Let's pretend, for the sake of simplicity, that I believe in God.
I have heard many people fall out of faith with God - the Christian God or otherwise. I've heard them say that God is punishing them, that they can't believe in a God who allows all these bad things to happen. Upon this, I've heard faithful people say that God works in mysterious ways, or that bad things happen for a reason, or, my personal favorite,
only good things come from God.
This is something that logically doesn't make any sense. If you believe that God is the ultimate creator, that means that he created everything. That means that He created flowers and bunnies and rainbows, but it also means He created germs, disease, and evil.
That's right, I said it - evil comes from God.
No, some argue, evil comes from Satan. Well, who created Satan?
Some will say, evil comes from the fall of Man. To that I reply, who gave man freewill?
God gives us a choice, that's correct, and with our choices we sometimes choose evil actions (let's pretend, again for simplicity, that there is a simple, black-and-white definition for evil). But God, being omniscient and all that,
knew that when He created free will, evil would come from it. In fact, I submit that he knew upon giving free will to Adam and Eve that they would choose to fall.
The fact is, if God is all-powerful, that means that he created EVERYTHING. That includes bad things.
If you're going to make claims that your God is omnipotent, don't be a hypocrite and say that bad things are our fault as people, or Satan's fault. God knew what he was doing when he created Satan - if He is all knowing, He knew that Lucifer would fall.
If you make the claim that only good things come from God, then not only are you ignoring anything that your own religious rhetoric can possibly conclude, I argue that you are denying your God an entire side of His existence. You are doing him a disservice by ignoring the powerful things that your God can supposedly do, that he did do. You're ignoring an entire side of His supposed majesty, merely because it is unpleasant to you. Read the Book of Job, for Christ's sake. A LOT of bad things came from God.
If you to ignore a part of your religion in order to comfort yourself, in order to have your faith at all, then I'm afraid you're missing the point of faith at all.
But don't take my word for it. I'm not even religious.
Comments (40)
A lot of unpleasant things come from God. Some of them seem bad. However, that brings up lots of questions. I believe that Augustine argued fairly well that evil is simply the absence of God, rather than another separate thing as we are prone to think.
@JadedJanissary - I've never heard that definition before. It's definitely something to think about. Thank you for enlightening me a little bit. =)
(Rambling comment, sorry)
I've wondered about this. If God is good and is incapable of creating evil, and he created Satan, then how did Satan become evil? People are incapable of choosing things that are not presented to them. How do you explain to a person born blind what sight is? In the same way, Satan wouldn't have even know what evil is. The thought of choosing to rebel would never have entered his mind, unless someone put it there. Satan's rebellion was choosing himself over God. Satan's sin, choosing not to submit to God, then is the same as God's good: believing you are what matters most. It seems freewill, what supposedly makes us like God, then, is the ability to believe you are "the center of the universe", as it were. To choose for yourself. But then it seems God has it easy, 'cause He can live for Himself all He wants, but we're all supposed to submit to Him. Thus God's selfishness is deemed as good, and everyone else's evil.
I don't understand it, but I know smarter people than me believe God is good.
@CommieForADay - That's an interesting stream of logic. I've often wondered why God's (seeming) selfish is okay, but ours is a sin. The answer I usually get is just because he's God, and we should be humbled before Him. But who knows? Perhaps it's something we'll just never understand.
@denisethornton919@revelife - I can respect that viewpoint very much. The broader teachings of Christianity - love and faith and that sort of things - are things I can definitely get behind. It's the smaller things that I seem to have trouble making sense of in my head. The intricacies seem to trip me up.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" -- Epicurus
Thousands of words have been committed to answering Epicurus's questions. I've never heard anything even remotely satisfactory or even logical.
When it comes to the problem of evil, believers say always, "God works in mysterious ways," This is fully a dodge. If a thing is evil to limited, flawed human beings, it is evil.
It's the same thing as saying that if you understand the complex processes of higher math 1 + 1 might equal 3.
@JadedJanissary - If God is omnipresent how is it possible for Him to be absent?
@rhinosaur767 - I guess that really depends on how you define God and Omnipresent, now doesn't it?
