The Problem of Evil

[MattJack]

Originally Posted by kahljorn

What about animals who attack humans? Of course, it's not considered evil to kill animals because you can eat them. So what's so evil about killing for personal gain, then, since that's what happens in nature? Some animals even kill for fun. So that brings to the table, what's so evil about killing another person for personal gain? Isn't that a part of life, and a part of surviving?

Isn't it only deemed evil out of our own personal interests?

I think the reasons animals attack other creatures are far different than why humans attack other humans. I think most animals kill for survival, not really just to kill time.

What makes it evil to kill for personal gain is that it puts someone else at a rather ultimate loss. I think most of the time when people kill they kill because of some form of basic greed. Motivations vary, but normally when it comes to taking another person's life the motifs are irrational.

I can't really think of too many scenarios where one would have to kill another individual in order to survive.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

yea but a utopia? even in a utopia you're going to have to eat and drink, have rent or whatever a utopia needs to work. You'll be exposed to "suffering", regardless. Is suffering evil? If not, what about the acts that are performed through it's influence?
It almost sounds like a definition of heaven or the paradise in the bible before we "Fell".

I would think of it to be like a heaven or paradise how the bible presents it before man fell, yes. It is a perfect world, and suffering is completely gone.

This all brings me back to something rather simple I seem to be investing more into:
God cannot be both benevolent and omnipotent. I don't even want to really refer to him as God, but rather The Creator or something to that tune.

Originally Posted by Gabby GaGa

I think some people are designated, or predestined, to commit evil acts.
God's way of creating an equalibrium. So that the existing "good" is dependent on its evil counterpart.

I don't believe anybody is predestined or designated to be or do anything. I believe that one chooses their own path through the decisions they make in life based off their circumstances and morality. If we indeed are predestined to be anything we truly don't have freewill do we? No matter what one would do or say, that individual's outcome is already decided. Therefore, that individual is not responsible for their actions in my eyes.

Why would God need to even create some "equalibrium?" He's God, he doesn't need an excuse to why he has created good. He doesn't have to answer to anyone does he? Why a counterpart? We do not need to have an counterpart of everything to know two sides of something. Further, many things do not have any counterparts. What is the counterpart of chalk? We know perfectly what chalk is without knowing what its counterpart is.

So my rebuttal is a very simple, why did God make it that way? Can God not do everything and anything? If he can't he isn't omnipotent.

If He decided to do it just because, well, He is not benevolent.