Good & Evil

The Red Light Morality Scale [Pic]

Ever notice that the "color" red is often associated evil in this culture? hmmmmm

The Red Light Morality Scale [Pic]

Say Hello to my Little Friend » Blog Archiv » Episode 045: What if God Were Really Bad?

Brian Auten recently posted a link to the last podcast or 2011 of the Say Hello to my Little Friend podcast. Here is the blog entry for the broadcast.

Here it is, the last podcast episode for 2011. This time I’m looking at “the “evil god challenge” as posed by Stephen Law in a fairly recent article by that name. Isn’t the evidence for a good God really no better or worse than the evidence that an evil god? In short, no. Here I explain why I think (as I suspect many may think) that the evil god challenges has major philosophical shortcomings, in spite of being an argument worthy of our attention.

I wasn't moved by Dr Law's "logic" but it's nice to see a good response to it.

Say Hello to my Little Friend » Blog Archiv » Episode 045: What if God Were Really Bad?

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FacePalm of the Day #145 - Debunking Christianity: Morality 3: Of objectivity and oughtness

John Loftus has posted the 3rd video on series in which the video maker attempts to rescue atheist philosophy on morality from the abyss it has sunk into. It attempts to dodge the point that there are things that we know are wrong no matter what we may think about them and that we have moral obligations and responsibilities that we ought to live up to. Does this video does any better than the previous two? Nope.






Where to start? How about where it goes of the rails - the beginning - because there is a major flaw at the beginning throwing the whole video into FacePalm territory. The video says that people like William Lane Craig is wrong. The point is asserted that what a person thinks about what they are doing is not irrelevant as to if the action or thought is evil. It is stated that we don't hold consider a person evil if they don't know what they are doing is wrong. I disagree, but for the sake of this blog post, let's grant that and ask a couple of follow up questions: If a man kidnaps, rapes, tortures, and murders a little girl, is the action not evil if he did not know it was wrong? Was Hitler evil because he was responsible for the deaths of innocent millions in concentration camps? Hitler thought he was doing the right thing. If it's true that we don't condemn an action if the person does not think what they did was evil, then the only consistent thing you can do is to say that in both these instances no evil was committed. I don't think anyone sane would do that because we know that such actions are evil - no matter who does it or why they did it. Therefore you can't really take the arguments in this video seriously. There are things that are wrong. There are things that are right.

The thing is that the video fails to take into account is the fact that God's standard of morality is not the same as ours. The fact  is that there are things that He considers really evil that left to yourself you would not consider evil - things we rationalize and ignore, but we are still accountable. For example, in God's economy lust is just as harmful and sinful  and evil as adultery - even if it's never acted upon. We also tend to look down on people who commit things we think are evil and wrong but ignore the things we do. Things like gossip. Things like slander. Remember that God is not going to be judging us by our own relativistic I'm-good-but-you-are-a-piece-of-garbage standard by which we judge one another - but God will be judging us according to his own standard by which we are guilty and deserve hell. Do you want to be judged through Jesus or on your own?


Debunking Christianity: Morality 3: Of objectivity and oughtness

FacePalm of the Day #142 - Epic Fail: Tisk Tisk, Johnny P Response #13

Well, I believe the problem is that Johnny P refuses to not be the last one to speak on this subject on my blog. Apparently, he will continue to leave comments until I allow him to have the last word. I don't mind. I can do this every single day if I have to because maybe just maybe God might get through to Johhny P and he will know just how bad some of his arguments and his conclusions are. God may yet have mercy. My annotations are in red.

This is poor.

Which part? And how are you going to prove that?

You have admitted to agreeing to my argument without admitting it.

Nope, I've said exactly where I agree with you and where I disagree with you. Maybe you need to re-read it....slowly.

You still equivocate on world. You cannot understand that you judge a world by outcome, and still build up straw men of what you wanted me to have said rather than what I said.

World is not a triviality here - if you are actually trying to make an argument and a meaningful point. I agree and have said that you have not said anything worth responding to outside of your fallacious premises and conclusions.

And you still don;t understand that the ingredients are necessary to achieve the outcome, which is the whole basis of the argument.

I've asked you to explain what outcome you are talking about. I agreed that all the evil and suffering in this world our necessary for the plan and goals God has determined with God's self, for God's self, and by God's self.

You still don't understand how God chose this world and that choice is perfect, and since it could have been any other world in conception, and God chooses perfectly, then this must be the most perfect world (out of all the choices).

Here again is where I disagree. Just because this world is as it is now, does not mean that it's the perfect world that God will bring about despite of and through the pain and suffering you seem to obviously have a problem with.

And you still don't understand that by saying perfect world I do not mean exclusively when I said it then, but not now, and not before, that this equivocation is stupid, that it is judged on outcome (as mentioned many times now).

What outcome are your referring to: the pain and suffering experienced now or the "the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18)?

You seem to want to choose your time for perfect world - before humans. Well, fine, who cares? The fact is, God designed tsunamis, decided perfectly to allow them to kill humans in a world which he has perfectly chosen over and above any other world. Thus they, and all other natural evil, are ingredients in his perfectly chosen world, which must be perfect by outcome / ensemble.

And to top it off, you say this UTTER STRAW MAN:

"In all his ramblings, Johnny P has not shown why this answer is wrong."

I NEVER SET OUT TO SHOW THIS WAS WRONG! STOP THESE STUPID FALLACIES AND GET A GRIP.

