Argument from evil and why free will doesn't work

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A logical fallacy. We see the effects of evil, but evil is not something that exists. Perhaps a poor analogy: If you exhale and refuse to inhale until you collapse, you are not succumbing to a disease, you are suffering from a lack of oxygen. but you caused it - God did not.
 
I never said evil has a positive ontology. Sure, it’s the privation of good. But what caused (or brought about) its privation – or, what failed to bring about good where it ought be?
 
Like someone else pointed out, the fact you are choosing to respond to messages on the thread proves your free will. Free will is a fact. For free will to exist, there has to be evil, otherwise we would not be truly free.
 
Dan_Defender said:
…the fact you are choosing to respond to messages…
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This just presupposes free will. It could be the case that I was determined to respond to the messages, and I had no ultimate control in the matter.
 
But you have control in the matter. If God does not exist and all comes to cosmic dust, then no matter what you do in this life in the big picture. Without God life becomes meaningless.
 
I need a wall chart to begin to understand it. What to avoid:
  1. Anthropomorphizing God. Always leads astray and limits contemplation.
  2. Too many simultaneous questions.
  3. Failing to question the self before others.
There may not be an answer - or one that satisfies.
 
po18guy said:
We see the effects of evil, but evil is not something that exists.
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A rather dangerous approach, this. See, a tree is good, for it was created by God. Evil is not the absence of a tree, or of all trees. Evil is that which delights in the destruction of trees. Unfortunately this can be extended to man (i.e. substitute “man” for “tree”), and indeed to God’s entire Creation: evil is that which delights in debasing and destroying what God created. It has an agenda.

The only sense in which we may say that evil is not something that exists, is that it does not exist in God’s Mind: it is not an Idea of God. It exists in a dimension (or on a “plane”) that wasn’t part of God’s Original Creation, but arose as a consequence of the Fall. Indeed, evil defines itself only relatively – it is against God’s Will, whatever God’s Will is – whereas God and His Good is of course defined absolutely. But to say that that which defines itself only relatively (and cannot do otherwise), does not exist, is dangerous because it invites us to underestimate evil – which indeed suits its agenda just fine.
 
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feltmeanings23 said:
God does not have libertarian free will*
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Of course He doesn’t. God doesn’t make “choices”. Which subverts the counter-argument you’re trying to make in your first paragraph.
feltmeanings23 said:
God can’t control the fact that He exists;
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You are here interpreting “existence” as applied to God in a way that applies only to created things. Or to use another poster’s terminology, you are anthropomorphizing God to the point where it no longer aids understanding, but hinders it. God is not “helpless” in the face of the fact of his own existence, because His existence is not an existence in the sense of a created thing’s existence. God is not created, He is not a thing or a creature or a someone, nor is He “out there somewhere” – but you seem to lose sight of this throughout your arguments.
feltmeanings23 said:
doesn’t your Church infallibly teach that God knows the future?
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No. Which subverts all of your last paragraph. But to elaborate a little bit: in your argument you conceive of the future as given “data”, to which God, as another “given”, stands in relation as either knowing of that data, or unknowing. But the future isn’t “given data”. It is that which arises as God continues forever to interact with His Universe.
 
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I know that you would chose a bowl of cereal to eat rather than a bowl of dead mice, but you still freely chose the bowl of cereal.

You might have heard this before but I thought I’d mention it anyway.
 
I have never heard of God having free. We have free will.

Yes God knows what will happen.

Are you trying to convince yourself there is no God or just irritated at the way He set up the universe?

If you want to know why He would create a person He knows will chose hell over heaven, I don’t know. Perhaps that person will help another chose heaven or be a miracle for a moment in another’s person’s life?

I’m more wondering why angels turned on Him, people are somewhat separate but angels were always accessible.
 
I am not denying evil. It is more like anti-matter.

Aren’t you still viewing it as a positive? It is not! It is the lack of goodness.

Delight in destruction of anything created results from a lack; an absence.
 
If God did not have free will than why did He create us? (Was this asked already?)
 
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Evil is the privation of good. I think you are answering your own question.

Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth described the devil as “Die Null” - the zero, the nothing. And, that is evil. A vacuum where good once was.

We can empty ourselves of good by our own doing, making less of ourselves than as created. To make ourselves greater than what we are requires grace from God - such as at baptism.
 
You don’t think God exists, yet you freely accept evil exists. The acknowledgment of the existence of evil is a first step to faith. I will pray for you
🙏🕊️

I have found many who deny the existence of God, either acknowledge evil exist, or get absolutely terrified about the concepts of hell. Yet there are so many Luke warm believers out there.
 
There are entire theology units dedicated to the problem of evil .

It’s a massive and complicated topic
 
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