Re: GOD:True or false
The traditional Christian belief falls under the definition of theism, specifically monotheism. This religion believes that God created the universe. Rowe rationalized the idea that God is a self-existent being. He says that the existence of everything is either dependant upon another being or is self-existing. Since everything can not be dependant upon another being, there must be at least one self-existent being. The traditional Christian God must be a self-existent being (Rowe 25). Since God created everything, then God must be omnipotent. God would have to have the ability to harness all the power of the universe in order to create it, therefore, God is all-powerful since God controls all the power in the universe. God must also be omniscient because God created the universe and all its laws, thus he should know how everything works and will come to be. A self-existent being should know what it creates, how it is created, and what the creation will become. God must also be omnipresent since God is part of the universe he created. God should be everywhere in the universe.
The traditional Christian God is said to be all-good. According to Christian myth, God gave Moses a set of moral rules, the Ten Commandments. These Ten Commandments were to be the supreme rules for humans to follow. These rules distinguish between right and wrong. The belief in the traditional Christian God is an ethical monotheistic belief. Since God said what was right and what was wrong and God supported right actions, then God must be good. Someone who believes in the traditional Christian God would believe that God was omni-benevolent.
According to B. C. Johnson, the theory of the traditional Christian God fails because he allows evil. Johnson says that God can not be all-good if he allows some evil to exist. If God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent, then why would he allow an innocent baby to burn in a fire? The fact that the baby will go to heaven is irrelevant. Even if the baby's death produced a significantly good outcome, an all-good God would not allow the smallest amount of evil to exist. Thus, if God is all-good then he is obviously not all-powerful since he allowed this evil to occur. Basically, Johnson states that the traditional Christian God can not exist because there is preventable evil in the world and he does not stop that evil (Johnson 85).
Johnson appeals to critics saying that even if it is someone’s free will to burn a baby, God still did not stop the evil act. The argument that we have to face disasters to become independent fails because we would have to face all disasters on our own, not just some. Johnson sarcastically suggests getting rid of fire departments and medical facilities since they exist to aid those in need. Johnson goes as far as to say that the idea of maximizing moral urgency from any evil is wrong and is not a reasonable argument for why God allows evil (Johnson 86). It is not an argument of why God allows evil to exists, rather it is an argument of why God allows more evil to exists than is necessary. According to Johnson, only a small amount of evil is needed for people to know what is good. Even a claim to God’s “higher morality” is stomped because if God has a different morality than us then we have no way of justifying his actions, anymore so than a child judging the actions of a parent (Johnson 87).
Johnson attacks faith by saying that to have faith in someone is like having confidence in a friend. There is no way to prove that your friend is good if all the evidence says your friend is not. Sure you may know your friend and his character as a good person, but if your friend’s behavior does not follow a good path for some time, your opinion of your friend’s goodness will change. Johnson makes a good point when he claims that by saying you have trust in God, you are only showing your stubbornness (Johnson 88).
In the closing of his argument, Johnson says that the moral character of God can be: “(a) that God is more likely to be all evil than he is to be all good; (b) that God is less likely to be all evil than he is to be all good; or (c) that God is equally to be all evil as he is to be all good (Johnson 88-89).” He says that it is unlikely that God is all good in cases (a) and (c). Case (b) fails as well. Johnson therefore concludes that it is unlikely that God is all good (Johnson 89).
If the traditional Christian God exists, then the traditional Christian God is the creator of the universe. The traditional Christian God is also all-good, meaning God would not allow evil in the world if it could not prevented. Since God is omniscient, God would know of evil that could be stopped. And since God is omnipotent, God can stop anything from happening, especially evil, thus evil can be prevented. There must not be preventable evil in the world since God does not stop evil acts; however, it is apparent that all evil can be prevented since God is all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing. God has the ability to know there is evil, he has the ability to stop evil, and he is obliged to stop evil since he is all good, but God does not stop evil (Johnson 85). Therefore, the traditional Christian God does not exist since there can not be both preventable evil and nonpreventable evil (Johnson 89).
