The only thing you need to underscore the importance of light is darkness. There is polarity in most things: light versus darkness, up versus down, success versus failure, great versus small, positive versus negative and the list goes on and on. Suffice it therefore to say that evil strengthens the existence of a better alternative which is good. Hence God stands for good and the negative polarity is evil. So evil validates the existence of God it does not in any way disprove his existence.
God is an abstract object pureee so It is everywhere... in everypoint in every cell .. in every particle... So by believing to Allah we feel free as soul...
If God is omnipotent and omniescent then it must have created evil and perpetuated it. The bible is of course deliberately vague about this. The serpent in the Garden of Eden must have been put there by God with a view to corrupting that which it made in its own image. It is difficult to imagine how that can have been done with good intentions, presumably God wanted trouble, suffering and evil to afflict its creations.
It is not in any case necessary to disprove the existence of God. God only exists, in whatever form preferred to those who believe in deities. God does not exists at all to an atheist so there is no need for 'proof'.
Those who wish to believe in whatever God they chose are free to do so. There are many to select from and if none suit you can make up one for yourself. As the old line in the song goes "what you believe is true" and it applies to what you do not believe also.
Allah is Supreme. We belive in one Supreme Power "Almighty Allah".
Every creature has two aspects, the evil is other side of the coin. Almighty has granted a choice to man, to struggle against the forces of evil and become pious. One day, HE will reward.
No. The existence of evil only demonstrates that God has given to his creation freedom to choose .
God is the notion of truth in all its complexity. Thus, the devil is the lie and can be described as the unstable part of the truth, the notion of time having been created for this instability to be manifested.
Every creature has two aspects, the evil is other side of the coin. Almighty has granted a choice to man, to struggle against the forces of evil and become pious. One day, certainly, HE will reward.
Of course can not, and will not Evil and his attempts to refute the existence of the Creator proved the existence of the Creator
Thank you for the invitation to answer this very deep question which after the elementary analysis leads quickly to the logical antinomy. How to avoid this antinomy is perhaps the basic problem. After consulting various sources I'm inclined to accept the solution presented by Leibniz in the Theodicy which basically confirms and expands your answer and many similar answers in this thread.
In 2010 the three-hundredth anniversary of the publication of this book was celebrated showing the remarkable influence of Leibnitz on our postmodern civilization.
For the summary of the book please see
https://www.enotes.com/topics/theodicy
This is indeed a good question and leads on to the question of, what is evil?
Almost invariably human cultures consider theft a crime or even a sin. Why then do we all think of Yogi Bear as the hero and the park ranger as the villain, after all the ranger is only trying to prevent Yogi from committing theft. Since Yogi is capable of speech and is smarter than the average bear (indicating sentience) and is frequently trying to encorage Boo Boo to steal picnic baskets, should we not consider him evil?
Evil has nothing to do with "god's existence " . It resides within us , leave god out of this :)
I think that logically, there is no way you can define "good" without also having to define "evil." Just as you can't define "up" without understanding "down."
Religions have a way of creating almost cartoon-like characters, to explain this phenomenon. Everyone has to fight the constant battle of doing what's "right." We create these images of a guy with horns and forked tongue, dressed in black, but really, that's just the contrast that exists in each individual. Not some external creature. Religions create stories to be easily understood by the masses, perhaps, but I wouldn't necessarily just accept these explanations blindly.
I've tried to address this question in my published article 'Godhood and Mathematics".
In a nutshell, you have two possible definitions of Godhood: a set infinity, or an ever-growing infinity (surprisingly enough to most non-mathematicians I know, infinity can grow - even infinitely so.)
The issue with a set infinity is that then God would become a set, museum-like, been-there/done-that godhead - which would most definitely detract from live Godhood.
Let us assume then that God keeps growing - that Infinity grows.
To do so, an engine of growth is needed. In simple terms, if the whole universe or multiverse is suffused throughout with infinite goodness, then growth is impossible (there are several reasons for this, the simplest way to explain that is the 2nd law of thermodynamics: you need a difference, an imbalance, a 'delta', somewhere, for movement & hence the possibility of growth to exist.)
Therefore, to fuel the growth of Infinity, you need a difference: someplace, somewhere in the universe, where for instance something less than 'infinite goodness' exists: bingo, you have just created less than infinite goodness: in other words, a measure of evil.
