The problem of Moral Evil (debunked)

[MindOverMatter2]

Love is something we do, not something we are, and love is relational.

You “experience” love through relationships, that is, you have knowledge of its existence because a person has interacted with you in a certain way that brings fulfillment to your being as a “person”. You experience it in this fashion because you are a limited being with limited knowledge, a knowledge which has to evolve through personal experience. To say that because you experience love through relations, that therefore love cannot be an objective nature, is an assertion. It does not follow from the premise. The only thing that follows from the premise is that you personally do not have “knowledge” of love outside of relations. Its an epistemological limitation and not necessarily an ontological limitation. It does not tell us what love is in reference to nature, but rather only how love is experienced in reference to our personal natures.

In any case, a person has to act out of love and a knowledge of love, expressing the true intentions of their heart, in order for an action to be truly a loving act, by definition. That this act necessarily ends in relations, does not preclude that which must precede the existence of that relation in order for that relation to be a true expression of love. The existence of a loving act and the loving heart, depending on the type of love, precedes the existence of the relation. In others words, God creates because he “knows” its good. He has absolute knowledge of good because he is the source of all reality, and therefore all meaning. God does not require the existence of people outside of his own personal nature in-order to know the nature of good, because he is the source of all good given the fact that he is the source of the very fabric of reality itself. Thus when God creates, he does so as an expression of his fundamental nature, and the absolute self knowledge of his nature.

Again, i do not have to defend the position that there is a nature which is good. I merely have to show that given the existence of such a nature, evil can exist without contradiction. I have shown this. You have failed to refute it; and thus you attempt to attack the argument by challenging the very definition God.

Besides, i never said that human beings are the nature of love. I said they can choose to be vessels of love. I was charitable enough to give an explanation of why we say that God is the nature of love, even though i don’t have to. But you have ignored it.

If you want to challenge me about how i define the nature of God, you should first concede that you have failed to defeat my refutation of the problem of evil. Once you have done that, i will be able to trust you enough to perhaps continue this debate on another thread with a name of your choice.

Thanks for entertaining me.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

In order for God to love us, God has to protect our best interests, not merely to sit there as embodied ‘Love’. God can only be said (in a manner of speaking) to be Love if He constantly loves every one of His creation even if they do not love Him. It is this statement which clearly contradicts the notion that God would cause or allow people to suffer objective evil for eternity in hell.

1. The strong version: complains that there is a necessary contradiction between the concept of a loving God and the concept of evil. This is debunked by the fact that if God is ontologically the nature of love, then he possesses a nature that would not force his creatures to love each other. Love, in the context of preparing people for heaven, by its very nature is freely given and is not forced. To force ones self upon another is a selfish act. The goal of God, is that everybody should freely choose to love God, because by doing so, mans nature as both an ontologically dependent and morally independent creature is fulfilled. Since all true acts of love can only exist because of Gods nature, we can only express love to a perfect degree by freely conforming to all aspects of Gods will. If the nature of perfect love is not forceful of loving actions, then it is logically possible that evil can exist in the presence of a perfect ontological love. The consequence of this is that people can harm each other; this is to say that they can act in opposition to love. Given that God loves all his children equally, it follows from that fact that he therefore values the freedom of all his children equally. Thus the world we see before us is to be expected, since humanity is free to act as it pleases.

This clearly refutes your argument.

 

[James1215]

1. The strong version: complains that there is a necessary contradiction between the concept of a loving God and the concept of evil. This is debunked by the fact that if God is ontologically the nature of love…

This clearly refutes your argument.

I have yet to read your post, but expected you’d disagree with my argument’s relevance. However. you state that if God is ontologically the nature of love, x,y,z follow which make God not evil. I have just argued God is not (by Himself) ontologically love, therefore that your defense of God does not stand.

 

[James1215]

You “experience” love through relationships, that is, you have knowledge of its existence because a person has interacted with you in a certain way that brings fulfillment to your being as a “person”. You experience it in this fashion because you are a limited being with limited knowledge, a knowledge which has to evolve through personal experience. To say that because you experience love through relations, that therefore love cannot be an objective nature, is an assertion. It does not follow from the premise. The only thing that follows from the premise is that you personally do not have “knowledge” of love outside of relations. Its an epistemological limitation and not necessarily an ontological limitation. It does not tell us what love is in reference to nature, but rather only how love is experienced in reference to our personal natures.

