One of the most hotly debated topics throughout Jewish history is the question of how the biblical God can be truly good and omnipotent while evil exists in the world. The main problem of the existence of evil in this world is that biblical religion centers on the concept of a single God who is unrestrained by the domains of nature and the physical world. Many argue that the existence of evil prevents us from viewing God as both limitless and good. This essay will outline the solutions given in the lecture as a way to correlate the concepts of evil and a completely good God together.
The first solution that is given by Professor Knohl and Professor Halbertal is the concept of primordial evil and consequently the idea of a limited God. According
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According to this solution some of God’s creations may be evil, but the choice to act on the evil is under human control. (This is not to say that God created the world as an evil place, but rather while the world itself was created by God as good it does contain some accidental features of evil.) According to the J source the proof for this solution lies in Genesis chapters two and 3, with the nachash in the Garden of Eden. The nachash was an evil and deceptive creature that promoted something that God had made forbidden as good, yet it was the humans who made the decision to act on this …show more content…
In the book of Job we see that God takes Job around to show him the beauty of the world and his creations in response to Job’s protests of innocence. The message that God was showing to Job was that humans are not the center of the world and everything was created for God to enjoy. Things in the world just happen (not necessarily against or for a person), and evil exists as a way to reconcile ourselves with the reality that we make up a marginal place in the world.
Each of these solutions enables us to understand how God is completely good despite the existence of evil in the
In the course of this essay I will argue that evil is not compatible with the existence of god. This means that evil and God cannot coexist because if god were present, the existence of evil would contradict all that god is believed to be. Abrahamic religions insist that God both created the world and that he preserves and maintains it. Christianity claims that God is all knowing and is boundless in his abilities. Religions claim that God is benevolent, and only wants the best for humanity and the universe, as his creations. If all of the above statements be true, then it is hard to understand why god would allow evil to thrive right from the beginning of time.
If god was all good, all powerful and all knowing, he would not allow the existence of evil.
The plain concept is that without letting some evil, God could not have completed a creation which had any good, because it is unmanageable for good will to exist without evil.
If we humans are responsible for “human evil”, then surely, only God can be responsible for “natural evil”. Yet if we apply God’s benevolent feature, the fact that natural evil exist would be contradictory, unless we alter the meaning and definition of natural evil. Either natural evil is not really evil or there is a good purpose behind the natural evils. Though free will defense does not answer these two questions, or at least not directly. We can also assume God cannot create this world without including said natural evil, but then that would, per
Evil is in the eye of the beholder, sometimes a daily reality. To present the problem of evil you must first know that evil exists. Since God reveals himself as the all-powerful, all knowing and all good, how can the same God allow evil to exist and for bad things to happen to good people? Our suffering, as well as the suffering of others, vividly marks the presence of evil in our world. The majority of us struggle at one time or another in life with why evil happens to our family, friends, nation and ourselves. In recent news we also hear about particularly disturbing instances—a child raped, a school shooting, genocide in another country, a terrorist bombing. In this paper, I will review the literature from authors Robert M. Adams,
This is the Rosetta stone, a masterpiece written by sadly not me. It has three different recitings of the same lines in three different languages
God is all-powerful. God is just. These are some the most well known statements about God. Yet, they pose an obstacle to why evil exists in this world. Natural evil began in the garden when Adam and Eve sinned. The result was pain in childbirth, toil in working the ground, and enmity between Satan and mankind. However, Elmer Towns adds, “The actual origin of evil was not initiated on an earthly scene, but within the glories of heaven. Man was tempted by an external force. Although this does not make him any less guilty, it does suggest to us that evil was present in the universe prior to Genesis.” Moral evil began when Lucifer proclaimed he would be like the Most High. Both moral and natural evil have their roots in free will. Because God is love, He did not make every creature a robot worshiping Him and carrying out His will. Thus Satan had a choice in heaven to submit and Adam and Eve in the garden had the choice to obey or disobey. In both instances free will was exercised and the consequences are still seen today as mankind continues to exercise his will. Demarest summarizes, “Humankind after the fall suffers extensive spiritual deprivation. Although the image of God in man survives (Gen. 9:6), reason has lost its soundness (2 Cor. 4:4), the will no longer is free to choose God and the good (John 8:34), and sinners are spiritually blind (1 Cor. 2:14) and dead (Eph. 2:1, 5). Once able not to sin, the unregenerate now are incapable of not