That's for the mathematics.
There are, of course, other approaches (even Nick Lane, the biochemist, has commented quite very interestingly on the issue) - which all confirm what the math hints at.
The demon believes in the existence of God, but he does not believe in His goodness. Believe in the goodness of God is what could save to many people.
The only thing you need to underscore the importance of light is darkness. There is polarity in most things: light versus darkness, up versus down, success versus failure, great versus small, positive versus negative and the list goes on and on. Suffice it therefore to say that evil strengthens the existence of a better alternative which is good. Hence God stands for good and the negative polarity is evil. So evil validates the existence of God it does not in any way disprove his existence.
No, God, creator of everything, will logically prevent him from going so far.
If all power comes from god (Nada) then god is within evil, if god is everywhere then likewise, god exists in evil, likewise as evil cannot exist without god (Dibakar) and it is proof of god, then again, god is in evil.
But what exactly is evil? By the definitions above-it is and can only be god.
I like the two opposing views presented by two different respondents: Barry Turner and Andreas May. This is why intellectual conversation rather emotional ones are so appealing. I love reading and not necessarily agreeing with scholars who can honestly disagree and are unafraid to share their views. REASON NOT EMOTIONS MUST RULE THE DAY, IF WE ARE EVER TO HAVE TOLERANCE IN THIS WORLD.
Atheist and believers should be respectful of other peoples beliefs and being sensitive to their feelings towards their faiths and beliefs. Being cultured means being open to all of the questions and acquiring the abilities to apperciate excellence in all of its forms.
Atheists and believers most certainly should take account of each others feelings. It is very unusual for atheists to proselytise their lack of belief in deities but very much the case with many religious adherents.
In my home town gangs of Jehovah's witnesses hang around the town centre handing out magazines and displaying posters (In Polish and English) We even have some of the Evangelical street preachers howling about evolution being a lie and telling people they will go to Hell if they do not repent.
They clearly do not 'respect' the views of others.
I do not believe I have ever seen an atheist trying to convert believers, although Richard Dawkins gets close sometimes.
Barry, at least atheists are witty. I don't mind religious types attempting to convert me, which happens on occasion, but please a change of record is welcome and some demonstrations of thinking would go down well. The arguments are those of ten year olds who have only managed to read a single book and, on such a winsome basis, imagine all knowledge is suddenly theirs, and overwhelms all other knowledge, most of which is beyond their understanding. No matter what religion, the arguments are remarkably the same. If you resist, they can resort to bullying, and at that point my kindness and tolerance evaporates. They insult, and disrepect, my knowledge and intelligence. Yes they convert-but merely the unstable, vulnerable, ignorant and poorly educated.
In truth, if religious types offered better arguments other than repetition of subjective, reactive arguments found on internet sites, offered with shocking confidence, I might pay attention-but highly unlikely. Oh, by the way, I'm acquainted and often deeply versed in most religious books, so, as a result, belief would not be an option.
Barry, you make a really good point. If we treat people with respect even when they don‘t deserve it demonstrates civility!
Interesting points Stanley! I have read in depth the scriptures including the Torah, the Bible and the Qu'ran and am familar with a lot of religious teaching having studied the Talmud too. Religion is a huge part of human experience and does not actually require belief in deities for it to be fascinating.
Many of my philosopher heros were religious, including many who were ordained so I have no problem with other people having faith and beliefs. I have never been sure why they feel the need to recruit everyone else though. One of the things I find interesting about Judaism is that proselytising is virtually unknown.
I was challenged by two students after a lecture a couple of years ago because they were unhappy that during a lecture on evolutionary convergence and taxonomy I had not considered a creator or ID. Believe it or not this was in a Research Methodology in Life Sciences Lecture Series.
I told them that I did not cover religion in science lectures but if they wanted I was happy to discuss the scriptutes with them and that it was certain that, as well as evolutionary science I knew more about the bible than they did.
They did not take me up on the offer, which was a pity.
Even my answer is No. In any work, we find our efforts and strengths
Don't forget Barry, monotheism is closely allied to the power of the word, which we in the West have largely forgotten through custom. For us, or most of us, it is just a chair in the room, of no greater consequence, but to many others it represents uncompromising reality. It has more consequence, though is similar to, the suspension of disbelief when audiences watch a film or play but is no more real.
