God responsible for evil?

[Tom_Baum]

Only Fundamentalists interpret every statement in the OT literally…

He wasn’t speaking of “every statement in the OT”, he was speaking about ““I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7”, and said concerning this passage, “The Bible clearly teaches that God creates evil.”

What is your take on this if you have one?

I, personally, would say that it is in line with the fact that God created everything, would you agree or disagree?

If you disagree, would you say that “evil” always was?

 

[Counterpoint]

In this case, your responding, “Define free will.”.

Yes. You and others here are using the free will defense. Define free will. What exactly do you man by free will? (It’s a simple and straightforward question; I expect a simple and straightforward response.)

 

[rinnie]

If we define evil as the privation of good (which is how Aquinas defined it), then God is ultimately responsible for the privation (or, perhaps, I should say “deprivation”).

Couldn’t be. God is the creator of all that is good. Evil is not good. To do evil or sin is to disobey God.

How can God giving us free will to obey or disobey him make him responsible for sin?

We created sin when we chose to separate our self from Good, which is God and create evil on our own with our own mind.

God never created sin or evil that came from separating yourself from God.

You have good which is God or evil which is Satan. opposites. God did not create the devil to disagree and separate himself from him. Satan choose to do that himself using the free will given to him by God.

 

[rinnie]

Yes. You and others here are using the free will defense. Define free will. What exactly do you man by free will? (It’s a simple and straightforward question; I expect a simple and straightforward response.)

Simple to choose the way of God or to choose the way of self. If you choose yourself and not the ways of God you have turned away from him and chose sin.

God made Adam and Eve completely good, they chose to sin on their own free will. The devil did not put a gun to their head, he said disobey God, They did. They didn’t have to.

They knew right from wrong, eve herself stated God said not to, the devil said do it, disobey God, she didn’t have to she choose to. That’s free will.

If she had not free will, she would not have said yes or no. She would have no power to do so without God giving it to her.

 

[MacQ]

I don’t know that you might mean by “determined”, because to me “determined” and “known” do NOT mean the same thing.

“Determined” to me means that God decided or determined what will happen as opposed to knowing what will happen, irregardless of whether you believe that this is possible is immaterial but the difference between the two is, to put it mildly, huge.

So what I am saying is that everything is NOT determined but everything is known.

I disagree with the “Merriam-Webster definition of predestination” in that I do not believe “that everything that will happen has already been decided by God” but that God knows everything that will happen, you might not be able to see the difference in what I am writing but it is a huge difference.

The MW definition is correct. Whether you subscribe to that belief (predestination) doesn’t make the definition of the belief incorrect.

Why not just say it plainly: predetermined and predestined both mean that God decided in advance. You think He didn’t, but that He knows.
(If you think about it, that’s kind of odd…that he would know very well and what? Let it happen anyway? Isn’t that the same?

Seems to me, He gave us free will so that corners could be turned one way or the other.
You say He knows in advance what we’ll choose…so He’s a futilist? Why bother?

 

[tonyrey]

He wasn’t speaking of “every statement in the OT”, he was speaking about ““I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7”, and said concerning this passage, “The Bible clearly teaches that God creates evil.”

Isaiah was a prophet not a historian, scientist, theologian or philosopher. His language is not a literal account of Creation. He is simply declaring that God is the Creator of everything that exists, has existed and will exist - the Ultimate Cause of all events and situations:

309 If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.

310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better.174 But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world “in a state of journeying” towards its ultimate perfection. In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.175

311 Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. **God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil.**176 He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it:

For almighty God. . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.177

What is your take on this if you have one?

God permits evil which is a side-effect of Creation:

385 God is infinitely good and all his works are good. Yet no one can escape the experience of suffering or the evils in nature which seem to be linked to the limitations proper to creatures: and above all to the question of moral evil.

I, personally, would say that it is in line with the fact that God created everything, would you agree or disagree?