Just like sometime we let our children experience things that can cause pain when we know it will bring about a greater good, God could also have good reasons to allow evil acts”. We were created free, but we abuse that freedom by doing everything that’s possible including wrong. the bad things that we do causes suffering in the world. The suffering is the consequences of the wrong we did. God allow suffering and evil in the world as a price for all the wrong we did. I would that’s we evil that’s happening in the world is our own doing. And God allows them because we have to face the consequences of our choices. However, not all evil can be explained with that approach. for example, natural disasters we don’t do nothing to cause them and we can’t do nothing to prevent
This is the problem of evil. Augustine summed it up most effectively when he said, “Either God cannot abolish evil or he will not. If he cannot then he is not all-powerful. If he will not then he is not all good.” Augustine viewed evil as merely the absence of good just as dark is the absence of light, a non-being “a name for nothing but the want of good”. He looked to the Bible for an explanation for the existence of God and believed that the fall of humanity from grace, as shown in Genesis, showed the origin of evil. He believed that evil came into the world because human beings had deliberately turned away from God and his goodness. This suggests that both moral and natural evil is a result of original human sin.
The logical problem of evil is almost as old as the concept of an omni-3 being as the one true God. God in this context being a mix of the Judeo-Christian belief that God is the Greatest Conceivable Being (GCB). Being the GCB implies 3 things: God is all good (Omnibenevolent), all knowing (Omniscient), and all powerful (Omnipotent), this is commonly referred to as omni-3. This argument boils down to a simple three part argument structure:
At first glance, the idols of Egypt and the God of Israel appear to be complete opposites with no common ground; however, even though it looks that they have no similarities, they do have some.
Many people throughout history have found themselves asking why evil exists. Or why, an all-powerful, omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect God allows evil into the world that he/she created. This question has brought about many answers and much debate between believers and non-believers. I have done a lot of reading on this dilemma and hope to address it through looking at a few key points. First, I want to address the question, what do we, as humans perceive as evil. To answer that question, I will look at both physical and moral evil, as well as try to explain what both are, and how they should not be blamed on God. Secondly, I will address the question why would an all-good God allow evil to exist within his creation. To answer that question, I will look to freewill to help explain why God would allow evil to take place. Finally, I will address the major question, why do bad things happen to good people. I feel to answer the question we have to look to our own perception of the situation, and what Gods plan is. The problem of evil has been of great debate throughout time, and continues to be today. The best place to start to understand this debate, and try to make heads or tails of it is to discuss what we as human beings see as evil.
Its impossible to reflect on the origins of evil without bringing up the concept of free will. God created man with this idea of choice; the choice to believe and obey, or the choice to disobey. It was this free will that allowed Adam and Eve to fall from their initial glory and introduce evil and suffering into the world. We can justify a large amount of sustained suffering by acknowledging that it actually benefits us and is not incompatible with God's loving nature. We learn lessons both physically and spiritually that allows us to grow and mature according to God. Some suffering is used to spark revival or for a great advancement in his kingdom, cause after all we're
It is by divine design that evil can exist in a world created by a good God. Evil would not exist if God did not will it into existence. Balance is also a major factor as to why evil has been brought into reality. Chinese philosophy of Ying and Yang has a great principle that states “that all things exist as inseparable and contradictory opposites (Cartwright, 2012).” Good cannot be recognized without the recognition of evil and vice versa. Good and evil are complementary to each other just like past-future, light-dark, or up-down (Cartwright, 2012).
The problem of unjust evil appears as one of the central dilemmas of human existence, and proves to evade any single, reasonable explanation. Taking this in mind, in the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Deuteronomy and the Book of Job attempt to give some insight into this problem. While Deuteronomy claims that a consciously and theologically grounded reinterpretation of the laws and commandments of the Torah and an adherence to this should allow people to evade evil, the Book of Job claims that the true motives of God’s actions cannot be known completely by humans and, thus, they should try to do God’s will in light of this inevitable ignorance.