I strongly believe that these three statements are true. God is all powerful. God is all good. Evil exists in the world. To many these three statements appear contradictory. How can God be all powerful, all good, and still allow evil to be present in the lives of people?
Many would argue that God can be all powerful and allow evil to occur because he is not entirely good. Others would say God is all good, but he is not powerful or involved enough to stop all evil from happening. It almost seems as if logically God cannot be all powerful and all good and allow the existence of evil.
Revelation 4:10 discusses people sitting before the throne of God worshipping God and laying their crowns and treasures at his feet. In verse eleven they say “for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” I draw my beliefs on the presence of evil from this passage.
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Many would read that statement and cry heresy, and maybe it is. I believe in a God that created everything. As the creator of all God is not bound by the same concepts and laws that people are. He exists outside of time and possesses omniscience to know everything that has or will happen.
God is completely good. For a multitude of people, this idea is a major hang-up. Why would a God that is completely good command one of his followers to sacrifice his only son? That sounds like a really bad God who doesn’t love people. Why would a God that is supposedly all good command his people to wipe out men, women, and children of other nations and then punish them for showing mercy? Again, this is a lousy God. There are several biblical examples of God that don’t fit into our nice little box of what we want him to be. Yet, I still firmly believe that he is entirely
Furthermore, if God were all powerful and evil existed, then God couldn’t be all good. And if God were all good and evil existed then god couldn’t be all powerful. The fact is, only two of these statements can be completely true. This situation is black and white. For example, if a burning lightbulb indicated goodness and
Furthermore, god is supposedly full of wisdom, his wisdom is infinite, yet the world lacks heavily. One way this can be viewed is with nature, how nature scarcely tends to the need of human and animal happiness. One question that one may ask is can and is god able to prevent evil? Does he have what it takes; maybe god is impotent (lacking power, strength). According
For atheists, apologetics, and non-believers, a big topic of contention is the existence of evil in a world with God. This is known as the problem with evil. How does a God that is all knowing, all powerful, and perfectly good allow such atrocities to occur under his watch? It is this question that so many people have discussed. The argument centers on God being omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good (Mackie, 1955 p. 200). Omnipotent is to be all powerful. Omniscient is to be all knowing and to be perfectly good means that God would prevent a morally bad event from ever happening (Swinburne, 1998 p. 13). In the problem of evil, God’s powers are taken at face value, and applied to God’s inaction to evil on earth. People who argue against the topic of evil typically make generalizations on the attributes that God
In a world of chaos, he who lives, lives by his own laws and values. Who is to say that the death of millions is any worse or better, for that matter, than injuring a cockroach. And in the case of an existing power in the form of God, who is presumed to be all which is good, presiding and ruling an organized universe, why then does evil exist? The prosaic response of “without evil, there is no good” no longer holds any validity in this argument as the admitted goal of good is to reach an existence without evil. So even if a God does exist, I think it is fair, at this point, to say that he is the embodiment of both good and evil. And if humoring those who would answer the previous question with the response that there can be no good
The final portion of the old questions asks “is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” (Hume 198). It would seem logical that if God is omnipotent and omnimalevolent as Christians believe then he would be able and willing to stop all evil. Since there is clearly evil in this world, wouldn’t that mean that God is just evil and relishes in the suffering of humans? Of the three questions, this is the least logical. God could not be omnimalevolent and evil because, by definition, these two characteristics contrast. Someone could not be all good and evil at the same time.
If evil is necessary for good contradicts that God is omnipotent and morally perfect. If he was really all
Loss of Rights: Rhetorical Strategies in Groskopf’s “The digital age has destroyed the concept of ownership, and companies are taking advantage of it”
If god was all good, all powerful and all knowing, he would not allow the existence of evil.
In a world of chaos, he who lives, lives by his own laws and values. Who is to say that the death of millions is any worse or better, for that matter, than injuring a cockroach. And in the case of an existing power in the form of God, who is presumed to be all which is good, presiding and ruling an organized universe, why then does evil exist? The prosaic response of "without evil, there is no good" no longer holds any validity in this argument as the admitted goal of good is to reach an existence without evil. So even if a God does exist, I think it is fair, at this point, to say that he is the embodiment of both good and evil. And if humoring those who would answer the previous question with the response that there can be no good
Following this line of thought, the next logical step for our human minds to pursue would seem to be that in order for God to experience Himself as the all-consuming good, there had to be something called the all-consuming evil. This is a flawed argument for there is only one deity we recognize as God. God is all there was, all there is, and all there ever will be. The existence of evil cannot be used as a pathetic excuse for God to be able to justify His existence.
The problem of evil questions the nature of God and threatens his status as a figure worthy of worship. Surely human beings would not wish to worship a God that is neither all good nor all-powerful? The figure we call God is seen to be entirely perfect and flawless in every way. The problem of evil also questions God’s omniscience, in respects that he is all knowing. If God is omniscient then he must know the harm that evil does and the suffering it will cause. The attributes in question are the essence of the nature of God and without them he becomes more like a human than a God. If any of God’s characteristics are omitted, he
Since the 8th grade, colleges were the only thing on my mind. The criteria are location, curriculum, internship rates and classroom sizes. George Washington University's prime location gives its students a large several internship opportunities. My goal of working for the government or an international corporation was a huge factor in my choice of GWU. I fell in love with the rigorous curriculum. The classes are small enough to become familiarized with your professors and vice versa. College/Universities with a large student body lose a great deal of networking opportunities due to lack of personalization of students and the academic staff. In my opinion, college is not only for education, but for exploration as well. With over 400 clubs and
We can contradict that God is all-powerful or wholly good, or we can contradict that there is any evil in the creation.
Code of ethics serves as the moral compass that directs and guides the integrity, values, and beliefs of an organization. A code of ethics clarifies to employees what the company stands for and its expectations for employee conduct (Daft, 2013). A well-written code is a true commitment to responsible business practices in that it outlines specific procedures to handle ethical failures. Within the research enterprise, the code of ethics ensures that research projects involving human subjects are carried out without causing harm to the subjects involved. Research ethics also ensure researchers conduct research in an ethical manner. This paper will focus on the regulations and guidelines that govern ethics in research, a study where
How we view the presence of God and evil depends on why we believe the world was created. If man is a fully created creature then the world was created for him to live in, a comfortable, pleasant place. Our world is obviously filled with suffering, danger, hardship of all kinds, so an all-powerful God could not have created it. To Christians the world is not a paradise where one can experience the maximum of pleasure and a minimum of pain. The world is a place of “soul making” or person making. As we try and understand the challenges of our lives, and our environment we may become “Children Of God”.