Doctrine that evil is not real makes God responsible for evil and not us
FIRSTLY...
Free will is the power to intentionally do good or evil. To do neither is to do
both. So its intending both good and evil then.
The Church says that God is wholly good and made all things from nothing.
There is a lot of evil and suffering.
The Church says we are responsible for that because God gave us freedom and we
misused it. The Church says that evil and suffering are not powers but are
merely good things in the wrong place. They are the abuse of good. Evil is the
absence of good. Deliberate evil is called sin - sin means doing what is against
the commands of God that we are to be good.
The question we are asking is, does having the power to do good or evil fit the
doctrine that evil is not real though it feels real?
THE "EVIL IS MISPLACED GOOD" DOCTRINE V FREE WILL
What if we blame free will for evil and then say that evil is not real but is
just distorted good? If God's record is pure because evil is a good that fails
to be good enough then what do you need to blame free will for evil for? You
don't.
If evil is just the absence of good then when we intend evil the will is not
evil but is just falling short of good. In other words, we are trying to be good
but doing it wrong. In other words, we do evil for the good results it may have
and don't do evil for its own sake. This is another perspective that shows that
talk about sin and having the power to choose good or evil makes no sense. It
shows that only the results of an action can be judged but not the action
itself. One may as well scrap belief in free will altogether.
Suppose that evil is good in the wrong place and that it may have good
consequences. Then knowing it is good in the wrong place is not going to comfort
us or help us. In fact it will make us feel we are freaks for when we are very
hurt we cannot look at evil as merely an absence of good. We cannot be grateful
that it is good in its way. Our alleged free will is supposed to be the power to
choose good or evil. But we cannot genuinely have free will when the thought
that evil is mere incorrect good is so alien to us. It is not natural for us.
Even if you make a being that can do evil for its own sake and who sees it as a
real thing and not just as a negation of good, several fatal problems emerge.
The evil use of the being’s will is still good because it cannot do better and
is doing its best. It wants to be good at evil for example. So no matter what
you make you cannot get away from the fact that we can only intend good even
when we do evil and the evil intention intends the good results of evil not the
evil itself. If the being could choose to stop seeing evil as good and start
seeing evil as evil and doing evil for evil’s own sake then the being would have
to be able to become insane for doing evil because it is evil would be more
insane than anyone could imagine so it makes free will far more impossible than
the view that the evil we do is mistaken for good does. If we only mean to be
good there is no point in God letting us do evil. He would not be manipulating
us if he made us do only good out of our own nature.
Suppose the evil is good in the wrong place and that it may have good
consequences. What matters first of all to the believer in God?
Our tendency to think we have free will is seized upon by the Church to make us
think it serves a good God. It blames us for evil and exonerates him. Blaming is
vindictive because it implies we need to be punished at least by disapproval and
by being made to feel guilty as long as we are not sorry. To say we are
responsible for sin has the following problem. Declaring a person responsible
without blaming is about telling a person that they can change what is making
them feel bad so it is all about making them feel better without any concern for
God or morality or sin. Declaring that is not a problem for the atheist! To say
we are responsible for evil is ignoring the element of sin. For a believer in
God, sin is the main thing. It cannot be ignored or its seriousness downplayed
and it is unfair to if there is a God. Thus the defence of God is only cosmetic -
it increases the evil. It creates a culture of blame and resentment and fear.
It is evil to blame us for the sake of a God that may not exist. You would not
consider a person to be good if they said you were to blame for your teeth being
rotten as to say you got some disease or whatever would be to accuse the tooth
fairy of negligence or cruelty.
The notion that evil is not real but is merely good that is not good enough
leads to some interesting things. What if a person is a cynical malicious
gossip? His friends may say, "You tell it as you see it!" That is saying, "You
are to be praised for being a gossip." It does not make their condemnations of
cynicism and gossip sincere. If you love the person you will be forced to praise
what good they do even if it is the good of evil. That you condemn proves that
you do not. To view a person as dangerous and harmful makes you hate and that is
what hate is all about.
To say God should allow evil to happen for it is just good falling short of
better good and has no real existence solves nothing because somebody had to
make the power for created things to fall short. Even free will cannot cause the
falling short unless God creates forces within the person that fall short of
real good that free will can draw upon to do evil. We never do anything without
a reason and without feeling which proves that if free will goes astray it was
impulses that went astray that led to this. If God is right to do such evil and
make evil for evil is just non-good and not a real thing as the argument says
then how can doing evil be evil if God is all-good?
Free will is not about total love for God
though Jesus commanded us to love God totally and to be ready to die
for him. We are to love God in our neighbour so you are not to
love yourself or another for any other reason than God. It is
not about you or them. A command that demands what you cannot
do is not a command but an abuse. Free will even if real is
not really about letting God be God. If evil is just happening
because we won't aim properly when we would be better off aiming
correctly then we would expect better of people. Nobody can
really be expected to love God properly. That is different and
shows there is something wrong with the idea of God. If evil
being a negation is a valid concept and worthy of respect it does
not fit God as being the one to whom we owe all for all came from
him as a gift in the first place.
Conclusion
The notion that evil is not a power but really an assessment of an action or
event contradicts the free will defence. It does not let God off the hook for
having the power to stop evil and not using it. At least it gets us off the
hook!
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THE WEB
www.colorado.edu/philosophy/wes/Tooley2.html
THE ARGUMENT FROM EVIL AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD by Michael Tooley.
http://www.nd.edu/~rpotter/courses/finitism.htm
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THE FREE WILL ARGUMENT FOR THE NON-EXISTENCE OF GOD by Dan Barker