The problem of evil is commonly broken into two different segments. There is the problem of “moral” evil, and the problem of “Natural” evil. Though they are somewhat related, they are not entirely the same, and they each have their own talking points.
The problem of moral evil and Free will
Here’s the logical Syllogism generally used to describe the moral problem of evil. This problem has been formulated in many different ways, but I believe the following captures the essence of the problem as it is proposed.
Premise 1 – God is all powerful and can stop evil from existing.
Premise 2 – God is all loving and does not want the people he created to do evil.
Premise 3 – The people he created do evil.
Given premise 1 and 2 an all loving and all powerful God wants to and could stop moral evil on this world.
Premise 4 – Moral evil has not stopped
Conclusion 1 –God is all loving and is incapable of stopping evil which would make him not all powerful
Conclusion 2 – God is Powerful enough to stop all evil and chooses not to which would make him not all loving
-Or-
Conclusion 3 – There simply is no God
Evil and Free will
Moral evil is evil done by people: examples would be murder, rape, or daytime television. The question of moral evil also often times comes along with questions about free will. Why does God allow people to do these horrible things? Why doesn’t he just stop them, or make it impossible for people to do these bad things? Surely, an “all powerful” God could do so.
As shown in “P1” the problem of evil seems to cause trouble for people often times, because they think that God, being “all powerful”, should have no problem stopping people from doing evil, without impeding on their free will. This misunderstanding seems to come from different concepts of the term “all powerful”. When we as Christians say that God is “all powerful” we are not saying he can do absolutely anything; rather we are saying God can do anything that can be done. So when the question is asked “can God make a rock so big that he can’t lift it?” The answer is no, because that cannot be done, it’s self contradictory(God cannot do anything and not do anything at the same time). A better term for His attribute of powerful would be “Maximally Powerful”.
Similarly, if you were try to say, “God can create free will beings that cannot make the wrong decision.” It would be equally illogical. But, why is this illogical?
To understand this we must first define free will. Free will is the ability to choose between available options. Pretty simple huh? Under this definition, we can see that if God made it so we could not choose an available option we would no longer have free will. Another interesting point is that making a good decision every time is a character trait, and character traits are developed by an individual, and cannot be given by an outside party.
Here’s an example: A man was walking down the street, and there was a woman he didn’t know hurt in a car accident on the other side of the street. The man had two major options at that point 1) he could help the woman 2) he could leave the woman there. Now without adding any extra variables into the equation, we’ll say that Helping the woman is “good” and leaving the woman is “bad”. Now if we were only capable of choosing option one, by definition we would not have free will.
As you can see in this example, on its face, there are no logical reasons that the man cannot choose either option. Both options are necessary given the situation, and nothing about choosing either option is logically impossible. In addition, we would have to be capable of choosing both options in order to have free will in any meaningful sense, but without the person having built the character to be a helpful person, he may not pick option 1.
The unfortunate consequence of creating a world where free will beings exist is that they have the ability to choose something different that what God may want them to choose. Inevitably, this means that some WILL choose to do evil. Sometimes we make bad choices because it’s the easier, sometimes because it just feels better to choose the wrong option. Whatever the reason as long as a bad choice is an available option we must be allowed to choose it, and there is no logical way for God to force us into a correct position without removing free will.
Next we will go into Moral evil and if it comports with the Christian Idea of Love.
Until then think, learn and prepare yourself to answer questions about the God you love.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Why I became an apologist
The purpose of this blog is to put my journey as an apologist into a format that could be helpful to others who may happen across this site.
I have been a Christian all my life, I went to Christian schools, and I’ve always accepted the teachings of the bible as truth. I never really thought too much about other religions and if they were true in fact, I was very pluralistic in my thoughts about other religions. Someone made the comment once that getting to heaven is like getting to the center of a city, there are many paths but all of them will get you there, and that was pretty much how I rationalized the existence of other religions.
When I got to college, I had a friend who told me he was an atheist he did not believe in Jesus nor did he believe in the bible. When I tried to rationalize with him, why he should believe in Jesus and I found that I had no evidence for what I believed. It bothered me that I couldn’t rationalize it to him, but it never actually shook my own faith, and looking for more answers didn’t cross my mind.
