Ray,
My name is Bill, and I am a philosophy student at whittier college in california, and I stumbled across your site the other day and found it to be very interesting keep up the good work. Anyways... I was wondering how you deal with what philosophers call the problem of evil? If God is all knowing, all powerful, and all good, how can ther be evil in this world? If God knows of evil, which he does, because he is all knowing, and God hates evil, because he is all good, then why doesn't he destroy evil if he is all powerful? I personally beleive in the notion of free will, and have used that as a defense for the existance of God, by saying that the reason there is evil in the world, is because man freely chose evil, which is to go away from God's way. My beleif in free will is not based on scripture, but rather it is based on what I see in the world, and on the fact that I haven't been shown any scripture that directly says that there is no free will. Anyway s, what do you make of all this, what is the source of evil if not the free will of man?
Thanks,
Bill
Dear Bill:
It is amazing how we accept some laws of science and reject others. Maybe the formost edict in the universe is that for every effect there is a cause, and yet virtually no one believes it. Athiests reject it, and Christians abhor it. If your thoughts are "effects;" if your words are "effects:" if your actions are "effects," then WHAT IS THE CAUSE? Your 'FREE" will? How can thoughts, words, and actions be free if they are all CAUSED? There is no such thing as "free" will/choice/moral agency, etc., etc. It is both a physiological impossibility and a Scriptural heresy.
"For it is GOD [who? man? NO, GOD] which works in you BOTH TO WILL AND TO DO of His good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). See also Rom. 9:6. Since God knows the END from the beginning (Isa. 46:10) there is nothing in the universe "free" to take a difference action from that which God knows in advance it MUST TAKE. How do we think God is able to tell the end from the beginning except that He controls all. OF COURSE men do not "approve" of God knowing all. It robs him of his idol of the heart and his supposed phantom "free will." All men have a will and all men make choices--millions of them, but not one if "free" to not be made. Even a non-choice is a choice to not choose, and it too is a caused thing.
Ministers tell people to REPENT and to COME to Christ and to CHOOSE Him.........freely! What utter nonsense and unscriptural foolishness. "NO MAN CAN COME TO ME....." (John 6:44). You have NOT CHOSEN ME, BUT I HAVE CHOOSEN YOU..." (John 15:10). "Or DESPISE you the riches of His goodness and the forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that THE GOODNESS OF GOD leads you to repentance." Man has NO FAITH IN GOD on his own. It is a gift, and we are God's workmanship [Gk: 'achievement'], not our own by our own free will ability (Eph. 2:10-11). A sinner cannot choose to stop sinning INDEPENDENT OF GOD (Jer. 13:23). Etc., etc., etc.
God CREATED evil (Isa. 45:6) and God USES evil all day long. Evil has no moral bias. Evil means to crush to pieces irrespective of any emotion. Men, of course, SIN when they use evil against another. God never sins when He uses evil.
It is part of the very purpose of our existence to "experience evil." "...It is an EXPERIENCE OF EVIL Elohim [God] has given to the sons of humanity to humble them by it" (Ecc. 1:12). Name me one virtue that is not the direct result of overcoming some form of evil? Sorry, but I have hundreds of unanswered emails ahead of yours. Read the material on our site for the details. Read my four-part series "The Myth of Free Will Exposed" in Installment 15 of my "Lake of Fire" series near the top of our home page.
God be with you,
Ray