@JadedJanissary - If God is omnipresent, there can be no absence of God. Therefore evil can't be defined as God's absence.
And if God is omnipotent, there's nothing He can't do or undo. Therefore nothing happens that he does not initiate or allow. Therefore evil comes from God or is allowed by God.
And yet God is supposed to be omnibenevolent. How does an a being that is fully good allow or cause evil?
Passive, tacit acceptance of evil is evil.
@rhinosaur767 - Well, for very large values of 1...
But that's an interesting quote. Way to take four lines to say what I couldn't really say in a whole blog entry, Epicurus. He is ALWAYS showing me up.
I've always thought of the "God works in mysterious ways" thing as a dodge. It basically means, "I don't know what the fuck's going on here either." Why don't people just say they don't know? I can respect that more than attempting to sound more faithful than me with cosmic, metaphysical bullshit. Maybe God DOES work in mysterious ways - if there is a God, I'd have to say he works in incredibly mysterious ways, since most of the things he does, I can't really comprehend. But that's not helping me with anything that I have to deal with, and I wish people would stop reminding me of that fact.
@rhinosaur767 - I've never considered "good" and "evil" to have finite definitions. What is evil to us, for instance, might not be evil to a deity. Just to be fair.
@JadedJanissary - What definitions would you use?
thanks for this post at such a good time! i was so gobsmacked yesterday at reading that post "Fuck you, God" *shudders*, because obviously i'm a believer in God and it kinda felt like a stab... but i was more gobsmacked when i read some comments "how do you know it's God? only good comes from God..." WHAT?! i believe everything, good and bad comes from God... saying only good is from God seems like the easy way out...
@AibellFaeire - But isn't saying that what's evil to humans may not be evil to a god or to God just saying "God works in mysterious ways" using different words?
Lots of things can become good in a larger sense when they serve the greater good. The "good" war (WWII being an example). Violence in self-defense or in defense of others. Homicide in self-defense. Even mass killing (the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to prevent greater bloodshed).
But moral relativism even in human terms has it's limits. Rape cannot be justified as an act that serves a greater good. Genocide cannot be justified as serving a greater good.
These are instances where the powerful exploit the powerless and inflict suffering and pain to no purpose except the whim of inflicting that pain and exerting that power. Those who commit such acts surely have their reasons and justifications, but that doesn't mean they are valid or even truthful.
The millions dead in Nazi gas chambers and ovens, the millions dead in Stalin's purges, the millions dead in the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the many hundreds of thousands hacked to death by machetes in Rwanda, the hundreds of thousands murdered by the guns of the Janjaweed in Darfur, these are not relative acts.
There's no greater good, no greater understanding that will make these acts anything but what they are: evil.
Any being who can look on these horrific events as anything other than the evil they are is not only not benevolent, but is malevolent and perversely so.
On a lighter note, I heard a comedian tell this joke the other night:
"When God does bad things, people say, 'He works in mysterious ways.' When I do bad things people say I'm a dick. But maybe I work in mysterious ways, too."
I disagree with Augustine -- I don't think evil is simply the absence of good or God. Evil is definitely a positive life force that goes toe to toe with good and is constitutive of the good itself.
If I were a religious person, I'd say that I don't think evil is something creatable -- it is something that is possible even within God. God is omnipotent, which means he is universal creator, but that doesn't mean he can do whatever he wants to do. To be omnipotent means that you can do all that is in your power to do without any outside force determining you. God is good, which means he can only do good and which also implies that his act of creating is itself always good.
This does not mean that his creation itself is good; it only means that his act of creating is good. Making everything good might very well be outside of God's power. Indeed, there are some Christians (e.g. LDS) who would argue that The Garden of Eden, which is commonly seen as a kind of perfect creation before man screwed up, was really a state of innocence (what the Greeks called the Golden Age or the Age of Saturn), which was neither good nor bad nor evil, but simply innocent, like a toddler.
If I were a religious person, I'd argue that everything God creates is alive -- from the rocks to comets to storms to plants to dogs to humans. I'd argue that life is freedom, which is necessary for growth and for decay. Generation and growth is good and decay is evil.
