Sunday, October 24, 2010

Evil: Just Desserts. Part 4 of ??

I've made the point in my previous blogs that the problem of evil can only be assessed by theists as evil points to a standard which points to a standard giver.  So while the problem of evil may exist for atheists, their world view does not give them the resources to required to wade into the problem.  That makes this problem an "in house" problem.
So, what do we who are "in the house" do about this problem?  How do Christians deal with evil and suffering?  I'd like to split this into two topics.  The first is the origin of evil; the second the persistence of evil.  Let's start with the origin of evil as I think that is the most difficult hurdle.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Evil-o, Evil-o! Wherefore art thou Evil-o? Part 3 of ??

So, what is evil? Where did it come from? Did God allow evil to exists? Could He have stopped evil from existing? What makes rape wrong and telling the truth right?

I heard Ravi Zacharias on his radio broadcast define evil as the absence of good resulting in a violation of God's purpose. I rather like this definition. But, before we delve into the opening questions or define evil further, let's review syllogisms. I'm sure you heard this one:

P1) All men are mortal.
P2) Socrates is a man.
C) Socrates is mortal.

For a syllogism to be meaningful it has to fulfill two conditions. First it must be logically consistent. In other words, the conclusion must logically follow from the premises. Second, the premises must be true. If these two conditions are met, then we are forced to take the conclusion. Looking over the above syllogism, we note that it seems to both have logical consistency and true premises. Let's test this out by playing a little switch-a-roo:

Monday, October 11, 2010

Evil: What's Your Problem? Part 2 of ??

So for my second post on evil, I'm still leaving the matter proper alone. I want to point out another flaw in the challenge. Remember that the typical challenge goes something like this: "God cannot be both loving and all powerful since evil exists". This is the philosophically correct challenge. But you may run into this version of the challenge as well: "I cannot believe in God because there is so much evil in the world." I want to point out how this challenge is flawed at the get go.

Many things have a parent child relationship in our world: Tree, fruit/seed; Mother and Father, child; Parent Node, child node (computer science); etc. This holds true for good and evil. The only way we can have evil is to have a standard which one breaks. This standard can be referred to as "good".

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Evil: What are you trying to prove? Part 1 of ??

Hey, I decided to get back to blogging. (Okay, I'm a sprinter not a marathoner!) I have great intentions, but it may be a year or five before I post again--you never know.

Anyways, I wanted to talk about evil. If you've taken a philosophy class or been in on the giving or receiving side of an argument about evil, you'll be familiar with the following challenge.

"How can an all powerful and loving God exist if there is evil in the world?"

While there are several aspects to the question that need to be addressed, I don't want to speak to all of them in one post (hence the "Part 1 of ??"). For this post, I want to look at what can be proven with the above challenge.

So at first, let's assume that the challenger's argument succeeds for the sake of discussion. Let's agree that God cannot be both all powerful and loving since there is evil in the world. Granting this, we see three options that remain to us. First, God could be loving but not all powerful, wishing He could remove evil. Second, God could be all powerful but not loving, being okay with some evil. Third, God could be neither all powerful nor loving.

While none of these options bode well with the Christian, what has the challenger actually proven? Certainly not that there is no God. Indeed, how the Christian understands God would have to change. But in no way has the existence of God been disproven.