Secular Right: “Will Bill O’Reilly or anyone else who saw the hand of God in the safe landing of US Airways Flight 1549 this January please explain why God chose not to save Continental Connection Flight 3407, which plunged into a house outside of Buffalo last night, killing all 49 people on board and a resident on the ground?”
This is really an age-old discussion about how God can allow “Free Will” in his creations. The problem is that so much of our society is ignorant about Christianity. Our Founding Fathers might not have all been believers, but they were intimately familiar with the Bible and with Christian doctrine, and so were their constituents.
Here is a portion of a snarky response by another godless heathen who mistakenly believes that he knows the answer, by quoting another godless heathen who lived before Christ. He sets forth the quote then mistakenly (ignorantly) believes that the quote destroys the Christian view of the world.
“Epicurus destroyed the omni-god 300 years BCE — that is, long before the world became burdened with the suicidal cult of xianity:
Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then where does evil come from?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him ‘god’?”
I do not presume to be a thinker on the level of Epicurus–I’m just a lowly American citizen who has been exposed to ideas that came along after old Eppy. But I’ll take on his so-called logic and show the error of his thinking, because this is really what the blog was asking–the blogger was just too unlearned or closed-minded to know it.
“Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.” God is able to prevent evil, but he usually allows it. Why? According to Judeo/Christian teaching God desired to create beings which each possessed a “free will.” Creatures with so-called “free wills” do not truly have free wills unless God allows the consequences of their actions to have negative effects on themselves, others, and the world around them. If God never allowed negative effects to occur then the creatures would not really be free.
I won’t get all Biblical for those not interested, but the bottom line in the Judeo/Christian belief is that God first created angels, including Satan (The Devil, whatever you want to call him) and he and 1/3 of the angels created rebelled against God and were cast down to earth. God did not make them evil–he merely created them with free wills and gave them the ability to choose good or evil, to worship God or to rebel against God. Some chose to rebel and to do evil. God could have created them without the ability to rebel, without the ability to do evil, but then they wouldn’t have been able to freely choose to love and worship him. They would have been more like “The Stepford Angels.” And God still has the ability to prevent their evil acts–he just voluntarily chooses not to prevent their evil. For now.
In the same way, God chooses to allow humans to make choices which have real consequences. We are not “Stepford Humans.” Humans can choose to do good, to be missionaries, to heal the sick and care for the poor. Or humans can choose to rape, pillage and murder. For now. Hell yes there is a hell, and you better be afraid.
There is a long-standing disagreement between Christians as to whether or not we really have a “free will” since Adam and Eve–that is not relevant to this discussion. But again, God allows humans to take real actions which have real consequences, either good or evil, because he chooses to do so. Not because he is “not able,” and not because he is “malevolent.” Then he is not omnipotent.
“Is he both able and willing? Then where does evil come from? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him ‘god’?” God is both able and willing to prevent evil, but he allows it. God hates evil. God does not condone evil. God does not commit evil. But he created beings with real–not just pretend or make believe–ability to make choices. That involves the ability to choose evil if the beings so desire. So evil comes not from God in the sense that God causes his creatures to commit evil, but rather from God creating beings with “free wills” and allowing them to commit evil, if they so desire. The evil actions by his creatures are no more the acts of God than my evil acts are the responsability of my father or my son.
Now, some can and do complain that God should not have created beings with free wills; that he should have known that they would commit evil and therefore not created them; or he should have created them without the ability to choose to do evil; or that if they choose to do evil, he should prevent the consequences of their evil deeds from affecting others or the environment. My response is to paraphrase Tom Berenger’s character in “Platoon”: “there’s the way things are, and the way things ought to be.” I’m just explaining the way things are, how they ought to be is a discussion for another day and another time. Heck, take it up with God on The Judgment Day.
But to close the loop, God created beings with free wills and allows them to make real choices which sometimes can and do result in evil or terrible consequences. God does not cause the consequences, he allows them to happen. God could prevent them, but he chooses not to, usually. Occasionally he intervenes and makes divine provisions to bail us out–some call these miracles, or Divine Intervention. Godless heathen call them luck or coincidence. Why doesn’t God always intervene some might whine? Because doing so would essentially undermine the power of free will, I think. But I don’t claim to know all the answers. I am just parroting what greater thinkers have said much more eloqently than I can long before America was even a country. But I think it is important to at least throw these ideas out there because we have so many un-learned cretins living in our country. I don’t care if you choose to disregard these thoughts or not, but you should at least be aware of them.
Now resume your surfing for porn… [sorry, just my attempt to lighten the mood after a heavy subject discussion.]
Smash Mouth Politics 