Sunday, July 25, 2010

Atheist Fallacy #2 - A Perfect Loving Good Would Not Allow Imperfection, Evil, or Suffering

There are many possible reasons why a perfect loving God would allow imperfection, evil, and suffering into his creation.  I have enumerated them elsewhere in this blog, but will list them briefly again:
  1. Difficult circumstances build character such as patience, perseverance, courage, resolve, and test our honesty.
  2. Difficult circumstances provide us with opportunities to exhibit charity, empathy, humility, and to embrace the different.
  3. Suffering prepares us for future tragedy and bonds us together in sympathy. 
  4. Pain creates a feedback mechanism for either avoiding or handling other pain in the future.
  5. Evil provides us with an appreciation for Good.  Our own evil nature makes us humble, and thus needy for a savior.
  6. Imperfection keeps us humble, often results in compensating factors that create greatness, and creates a longing for a better time.
  7. Evil creates a longing for justice and provides an opportunity to learn the character trait of forgiveness and longsuffering.
The list could be much, much longer, but all of this is contained in that old book of myths.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

A perfect loving god with OMNIPOTENCE would be able to simply create us with those characteristics(mentioned in 1-3 and 6-7). A perfect loving god with OMNIPOTENCE would be able to create us in a manner in which we could not feel pain(4) A perfect loving god with OMNIPOTENCE could create us to simply appreciate existence which, without evil, would be entirely good(5).

There is no reason for a being that is supposedly perfect and benevolent to allow evil to exist IF said being is omnipotent. If this being is not omnipotent, then there is reason. However, I would see no reason to worship such a non-omnipotent being(and, come to think of it, not much reason to worship one were they).

Tucker Lieberman said...

These seven reasons all presume a future in which the person can exercise his or her improved character. They imply that the short-term suffering is actually beneficial in the long term. None of these seven reasons are valid for a person who suffers and immediately dies.

Anonymous said...

There is evil that does not provide any growth. Take a dear in the middle of the woods that no one knows about. It breaks its legs and cant move to get food. It then starves to death. How is this dears suffering (evil) providing any gain for a human?

Anonymous said...

No, the reason there is suffering is because God has to be just. We are sinners and deserve suffering and death. Without suffering, no one would rely on God because everything is good

Anonymous said...

As the first comment said; a truly omnipotent god could have created man with all the characteristics that suffering is meant to instill. Why would an omnipotent and omniscient deity create imperfect objects and then exact his vengeance on them for being as he created (or knew they would become). To date this has not been explained in any reasoned argument to me