How do some people construct such powerful convictions on narratives? This interests me!
Interesting discussion except from those comments based on religious beliefs rather than personal academic opinions. This platform is made for research purpose.
We do not know if God is good or bad and we have different definitions of "good" and "bad", and even if God existed, I do not want to believe that slaughtering and raping children and hating certain people belong to the category of "good things".
In view of some of the above answers, I would like to draw attention to Psalm 10, which demonstrates that your question is an age-old question. Here evil is addressed from the faith perspective that God exists. The psalmist translates the Hebrew word רשע interchangeably with the two English words "evil" and "wicked" in the New Living Translation (NLT). Although רשע only appears 5 times in the Hebrew text, the term "wicked" occurs in verses 2, 4, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 15, while the term "evil" is used in verses 2, 3, 7 and 15; thus altogether 11 times in translation. The NLT first appeared in 1996 and is the work of a team of scholars and English stylists who were needed to shape the text into clear, contemporary English. From the multiplicative occurrence of the terms "wicked" and "evil" describing the degenerate nature of humankind in the translated English text (NLT), it may be derived that modern translators are very aware of the need of people to express their frustration with evil confronting them, in their relationship with God. This means that for them evil does not disprove the existence of God. How interesting though that verse 4 states: " The wicked are too proud to seek God. They seem to think that God is dead."
Psalm 10
1 O Lord, why do you stand so far away? Why do you hide when I am in trouble? 2 The wicked arrogantly hunt down the poor. Let them be caught in the evil they plan for others. 3 For they brag about their evil desires; they praise the greedy and curse the Lord.
4 The wicked are too proud to seek God. They seem to think that God is dead. 5 Yet they succeed in everything they do. They do not see your punishment awaiting them. They sneer at all their enemies. 6 They think, “Nothing bad will ever happen to us! We will be free of trouble forever!”
7 Their mouths are full of cursing, lies, and threats.[a] Trouble and evil are on the tips of their tongues. 8 They lurk in ambush in the villages, waiting to murder innocent people. They are always searching for helpless victims. 9 Like lions crouched in hiding, they wait to pounce on the helpless. Like hunters they capture the helpless and drag them away in nets. 10 Their helpless victims are crushed; they fall beneath the strength of the wicked. 11 The wicked think, “God isn’t watching us! He has closed his eyes and won’t even see what we do!”
12 Arise, O Lord! Punish the wicked, O God! Do not ignore the helpless! 13 Why do the wicked get away with despising God? They think, “God will never call us to account.” 14 But you see the trouble and grief they cause. You take note of it and punish them. The helpless put their trust in you. You defend the orphans.
15 Break the arms of these wicked, evil people! Go after them until the last one is destroyed. 16 The Lord is king forever and ever! The godless nations will vanish from the land. 17 Lord, you know the hopes of the helpless. Surely you will hear their cries and comfort them. 18 You will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed, so mere people can no longer terrify them.
Footnotes:
New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Interesting Gudrun, but still not enough to refer to a novel instead of science.
Johan, I study the Bible from a scientific perspective, and in that field my research focus is Aramaic Bible translation, texts which date back to before the Common Era. So the Bible is not just a novel but an ancient text that has significantly impacted learning, culture and social life in the Western world.
The scientific study of the Bible is a systematically organized body of knowledge on particular subjects, which range, to name but a few, from linguistic, philosophical, and gender studies to the study of behavioral patterns and not least, the study of God, i.e. Theology.
It is correct that the bible is a significant set of cultural documents and that it provides a wealth of information for scholars.
It is not necessary of course to believe in the existence of god/s to appreciate religious texts.
One of the msot fascinating aspects of faith in deities is that adherents are frequently not scholars of the texts. It is considersed enough to belive the stories as literal and no real knowledge of the historical, archaeological or linguistic aspects matter to true believers.
One of the things that has always amused me is the portrayal of biblical characters from a European perspective. The portrayal of Christ for instance is often a man with flowing curly blond locks and a blond beard. He is pictured with rosy cheeks and even occasionally blue eyes, indicating a northern European image.
Barry and Gudrun: I totally agree. I am Indo-European linguist myself so I have studied the New Testament in Ancient Greek and the Gothic Bible (and the Vedic scripts and Avestan in original language and script to name some other religions/conceptions of life). I just don't think we need to refer to the Bible (or emphasise the religious scripts) when we discuss moral codes because these codes existed way long before Christianity.
The real question behind this is, Do we (humans), at any level, have Free Will? And in this, I'm not talking about deciding what to have for breakfast, but a capacity to choose intentionally to do something that we know is truly right or wrong, such as an act of murder.
Most of our every day choices are strongly influenced by a range of external factors, including cultural and social pressures and the way we were brought up.
The question is, do we have a capacity to intentionally choose to do something wrong despite being fully aware of the wrongness of what we are about to do? This is the essence of a truly evil act that cannot be justified.
If we do not have this capacity, then we live in a totally deterministic universe where everything we do is predetermined by what has come before in our lives.
In such a universe, it doesn't matter whether God exists or not, because God has no capacity to influence our lives.
If you accept that we do have free will, then evil becomes a problem of the human condition. The evil that we, as humans, do, is not the responsibility of God. Nor can God be held accountable for our evil acts.
Further, if you believe God created humans with free will, then you also have to accept that, as far as what we do, God's hands are tied. Because any act of God to intervene to prevent us doing something evil would be a breach and rebuttal of the capacity for and gift of Free Will he created. He'd be breaking his own rules.
Consequently, Evil does not disprove the existance of God.
And that's leaving aside the question of whether or not other life forms have any capacity for free choice.
True, Johan and I agree with Barry. However, the Hebrew Bible existed way before the Greek New Testament and other ancient texts you are referring too. I also studied Classical and Koine Greek. I chose to concentrate on Semitic languages because these are among the oldest languages in the world. Texts which are written in these languages reveal how ancient peoples conceptualized God. The fact that the Hebrew Bible is still one of the most read and studied texts of modern times makes it a relevant text to consider when researching questions about the modern conceptualisation of God. In my view, it is essential that academia is relevant for the real world, not only on a philosophical level. The question regarding ˋDoes evil disprove the existence of God?´ is a question that is not only asked in academia but an aspect that many people are grappling with in their own conceptualisation of spirituality. And many individuals are also turning to the Bible in order to find an answer to this question for their own lives. In a forum like this one, it however is not possible to answer this question fully from an academic perspective.
The word disprove is filled with all kinds of value judgements in this context. It is rarely necessary to disprove anything and incumbent on those who assert to prove.
In the law we talk of probative evidence in reference to statement, autoptic and circumstantial evidence and allocate varying weights to this evidence. Can we apply this model to a discussion of the existence of God/s?
The three monotheistic faiths are described as revealed religions meaning that the scriptures were revealed directly to the prophets who translated them into a creed. We would therefore refer to the prophets as 'witnesses' to the revelation and their testimony as statement evidence.
In law this is strong evidence and can be subjected to interrogation and cross examination to test its veracity. We cannot of course do that directly, the prophets and scribes who wrote down the testimony are long dead but we can still analyse these statements linguistically and extract meaning. Of course that can only be done by examination of original scripts and verifying those is all but impossible.
That leaves the written testimony as it remains as hearsay, often several times over hearsay since all of the biblical stories have been subjected to many revisions.
Autoptic evidence too is virtually none existent. We cannot find the ashes from the burning bush that spoke to Moses. None of the pieces of the 'true cross' have ever been definitively traced to 1st century Palestine.
This leaves us with circumstantial evidence, often considered the weakest of all. Even here we are hopelssly short of anything that could be corroborated or verified. Stories sometimes match but since we cannot verify the source, the originator or find any definitive agreement on translation we are nowhere near proof.
Perhaps we should invert the question, does good prove the existence of God? People do a lot of good and in spite of all the horrible injustices and evil in the world more people do good than harm. Once again though it does not prove the existence of a supernatural deity by weight of evidence.
We can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God/s on the evidence before us. It is about belief not proof.
What we should aspire to is a world where those who believe are satisfied with that faith without insisting that others follow suit. Those who do not believe do not need to disprove anything. Gods and other supernatural beings only exist to those who believe in them.
