entitled to the goods of super-strength or super-intelligence or everlasting life rather God has made me as I am a finite being with an expiration date. Is an ant or maggot entitled to lives free of suffering or death? Why should we creatures who are also part of this natural order be free of this? Just because we may find in our own subjective sense that the lot we've been given is a bitter one doesn't mean that we are objectively entitled to anymore.
Parker Price
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Nolan Taylor
Isn't that rather arbitrary? Couldn't I also describe good as just a degredation of evil? What about evil makes it seem any less of an existing concept than good?
Noah Phillips
The problem of evil has been dealt with for a long time. These atheists are just lifting arguments from previous thinkers.
Their argument boils down to: Why doesn’t God make life perfect for me? I want utopia. I want God to take away my free will and turn me into an automaton. I want to live in a perfect world where nothing bad ever happens.
It’s such a whiny atheist argument that I cringe inside.
Ethan Hall
Because we live in a sin cursed world, in sin cursed bodies, and the devil is on the loose
Also if we trust in the Lord, He will deliver us like the countless things told in the Bible (Egypt comes to my mind).
The thing with evil is that people are so fixated on God that they forget the devil could be behind it as far as we know and he is the one bringing pain and suffering. Its funny how people always blame God but not the devil
Carter Young
It's like they never the Book of Job or something.
Gabriel Kelly
My big issue with this is that the Devil was created by GOD and that GOD allows the Devil and demon to oppress us. I guess it eventually leads to the question "Why did GOD need to create humans in the first place"? I'm not trying to sound like an atheist but I want to understand how our creation fits with GOD's grander plan.>>786562
Easton Hall
gutenberg.ca
C.S. Lewis answered this question very thoroughly. It'll take a few days to read through it all, but it's well worth it. In short, it's not intrinsically possible to create sapient beings with free will without allowing for the possibility of suffering and evil. What exactly would you have God do? Would you have Him miraculously manipulate matter every time somebody wants to use it for evil? That would get pretty ridiculous; you'd see all kinds of inanimate objects suddenly contort and fly away in the presence of a bad person. No, even worse than that, the logical conclusion of this is that brain matter would temporarily cease to function every time an evil thought began to form, which would literally actually be the destruction of free will.
Because He loves us. God exists in and experiences all times and places simultaneously. He loved you in the future so He made you in the past. He loved you too much not to create you. Human suffering is not so terrible that it would be better not to exist, especially when you consider that the promise of eternal life in Paradise awaits us after our short time on Earth.
Oliver Ortiz
Why shouldn't I rejoice when evil people finally taste justice? Thinking that people burning in hell is a bad thing is to say that god isn't good, that his judgement isn't perfect. Muslims go to hell
Luis Smith
The problem of evil is dumb anyway. How do you define evil, things I personally don't like? If you're imperfect and God is not that doesn't warrant you authority on what is good. By accepting God as perfect everything else is imperfect and therefore wrong if it contradicts with God. But then there's the issue of subversion where what you're told is God's word is something completely different. If Eastern religions seem like Christianity to you you were incorrectly taught Christianity. Christianity is about maintaining sovereignty and separation not capitulating to demons and this new age (((becoming one))) meme. That's one of the problems I have with Jung. He wants you to merge your soul with the anima, which is clearly meant to remain separate. Anima possession results in faggotry and that weird lisp.
Austin Collins
The suffering of Jew-Killers have no higher value than anybody else, they think that they are the master race like the absolutely repugnant racial supremacist ideology of theirs, but don't promote their rhetoric. Jews have exterminated a lot of people and yet, we NEVER mourn them. Stop with this pedestal of the holocaust and of the Jewish people.
Alexander Cruz
And the Jews legalized abortion pretty much in the whole west.
Adrian Rodriguez
You know what's funny about you people? Your refusal to confront the fact that many "whites" collaborated with your great enemy wittingly or not, especially in the Soviet endeavor, and in all similar endeavors since. It's always suspicious, in fact, how so little rhetoric focuses on traitors, and instead pins all blame on an external foe. No "race" is free of grievous sin and atrocity.
Go read God's Secret Armies. Jews suffered plenty under the Soviet yoke with the others, especially under Stalin, but that's inconvenient, isn't it.
Jordan Brown
Not every bloshevik was a Jew, but the extreme majority of leading position were Jews and the Secret Police was Jewish and the person who oversee the starving to death of 8 millions christian Ukrainians by starving was a Jew.
Bolshevism was a Jewish movement, a Jewish invention and it couldn't have existed and prevailed without Jewish involvement…Same thing with feminism.
See the video here at the beginning.
Samuel Bell
Luke Green
Even Vladimir Goyim at to admit that 80-85% of the Soviet Government was Jewish (and he didn't say it, but high position of powers in the Soviet Union Pretty much was 90-95% Jewish).
And this ideology has killed more or less 85 millions ethnic Catholics. So no, Jews are no victims at all as a whole, as a people.
Hudson Nguyen
Yeah. Comrade Stalin hated jews with passion. That's why his wife was a jew.
Stalin did purge the soviet leadership which was surprise, surprise, full of jews. But he replaced them with another jews…so …so much for his "anti-semitism".
Your "notall" bs does not work. Jews had an "autonomous oblast" in Soviet union. CHurches were torn down, not synagogues. Of course you will not mention this. As you will not mention who created gulags, etc.
tl dr: pathetic, get your facts straight
Grayson Wood
To be fair, he did go against the Jews once…And then, his Jewish Doctor immediately killed him.
Logan Martinez
It's very simple OP.
Hitler willreturn from Heaven and deliver a message about all of us having to exterminate jews all accross the world. As a result those who take up arms will be judged as righteous, and the rest will be judged as lukewarms, and sent to hell along with the jews.
Good and Evil don't exist independently of God. What God says is good, and you submit or go to hell.