Is God Evil?

[Kosh]

Suffice it to say, if God was evil I don't think we'd exist right now.

[jmjtina]

Will man ever be able to comprehend God?

No.

[Guest JeffCR07]

[quote name='Groo the Wanderer' post='1103799' date='Oct 29 2006, 12:06 AM']
Yes he could! But he didn't.

Think of it this way...say you are a parent (might even work for an older brother or sister). You have a child (or little bro/sis) and a dog. They both love you.

Now the dog loves you cause you feed it and play with it. But its love only goes so far. You also love the dog, but you are not willing to give up yer house, yer job, or yer life for it (unless you are a nutcase). Your love also goes only so far.

Your child on the other hand, loves you unconditionally, just as you love her/him unconditionally. You would willingly give your child anything it needs for the love it returns to you. Your child brings you a wilted dandelion with a huge smile and you accept it, making the child's day. Do you need the wilted dandelion? Of course not, but you take it for the token of love that it is.

Now, which love is more precious, more enduring, has more worth? the dog or the child?

God allowed this to happen because He loves us. He wants us to love Him too, but not because we have to or for the stuff we get. He values our love so much, he is willing to risk losing it if we would only choose to return to Him freely, of our own will. THAT is what makes us so special to our Creator.

Now put yerself in the place of God in yer imagination. Which is more fulfilling to you?
1. a creation that is perfect in every way, has no possibility of sin and hence no free will, but everything in it loves you fully because you made it that way
2. a creation that was perfect, but became tainted, filled with creatures who trudge and toil through life, enduring the hardships and agonies of the tainted creation, only to find thier way to you and learn to love you fully out of their own hearts and of their own choice

I'd pick #2 personally....
[/quote]


I very much disagree with this above post. God does not desire sin because somehow a cosmos without it would be worse. By definition, the perfection of creation is an order without sin or death, and perfection is always better than imperfection. Had Adam not sinned, the world would be better than it is today.

It is necessary that sin not only affect our spiritual status of communion with God, but also the created order precisely because man is not merely a spiritual being, but also a material being. We are body and soul, and the first sin affects the human person as such. If sin had only a spiritual effect, then only part of man's nature would be fallen. Rather, the whole man fell, and this has both spiritual and material repercussions - the wages of sin is death.

There is also a deeper problem that I have with this whole discussion. Terms like "necessity" or "choice" are meaningful only in an analagous way when applied to God. Because God is simple and beyond the category of time, it follows that He neither "chooses" in a human way nor are His actions "necessary." Choice implies a dyad between Reason and Will. In order to "choose," one must reason between possibilities and then will in accordance with the result of that process of Reasoning. But if God is simple, then his Will and his Reason are ontologically identical, and so neither one can preceed the other, even in the order of logic. Rather, God's Will [i]is[/i] His Reason, and His Reason [i]is[/i] His Will. God wills, and it is reasonable, and God reasons, and it is his will. Thus, "choice" is applicable in only a limited way.

So too with the notion of "necessity." For the term "necessity" or "necessary" to have any meaning, there must be a dyad. There must be a that-which-necessitates and a that-which-is-necessitated. But, as said before, God's Reason and Will (like all of his attributes) are ontologically identical. As such, it is impossible for the Will of God to follow necessarily from the Reason of God, or for the Reason of God to follow necessarily from His Will. Rather, they are the same thing, and so the application of the term "necessary" is also problematic.

I bring these two points up because it seems to me that much confusion is caused by trying to imagine God as having all these possibilities before Him and deliberating between them. If the question is couched in these terms, then it is difficult to solve, but I am not so convinced that the question itself ("could God have created the world differently?") is even a meaningful question. God's Reason does not preceed His Will anymore than His Will preceeds His Reason. The most we can say is that His Will is reasonable and his Reason is willed. To go beyond this is to ask meaningless questions that, when analyzed properly, fail to make any sense at all.

Your Brother In Christ,

Jeff

[Azriel]

[hijack] I Jeff [/hijack]

(in that, you are a cool dude, with a great mind, kind of way)

[Goetian]

Jeff --

Just because his will and reason may be one does not mean that reason/will is necessarily good.

[Winchester]

Philosophically, God would be the good.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Goetian' post='1106994' date='Oct 31 2006, 09:43 PM']
Jeff --

Just because his will and reason may be one does not mean that reason/will is necessarily good.
[/quote]
Again, by what standard do you call God "evil"?

[Thy Geekdom Come]

If God is not good, then He is not God.

Goodness is an essential quality of God. It's part of what God means.

[123]

From what I have read here, all I can say is that GOD is the supreme ruler, he does what he wants and when the creature questions the creator, there is a problem. You see examples of this over and over again in the old testament of Sacred Scripture, men questioning the motives of God. And when Moses questioned God at the burning bush, he made a simple answer that resounds today:

"Who made man's mouth? who made the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? did not I? Now go."

[Guest JeffCR07]

[quote name='Goetian' post='1106994' date='Oct 31 2006, 09:43 PM']
Jeff --

Just because his will and reason may be one does not mean that reason/will is necessarily good.
[/quote]

Goetian, this is not a matter of subjectivity, but rather, a matter of definition and the meaning of terms. If we understand the term "God" to mean "that than which nothing greater can be conceived," then it follows that God cannot be evil in any way. This is true because evil is a privation, not a positive thing, and "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" cannot lack anything. Thus, there can be no privation in Him, and therefore no evil.

Your Brother In Christ,

Jeff