In any case, a person has to act out of love and a knowledge of love, expressing the true intentions of their heart, in order for an action to be truly a loving act, by definition. That this act necessarily ends in relations, does not preclude that which must precede the existence of that relation in order for that relation to be a true expression of love. The existence of a loving act and the loving heart, depending on the type of love, precedes the existence of the relation. In others words, God creates because he “knows” its good. He has absolute knowledge of good because he is the source of all reality, and therefore all meaning. God does not require the existence of people outside of his own personal nature in-order to know the nature of good, because he is the source of all good given the fact that he is the source of the very fabric of reality itself. Thus when God creates, he does so as an expression of his fundamental nature, and the absolute self knowledge of his nature.

Again, i do not have to defend the position that there is a nature which is good. I merely have to show that given the existence of such a nature, evil can exist without contradiction. I have shown this. You have failed to refute it; and thus you attempt to attack the argument by challenging the very definition God.

Besides, i never said that human beings are the nature of love. I said they can choose to be vessels of love. I was charitable enough to give an explanation of why we say that God is the nature of love, even though i don’t have to. But you have ignored it.

If you want to challenge me about how i define the nature of God, you should first concede that you have failed to defeat my refutation of the problem of evil. Once you have done that, i will be able to trust you enough to perhaps continue this debate on another thread with a name of your choice.

Thanks for entertaining me.

I say love is relational - and I mean all love, not just human love, you disagree. I’ll try to summarise your points as I understand them. The first 3 I would flat-out contradict on a definitional basis (or a lack of evidence), and the latter I deny as mistaken, because they still rely upon love as relational.

1. We are limited to a human experience of some kind of objective love, which exists even when not experienced
2. what I occasionally experience of this objective love I do not fully understand
3. I cannot say simply because I only experience love in relationships that love is only found in relationships
4. Love as expressed in relations is based on good, loving intentions and these intentions come before the relations.
5. God knew that it would be loving and good to create humans, and there existed this potential love soon-to-be-demonstrated, which is a reflection of His supremely good nature. As such, love exists ontologically in the form of God.

However, in keeping with the way I opened my first response to your thread(!) I will first say that you appear to have contradicted yourself by relying upon human understanding to convey that which you just said was beyond comprehension. Therefore, even accepting the thrust of the above points, there are problems. We can all intuitively understand having loving intentions ourselves, and you point to God’s loving intention to create us. This compares the human with the divine as if the former illuminates the latter, when you said that understanding ontological love is epistemologically impossible.

Nevertheless, my other objections are simple. I hold that love is in reference to something outside the self - in this way it is relational. Even good loving intentions are loving intentions that relate to another, without them having to be demonstrated in a relationship or without the other knowing of them. That is a part of the definition of ‘love’, and if we talk about some sort of ‘ontological’ love, that needs explaining right here, not on another thread. I can see how God did have the potential to be loving before He created anyone else, but he was not actually loving because only He existed then. I can half-concede that point. However, where is the evidence that God embodies a kind of love that is non-relational and beyond human comprehension? What in the Bible indicates that?

The second part of love is that it promotes the best interests of its object. I don’t think hell is in the best interests of anyone, so I do not concede that part at all, and the conflict still exists.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

I have yet to read your post, but expected you’d disagree with my argument’s relevance. However. you state that if God is ontologically the nature of love, x,y,z follow which make God not evil. I have just argued God is not (by Himself) ontologically love, therefore that your defense of God does not stand.

Its not surprising that you have not read my post; I expected nothing less. Again this is a disagreement about the definition of love as it applies to Gods ontological act. The validity of your argument can be a subject for debate. However, It is irrelevant to whether or not evil is compatible with the Christian concept of God.

 

[James1215]

Its not surprising that you have not read my post; I expected nothing less. Again this is a disagreement about the definition of love as it applies to Gods ontological act. The validity of your argument can be a subject for debate. However, It is irrelevant to whether or not evil is compatible with the Christian concept of God.

I have read your post, I just skimmed through first and found that you thought my arguments were irrelevant and entertaining - so I said right off how they are relevant.

Since then I fully read it and replied.

Given that the problem of evil is the conflict between God being loving and God causing eternal suffering, the definition of love is central!