Why does God allow evil to happen in the world?

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Dinesh D’Souza’s book Godforsaken covers this topic very well for anyone interested.
 
Also, another good Q&A article written by William Lane Craig where he talks about Animal Suffering: reasonablefaith.org/animal-suffering

He has another Q&A written around the same time if you go to his list of writing in the Q&A section of his site.
 
catholictiger said:
I think Augustines analogy of lights and darks are the best to explain this

imagine a large painting that is one of the most beautiful in the world and actually this painting is painted by just taking a color and putting it point by point, not strokes just like you have a pencil of color and you put a dot in it. Put your nose to it and it doesn’t look like anything just a strange collection of colors nothing beautiful at all. Then you take a step back and you notice that some images are starting to form, go all the way back and you realize that its the most beautiful painting in the world.

We are just like this painting and our perspective of it is like our noses are on the painting, the are lights in it, mother theresa what she has done in the world, the great scientific advances and how it has improved human life, but there are also darks in it. The Death camps in Europe during WWII, the Rowandan Genocide, abortion, along with other things. In our perspective it looks like the darks are bad and God should stop them and not let them happen. But if we were to see it from God’s perspective we would see the beauty of it and the evils are necessary for this to happen.

to put it visually without darks and lights on this post you couldn’t see my writing

Highlight the bellow line

If I were to put this entire thing in white you couldn’t see it

but by putting it in black you can see everything.

you could say the background is the good in the world, and the words the evil. But put it all together and it makes sense.
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Yes, excellent! You will make a great sermon giver!
 
tonyrey said:
:
" The inherent character or basic constitution of a person or thing" : Merriam-Webster

"Ultimate reality is a term used in *philosophy *to indicate the underlying nature of reality"! -wikipedia

For materialists the basic reality is matter.

For Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus the basic reality is God.
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Reality = everything. If everything has the same ‘inherent character’ and God is real, and I am real, then God’s inherent character = my inherent character. I imagine you didn’t mean this!
 
catholictiger said:
why do you think animals should be brought tot he same level of humans, and why is it such a huge deal that animals suffer?
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I do not see humans and other animals are being on ‘levels’. Humans are different from all other animal. But this is true of all animals. It is what we mean by species. So far there have been modern humans for a couple of hundred thousand years. Other human species, such as neanderthals have lived much longer before becoming extinct (except for a few genes passed on to some of us). Homo sapiens sapiens is not unique nor yet as successful as earlier humans. There is no reason, even if you favour the idea of ‘levels’ to put our species on top.

My point about animals suffering is that it is patently not something an all-loving and all powerful God would allow. Your solution to this seems to be to say that animals do not suffer, or that their suffering is somehow different to human sufferring and therefore something a loving God could be reasonably thought to do. This appears to me to be illogical, as any level of suffering, could not be allowed by a loving God with no corresponding benefit to the individuals involved. This is not an argument against the existence of any god. It is in my view a strong argument against the existence of the Christian God. To the extent that it is a huge issue, it is therefore a huge issue for you, not me, since the God in which you believe is clearly responsible for things which are antithecal to one of the qualities (love) which you attribute to him. I am not suggesting you adopt my conclusions - I am asking you to more carefully elucidate your own so I may understand how it is possible to know of the immense sufferring of trillions of animals, and believe an all-loving God is responsible.
 
Hokomai said:
Reality = everything. If everything has the same ‘inherent character’ and God is real, and I am real, then God’s inherent character = my inherent character. I imagine you didn’t mean this!
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God is not a thing.
 
Hokomai said:
I do not see humans and other animals are being on ‘levels’. Humans are different from all other animal. But this is true of all animals. It is what we mean by species. So far there have been modern humans for a couple of hundred thousand years. Other human species, such as neanderthals have lived much longer before becoming extinct (except for a few genes passed on to some of us). Homo sapiens sapiens is not unique nor yet as successful as earlier humans. There is no reason, even if you favour the idea of ‘levels’ to put our species on top.

My point about animals suffering is that it is patently not something an all-loving and all powerful God would allow. Your solution to this seems to be to say that animals do not suffer, or that their suffering is somehow different to human sufferring and therefore something a loving God could be reasonably thought to do. This appears to me to be illogical, as any level of suffering, could not be allowed by a loving God with no corresponding benefit to the individuals involved. This is not an argument against the existence of any god. It is in my view a strong argument against the existence of the Christian God. To the extent that it is a huge issue, it is therefore a huge issue for you, not me, since the God in which you believe is clearly responsible for things which are antithecal to one of the qualities (love) which you attribute to him. I am not suggesting you adopt my conclusions - I am asking you to more carefully elucidate your own so I may understand how it is possible to know of the immense sufferring of trillions of animals, and believe an all-loving God is responsible.
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I see where you would have objections to this, I guess why I believe what I believe is that I don’t put animals at the same level that you do, animals are not humans what does that mean in the Catholic world. That means they don’t have immortal souls, that means they can’t obtain salvation, that means they have no free will, that means they aren’t rational creators. While their suffering isn’t good for them, their suffering benefits all of God’s creation not just themselves personally. Because animals don’t have immortal souls they don’t really need benefits from suffering and their life just doesn’t matter as much.

try to read the article that was posted earlier maybe it will give you an insite I can’t seem to give yet.
 
Hokomai said:
Reality = everything. If everything has the same ‘inherent character’ and God is real, and I am real, then God’s inherent character = my inherent character. I imagine you didn’t mean this!
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while inherent character isn’t the best word but we both share in the existence of God, just in a much less perfect way. God is pure existence, we are the highest level of existence among composite beings aka form and matter.
 
maybe this will help from C.S. Lewis, he seems to believe that somehow God does give benefits to animals its just outside our knowledge.

