The Night of a Birthday

To conclude this night, and to put a close to this event, I have one thing to add concerning the great debate between quality and quantity. One may concede that quality has taken the day when we see the vast superficiality of our acts and the momentary delights fall to the wayside. However, another may be taken by force when no feint number has lifted a heavy burden and supplied a vast chimera who comes to brilliant end. But to both I must concede they are wrong.

By God's mercies one may have both quantity and quality. To those who came, I thank you for a lively night full of enjoyable games, embarrassing moments, and comedic injuries. The memories will haunt your paths and provide too many antagonistic comments to keep your lives peaceful. To those who could not attend, I thank you for being by my side for another year and for providing moments to stunt my pride, boost my humility, and grant the gift of a good conversation. And yet, to a few I know that time and distance has kept our conversations short and far between, you have continued to be in my thoughts, prayers, and conversations. I hope and pray that another year will bring greater understanding and greater insight that God provides both quality and quantity, and that one must simply look around to see His blessings.

The Problem of Evil: A Facebook Response

Hello Nealroed (name altered for privacy). I'm not sure how this picture responds to the previous points that I brought up, so I'll count them dropped and "crack on."

There are several things wrong with this picture, and I'll point them out one by one.

First, the conclusion of this image is "Then why is there evil?" This conclusion misrepresents the scope and depth of the problem of evil's proposed claims. The Problem of Evil isn't attempting to ask the Christian "Why is there evil?" it is attempting to draw a logical contradiction between the notion of a OOO God and Evil co-existing. If it were trying to ask, "Then why is there evil?" any answer that has enough explanatory power and explanatory scope would suffice the problem. So, my first point is that this image misrepresents the conclusion found in the Problem of Evil (the version we are speaking of. Granted there are different one depending on the scope, depth, and condition. Our argument concerns the category we call evil.) by exchanging the argument from a logical contradiction with a question concerning the fact.

Second, this image ignores the implications of God's Omni-attributes. I'll begin by listing each attribute, detail the improper implication that the image draws, and then argue why the correct view of that concerned attribute holds and disproves the contradiction.

- God is All Powerful or Omnipotent. The image asks a simple question," Can God stop Evil?" However, this simple question has a hidden facet - namely, the exclusion of 'all'. The question isn't about, "Can God stop some evil," or "Can God stop a evil," or "Can God stop evil once it has begun to act," but really asks, "Can God stop 'all' Evil 'from existing'?" This latter form of the question misses two important qualifications for omnipotence: logical implications and qualifications of other attributes. Here, I'll explain the logical implications, afterwards, I'll explain, along with the other attributes, the collective qualification of the attributes.

As I have argued in prior posts, omnipotence means that God is all-powerful but doesn't necessarily mean that God can to anything and everything. This is because there exists linguistic and logical paradoxes that cannot make sense (notice I don't say, "wouldn't" because can implies ability rather than preference.). Thus, it wouldn't follow that if God is Omnipotent then God could create a square-circle (Unless it's the Triangle Square in Southern California ^_^). So the point here is that omnipotence is qualified by logic. In a little bit, I'll come back and argue how it is qualified by other attributes.

- God is All Knowing or Omniscience. The image asks a straightforward question that has a very straightforward answer. Does God know about evil? Yes. However, this image errs in the aspect of how God's knowledge is understood to be applied. Most often people assume that what God knows is what God does and what God does is what he knows. This image seems to advocate this position because of how it connects this idea of a "test" to the question "why is there evil?" There are several responses to this and I'll delineate them below:

First, this is false because if God knows what he does and does what he knows, then Omniscience is simply a reformation of Omnipotence. But this cannot be the case because it is fairly reasonable to assume that the power to execute an action is not a prerequisite to any knowledge concerning that act. For example, it would be perfectly reasonable to say that I have an epistemological justification that if I throw a baseball at you that you will catch it. However, it seems irrational to respond, after you caught the ball, "You don't have any justification for your belief because you didn't make it happen."

Second, we must understand the knowledge of God in reference to space and time. Now this image is odd because it poses an argument that most people wouldn't even think about arguing because it is so abstract (I applaud the image). What the image is stating is that God knows not only the actualities but also the potentialities of all acts. And if God knows the potentiality of all acts then they would count for the actuality of those acts. Now the problem with what the image states is two part, the first part is what will be addressed here - the problem of an actual act by looking at the nature of God's knowledge in connection with an act - and the second - evil being a test - which will be addressed next.

When we speak about what God knows, in reference to space and time, we are saying that what God knows is what we have freely chosen and that God knows this because he is outside time. So, to exemplify what I mean, the question may be asked, "If God knows that I will steal something tomorrow, then do I really have a choice that I will steal something tomorrow?" The answer is yes because God is outside time. We can further ask, "If, hypothetically, I would not have stolen anything tomorrow would God know it?" The answer is yes, because God is outside time. This notion, without getting too complicated, is derived from the notion that if God is outside of time, he is not bound by the limited scope that time offers to us. We could some this point in one sentence, "What God knows will happen has happened."

Third, the argument that evil is a test fails to understand the nature of evil and free-will. Now, this isn't necessarily a problem with omniscience, but since the connection was made in the image I'll respond to it here. Evil is a moral judgment concerning an act. But the question that necessarily follows is, "Which acts are moral and which acts are not?" And this is where we find the logical necessity for free-will and the principle that "ought implies can."

For a moral universe to exist, the individual must not only be responsible for their own actions but also be capable of acting out those acts. We can find this to be true by rationalizing the concepts of a act that one is not responsible for (how could we say that since Bob stole a car, that Jim did an evil act) or rationalizing the concept of an act being driven, necessarily, by a prior cause (If Bob pushed Jim into the street, then Jim is responsible for committing suicide). So I think it is mistaken to say that evil is simply a "test". More properly, evil is a by-product, necessarily, of a moral universe which necessitates free-will.

- God is All Loving or Omnibenevolent. This attribute ought to be more simple to capture because being all-loving is a common human strife. However, taken in a vacuum, this isn't a Christian concept at all. The image argues that an all-loving God will do anything to demonstrate his love. But this isn't the case. God isn't simply all-loving, but also just.

This is where Islam and Christianity drastically diverge, among other things. The islamic god, Allah, is either just or loving; But when he is just he is unloving and when he is loving he is unjust. Contrarily, the Christian God suffices both love and justice in the substitutionary sacrifice of the cross. This is what makes Christianity insanely unique - that while God is all-loving, evil must be severely punished. And that is what we find in the concept of the cross: an act of severe love but also an act of severe punishment. So you cannot take omnibenevolence outside the context of God's justice.

Third, in wrapping all these attributes together, we are left with one final question, "Could God have created a universe without free-will?" I would say it depends on what you mean. If you mean to say, "Could God create a universe without free-will but contain moral properties?" I would say no. But if you meant, "Could God simply have created an amoral universe without free-will?" I don't see why not.

In concluding this response, I would like to say one more thing. The Problem of Evil seems to be a problem derived from either a misrepresentation of the omni-attributes and the concept of good and evil or it is derived from the seemingly unfair idea that human do bad things. However, as the above testifies, I do not believe that either give us a good reason to deny that the OOO God exists, let alone attempt to call it a logical contradiction.