God Created Evil -- The Irreparable Flaw in Christian Thought
Believers and non-believers lock horns on these HubPages on every topic imaginable. Most discussions end up in stalemates, often because Believers--necessarily, I might add--end up asserting their faith, expressing deep concern for the immortal souls of non-believers (who have no faith), and accusing them of worshiping Ego, a manifestation of Pride, the sin of sins, and a fast track to a very hot future indeed. The non-believers argue that the Believers are motivated by fear and a desperate need to belong and their insistence on an afterlife springs from a fear of death, and nothing else.
Of course the arguments are much more complex than the sketch above, but the sketch does outline the usual parameters, and it also shows why these discussions are almost invariably on a merry-go-round that never stops. You canNOT have any kind of successful argument where neither party acknowledges nor respects the fundamental premise of the other. "Apples taste better than oranges" can go nowhere, because the argument is based on personal whim alone. A pound of feathers weighs less than a pound of lead can go somewhere, because the argument is based on a common denominator.
The purpose of this very short Hub and its very scary picture is to stimulate debate around two propositions that lie at the core of virtually all significant theological debate from the beginnings of Christianity. Here they are:
1. God is Love--infinite and omnipresent. By definition, God is all-good, all-knowing and incapable of error.
2. Evil exists in the world. God is all-knowing. God created all things. God created Evil
From Augustine forward, through a dense mob of theologians, philosophers, thinkers, social analysts, poets, and novelists, for hundreds of years we have wrestled with the problem of Evil, trying desperately--as Milton put it in "Paradise Lost"--to "Justify the ways of God to men.". Believers can't wriggle out of this conundrum by saying it's all part of divine mystery, and some things we just aren't meant to understand; nor will it wash to say that Satan and Eve/Adam committed Evil through free will, so somehow WE (and the fallen Archangel) are responsible for the existence of Evil.. To believe that is to believe that God is LIMITED (contradiction in terms), in that he was unaware of Evil and the outcome of Evil acts, until WE committed them. That argument is specious and not worthy of mention.
So this Hub opens for discussion THIS QUESTION: how can we account for the fact that a God who created all things, who is all-Love and all-knowing, must have created Evil, which is an integral part of this universe.
