Post by Emperor AAdmin on May 25, 2008 14:17:52 GMT -5
Theodocy: Existence of Evil and God!!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy
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A) Here are some examples of Theodocy and feel free to comment on some of them and why you do (fully or partly) or do not disagree with them?
B) Do some examples bellow make reasoning in so called 'holly books' obsolete and why?
PS: I highlighted some points I considered rather interesting.
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Examples of theodicy
Resolutions to the problem of evil generally entail one of the following:
01) What people consider evil or suffering is an illusion or unimportant.
02) Events thought to be evil are not really so (such as deaths by natural disaster).
03) God's divine plan is good. What we see as evil is not really evil; rather, it is part of a divine design that is actually good. Our limitations prevent us from seeing the big picture.
04) A related posture holds that no theodicy is needed or even appropriate. God, if he exists, is so far superior to man, that he cannot be judged by man. Man's assumption that he can tell God what a benevolent and all-powerful god can or cannot do, is mere arrogance.
05) A perfect God is not only good but also evil, since perfection implies no lacking, including not lacking that which is evil. A lacking of evil would imply that there is something external to his all-encompassing perfection. This is related to monistic philosophies such as advaita, or pantheism.
06) Evil is the consequence of God giving people free will, or God may intend evil and suffering as a test for humanity. Without the possibility to choose to do good or evil acts humans would lack moral content.
07) Evil is the consequence, not cause, of people not observing God's revealed will. Universal reciprocated love would solve most of the problems that lead to the evils discussed here.
08) Evil is propagated by the Devil in opposition to God.
09) God's ultimate purpose is to glorify himself (which, by definition, he alone is infinitely entitled to, without vanity). He allows evil to exist so that humanity will appreciate goodness all the more, in the same way that the blind man healed by Jesus appreciated his sight more so than those around him who had never experienced blindness.
10) God created perfect angels and humans with free will. Some of them began to sin and lost their perfection, which resulted in evil doing and death. For a while God will allow this to continue, so that it can be shown that his creations can not be happy while independent from God. In due time God will restore the people who choose to depend on God to perfection and so bring an end to sin and with it an end to evil.
11) God is a righteous judge; people get what they deserve. If someone suffers or falls ill, that is because they committed a sin that merits such punishment. (This is also known as the just world hypothesis.)
12) Evil is one way that God tests humanity, to see if we are worthy of His grace.
13) Evil and pain exist in this world only. This world is only a prelude to the afterlife, where no pain will exist. The scales of justice are balanced in the afterlife.
14) The world is corrupt and of itself shouldn't have been created, but the work of Christ (or some savior figure) redeems the world and thus God's creation of it.
15) Absolute evil is not actually real. Rather, it is only the condition of lack of goodness. (See also mention of William Hatcher's explanation.)
16) Evil is relative to good; neither good nor evil could exist without both existing simultaneously.
17) Karma: Evil is caused by past bad deeds, either in one's current life or one's previous lives. It is only when this karmic chain of causation is broken that reincarnation ends. This explains why an infant may be born into misery, due to actions that may have been perpetrated in previous lives.
18) One of the conflicting assumptions is wrong: Drop either the assumption that God is omniscient, or omnipotent, or perfectly good. See the entry on the subject of God and omnipotence for more details on this point.
19) Religions such as Gnosticism and Manichaeism, and even some Christian groups, dispense with the issue by embracing various forms of dualism, in which God is opposed by an evil counterpart, and is therefore not omnipotent.
20) Dystheism is a theoretical position that claims that God simply is not entirely good himself. This resolves the problem of evil by acknowledging that an omnipotent all-benevolent God would not create a world in which there was evil, concluding that God, assuming he exists, is not all-benevolent.
21) Evolutionary theodicy, suggests that the plan that God has involves the elimination of all evil at the end of time, but that the means by which creation occurs always leads to the presence of evil in the interim. This theory is linked to the evolution of God himself as present in the cosmos.
22) Nontheists claim that statements about God are unimportant or meaningless. E.g., the book, "God is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchins.[citation needed]
23) Atheists resolve the apparent contradiction by rejecting the hypothesized existence of God (possibly for reasons other than the problem of evil). Some atheists think that the problem of evil can be used to prove that no gods exist by the method of reductio ad absurdum (proof by contradiction). This method does not prove the non-existence of all gods, rather it is an argument that if such a god exists then he is not both omnipotent and benevolent.
24) Agnostics believe that no answer to the question of religion will ever be found (or can not be discovered with the present level of human knowledge).
25) The contraction hypothesis holds that god has withdrawn himself so that creation could exist. That creation lacks full exposure to god's all good nature.
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Criticism
Candide, ou l'Optimisme (1759) is a French satire by the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, the title of which has been translated into English as Candide: Or, All for the Best (1759); Candide: Or, The Optimist (1762); and Candide: Or, Optimism (1947).[4] This novella tells the tale of a young man, Candide (meaning "ingenuous"[5]), who has been indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism but becomes disillusioned after witnessing and experiencing many great hardships.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide
Theodicy (IPA: /θiːˈɒdɪsi/) (adjectival form theodicean) is a specific branch of theology and philosophy that attempts to reconcile the existence of evil or suffering in the world with the belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent God, i.e., the problem of evil.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy
------------
A) Here are some examples of Theodocy and feel free to comment on some of them and why you do (fully or partly) or do not disagree with them?