I actually think your logic is right on. In fact, properly understood this can be extremely comforting, if (and only if) it's kept with the rest of what the Bible teaches-- the death and Resurrection of Jesus, for instance.
If you want a good Christian perspective that takes this fully into account (sadly I've not got time to give this the full response it deserves!), I'd recommend C. S. Lewis's book The Problem of Pain.
book of Job asks... paraphrasing here. Do we accept good from God and not the bad? Its ignorant to think God only brings good things. God's vengence destroyed civilizations in biblical texts. Angel of death was sent by God. God's wrath (theologically) crushed his only begotten son.
@OhItWontBeForever - It IS like taking the easy way out, and it's also misunderstanding your own God. I think you could even argue that it's doing Him a disservice and ignoring a part of his power.
@rhinosaur767 - If there is a God at all, the whole "God works in mysterious ways" is an annoying and unhelpful answer, but that doesn't mean it's not true. If He is an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omni-whatever being, then perhaps it is impossible to understand Him. But then, why create the rules of logic if you're not going to follow them? There are some things that are evil, yes - but you could argue that God has a plan that makes those evil things necessary, even when they don't seem to be for us.
You could make that argument. I don't agree with that argument and I think it's ridiculous, but you could make it all you want.
@markb287 - Interesting thoughts. I've always kind of had that idea in my head that Eden was only Paradise because Mankind was ignorant while there.
That's an interesting spin on what I'm saying, that God's creations may not be good, but his act of creating is. However, I've always thought that omnipotent meant all powerful - meaning you could do anything. Absolutely anything. Including create beings that aren't evil, and are also incapable of evil. Omnipotent means that absolutely nothing is outside of God's power, if he chooses to use it.
If evil is a force, an actual thing, and God created everything, then God created evil.
@llcoolchae - And I think people like to ignore that idea because they don't want to think that God could hurt them, just because he felt like it. Or that all the bad things happening to them also come from the God they love so much.
@Pass_the_Aura - Lewis always has a brilliant way to look at things. And I think accepting God (or things in general) for the good and the bad they hold can be exceedingly beneficial for a person. They just first have to accept that there is good and bad in everything, which seems to be a bump a lot of people aren't ready to jump over.
@AibellFaeire - I think that's a misinterpretation of the word omnipotence or being all-powerful. Or rather, let me say this, the interpretation that omnipotence means you can do absolutely anything is just that -- an interpretation. There are many different interpretations of what omnipotence means -- it is a very hotly debated issue. If I were a Christian, I'd take a different interpretation. For Christians, God is good; he cannot do evil. If he were to do evil, he would cease to be God. This doesn't mean that he is not omnipotent, because as God, he can do all that is in his power to do, without being stopped, determined, or changed by anyone or anything outside of him. This is what makes him all powerful -- all things in the cosmos cannot stop him from being good.
Now you can disagree with this interpretation, but then I feel we'd be getting into semantics. All I'm saying is that the word omnipotence or all-powerful doesn't necessarily mean or imply that one can do absolutely anything, but that it does imply that one can do all that is in one's power to do without being determined by anything outside of it. Think, for example, of a fish that can do all that a fish can do. It can swim, breathe underwater, eat other fish. Now there are certain things this fish can't do: it can't fly, it can't speak, it can't walk, etc. It can only be a fish. Imagine, then, that this fish is so special that nothing outside of this fish can stop it from doing what it does. Nothing can eat it, nothing can kill it, nothing can hurt or damage it. I would consider this fish to be divine, that is to say, omnipotent.
To look at it yet another way, the omni modifies the potent, the all (adverb) modifies the "powerful" (adjective), and not the other way around. It is not the power to do all, but all the power to be (oneself).
Also, to be clear, a force is not an actual thing, which is why I said evil may not be creatable. A force is a relation between interacting things; in a sense, it is the interaction itself.
But you do have a point: If I were a Christian, I would argue that the act of creation is a godly act, that is, a goodly act, and that I think evil involves creative activity, however corrupt this ability may be. That is to say, there is a certain extent to which evil is good. But that does not mean or imply that God is or does evil. What it does imply is that good and evil are both creative forces that are driven towards two different goals. Good is driven towards itself (God, which is all things), and evil is driven towards what is not itself (nothingness, void, destruction).
