THE DUBIOUS THEOLOGY BASED ON HOW GOOD FALLS SHORT OF EVIL!

 

Even those who think evil is as real and tangible as we see in horror movies, also somehow think of it as falling short of good.

 

Religion manipulates that perception to get you to think that only good is really true and real and evil is just a distortion.  It is a bend in the iron bar that should be straight. It is not there in a sense.

 

Even if it were right, the fact that you accept something as true and are right to does not suggest that you didn't have to be programmed and taken advantage of to see it.

Religion insists that an all-powerful God of love exists. It says he has not made evil for evil is merely a falling short of good. It is good in the wrong place so it is not real in a sense. A good God cannot make evil if evil is a power or energy.
 
Suppose it makes sense to ask the question of whether evil is a mere falling short of good. Can we also ask if good a mere falling short of evil?
 
If evil is a power and as real as a mousetrap, then good could be a power that is parasitic on it.
 
If evil is a bad principle what then? It is not real in the way that 1 and 1 is unreal.
 
Cold is the natural state. Heat is parasitic on cold. It reverses cold. Cold fights heat and heat fights cold. Is cold the mere absence of heat? That makes no sense. Cold corresponds to evil in the sense that heat has to counteract cold to allow life to take place. When the right amount of heat exists we have life. Heat corresponds to good. Evil is the natural state not good. Therefore good is falling short of evil.
 
If nothing at all existed there would be no good or bad. If something exists, then it seems that is good. But if it does not exist then it cannot be said to be a falling short of good for if there is nothing at all there is no good or bad.
 
The Christians when they say that evil is the absence of good actually mean that evil is the lack of God's presence and activity. They identify good and God. This makes no sense. If God is good then goodness is not God because if I am good I mean I do good not that I am goodness itself. I am not goodness itself because goodness will go on without me. It would still be goodness even if I never existed. In reality the worship of God is not the worship of goodness but the worship of a person. Thus it does not matter to the believer if God is good or not. If you worship God because he does good things then it is really the good things you worship. So it follows that God or belief in him is not important. Augustine evilly devised the theodicy that God is not to blame for evil for evil is merely misplaced good and God is good as a form of worship and as a justification for worship. The goal of the theodicy was to glorify God. But it fails because goodness is a default - it does not need anybody not even God to recognise it. It will make demands on us whether there is a God or not. Even if there was nothing at all, no God, no babies, nothing, it would remain true in principle that murdering babies for fun is wrong. There can be no stronger endorsement of good. Anything else is too weak even if it seems to work.
 
So if you say there is a God, you say that he is goodness itself which makes no sense and shows you do not really have a clear idea of what good is. You would be condemned to be evil or amoral should you misunderstand. You are really turning good into a kind of evil that is defined as falling short of even worse evil.
 
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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
 
FINITISM AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL, R Dennis Potter,
 
www.ffrf.org/fttoday/august97/barker.html
 
THE FREE WILL ARGUMENT FOR THE NON-EXISTENCE OF GOD by Dan Barker