Uncaused first cause evil?

[adrian1]

What are the philosophical argument against an personal , all-powerful, eternal but evil God? Why uncaused first cause must be a loving and good God? I accept the Christian teaching, I want a more detailed philosophical argument against personal evil god

 

[Arkansan]

What is the argument against a square circle?

 

[Ron_Conte]

Evil is a deprivation of some good which exists. In other words, evil is an absence or lack of something. Perfect evil would be perfect non-existence. God is perfect infinite existence. An evil God, by definition, would not exist, since he would be perfect non-existence.

Interestingly, perfect existence is love. God is love. God exists. In God, existence is the same as love. Evil is therefore always, in some sense, an absence of love.

 

[steve-b]

What are the philosophical argument against an personal , all-powerful, eternal but evil God? Why uncaused first cause must be a loving and good God? I accept the Christian teaching, I want a more detailed philosophical argument against personal evil god

Divine revelation as to God, and who God is, is required 1st from God to have the necessary authority behind it in order to believe correctly. Without revelation, we have endless personal opinion against personal opinion.

 

[po18guy]

An evil God would unjustly condemn you to hell. I am guessing that your zip code is not 66666. So…

 

[End_Timer]

i’d like to mention that most Atheists on CL ReFo say that if God
exists, He must be evil. Typical comment “Evil, sadistic Sky-monster”
“drowns babies & has thousands slaughtered” “Kills 6 million kids a year” etc.

 

[Wesrock]

@adrian1

Post 1 of 2

I saw this topic a few days ago, but these types of things take some thought and reflection… and time, of course.

First, are good and evil separate substances? A lot of Gnostic religions proposed that they are. There is one God who is the source of all good, and there is something else which is the source of all evil, and that they are mutually exclusive. But that’s not what we profess. We profess that God is the creator of everything. The idea that there is this separate substance of evil that isn’t created by God but has its origin in something else, whether uncreated or created, is antithetical to monotheism.

It’s also common theological opinion among Catholics that evil is not a creation in itself at all, but a privation in some good that should be present. Let’s reflect more on that. If I have a triangle, is the triangle more good or less good the more closely it instantiates triangularity? A healthy dog has four legs. When a dog loses a leg, is that a good or is that a physical evil it has suffered? We generally say that a good is healthier, that is, more good in health, when it has four legs, when it’s immune system is healthy, etc . . . And that it has suffered an evil when it loses some functionality or feature that seems natural to being a dog (having four legs). Likewise with humans, we can of course speak of goodness in health. Goodness in morality is a similar concept, in which case when people are morally good when they act more in accordance with what we consider their “humanity” or “human nature,” and evil when they act contrary to what is fulfilling for a human being of healthy mind and body.

So the common theme here is that you have a triangle that is more good when it better instantiates being a triangle, a a dog in good health when it better instantiates what you expect from a healthy dog, and a morally good human when they act more in accordance with human nature. There is a relationship of goodness to the thing’s way of being. The better or more full it is (be’s, is being) in being what it is, the more good it is at being what it is. This isn’t exclusively a moral measurement, but it applies to human morality as well, as illustrated above. Goodness is convertible with being (these are two things that philosophers have traditional considered to be among the “trancendentals”).

 

[Wesrock]

Post 2 of 2

So then we come to the question of God, who by philosophical arguments we understand to be subsistent being itself. A being of actus purus, who simply is actual without having any potentialities that require actualizing. That is, something that simply is being without any privation in His being. Since God is the fullness of being without any depriviation in being what He is, and since being is convertible with goodness, God is absolutely good. Note here that the statement that God is good is not a moral statement. His goodness is Him being absolutely actual. Now, it further follows that God has reached out to man, desires man to reach the fullness of their own nature, desires for man to participate in Him to to associate them with His own glory, of course, so there is here what we would call goodness and love, but it’s more than just saying that God is a human moral agent who is living to the fullness of human moral nature.

Now, I didn’t go into why God is actus purus or subsistent being itself. That follows from some famous cosmological arguments which I hope you’re somewhat familiar with, and I don’t have a lot of time. But from these arguments, and that goodness and being are convertible, and that God is Being Itself, and that evil is a privation of goodness, it follows that God must be perfectly good. The idea that something which is purely actual without any potentialities that could be actualized being a purely evil being is nonsensical. It makes as much sense as saying that being is equivalent to non-being.