Evil is not a “thing”. Aquinas pointed out that it is an **incidental **defect:

On the contrary, Augustine says (QQ. 83, qu. 21), that, “God is not the author of evil because He is not the cause of tending to not-being.”

I answer that, As appears from what was said (1), the evil which consists in the defect of action is always caused by the defect of the agent. But in God there is no defect, but the highest perfection, as was shown above (Question 4, Article 1). Hence, the evil which consists in defect of action, or which is caused by defect of the agent, is not reduced to God as to its cause.

But the evil which consists in the corruption of some things is reduced to God as the cause. And this appears as regards both natural things and voluntary things. For it was said (1) that some agent inasmuch as it produces by its power a form to which follows corruption and defect, causes by its power that corruption and defect. But it is manifest that the form which God chiefly intends in things created is the good of the order of the universe. Now, the order of the universe requires, as was said above (22, 2, ad 2; 48, 2), that** there should be some things that can, and do sometimes, fail.** And thus God, by causing in things the good of the order of the universe, consequently and as it were by accident, causes the corruptions of things, according to 1 Samuel 2:6: “The Lord killeth and maketh alive.” But when we read that “God hath not made death” (Wisdom 1:13), the sense is that God does not will death for its own sake.
newadvent.org/summa/1049.htm

It is clearly a mistake to regard the Creator as directly responsible for every event that has occurred.

If you disagree, would you say that “evil” always was?

Only God has always existed!

 

[Tom_Baum]

Yes. You and others here are using the free will defense. Define free will. What exactly do you man by free will? (It’s a simple and straightforward question; I expect a simple and straightforward response.)

I would personally say that free will is that we make a decision as opposed to something such as today’s computers that just follow from one step to another, no thinking involved or that we are just “puppets on a string” whether that string is “fate” or God or as some psychologist seem to think that we are just automatons of our biological juices.

I give you here, at least from my perspective, a simple and straightforward response and I have already given you an example when I wrote, “In this case, your responding, “Define free will.”.”, in that you made a decision to ask for a definition, it may have seemed like a logical thing to ask but you did NOT have to ask but you decided to ask.

I have a question of my own, what exactly do you mean by “free will defense”?

 

[Tom_Baum]

Couldn’t be. God is the creator of all that is good. Evil is not good. To do evil or sin is to disobey God.

How can God giving us free will to obey or disobey him make him responsible for sin?

We created sin when we chose to separate our self from Good, which is God and create evil on our own with our own mind.

God never created sin or evil that came from separating yourself from God.

You have good which is God or evil which is Satan. opposites. God did not create the devil to disagree and separate himself from him. Satan choose to do that himself using the free will given to him by God.

God did create satan tho, don’t you think?

Don’t you also think that God “knew” what satan would do even before God created satan?

As far as “How can God giving us free will to obey or disobey him make him responsible for sin?”

Since God created creation as God created created, there is sin, whatever sin may or may not be, Who created creation?

 

[antunesaa]

Because those are the only two logical possibilites. Either everything is determined or it is not.

Yes, but then you go on saying that if something is not deterministic then it has to be at least in part random. And that’s where I think you’re wrong. Your problem is that you’re essentially a naturalist and naturally (no pun intended) you believe that only matter exists. In that case you’re consistent and probably right. Now, if you’re not bound by naturalism, of course it is possible to devise a supernatural object called “free will”. This supernatural object acts upon the natural world but does not draw its existence and purpose from it; it draws them ultimately from this unavoidable entity which we call God. So, in practical terms, and to simplify, imagine that the past history of the world up to moment t is subsumed in a collection of tangible pieces of information S_t. Under determinism, S_t is sufficient to describe the (only) future path of all things. Under randomness, S_t is sufficient to describe all possible paths of all things and attach probabilities to each of them. Under free will, S_t is possibly sufficient to describe the future path of all things, but is not sufficient to attach probabilities to each path, since those probabilities will change each time the (supernatural) will, whose attributes are by definition excluded from S_t, acts upon the natural world.