God's existence depends on believing in Him. Without (monotheistic) faith no (monotheistic) God. But interesting: Nevertheless exists the evil in the world. The evil doesn't need God or Devil - it happens either way: Men act often not in accordance with the moral or with the juridical laws. What's "the evil"? The ancient holy writings, last not least the Holy Bible , see the evil as being, at least as a kind of substantial quality. In the Ongoing of modern understanding - for instance that there exists the soul or the "spirit" as substantial quality in our inner world - we have to consider: In Western philosophy of the late 19th century happened a change of view from substantial concepts to functional concepts. In the functional modern world there is much evil, and this we have to claim as equal for God-believers and atheists as well . It is allowed to assert that this fact belongs to the evolutionary legacy: In the modern meritocracy this legacy is active in societal fights of interests, political parties an situations of conflicts also between individuals who are competing fights in reaching higher positions or to get more money or influence. Then, of course, some men don't act well and just; they don't act responsible, not morally, by exploiting others, enriching themselves etc. We have to live with this fact and it is our task to minimize unjust acting and unjust governing- also by education, public discussion, asking our conscience as our inner voice in order to avoid unjust behavior. Corruption and violation of human rights arte basic evils in the world. However political and economic analysis of the reasons - at every case there exist reasons - and the analysis of functional context of inhuman acting in certain - often typical - situations (see the political situation in the troublespots throughout the world) open ways of better understanding, wiser acting and reducing injustice. So Leibniz' question of "Theodizee" - How comes the evil in the world? which leads in a theological dilemma - has no chance to arouse large discussions - because man has begun to use his own reason. Our mind is not almighty, but in its weakness always helpful.
Leibniz’s response is that while God can do anything that is logically possible, it is not logically possible for God to create a perfect world because such a world would be indistinguishable from God. The endless struggle to understand the meaning of life (good and evil) will have not end.
Amir: You have two presumptions here: that the world is supposed to be perfect, and that there is a meaning of life.
Dear Kirk MacGregor
Maybe the question could be answered in a different way. Taking the question alone first we have to be add some more questions. What is god and what is evil? Then we can come up with a huge amount of definitions of god and a huge amount to definitions of evil.
With that result we then can assume that, according to the question, evil exists. Based on that then all definitions of god are disproved, that are incompatible with the existence of evil. What we do the those definitions of god that survive this test is then up to others. If one of these remaining definitions of god is compatible with a real existing god is yet another question.
Regards,
Paul Gradenwitz
Good day Professor Kirk.
I think that evil is not in contrast with the existence of GOD.
The existence of GOD is not sustainable because of:
-) its immortality;
-) its omniscience.
This is one of the preliminary conclusions outlined in my recent little book (#VanGELOassoluto).
Book VanGELO Assoluto.
Regards
s.v.
The evil disproves the goodness of God, but it does not disprove the existence of God always.
I think it's more fruitful to not use the term "God", because then we somehow presuppose that he/she/it exists. Often the term "intelligent designer" is used, which is also quite wrong because not every creation in the world is created in an intelligent way and things change and evolve all the time. If I have a beautiful vase but happen to drop it and destroy it, I was the one who destroyed it and changed it to something else less perfect.
And, can't things be both good and evil or do both good and bad actions? The present version of me and my actions is a combination of my genes and my experiences. And even if "God" exists and is involved in human actions, why care for someone who kills and torture people?
Many claim that God has given us free will, which is a good thing to have. However, we sometimes make bad choices, with evil consequences, therefore evil is of our own doing.
But even if we agree that some evil might need to happen for the greater good of having free will, clearly very much is not even relevant to free will. Many evils besides human-made evils befall us and other sentient life. What is the point of innocent young children being killed in natural disasters like earthquakes or floods? (Note that natural disasters are often called “acts of God”!) What is the point of innocent young children or animals suffering as burn victims of lightning-caused forest fires? What did they do to deserve that?
An omnipotent & omniscient God should be able to prevent such things, so he’s either not omnipotent & omniscient or not benevolent. But if God is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent by definition, then such a God doesn’t exist.
God was created in the image of man. All gods have human attributes, including good and evil because all gods are a reflection of humanity.
All gods, thoughout human history and in every culture are a product of the human imagination. They/it did not create us and neither do they/it inflict evil upon us. The nasty things that happen to us are not inflicted by some supernatural being sat on a cloud. They are done by us or they are done by nature. We talk of natural events as being 'dangerous' because we project ourselves onto them.
