The Problem Of Evil.

[Wizened Sage]

That "Problem of Laziness" post was seriously confused. I couldn't figure out what he was getting at through most of it. Anyway, one problem with this whole issue is that no one has defined evil for purposes of this discussion. If we can agree that it is evil (as one type of evil) for one conscious agent to cause the suffering of another conscious agent, then a lion chasing down and killing a gazelle is evil. There is a huge mass of evil of this sort in the world since every flesh eating predator of the air, sea, or earth must slaughter in order to survive. Obviously, that means there is an enormous amount of suffering going on. It's reasonable to assume that any animal with a brain can feel pain and that's millions being killed and suffering every day. God could have made us all plant eaters, after all. If you've ever seen film of a wolf pack chasing down a deer and then ripping it apart, don't you have to wonder if there is a god who gives a damn about the massive amount of suffering of sentient creatures in this world? You are entirely correct, Marcus, the problem of evil is a serious problem for believers in a supposedly compassionate god. They have never adequately solved the problem.

[thefriendlyghost]

Sage, the issue with animals bothered me constantly as a christian. What the hell did they do wrong? Thanks for bringing that up. The way people and animals were constantly slaughtered in the bible made it seem like we were just a bunch of facelesss multitudes to god, so we were easy to smite. God is supposed to care about each individul creature, so I was always disturbed by the mass killings, and animal sacrifices.

[Loren]

Sage, the issue with animals bothered me constantly as a christian. What the hell did they do wrong? Thanks for bringing that up. The way people and animals were constantly slaughtered in the bible made it seem like we were just a bunch of facelesss multitudes to god, so we were easy to smite. God is supposed to care about each individul creature, so I was always disturbed by the mass killings, and animal sacrifices.

Me too, me too.

The whole, "fall from grace," predicate is meant to address humanity, but it affects every living thing, as well as humanity. The closest I've ever heard an apologist come to straightening out the morality of it has been for them to say, "Well, animals have no souls." The other most common Christian party line response was basically Calvinism reworked for the animals: "Animals were created at God's pleasure for the use of Adam," and so forth.

 

Okay, fine. But that misses the point: They still suffer from the fall and the entrance of sin and death into the world.

 

The massive injustice of it was a huge problem for me as a Christian.

[Loren]

Some apologists try to make up some kind of middle ground by using the term "God's nature," and with this they intend to argue that God is moral because it is his nature to be moral, he doesn't have to follow it, but he can't refuse it either. In other words, morality is absolute, and it is in God's nature to follow it. But then, it would mean that genocide and all these other atrocities in the Bible are in fact approved by God as moral, and we know that it is not. So which ever way we turn it, there is a gaping hole of logic in the concept of the Christians God.

And, by resorting to that argument, those same people must, themselves, resort to judging God. One cannot make any concrete statement about God's "nature" without judging God in some way.

 

When I say to a Christian, "The morality of the god described in the Bible is horrible and egregious," and they respond by saying, "Who are you to judge God," and come around to the God Did It, Therefor It's Right argument, I can then suggest a hypothetical based on what they said:

 

"Are you going to Heaven after you die?"

 

"Of course. I've been washed in the blood of the Lamb, blah, blah."

 

"Will you be there forever?"

 

"Of course."

 

"How do you know God won't allow you to spend a thousand years in Heaven, and then send you to Hell after all?"

 

"Oh, God wouldn't do that!"

 

Now who's judging God?

 

The issue of it being sinful to judge God is another red herring. It's impossible to not do it. For anyone to even accept that Jesus is God, they must, on some level, evaluate and judge what's presented to them. They couldn't make a decision without doing so. It's inescapable.

 

The issue is not whether or not we should judge God. The issue is whether we are going to do a good job or a poor job of judging God.