“The problem of animal suffering is appalling . . . because the Christian explanation of human pain cannot be extended to animals. So far as we know [see quote]. At the same time, we must never allow the problem of animal suffering to become the centre of the problem of pain; not because it is unimportant–whatever furnishes plausible grounds for questioning the goodness of God is very important indeed–but because it is outside the range of our knowledge. God has given us data which enable us, in some degree, to understand our own suffering: He has given us no such data about beasts . . . From the doctrine that God is good we may confidently deduce that the appearance of Divine cruelty in the animal kingdom is an illusion–and the fact that the only suffering we know firsthand (our own) turns out not to be a cruelty will make it easier to believe.”

I need to say this don’t see my view point as the view point of the church it could be but also could not be, if you feel drawn to the Catholic Church don’t say because CT believed this than the church is obviously wrong
 
catholictiger said:
maybe this will help from C.S. Lewis, he seems to believe that somehow God does give benefits to animals its just outside our knowledge.

“The problem of animal suffering is appalling . . . because the Christian explanation of human pain cannot be extended to animals. So far as we know [see quote]. At the same time, we must never allow the problem of animal suffering to become the centre of the problem of pain; not because it is unimportant–whatever furnishes plausible grounds for questioning the goodness of God is very important indeed–but because it is outside the range of our knowledge. God has given us data which enable us, in some degree, to understand our own suffering: He has given us no such data about beasts . . . From the doctrine that God is good we may confidently deduce that the appearance of Divine cruelty in the animal kingdom is an illusion–and the fact that the only suffering we know firsthand (our own) turns out not to be a cruelty will make it easier to believe.”

I need to say this don’t see my view point as the view point of the church it could be but also could not be, if you feel drawn to the Catholic Church don’t say because CT believed this than the church is obviously wrong
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Thanks for responding to my questions and challenges Catholictiger. I understand that you are looking at the same set of facts and theories/beliefs that I am and discussing them on what seem to be their merits from your personal point of view. I appreciate the difference between your posts and the magisterium, although I must say your posts are often much better written than the obscure statements of the Vatican and bishops! 🙂

The CS Lewis response seems to me to be almost circular: God is good. animal suffering appears not to be good. God allows it. Therefore there must be a reason for this which allows God to do this, and remain good. It is a good example to me of the way ‘belief’ can persist in the face of countervailing facts. It is a non-scientific view, since absolutely anything can be explained/justified by it. In Catholic tradition when such logical problems emerge the word ‘mystery’ is used, and belief replaces observation and rational thought, although great effort is taken to avoid direct contradiction of either. The animal suffering issue is I think one of the weakest uses of the ‘mystery’ defence, as the observed facts are material and obvious to all, unlike the ‘facts’ of the ‘mystery’ or the Trinity, or the Eucharist, or the bodily assumption of the BVM.
 
Hokomai said:
Thanks for responding to my questions and challenges Catholictiger. I understand that you are looking at the same set of facts and theories/beliefs that I am and discussing them on what seem to be their merits from your personal point of view. I appreciate the difference between your posts and the magisterium, although I must say your posts are often much better written than the obscure statements of the Vatican and bishops! 🙂

The CS Lewis response seems to me to be almost circular: God is good. animal suffering appears not to be good. God allows it. Therefore there must be a reason for this which allows God to do this, and remain good. It is a good example to me of the way ‘belief’ can persist in the face of countervailing facts. It is a non-scientific view, since absolutely anything can be explained/justified by it. In Catholic tradition when such logical problems emerge the word ‘mystery’ is used, and belief replaces observation and rational thought, although great effort is taken to avoid direct contradiction of either. The animal suffering issue is I think one of the weakest uses of the ‘mystery’ defence, as the observed facts are material and obvious to all, unlike the ‘facts’ of the ‘mystery’ or the Trinity, or the Eucharist, or the bodily assumption of the BVM.
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thanks for the positive comments 🙂

as far as the mystery goes the reason they come about is we can’t know the devine fully because we are limited by our existence, our existence is not the existence of God’s. We know from Scripture that things have happened and are true. God tells us that he is a trinity but we can’t in our human knowledge be able to explain how he is a trinity, even though we have tried and I can try to explain it to you. The Church doesn’t use mystery to try and cover up illogical things, rather they are things that go beyond our understanding. BTW every single mystery in the western church has tried to be explained.
 
Hokomai said:
I did not know this was part of Catholic belief. Fascinating idea. Educate me further please! What is a thing, and if God is not a thing, what is God?
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God simply is.

everything bellow God is something.

for example, you pick up a rock you say this is a rock, in metaphysics is has meaning, it is the existence of the object or rock. All creators actually have the same ontological property of existence. The problem is where does this unity come from, it can’t be from the diversity of beings, because that describes many not one. It can’t be from its own act of existence, because our existence isn’t necessary it is contingent meaning it depends on something else for its existence, so to give something you don’t have to yourself is absurd. So the unifying existence must come from something outside of us, and transcends this. It also must be pure existance because it has to transcend all other beings, and something that doesn’t have pure existence could be transcended by something else. I also think (not sure) but if you don’t have pure existence you must get it from someone else.
 
He gives each of his creatures free will (to love him or not). What is love if it is forced? That’s like putting a machine to do something… we aren’t machines… we are creatures of God…>

Satan, God’s most beautifully made angel… began to get jealous that God wanted a relationship with us, so lowly and poor human creatures… who would want to be in a relationship so intimate with that ?? Well Jesus!! And Satan didn’t like the idea, so in all the deadly sins he fell… and God gave the angels a choice between heaven and hell… and 1/3 fell… and that was that.

God owns ALL goodness… it is His. The only thing not from him is evil.
 
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