Re: If there is a god is he evil?
Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2021 8:33 am
The only Biblical answers to the problem of evil that I have identified are the next-to-last scene in the book of Job, where God says that humans just have no idea what it takes to run a universe, and the episode where Jesus gives sight to the man who was born blind, as a parable to show how overwhelmingly greater good can result from evil.
These are essentially the answers offered by Officers 5 and 9 in "The Tale of the Twelve Officers". They are answers, though, that work a lot better for an actual God than for a police officer. I think the Tale of Twelve is abusing the rhetorical device of the allegory, here, because these two answers only seem ridiculous for a human police officer. If the police officers were superhuman aliens like Star Trek's Q, then answers 5 and 9 wouldn't be so absurd.
The Tale of Twelve seems effective because the notion of God as a cop is a reasonable analogy up to a point, but I think you're really missing a point about the theological problem of evil if your charge against God relies essentially on overlooking superhuman knowledge and power. Both these 5,9 / Job,Jesus answers seem plausible to me as the way things might look from God's point of view, though they hardly resolve the problem for humans who can't see any even comparable good emerging from some evils, or imagine why the universe might break down so badly in some cases when it otherwise seems to run fairly well.
A God who can arrange a tailor-made afterlife has infinite powers of recompense. I can't recall whether it's a Quran verse or just a Muslim tradition but the concept is that just a few moments in heaven are enough to make one forget that one has ever suffered at all. Unfortunately for human argument on the subject, we have no hard information about any afterlife, but I think this issue is unavoidably on the table if one is trying to convict God of evil. It's close to a get-out-of-jail-free card for God, because I think it does logically counter the otherwise overwhelming charge that some evils are just too big.
Nobody is going to say that little kids occasionally scraping their knees proves that there is no good God. That level of evil seems pretty bad at the time to the children involved but adults know good things in the world that far outweigh the scraped knees. It doesn't seem too hard to suppose that maybe a universe that allows some scraped knees could really be a lot better than one that sacrifices other possibilities in order to ensure that scraped knees never happen. Unfortunately for the clear resolution of our discussion of evil, however, the scope of possibilities available to God is so great that even evils that overwhelm human adults might be like scraped knees in that larger perspective.
We don't know, and I don't think we could expect to know, what it would actually cost for God to prevent bad things from happening, or what opportunities for good God may have. I can only reply to Job's whirlwind, "No, I've never commanded the morning," and to Jesus, "Well, I sure hope you're right."
These are essentially the answers offered by Officers 5 and 9 in "The Tale of the Twelve Officers". They are answers, though, that work a lot better for an actual God than for a police officer. I think the Tale of Twelve is abusing the rhetorical device of the allegory, here, because these two answers only seem ridiculous for a human police officer. If the police officers were superhuman aliens like Star Trek's Q, then answers 5 and 9 wouldn't be so absurd.
The Tale of Twelve seems effective because the notion of God as a cop is a reasonable analogy up to a point, but I think you're really missing a point about the theological problem of evil if your charge against God relies essentially on overlooking superhuman knowledge and power. Both these 5,9 / Job,Jesus answers seem plausible to me as the way things might look from God's point of view, though they hardly resolve the problem for humans who can't see any even comparable good emerging from some evils, or imagine why the universe might break down so badly in some cases when it otherwise seems to run fairly well.
A God who can arrange a tailor-made afterlife has infinite powers of recompense. I can't recall whether it's a Quran verse or just a Muslim tradition but the concept is that just a few moments in heaven are enough to make one forget that one has ever suffered at all. Unfortunately for human argument on the subject, we have no hard information about any afterlife, but I think this issue is unavoidably on the table if one is trying to convict God of evil. It's close to a get-out-of-jail-free card for God, because I think it does logically counter the otherwise overwhelming charge that some evils are just too big.
Nobody is going to say that little kids occasionally scraping their knees proves that there is no good God. That level of evil seems pretty bad at the time to the children involved but adults know good things in the world that far outweigh the scraped knees. It doesn't seem too hard to suppose that maybe a universe that allows some scraped knees could really be a lot better than one that sacrifices other possibilities in order to ensure that scraped knees never happen. Unfortunately for the clear resolution of our discussion of evil, however, the scope of possibilities available to God is so great that even evils that overwhelm human adults might be like scraped knees in that larger perspective.
We don't know, and I don't think we could expect to know, what it would actually cost for God to prevent bad things from happening, or what opportunities for good God may have. I can only reply to Job's whirlwind, "No, I've never commanded the morning," and to Jesus, "Well, I sure hope you're right."