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Genius · Paris Forum Guest

The problem of Evil

Before Christ was born there was a Greek by the name of Epicurus (born in 341 BC) who was the first person to recorded to describe the problem of an omnipotent, benevolent God and at the same time there to be evil in the world.

A quote of his on the subject:

"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. ... If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. ... If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?"

I remeber long ago reading about why before Christianity that no religion wanted to claim that their God was all powerful and cared anything about the world because of the problem of evil would make the religion not rational to others.

Since it's been around forever Christian scholars have created several agruements as to how an omnipotent God and evil can exist at the same time, however none of them can explain away this problem.

It is kinda funny that an athesist arguement that was created even before Christianity would still be to this day one of the biggest reasons as to why someone would not believe in God.

Feel free to post your thoughts on the subject..

Taku · Paris Forum Guest

What does evil have to do with God?
If God is a Creator, the Creator, CREATOR, then the creation of evil and good is no less of a creation as day and night.
There are 2 ways one can examine this:
1-From a structural point in creation.
2-From the evaluation of Human debate of the Truth.

1-The aspect of God as Creator allows differentiation. We all agree that if all were the same: sameness, then there is nothing different. No creation. We also can agree that if all was different: differentness, then also there could be nothing the same. Again no creation. We can then understand that if we did not have light and darkness then there could be no form. The dynamics of sameness/differentness create the perception of meaningful relations.

2-Human perspective is that mankind experiences value judgements. Each culture has given birth to evaluations, questions, more evaluations, ect. Most of mankind has adjusted cultural beliefs to be Truths. Some of these truths are massive, some are contained. Today, head hunting and cannibalism is banned. Religions claim sanctity to the Truths of God and God's words. In one hundred years in the future, well, God only knows what Truth will be and the evil and good. I am curious to read what history will record about President Bush in this light. I hope he will find this website and another one, Holophany.com. He may change his mind about Good and Evil.