Guest AloysiusGhost Posted May 20, 2004 Share Posted May 20, 2004 [quote name='dUSt' date='May 20 2004, 04:25 PM'] No. I didn't say that. Please read what I said again. But this is actually just getting off the point of the original premise anyway. My point was that without knowing what bad is, we can't know what good is, by the very definition. Good being an absence of bad. By the mere definition, bad would have to exist in order to simply define good. Summary: the original argument makes an assumption that God is "all good", which automatically applies that there is a bad. In actually, God would just be. In other words, He would describe Himself as, "I am who I am". "Good" is a human term which only makes sense when "bad" exists. [/quote] ahhh IC i shouldn't have been so quick to doubt you, dUST. i'm sorry. Pax Amorque Christi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dUSt Posted May 20, 2004 Share Posted May 20, 2004 [quote name='Aloysius' date='May 20 2004, 04:26 PM'] it's dUST that said evil was necessary [/quote] Okay. This is actually quite annoying. Please show me where I ever said this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DojoGrant Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 That's pretty much the Epicurean argument against God. I wrote a paper against it last fall. But the answer has already been stressed; if one can call a certain instance of suffering needless, he is appealing to some absolute standard of suffering, and if there is an absolute standard for something such as suffering, you're defeating yourself, because what possible standard could exist that wasn't specifically created. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest AloysiusGhost Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 [quote name='dUSt' date='May 20 2004, 06:30 PM'] Okay. This is actually quite annoying. Please show me where I ever said this. [/quote] i already apologized. i was clarifying that it wasn't p0larbear. your words just took on a life of their own after everyone was afraid you were propogating Zen ideas... the wording confused us all. srry. can you fix my email thing? lol...i'm so dumb Pax Amorque Christi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
p0lar_bear Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 OK, I'm sorry dUst, what you actually said was: [quote]Good would not exist without bad. If everything was good, there would be no bad. Without bad, we wouldn't have good.[/quote] I'm sorry, I equated "bad" with "evil" Could you define "bad" in a way to distiguish it from "evil"? Also, even if we use "bad," we are left with the same problem. Scripture tells us that God "alone is Good." If God is Good, then He is fully Good. You can't say we wouldn't have good without bad, because then we couldn't have God without something else. In a way you are right, sometimes lack helps us to appreciate abundance, but not necessarily. I can appreciate food without ever having experienced true hunger. My friend can appreciate the warmth of southern California before she experienced the cold of the northern states. An infant who died and went to heaven could still appreciate the joys of heaven without ever experiencing true suffering. And so on... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dUSt Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 [quote name='p0lar_bear' date='May 21 2004, 08:08 AM'] Could you define "bad" in a way to distiguish it from "evil"? [/quote] Evil = opponent of good. Bad = inferior to good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
p0lar_bear Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 OK, so if "bad" is "inferior to good," then would you say that "good" is "perfection"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dUSt Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 [quote name='p0lar_bear' date='May 21 2004, 09:23 AM'] OK, so if "bad" is "inferior to good," then would you say that "good" is "perfection"? [/quote] Only after 6pm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasJis Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 dUSt, I get your point, but I think people are misunderstanding what you are saying. It can be explained with physical science terms. Assume God is air, and evil is a vacum. Where Air is, a vacum cannot exist. Air does not need a vacum to exist, but a vacum requires the absence of air. Good does not need Evil to exist, but Evil requires the absence of Good to exist. Because Good exists, the potential for it's absence creates the potential for Evil to exist, but the existence of Good does not create the necessity of Evil to exist. Our free will ability to choose Evil is really our ability to turn away from Good and we cause Evil to exist. God didn't create Evil, we did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmotherofpirl Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 Good needs nothing else to exist, it just is. However without bad you might not recognize good as something different than bad. Bad is a distortion of good, it is derivitive, not original. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dUSt Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 Good cannot exist without bad. God is good--he's all good. Anything other than God is inferior to God--therefore, bad. God could exist without bad, sure, He's God. But, He is who He is, and in order for Him to be defined as good, there must be something bad to make the definition make sense. God made bad things so that there could be good things. If [b]everything[/b] in this world was good, then it would all have to be equal. If everything was not equal, it would be either superior or inferior, in which case, it would be bad. So... if everything was good and equal--why would we have the need to exist? Life, free will and experience would have no place. God made bad things so that we can exist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmotherofpirl Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 But in the beginning Good did exist without bad, bad didn't exist until the first sin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasJis Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 [quote name='dUSt' date='May 21 2004, 04:20 PM']Good cannot exist without bad. God is good--he's all good. Anything other than God is inferior to God--therefore, bad. God could exist without bad, sure, He's God. But, He is who He is, and in order for Him to be defined as good, there must be something bad to make the definition make sense. [/quote] So wrong dUSt! Good CAN and DOES exist without evil. Jesus and Mary and God are examples. In no case does God make or create evil as a needed precedent for Good. Now God does ALLOW evil to exist, but He chose to do that in order to give us Free Will. Without a choice, we don't have Free Will. Allowing the [i]possibility[/i] or [i]potential[/i] for evil is one thing, but that does not mean God who is ALL GOOD causes Evil of His own initiative in order to create Good. That would make Good subservient to Evil. Now God does turn things around on us. We cause Evil, God allows Evil to come into being as a consequence of our choices/actions. But God also defeats Evil by causing Good to become ALSO as a result of our Evil (Grace in Repentance, God's Forgiveness, etc.). [quote name='dUSt'] God made bad things so that there could be good things. If [b]everything[/b] in this world was good, then it would all have to be equal. If everything was not equal, it would be either superior or inferior, in which case, it would be bad. So... if everything was good and equal--why would we have the need to exist? Life, free will and experience would have no place. God made bad things so that we can exist.[/quote]No, no, no. God Allows Bad things so we can choose Good. God Allows bad things so that our Free Will can exist, not so that we can exist. To say God made made bad things so we can exist would say that we are fundamentally evil as a nature of our creation. We are fundamentally neutral with Free Will and need Grace to chose God or deny Grace to chose evil. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antonius Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 [quote name='dUSt' date='May 21 2004, 04:20 PM']Good cannot exist without bad. God is good--he's all good. Anything other than God is inferior to God--therefore, bad. God could exist without bad, sure, He's God. But, He is who He is, and in order for Him to be defined as good, there must be something bad to make the definition make sense. God made bad things so that there could be good things. If [b]everything[/b] in this world was good, then it would all have to be equal. If everything was not equal, it would be either superior or inferior, in which case, it would be bad. So... if everything was good and equal--why would we have the need to exist? Life, free will and experience would have no place. God made bad things so that we can exist.[/quote] Whoa, honorable webmaster! Please be careful at what you are saying. Be very careful. First off, St. Augustine HIMSELF settled all this a long time ago in his philosophy. Not only is he a Doctor of the Church, he's also considered one of the greatest philosophers ever, doesn't matter if you're Catholic or Protestant or anything. I don't have my philosophy notebook next to me... but let's see what i can remember... Basically, Augustine based his philosophy off Plato's. (Every philosopher after Plato and Aristotle can be classified as either Platonic or Aristotelian... 99.98% of philosophers). Augustine proves that there is no evil. Evil does not exist. There is only lack of good. The ultimate good is God. He is Truth, which is Good. He is. What we call "evil" or "bad" is actually just lack of good. Think about it this way, God is ALL GOOD. He is Good Itself, the Form of the Good. After a big gap, the Angels are right under that. They are very good, but totally unlike God. Then come humans, who are less good than angels. After that, the animals, plants, and then stuff like rocks. And even under those you can put the fallen angels and Satan. But even the devil is not pure evil, because evil does not exist, only lack of good. Picture the devil as having the smallest shred of goodness. This is because he was one of the top angels, knew a lot about God's plan, and God created him. "God created it and it was good." So, God is 100% percent good. The angels can be, say, 80% good. Humans would be around 65%.... whatever, these numbers are arbitrary. Anyway, the devil could be pictured as being 0.000000001% good. See, everything is set up like a pyramid, or a hierarchy of Goodness. So, dUSt, I love you. But what you were saying was very "zen like" or even Manichean. Remember, Augustine was a Manichean for a while, and they believed in two gods, a good one and an evil one. Roight... well this is kinda long. I hope i kinda pointed people in the right direction here, since St. Auggie already answered this great question. He's got a lot of other cool things too... So does St. Thomas Aquinas! They're both brilliant. God bless all theologians and philosophers in the making! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest AloysiusGhost Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 i think everyone just keeps misunderstandin and misrepresentin each otha, IMHO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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