B) Do some examples bellow make reasoning in so called 'holly books' obsolete and why?
PS: I highlighted some points I considered rather interesting.
-------------
Examples of theodicy
Resolutions to the problem of evil generally entail one of the following:
01) What people consider evil or suffering is an illusion or unimportant.
02) Events thought to be evil are not really so (such as deaths by natural disaster).
03) God's divine plan is good. What we see as evil is not really evil; rather, it is part of a divine design that is actually good. Our limitations prevent us from seeing the big picture.
04) A related posture holds that no theodicy is needed or even appropriate. God, if he exists, is so far superior to man, that he cannot be judged by man. Man's assumption that he can tell God what a benevolent and all-powerful god can or cannot do, is mere arrogance.
05) A perfect God is not only good but also evil, since perfection implies no lacking, including not lacking that which is evil. A lacking of evil would imply that there is something external to his all-encompassing perfection. This is related to monistic philosophies such as advaita, or pantheism.
06) Evil is the consequence of God giving people free will, or God may intend evil and suffering as a test for humanity. Without the possibility to choose to do good or evil acts humans would lack moral content.
07) Evil is the consequence, not cause, of people not observing God's revealed will. Universal reciprocated love would solve most of the problems that lead to the evils discussed here.
08) Evil is propagated by the Devil in opposition to God.
09) God's ultimate purpose is to glorify himself (which, by definition, he alone is infinitely entitled to, without vanity). He allows evil to exist so that humanity will appreciate goodness all the more, in the same way that the blind man healed by Jesus appreciated his sight more so than those around him who had never experienced blindness.
10) God created perfect angels and humans with free will. Some of them began to sin and lost their perfection, which resulted in evil doing and death. For a while God will allow this to continue, so that it can be shown that his creations can not be happy while independent from God. In due time God will restore the people who choose to depend on God to perfection and so bring an end to sin and with it an end to evil.
11) God is a righteous judge; people get what they deserve. If someone suffers or falls ill, that is because they committed a sin that merits such punishment. (This is also known as the just world hypothesis.)
12) Evil is one way that God tests humanity, to see if we are worthy of His grace.
13) Evil and pain exist in this world only. This world is only a prelude to the afterlife, where no pain will exist. The scales of justice are balanced in the afterlife.
14) The world is corrupt and of itself shouldn't have been created, but the work of Christ (or some savior figure) redeems the world and thus God's creation of it.
15) Absolute evil is not actually real. Rather, it is only the condition of lack of goodness. (See also mention of William Hatcher's explanation.)
16) Evil is relative to good; neither good nor evil could exist without both existing simultaneously.
17) Karma: Evil is caused by past bad deeds, either in one's current life or one's previous lives. It is only when this karmic chain of causation is broken that reincarnation ends. This explains why an infant may be born into misery, due to actions that may have been perpetrated in previous lives.
18) One of the conflicting assumptions is wrong: Drop either the assumption that God is omniscient, or omnipotent, or perfectly good. See the entry on the subject of God and omnipotence for more details on this point.
19) Religions such as Gnosticism and Manichaeism, and even some Christian groups, dispense with the issue by embracing various forms of dualism, in which God is opposed by an evil counterpart, and is therefore not omnipotent.
20) Dystheism is a theoretical position that claims that God simply is not entirely good himself. This resolves the problem of evil by acknowledging that an omnipotent all-benevolent God would not create a world in which there was evil, concluding that God, assuming he exists, is not all-benevolent.
21) Evolutionary theodicy, suggests that the plan that God has involves the elimination of all evil at the end of time, but that the means by which creation occurs always leads to the presence of evil in the interim. This theory is linked to the evolution of God himself as present in the cosmos.
22) Nontheists claim that statements about God are unimportant or meaningless. E.g., the book, "God is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchins.[citation needed]
23) Atheists resolve the apparent contradiction by rejecting the hypothesized existence of God (possibly for reasons other than the problem of evil). Some atheists think that the problem of evil can be used to prove that no gods exist by the method of reductio ad absurdum (proof by contradiction). This method does not prove the non-existence of all gods, rather it is an argument that if such a god exists then he is not both omnipotent and benevolent.
24) Agnostics believe that no answer to the question of religion will ever be found (or can not be discovered with the present level of human knowledge).
25) The contraction hypothesis holds that god has withdrawn himself so that creation could exist. That creation lacks full exposure to god's all good nature.
_________________________
_________________________
Criticism
Candide, ou l'Optimisme (1759) is a French satire by the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, the title of which has been translated into English as Candide: Or, All for the Best (1759); Candide: Or, The Optimist (1762); and Candide: Or, Optimism (1947).[4] This novella tells the tale of a young man, Candide (meaning "ingenuous"[5]), who has been indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism but becomes disillusioned after witnessing and experiencing many great hardships.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide