[lockeliberty]

Welcome back, Milque.

Love your homepage.

LOL

[drstevej]

Welcome back P-Marlowe.

Having done time in Freeper Purgatory myself, I'm sure it's nice to leave the asbestos suit behind and step into the tranquility of this asylum we optomistically call, Free Republic.

[dark_lord]

I suggest that the argument has been made in a more simple form, which is that evil exists because God has made humans with free will (the free will aspect was touched on in the above argument but not elaborated). Love is a result of the ability to have free will. But even without capacity for love, just having free will alone permits evil. So I suggest that a root cause of evil is free will.

That said, most arguments made about evil were made before chaos theory. It can be argued that some evil is caused because not all effects are deterministic, but rather some are chaotic. This type of evil occurs in complex systems (like nature, or market forces). This is not evil in itself, but rather in its effects. Thus here evil can occur without any "one" determining it. And of course this is relative rather than absolute evil (the child who dies due to a hurricane, the father who loses a job due to computer program driven currency trading half a world away).

[restornu]

Why Does God Allow Evil?

Be careful of good guy, bad guy!

Trusting hearts are vulnerable!

Beware of a dark_ shadow who wants to befriend!

Some charades are endless metamorphosis! !

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[RobbyS]

I wonder how many skeptics have encountered men who are deeply evil although in ordinary circumstances, seem very ordinary. I am thinking about Hannah Arendt's famous remark about the "banality of evil."

[malakhi]

A universal sense of moral right and wrong can only come from a source outside of ourselves: a transcendent source, a moral Lawgiver.

Exactly!

In the absence of God, morality is entirely subjective -- a matter of taste, of aesthetics. As Dostoevsky wrote, "If there is no God, then everything is permissible".

[Jean Chauvin]

"Let us consider the nature of love and its consequences. I cannot experience love from you unless you have the capacity to do otherwise. If you have the capacity to not love me, and you choose instead to love me, then that choice has validity. It has meaning. You cannot have a love relationship with a computer. It is pre-programmed to serve you. Love requires choice: unencumbered choice. And that's where the problem lies."

I do not love my children because I "choose" to do so.

I love my children because they are my children. In reality, I don't have a "choice" but to do so.

I guess, according to your author, I don't ~really~ love them.

Jean

[Jean Chauvin]

"...one of God's attributes is love. "He who does not love does not know God, for God is love." (I John 4:8"

" But where there is choice and the capability of love, there is also the capability to choose wrong and to do great evil."

Does God have this "capability to choose wrong and to do great evil"?

If he does not have the "capability to choose wrong and to do great evil", then, according to your author's argument, he is not ~really~ capable of true love.

If he does have the "capability to choose wrong and to do great evil", then he must not be truly sovereign, because he must ~co-exist~ with the 'evil'. 'Evil' is a ~reality~ that God must ~always~ deal with and that he has no ~choice~ but to deal with.

Jean

[Jean Chauvin]

"But as we have seen, there are compelling arguments that a world possessing both evil and love is superior to a world where neither is possible. For God to eliminate evil, He would have to eliminate our capacity of choice and thus our capacity to do both evil and good."

Well, there goes the idea of "heaven"!

Since we will not have the ~capability~ to "do evil" in the "New Creation" (1 Corinthians 15:51,52), we will not have the "capacity of choice". Therefore, according to the author's argument, this current sin filled earth "is superior to" the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Jean