Volcanoes are not 'dangerous' to the planet or even to life on it. Lightning, tsunamis, earthquakes and bush fires are not 'dangerous' neither are they evil. They are part of the evolution of the planet as a whole. Without them we would not be here. Without them we would never have evolved and then no one would have been around to create gods.
Yes !!! That is how Hindu mythology says Prof Turner ...
We are told the gods envy humans and hence they come as Avatars to experience life on earth ...
Yes again !!!!
That is false! God has given us the freedom to choose and many are abusing it to do evil! However, very soon, God's fury will be on them. The existence of God is solidly founded!
Why do people here keep evading the issue?
The problem of evil is not just about freely chosen evil acts committed by humans. We can grant that such evil acts may have to be allowed for the greater good of having free will. However, there are natural evils that befall us (often called ‘acts of God’ in legal contexts) that have nothing to do with free will. Such evils include disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires caused by lightening, etc. in which innocent young children and animals suffer undeservedly. Nor is this a matter of how we define “evil”. We can dispense with the word if people find it problematic. We all know what suffering is and we can rephrase the question in terms of suffering instead of evil.
Surely an omniscient & omnipotent God can prevent suffering that is not caused by humans’ free will. Why wouldn’t an omniscient, omnipotent, & benevolent God at least prevent that kind of suffering? A plausible answer is that either God doesn’t exist or else God exists but is not omniscient, omnipotent, & perfectly benevolent, i.e. lacks at least one of these properties. (Prima facie, there is biblical evidence for God’s not being perfectly benevolent.)
I am here to be enlightened. Please don’t just answer with a dogmatic assertion or a “vote”. Let’s have some thoughtful reasons and explanations. Thank you.
The answer is extensively false. There is no way evil doing disproves the existence of God. As human beings we are mandated to make choices in life; however, some decide to do evil.
Dear Karl,
May I suggest a third alternative reason that may be acceptable to you for your question:
Why wouldn’t an omniscient, omnipotent, & benevolent God at least prevent the kind of suffering that is not caused by humans’ free will?
This is the crux of the problem, but your arguments only carry weight if we are view the 'benevolent' aspect of God, however you define him/her/it, as having a concern for our physical well-being (as human beings), and the pain and suffering that we suffer in this life.
But what if God's concern is not with our physical well-being, but our spiritual development? If you can imagine a God whose purpose is concerned with human spiritual growth, then even the worst things that happen in our lives can be viewed as tests and challenges to goad each of us, according to where we are at spiritually, along the path of our own spiritual evolution.
You can view this as all directed towards all or some attaining either de Chardin's 'Christ State', or the Buddhist Nirvana.
And I'm not arguing the case for one or the other, just offering an alternative way of viewing the issue, to suggest that God, if God does exist, may be much more sophisticated, with a far more complicated agenda than questions such as this suggest.
And for those who would protest about the injustice that many infants and young children may never have been given a chance to spiritually grow, than perhaps the eastern doctrines of reincarnation may offer a solution for even that thorny problem.
Kathleen,
Thank you for your thoughtful answer.
RE: If you can imagine a God whose purpose is concerned with human spiritual growth, then even the worst things that happen in our lives can be viewed as tests and challenges to goad each of us.
That kind of makes him sound like those guys who beat their wives and children for their own good or because they love them. I have trouble with the idea that God's concern for us let's him do or allow things that would be considered abhorrent for a human. We (or some of us, anyway) have progressed and are now enlightened enough to no longer use the belt as a teaching machine to goad children along the path to their betterment. An omniscient omipotent being should be able to goad us to our betterment in enlightened nonabusive ways from the get-go.
If 'God' is omnipotent and omniscient then s/he (it) has to be evil. If 'God' was not evil he/she/it could not be omnipotent by definition.
The fact that we are having this discussion at all implies that there is no 'God'. As for proof, we cannot disprove the existence of a supernatural being because they are supernatural i.e. outside the range of our ability to observe or measure.
It is not however the case that simpy because we cannot 'disprove' the existence of God that our inability to do so proves the opposite.
We cannot disprove the existence of Santa Claus but I doubt that many would consider that conclusive proof that he therefore exists.
@ Aleš Kralj
> Evilness is a positive evolutionary trait. Those who are not evil enough are less likely to have offspring (historically looking and not so far off even today). Existence of evil therefore proves evolution. we cannot disprove the existence of a supernatural being because they are supernatural i.e. outside the range of our ability to observe or measure.