I apologize for this long response, and I apologize if I seem nitpicky over the word omnipotence. Thank you for letting me share my ideas, and thank you for sharing your own with me!
@markb287 - Yeah, I hate arguing over semantics. We just interpret the word differently, which I can respect. But I would call that fish invincible, not omnipotent. According to dictionary.com, the definition of omnipotent is, "almighty or infinite in power, as God." Now, that's not to say it doesn't have many different connotations, but if we're going by the dictionary definition, that fish is not omnipotent.
The term "all powerful" to me, even with the adverb describing the adjective, says the power to do all. By your definition, we're all omnipotent - we all have the power to be ourselves, which I think isn't really grasping what the word means. Etymologically, omni- meaning all and potent- meaning powerful would indeed mean the power to do all.
I do really like your definitions of good and evil though. And personally, if I were to describe my own beliefs, they would run very much parallel with yours. However, the Christian belief system is set up so that I don't believe they could possibly agree with you, logically. The Bible uses omnipotent to mean "the power to do anything." Therefore, if I were to look at it from a Christian standpoint, I don't think it's possible to agree with you.
And I don't mind the long responses. I love them, actually. =) And nitpickiness about words is my specialty. =P
i agree! it most certainly is taking away a bit of His power if one believes in Him! agreed. :)
@AibellFaeire - For someone who's "not even religious" you have a great understanding of God!
@AibellFaeire - By my definition, not all of us are omnipotent. You are right in saying that we all have the power to be ourselves, but we do not have the power to protect ourselves from being determined by the outside. With a fish, a rock, a person -- we can all be killed, injured, or disabled by outside forces, by forces more powerful than us that can stop us. From a Christian point of view, there is no force that can stop God from being God.
I still don't think the dictionary.com definition contradicts my own. This fish can still do an infinite number of things; but that doesn't mean that it can do absolutely everything. If you think in terms of numbers, for example, there are an infinite number of even numbers, but even numbers do not comprise every number. Only a set of numbers.
And you are right, etymologically "omni" and "potent" do mean "all" and "powerful" respectively. But I'd like to stress the adverb-adjective relationship and what it means in the word "omnipotent" or "all-powerful." Let's use another similar word -- "well-written." To say a paper is "well-written" is to say that it is written well; that is, the "well" describes how the paper is written. The term "well-written" does not imply that what is "well" is always written; that to be well, the paper must be written. Under this view, the "well" becomes an adjective, thus rendering this interpretation somewhat ridiculous. This is because an adjective cannot modify an adjective; only an adverb can modify an adjective.
Therefore, a well-written paper is a paper that is written well (i.e. flows good, uses writing conventions very skillfully, etc.); it is not a paper that is well simply by virtue of it being written.
The same goes for "all-powerful." To say that God is all-powerful is to use the word "all" as an adverb -- which means "entirely," "completely," or "wholly." God is "completely-powerful." It is not using the word "all" as an adjective, which could mean "every," "any," "the whole of," "the whole number of," etc. It could not use it as an adjective because the word "all" needs to modify the word "powerful" -- and only adverbs can modify adjectives. Now the word powerful means "full of the ability to act or do (something)." Putting the words together, "all-powerful" means "entirely or completely full of the ability to act or do (something)." It does not mean "full of the ability to act or do" "all." Simply because "all" here is an adjective without a noun: it would be "full of the ability to act or do all" -- what?
In my interpretation, what this means is that to be all-powerful is to have full capacity to do what one is able to do. In other words, to avoid completely the possibility of being stopped from doing what one can do. If I have full capacity to do what I am capable of doing, that means nothing -- absolutely nothing -- can prevent me from being able to do this act. It does not mean I can do absolutely anything; all it means is that absolutely nothing can stop me from doing what I am fully able to do.
If evil exists in this world, it is because God is unable to prevent evil from existing. But that does not mean he is not omnipotent, since, from a Christian perspective, absolutely nothing can prevent God from being omnibenevolent -- that is, entirely good.
I hope you see this adverb-adjective relationship in the word omnipotence. To be sure, the definitions I used for the words "all" and "powerful" all came from dictionary.com.