Philosophy of Religion


{Under construction...sorry}

The  MAJOR pieces on Theodicy are in the Hall of Questions (Subject Area Index), under the categories of "Theological" and "Philosophical".


[This musing was more of an ethical statement, I suppose, than a philosophical one. Indeed, the general problem of evil can probably be constructed without the blame-shifting of the above. And even the portion of the problem that occurs in nature, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, can hardly be placed at our feet. But I think the point is still valid...we are often prone to make God 'closer' to the responsibility than WE are--at least the responsibility for the horrors that people have produced in history.]

Now the problem with this should be obvious. If we use evil (which is dependent on God for its existence, in this argument) to disprove God's existence, then we pull the rug out from under 'evil' at the same time. In other words (if we work within the notion of transcendentally-defined 'good') we cannot disprove God, without losing the reality of evil.

This is not a dualism type thing at all, though. The old "you can't have good without evil" is barely true conceptually, and certainly not true 'ontologically'.

And, to be very pragmatic about this, I would find it much more difficult to believe that genocide, child abuse, kidnapping, vandalism, crimes against the elderly, racial violence were NOT truly evil, than to believe that a God existed who might someday be able to explain it to me and/or 'fix it with justice and mercy'...

Needless to say, this is very simplified...The argument above is highly collapsed, and most of the theodicy work is done on the assumption. Most ethics work is done on the 2nd statement, largely centered around alternative ways to 'ground' values (I will discuss this later.)
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From: The Christian ThinkTank...[https://www.Christianthinktank.com] (Reference Abbreviations)