Karl
Any discussion about the nature of God, however we may conceive the divine to be, always runs the risk of trying to define that being or essence in terms of our own experiences and values.
What I was suggesting was not a simplistic model of God using the unpleasant things of life to "goad" us into being better people. If we have free will, it is always up to us to choose how we respond to the good and the bad things in our life.
Personally, I believe that it is reasonable to conceive that God created the Universe (leaving aside the multiverse and spontaneous generation hypotheses) some 13 billion years ago according to a set of physical laws that included the prospect that at sometime life, and ultimately intelligent life would evolve. Which means that the world in which we live is a dynamic, non-benevolent environment in which we have to struggle to survive and if possible thrive, preferably in a responsible manner.
I personally do not believe in an interventionist God, though I will allow for the possibility that we may be able to feel the presence of divine touching our lives in very subtle ways that one can never be certain about, save perhaps for the perception a coherent pattern over the course of ones life that could never be rationally presented and argued to any other person.
When I was much younger, I often used to say that I believe in a hard God.
I'm not so harsh in my opinion anymore, but I certainly do not accept that we can hold God responsible for suffering in the world, whether due to natural disasters or as a consequence of human action or inaction.
One further point, Karl. About twenty years ago I became friends with a woman who was heavily into, for want of a better term, New Age spirituality. She claimed to be able to see auras, and used to read Tarot cards etc. R was now an educated woman, though she had clearly read a lot about the things that meant something to her. She worked as a cleaner in the ward of a large hospital here that, back then, just looked after dying babies and very young children. And because she was a very caring person she did what she could to help out the babies and their parents in coping with what was happening. She saw many babies die. But it didn't trouble her because, as R told this story to me, no matter how much suffering the children had to endure, when it came for them to die, she would see a look of profound peace come over them, just for an instant, before they passed away. R believed in reincarnation, and as she saw it, the souls of those children were very old, and they had accepted the burden of their brief, painful incarnations, because that those experiences were something one or both parents, or someone else, had to go through for their own spiritual development. I have no idea whether or not there was any substance to what she claimed to have seen. I wasn't there. I offer the story solely as an example of how someone with a very different perspective on the nature of creation to the Judeo-Christian one, found a way to accept, and as best she could, understand, the intense suffering she regularly experienced in her work. And I know Barry that it's a story you'd be inclined to simply dismiss. But it worked for R.
@ Kathleen D Toohey
> Why wouldn’t an omniscient, omnipotent, & benevolent God at least prevent the kind of suffering that is not caused by humans’ free will?
This is the crux of the problem, but your arguments only carry weight if we are view the 'benevolent' aspect of God, however you define him/her/it, as having a concern for our physical well-being (as human beings), and the pain and suffering that we suffer in this life.
Barry,
I totally agree, as I've argued before, that we cannot prove the existance of God. We just differ on the reasons why.
I also agree that the fact that we cannot 'disprove' God exists can in any way be used as 'proof' that God exists. That is a totally unjustifiable claim.
I do think, though, that we should move the debate away from whether or not 'God' is omnipotent, omniscient or omnipresent. You began your own arguments from that position, but Kirk made no claim to such attributes of God in his question.
The idea that God is omniscient has always been problematic for me, if you accept that we have free will. If we do, God can never know with any certainty what any individual will do at any given time. Maybe God's 'omniscience' operates along the lines of probability theory or even quantum mechanics. (E.g. Perhaps God can know who we are, or what we are about to do at any given time, but not both at the same time. Or some similar uncertainty principles.)
@Aleš
> Sure, but among them who is going to lead? ;-) So, it is not about not playing cooperatively at all. Few examples of cooperative cruelty: Genghis Khan, H. Himmler, ...
Kathleen
I do not at all dismiss your friend's belief in reincarnation of the babies souls. It indicates that she is a compasionate and caring person, qualities that we should all in fact aspire to.
We do not have to believe in religious or spiritual ideas to see good in them.
Spirituality as part of humanity and essential to our wellbeing as individuals and as a species. It is quite possible to be a spiritual person and not to believe in deities of any description.
Thanks for your consideration, Barry. And you make a good point. To paraphrase Matthew, it's by their fruits that you shall know the worth of people, rather than their religious or spiritual ideas and dogmas.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Philosophy
- Ethics