i wouldn’t be sure but maybe hurricanes or rapist or something along the lines of that. I think the objection was to the point in general
CT:
It is very important to clearly define the terms of the argument, as you no doubt can gather from a reading of many of the newest posts in the Philosophy forum. Both theists and atheists are lamenting the problems they’re having with communication due to the lack of clearly defined terms.
In another post, I suggested that ‘evil’ is not a thing. Rather, it is a condition of a thing. A hurricane is not
per se ‘evil.’ The absence of an orderly landscape after the hurricane passes through is what we consider the evil. That absence of orderly life after the hurricane is what we think of as evil. We have a tendency to call natural disasters ‘evil’ without thinking about what we’re saying.
In 2004, Florida was hit by 5 hurricanes in a row. Did God send 5 evils to visit the State? As I recall, that year the State needed the rain – perhaps not as much as it received – but, it did need the rain. In the early days of the land mass known as Florida, hurricanes would more than likely have been godsends, supplying the flora and fauna with needed water, keeping the aquifers filled to prevent sink holes, filling lakes and streams to keep fish and sea life alive, to prevent salt water intrusion, etc., because normal rainfalls simply could not keep up with the water’s consumption.
But, you couldn’t call the hurricanes ‘good’ either. A hurricane is a neutral phenomenon. It is the thing that possesses the condition that does, or, does not,
need the hurricane that contains the absence or presence of the “good.” But, is land evil? If it is determined that land is not evil,
per se, then we are using the wrong term.
As for the rapist, do we universally understand the rapist to be evil? There are several consequences meted out to convicted rapists. Usually, the consequences involve some sort of rehabilitation. Why? Well, it is the general thinking that rapists are (or, were), deep down, decent people. It’s just that something went awry with their moral compass, or, more to the point, their state of normalcy. They are, at least temporarily, absent their normalcy. This is precisely the problem intelligent people have with the death sentence, in some States, for certain crimes.
So, you can see how important it is to understand a thing for what it is. Otherwise, aberrant, but not evil, people may be punished unjustly.
if God allows evil and also says the ends can’t justify the means then he is contradicting himself because allowing evil to occur is like letting the ends justify the means.
God only creates positive things. He has only created positive exigencies. That is all he can Create. When certain of those positive exigencies are absent – when there is a privation of God’s creatures – evil can slip in and fill the gaps.
Let’s think about this a little. If, as the materialist says, there is no immaterial, then there can be no real Evil. There would only be the absence of something that may be missed by sentient creatures, or not. If the universe consists of nothing more than the presence or absence of material, or mobile, being, what can be evil?
Evil has taken on a much more meaningful conception, since the days of the cave men. It is more the antithesis of creation. It is annihilation with a purpose. It is not an indeterminate, vacuous, unimportant absence.
If one admits that Evil exists as an occasional condition of certain things, then it is grounded in the existence of God, but, in no way
dependent upon him - except in the loosest of manners. By that I mean, if God were to be annihilated, so, too, would Evil be annihilated - although the absence of God would be the greatest evil of all.
If we understand that true Evil is
absence with purpose, the question is: What ends are there to be justified? There are none. At least, no ends proposed by God.
one last thing to say in my class my teacher classified two types of evils
moral evil, evils that are done by humans like rape murder and so on and so forth
and natural evils, evils that are not done by humans, like hurricanes tornadoes tsunamis
See the foregoing.
so I guess this guy was saying why would God let people rape or murder, or let hurricanes happen if the ends can’t justify the means.
As you can probably see, God makes only positive creatures. The universe consists of material objects. It there was no space between objects, the universe would be full. It would be infinite material. Nothing would move. This gigantic block of matter would do no more than exist, everywhere, and no other material could co-exist with it. In fact, there could be no space within the quantum building blocks of matter. The quanta of the universe would collapse until it all became one, homogeneous mass. But, because matter requires space, absences can and do occur. So, it’s either/or: either we live and accept some unpleasantness, or, we don’t exist at all; ever.
God bless,
jd
