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To: P-Marlowe
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).

4 posted on 07/29/2003 8:09:28 PM PDT by dark_lord (The Statue of Liberty now holds a baseball bat and she's yelling 'You want a piece of me?')
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To: dark_lord
Evil has to be understood in a way more profound than human choices....since Satan was evil, tempting humans, before Adam chose to heed his wife's bad choice and plunge his dominion, this world, into sin, with its resultant death. As to the unknown (and unknowable?) ancient choice of Lucifer to rebel against God, that's a mystery too profound to ponder...even St. Augustine says we can't (and shouldn't) try to figure it out.

That said, as the Apostle Paul taught in Romans, the whole of creation is under a curse, groaning as it were, (with Christians) to be released from evil and its effects. Whether this has anything to do with the theory in physics of chaos, I really don't know--we just need to understand that besides human nature being fallen, so is our world--and its also affected by fallen angels. These 3 fallen things, do logically make for the chaotic nature of evil.

Thanks be to Christ who defeated death itself, and will redeem not just our souls, or even our bodies, but all of fallen creation itself. Thanks also that all things--even if now seemingly purposeless--do work together for the good....for those who know God and are called by His plan.....
22 posted on 07/29/2003 10:23:43 PM PDT by AnalogReigns
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