After I left college spirituality wasn’t high up on my list of things to do, but I was constantly a believer. The first time I had real trouble with my faith was when I saw the movie Zeitgeist and it went through all the different religions that were “the same” as Christianity. I had no way of responding to this movie, and I didn’t know where to look, and I was not enough of a researcher to find the information for myself. Needless to say the role of God played less and less of a part in my life though I was still convinced that what the bible said was true. Everything it teaches, was truth and I had trouble believing that that was a lie.
As time went on I started going back to church, and the holy spirit was convicting me about the way I was living my life and I moved back onto the path of being a Christian though an imperfect one. Even still being back on the Christian path I was not an evidential Christian and evidence was not even on the radar as far as a reason to believe in God. I began to think about Christianity differently when I had my first conversation with my father about him being an agnostic. My mother had told me that he was agnostic, but I never talked to him about it, and he never shared his beliefs with me. The conversation started when he told me that he wasn’t doing very well, and I asked him if he prayed about it. He then told me that he didn’t believe in God. When I asked him why, he told me that there is too much evil in the world for there to be a God in existence, also there was no evidence for God that he could see.
I had a lot of trouble responding to him, so I began to look for answers. I told him that God is real and he is true and I accepted his challenge to find evidence for his existence. So I began looking and researching ever since. I’ve found sufficient reasons to believe that God exists and that The Christian God is true.
The first issue I will tackle in this blog is the problem of evil it’s probably one of the most difficult challenges we face as Christians, but also coincidentally one of the strongest evidences FOR the existence of a God.
Until then think, learn and prepare yourself to answer questions about the God you love.
I have been a Christian all my life, I went to Christian schools, and I’ve always accepted the teachings of the bible as truth. I never really thought too much about other religions and if they were true in fact, I was very pluralistic in my thoughts about other religions. Someone made the comment once that getting to heaven is like getting to the center of a city, there are many paths but all of them will get you there, and that was pretty much how I rationalized the existence of other religions.
When I got to college, I had a friend who told me he was an atheist he did not believe in Jesus nor did he believe in the bible. When I tried to rationalize with him, why he should believe in Jesus and I found that I had no evidence for what I believed. It bothered me that I couldn’t rationalize it to him, but it never actually shook my own faith, and looking for more answers didn’t cross my mind.
After I left college spirituality wasn’t high up on my list of things to do, but I was constantly a believer. The first time I had real trouble with my faith was when I saw the movie Zeitgeist and it went through all the different religions that were “the same” as Christianity. I had no way of responding to this movie, and I didn’t know where to look, and I was not enough of a researcher to find the information for myself. Needless to say the role of God played less and less of a part in my life though I was still convinced that what the bible said was true. Everything it teaches, was truth and I had trouble believing that that was a lie.
As time went on I started going back to church, and the holy spirit was convicting me about the way I was living my life and I moved back onto the path of being a Christian though an imperfect one. Even still being back on the Christian path I was not an evidential Christian and evidence was not even on the radar as far as a reason to believe in God. I began to think about Christianity differently when I had my first conversation with my father about him being an agnostic. My mother had told me that he was agnostic, but I never talked to him about it, and he never shared his beliefs with me. The conversation started when he told me that he wasn’t doing very well, and I asked him if he prayed about it. He then told me that he didn’t believe in God. When I asked him why, he told me that there is too much evil in the world for there to be a God in existence, also there was no evidence for God that he could see.
I had a lot of trouble responding to him, so I began to look for answers. I told him that God is real and he is true and I accepted his challenge to find evidence for his existence. So I began looking and researching ever since. I’ve found sufficient reasons to believe that God exists and that The Christian God is true.
The first issue I will tackle in this blog is the problem of evil it’s probably one of the most difficult challenges we face as Christians, but also coincidentally one of the strongest evidences FOR the existence of a God.
Until then think, learn and prepare yourself to answer questions about the God you love.
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