Under my hypothesis, I can be justified in saying that “I will move my hand in t+1”, and then move it, without having to invoke unwarranted and unappealing coincidences of S_t being able to unpurposefully account both for my declaration and my factual atittude. And believing in naturalism is nothing short of believing in self-enforcing, self-consistent rules, conspiring since the dawn of times to induce the formulation of generally true statements about the natural world uttered by compounds of matter called “humans” (or other intelligent beings). This to me would look supernatural enough, so I stick to the other, simpler explanation.

 

[Counterpoint]

Simple to choose the way of God or to choose the way of self. If you choose yourself and not the ways of God you have turned away from him and chose sin.

God made Adam and Eve completely good, they chose to sin on their own free will.

If God created Adam to only desire good, then choosing to “sin” must ultimately be good.

 

[davidv]

If God created Adam to only desire good, then choosing to “sin” must ultimately be good.

They were created good, not desiring only good. Part of their good was having free will.

You conclusion does not follow from the original statment, “created good”.

 

[Counterpoint]

They were created good, not desiring only good. Part of their good was having free will.

You conclusion does not follow from the original statment, “created good”.

Well, if they were not created to desire only what is good. then it logically follows that they must have been created to also desire evil. Either way, God is ultimately responsible for evil.

 

[Counterpoint]

Yes, but then you go on saying that if something is not deterministic then it has to be at least in part random. And that’s where I think you’re wrong. Your problem is that you’re essentially a naturalist and naturally (no pun intended) you believe that only matter exists. In that case you’re consistent and probably right.

You are incorrect. I’m not a materialist. And while materialism is compatible with determinism, it is not compatible with indeterminism. Why? Because there is no physical explanation for something that doesn’t have a physical cause. So, if indeterminism is true, materialism is not.

But regardless of your metaphysical position (materialism, dualism, or idealism), you are obligated by the dictates of logic to acknowledge that either everything is determined or it is not.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

You are incorrect. I’m not a materialist. And while materialism is compatible with determinism, it is not compatible with indeterminism. Why? Because there is no physical explanation for something that doesn’t have a physical cause. So, if indeterminism is true, materialism is not.

But regardless of your metaphysical position (materialism, dualism, or idealism), you are obligated by the dictates of logic to acknowledge that either everything is determined or it is not.

That is a false dichotomy as you well know. Some things certainly are determined, but not the rational acts of man.

Linus2nd

 

[Counterpoint]

That is a false dichotomy as you well know. Some things certainly are determined, but not the rational acts of man.

I realize that this may threatened your belief-system, but physical determinism is not the only form of determinism.

 

[davidv]

Well, if they were not created to desire only what is good. then it logically follows that they must have been created to also desire evil. Either way, God is ultimately responsible for evil.

How does it follow logically? You haven’t demonstrated that it does, nor is it self-evident.

Now would you please present rational arguments instead of these logical fallacies. (false dichotomy and non sequitur)

 

[davidv]

I realize that this may threatened your belief-system, but physical determinism is not the only form of determinism.

Like what? And how does it apply to the OP topic?

 

[Counterpoint]

Counterpoint:

Well, if they were not created to desire only what is good. then it logically follows that they must have been created to also desire evil. Either way, God is ultimately responsible for evil.

How does it follow logically? You haven’t demonstrated that it does, nor is it self-evident.

Now would you please present rational arguments instead of these logical fallacies. (false dichotomy and non sequitur)

If I was created to desire both good and evil (which is what your argument of free will implies), then God is ulitimately responsible for my evil desires. (Free will is simply the capacity to fulfill whatever it is you desire.)

 

[davidv]

If I was created to desire both good and evil[1] (which is what your argument of free will implies)[2], then God is ulitimately responsible for my evil desires.[3] (Free will is simply the capacity to fulfill whatever it is you desire.)

1. False premise
2. Strawman
3. Non sequitur

 

[Counterpoint]

1. False premise
2. Strawman
3. Non sequitur

If we were created to desire only good, then how is it possible for anyone of us to choose evil?