Perfectly chosen? Yes. Look you wrote an "essay" that you described that "critiques" the Christian worldview that was posted on a blog called Debunking Christianity. If your goal was not to show that the answer given by the Christian worldview is incorrect and does not make sense, then why did you write it? Why waste an entire month arguing about it? Why are you even an atheist if you don't think that the Christian Worldview is wrong? What point are you trying to make? Is it that you don't always understand how an all-good God can allow evil, pain, and suffering? Join the club. We got T-shirts. The Bible is full of that question being asked and answered. It doesn't matter if you don't like the answer for it to be true. This should be a slam dunk and you should be running to a church and falling down on your knees in abject surrender to God who made you. Looks like you are the one who needs a grip. His name is Jesus Christ. Reach for Him.

My conclusions are these:

IF you are a Christian
THEN you must accept that all natural evils are necessary ingredients in a perfect world.

Not in the world as we see it now. And not just all natural evils, but everything that ever happened will go into what God is building and making. No where in the Bible does it say that this world is prefect. By all means, consider the ensemble. You say you are but by your conclusions in rejecting God, you show you are not looking at the ensemble, just the little piece you think you understand. But we will see how it all comes together and we will know it's perfect when Jesus returns for His people. The question you need to be asking yourself is, are you one of his people?

You can equivocate like a child all you want that I meant perfect world now. But I didn't, I never said that, and it would make no sense whatsoever anyway. Words in my mouth.

You mean you didn't write the following quote?

If this is where logic takes a Christian, then they can keep their God in all his maximal perfection. And while they’re at it, they can package up all the pain and suffering and send it return post to the pearly gates. Not needed here, thanks.

And now you are saying that you didn't intend to prove that the logic employed by Christians is wrong. Then are you trying to say that you reject it out of a purely emotional fit? Yep. Like a whining, kicking, and screaming baby who doesn't get what he wants and so lashes out? Yup. How mature is that? It's not. You have no argument, if you are not weighing in on whether or not Christianity is true and why you reject it. Remember the name of the blog which you love that the post originally appeared in, right? What point were you trying to make then? If it was an exercise in pontification, you succeeded awesomely.


What had happen' was.....: FacePalm of the Day #141 - Epic Fail: Tisk Tisk, Johnny P Response #12

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Faithful Thinkers: Video: Free Will and Evil

Thanks to Luke Nix for posting the following video on his blog.




I realize that "Free Will" is often taken as a given and is usually defined as being able to act or act otherwise without influence or force from outside of oneself - motivated by one's own interests and desires. I think the fact that people have minds and wills of the their own is undeniable. My question: Is it "Free". The Bible says we are enslaved to sin and incapable of  living without transgressing God's standard. Some of us are so lost and blind we can't even see the need. for salvation. That doesn't seem "free" to me. Our inability to do right in every and all circumstances is not the root cause of evil - its a symptom. We are cursed to sin and death because of evil. I think the question that we must attempt to answer is: What is Evil?

Evil is what you get when anyone acts outside the will of God. We know that God has our best interests in mind so that when ever something happens not in our best interest, we experience evil. At the same time, God uses evil in the best interest of his people.

²⁰ You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. Genesis 50:20

 ²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.  - Romans 8:28-29

Faithful Thinkers: Video: Free Will and Evil

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Faithful Thinkers: Video: Source of Evil

Luke Nix posted a link to the following video of Norman Geisler answer the question: Where does Evil comes from?




I don't really believe that Dr Norman Geisler is fully correct. He believes that people have free will and God allows us to make choices about our eternal futures without interference. I however, don't see how God does that if we are enslaved to sin and incapable of  coming to God without God's drawing and power.  If God draws everyone to the same degree, then how is it that some say "Yes" while others say "No."  Is there something "Better" about those who say "Yes"?  I don't think so.  Not in the slightest. That's why I don't think we can set the origin of evil on "Libertarian Free Will".  We can't even learn to tie our shoelaces without help, I wonder why some people think we can find God without Him.

Faithful Thinkers: Video: Source of Evil

Skarlet's Two Cents: Forget who-dun-it. Who is responsible for this mess?!?

I came across this article from Brennon's blog, Brennon's Thoughts.  It is a good article I wanted to comment on the points made.  I like the title. I would like to add to it. Who is accountable for this mess? If there is someone accountable, whom is the responsible party accountable to? The article is from an Arminian position and I think everyone should think about what she wrote I recently realized that I equate responsibility with accountability. I think most people do. The problem is that the two ideas are real different. You can be both responsible and accountable for something but necessarily. For example you can only be blamed for something if you are accountable to someone. Without someone to hold you accountable there can be no condemnation or accountability. You can have responsibility but no accountability. It's hard to think of an example because almost every responsibility has the weight of accountability. God does not deserve blame for our sins, but He is responsible because he could have stopped Adam, but He didn't. There are many examples in the Bible and in my own life that God has stopped me from sinning and in those cases in my life God made sure that I understood that I wanted to do something and He said No. Yet at other times He allowed me to go ahead and let me mess up so that He could use it for a purpose. I think  this is true for everyone. Does this mean that without God's decisions and actions, evil would not exist? Yes. Does this make God the author of evil or accountable? No. I mean who is God accountable to? Who is that rules over God. No one. This means that God is not culpable, but it does mean that God is the only free-will agent because of humans we are slaves to sin until Jesus frees us when the Holy Spirit convicts and the the Father draws us. I see where the author is coming from but I don't think that it torpedoes the Calvinist position at all. Another point is that suffering  and evil are not purposeless.  God has a reason for everything and there is no way we can possibly understand it all now. The best we have is to trust God. 

 ²⁸And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. - Romans 8:28-29

Skarlet's Two Cents: Forget who-dun-it. Who is responsible for this mess?!?