Re: problem of evil - to clear things up

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 13:24:18 GMT, "Damien Stanton"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>"Daniel T." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> You accept that evil exists, and explicitly state that God is
>> omnipotent, so you must be denying his benevolence, He refuses to
>> eliminate evil. Or maybe you really are denying omnipotence by saying he
>> is not powerful enough grant us free will and eliminate evil at the same
>time.
>
>
>The idea of free will is that it outweighs the evil is causes, thereby
>resulting in a net gain of good over evil.  Implicit in this that evil can
>be balanced out by good - just like the pain of tooth extraction affords a
>greater good (otherwise why bother?).

But if we were as omnipotent as god, we could just "magik" the tooth
out of there and not cause ANY pain. As it is, we do everything in our
power to lessen the pain. So is this the best that god can do?

>
>God is therefore 'powerful enough to grant free will and eliminate evil'
>because free will results in more good than it causes, thereby eliminating
>evil on the balance.  If you are saying that God should be able to give free
>will and eliminate evil absolutely (not just on the balance) then you are
>expecting God to do something like create a round square, and I don't think
>this represents a lack of power on his part.

Does god ever do any evil? No? Does he have free will? Yes? Then why
do we have free will and do evil? Why couldn't god eliminate evil in
us AND preserve our free will?

>
>
>> In any case, you cannot refute the argument without denying one or more
>> of the premises. Unless you deny logic itself, in which case God can
>> both exist and not exist at the same time...
>
>Well, if you must, the free will defence would deny that evil exists on the
>balance.  It is still there, but it is outweighed by the good of free will.

---
Mike                               atheism: a non-prophet
organization...
Creation Science: an oxymoron actually created by morons...
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