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.

Principles of Government and How They Relate to Guns, Gambling, Drugs, Etc.

I've often weighed the role of government. I have boiled my thoughts on government down to one main principle and two supporting principles:

1. Government should protect its citizen's individual freedom foremost.
2. Government should accomplish this by:
   a. Protecting citizens from outside entities (other countries' armies, terrorist, etc.)
   b. Protecting citizens from each other

All laws, taxes, fees, statues, governmental bodies, etc. should support align with these principles. Laws should only restrict or limit individual freedom (#1) to accomplish protecting that individual from other entities or other citizens (#2a or #2b). These restrictions should only happen in circumstances where all other avenues have been explored and proven ineffective.