Johnson uses the idea that God is evil to promote that God does not exist. Most of the essay focuses on why he believes God to be evil. The argument just seems to want to make people angry at God rather than to convince them that there is no God.
Johnson says that the argument of “one would not know good if there was no evil” fails because evil as small as a toothache would provide enough moral urgency to know good. Johnson's argument fails because to know good, one would have to know what was equally bad. A minor toothache does not cause a person to do only good any more does a spanking causes a child to stop all bad behavior for the rest of his life. Even though Johnson makes considerations for some evil to exist to maximize moral urgency, he contradicts himself by saying only as much evil as a toothache is needed. His toothache example may be sarcasm but it undermines his argument that there is a need for some evil to maximize moral urgency.
According to the creation myth of Christianity, God gave humans the chance of eternal bliss in ignorance or freewill with knowledge. Humans chose freewill, allowing humans to make their own decisions which decide their own future. Since humans to make their own decisions, they determine their own future. Humans are free to make whatever choices they want. If God stood by and forced humans to do only good, then there would be no freewill. Since God obviously does not do that, this allows for bad things to happen. There is no proof that God strikes anyone down for choosing evil over good, but God does not stop. If God stopped it, it would not be freewill.
If God were to stop all evil, then there would be no such thing as freewill. Sure, freewill can exist as decisions between good things, but how would one know which decision was the correct decision if there were no bad attributes to either decision? It would be pointless to make any decision at all if they would all be good. Even if there were some decisions that were more good than others, it would not be freewill. Freewill is the right to chose one’s own destiny from any number of possibilities, not just good ones.
It can also be argued that God allows natural evils that allow freewill to exist. Richard Swinburne says that by allowing someone to have a disease, someone such as a doctor makes a choice of whether to quarantine that patient or to let others catch the disease. The moral decision is up to the doctor because he holds the knowledge of this disease. If not for the diagnosis of the disease, the patient could die or risk infecting others; however, it is not the doctor's fault if the person does not seek medical advice. The diseased person can go all through life carrying this disease, but if he does not seek someone with higher authority or expertise on the disease, then it was the person's decision to spread the disease. Freewill is used to make our decisions about evil. In this case, freewill laid in the hands of a diseased person, and by choosing not to seek out a higher authority, he chose to infect others. The disease is how evil develops and spreads, the choice of an individual. People thus learn how to do good and bad from those who have higher authority and knowledge on topics they do not know. Just like a disease, evil can be spread if one does not submit to the higher authority of God. Thus, the only person to blame for evil is one's own self (Swinburne 95).
According to traditional belief, God only handed out the handbook of how to live a good life. It is up to one’s own judgment to live that life or not. God is considered all good because he laid out the framework for what is good and what is evil. Humans made the choice to learn evil and their free will is what keeps evil existing in the world.
The choice is an individual choice. In order to change the existence of evil, each individual would have to have the same framework for what is good and evil. Since different societies have different religions and beliefs there are no set rules to what is morally right or wrong.
All this being said, Johnson’s argument fails because it neglects the fact that in order to have freewill, there must be a variety of choices, including evil choices. Johnson's argument also fails by stating that only a small amount of evil, no larger than a toothache, is needed to ensure moral urgency. Seemingly unnecessary evil, such as a baby burning to death in a fire, causes people to consider their actions more carefully, as well as make better choices, in accordance with the belief system that their particular ethical monotheistic religion dictates.
WORKS CITED
Johnson, B. C. “God and the Problem of Evil.” Reason and Responsibility. Ed. Joel Feinberg et al. 12th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2005.
Rowe, William L. “The Cosmological Argument.” Reason and Responsibility. Ed. Joel Feinberg et al. 12th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2005.
Swinburne, Richard. “Why God Allows Evil.” Reason and Responsibility. Ed. Joel Feinberg et al. 12th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2005.
