If bad things happen, god is either not all powerful, doesn't love us, or doesn't exist
however
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This implies suffering and hardship are flawed or without purpose. Perhaps a story of redemption and triumph over evil was preferred, a world where good things like honor, courage, altruism, discipline, and wisdom could exist.
While I agree that evil can bring out the good, some things are so extreme that I can't imagine it would possibly have a purpose. For example- genocide, the suffering of the poor and starving, horrific random murders. Where is the triumph over evil in those cases?
I would say the kids that die everyday. The women that get raped and trafficked. and the Christians in Syria that are being crucified are examples of bad things
We must start by defining what is good and what is bad in a universal way. Either God's definition of "bad" is different than humanity's, or not. But if it is different, why has God not corrected it for us? Perhaps God's morality is not mappable to ours; if so, God can still be "bad" by our terms.
As society changes, so do our morals and ethics. It's quite possible that our morals and ethics have moved on from being like god's "morals" (in the case that he is not amoral).
Naturally god's "morals" would never change since he would exist outside of time
It's quite possible god has no views at all on "good" or "bad" as he would be an amoral being.
Concepts like "good" or "bad" may not apply to a supreme being like a god. Remember, a being like god exists outside of time itself, what can we really know about such a being.
So let's say god is all powerful, but amoral, so he doesn't see the things that happen to us as bad or good. Can that amorality be compatible with "love?" Even if god doesn't see them as bad or good, can't he see that WE see them that way, and suffer as a result? Can inaction in that light be love?
We could also go on to say that the concepts of "worship" and "sacrifice" were created by the religious leaders, not god. Organized religion has been known to be rather controlling of it's members.
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Scientology's "church";
Catholicism in the middle ages, etc.;
Certain sects of Islam;
Cults (though I wouldn't really consider them an organized 'religion')
If our understanding of those "plans" is too superficial, it follows that thinking and talking about "his" "plans" and "having" "reasons" are also superficial. Probably god dont have any plan.
That's the thing- he may, or he may not. You're basically saying that we can't comprehend why he lets evil happen. Therefore, by our human definition of "goodness," his actions in that cannot hold merit. We can't just say "God works in mysterious ways" and avoid the argument altogether.
That isn't necessarily true. In the Christian perspective, God is all-powerful but gives us our freedom so we can love Him back, without freedom to choose there is no real love. The bad things in this world happen because we chose not to follow God and they are why God sent His Son to die for us
If he creates a world & does it with all the foreknowledge of what will transpire, then we don't have free will. He made us knowing what our choices were going to be. If you extrapolate further, this means god creates some people solely for the purpose of inflicting pain on them in life & in hell.
Is it not possible for god to know what will happen, but also for people to have free will? Let's assume that fortune tellers actually have supernatural powers.Through them telling you what will happen, they have influenced your decision and no longer are you working off of your own will.
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However, if they didn't tell you your future, they would still know it, but you would still have the ability to freely choose for yourself what you want to do. Is the fortune teller all of a sudden taking away your free will by not telling you your future? Or is the fortune teller giving you free will by letting you make decisions on your own?
Thus we would only have free will up to the extent that God does not act within our spacetime. All the things that are considered acts of God are thus violations of our free will. Either god cares about maintaining our free will, or he acts within our universe. It can't be both.
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If god arbitrarily violates our free will at his whim, then it is not really free will at all, but conditional will.
creating the univese would already be an act in our spacetime => if god gives us 100%free will he didn't create the univese and does not interact with us at all
Does god decide not to do anything because he values our free will? If so, then wouldn't it follow that prayer and worship is pointless? Since god will not be involved because he doesn't want to interfere with our free will. Prayer and worship shouldn't change that.
If God is an omnipotent, all-powerful being, why does he have the narcissistic need to be worshipped? If he has created everything, why are humans chosen as the one species that need to subject themselves to him? Aren't all creatures created equal?
Is that love? What is love? Is it to punish with death for disobedience? Again, if we redefine love to have more than one meaning, dependent on who is doing the loving, we are just moving the goalposts. We must agree on a universal definition of "love" to decide whether an act is an act of love.
When a parent puts soap in their child's mouth for saying a bad word, or when parents ground their children because they did something they shouldn't have, is that because the parents hate their kids or is it because they love them?
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I'd make the argument that the parents love their kids enough to punish them because they know that, through punishment, their kids will learn how to behave in society (or whatever lesson the parent was trying to teach).
Just because bad things happen in the world doesn't mean it's because you didn't follow god. Even people who are devote followers of god have terrible things happen to them.
tokani
Bad things happen to everyone, no matter who you are. Many people say that goodness comes from god, but that really isn't true. God is an amoral being. He is above morals (or at least that's sort of one part of the concept of a god).
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Basically whatever people think is good or bad does not necessarily correlate with what god thinks is good or bad, if good or bad are even concepts to god.
People complain about this explanation because they want to think that god is like a good person. God is supposed to be an ultimate being, perhaps humans are the only ones with morals and god just does what he wants?
If God is amoral, doesn't that mean that by our definition of "goodness," he is not "good," just neutral? That's possible, of course, but I can't see then how some say He loves us unconditionally and wants all the best for us...
religionisdumb
