“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
The most serious argument against this, generally speaking, is the "free will" excuse. God wants us to have free will, and so cannot intervene when evil happens. There are two very serious problems with this apology, which need to be explored.
The first, which is really very easy, is that free will has nothing whatever to do with natural calamity. An undersea earthquake raises a tsunami that kills a quarter million innocent people, including infants, children, nuns and murderers alike. Unless we are going to assign "free will" to the earth (and call her Gaia), this is simply not applicable.
But let's look at it from the perspective of a person doing evil, from free will. To do that, let us, just for a moment, take this argument down from its lofty heights to a merely human level -- meaning, let's leave God out of it.
Here's the scenario: there are a young woman, a young man with a knife, and police officer (armed) at night on a dark section of the street. In plain view of the officer, the young man runs towards the woman (this takes several seconds) brandishing his knife, and when he gets to her, stabs her multiple times until she falls to the ground and bleeds to death. The officer, throughout this event, does nothing. Perhaps he's religious and thinks, "who am I to interfere with his free will?"
So let's reframe old Epicurus' argument to fit this situation:
“Is the officer willing to prevent this murder, but not able? Then he is not competent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is a bad officer.
Is he both able and willing? Then how could the stabbing have taken place?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him a police officer?”
(Okay, that last clause works better for God, but never mind.) Anyway, let's look closely at the "free will" argument in this case. If the officer had got out his taser, dropped the guy on the spot, then knelt on him holding him down while calling for backup -- has the assassin been stripped of his free will? Not at all. He may yet be struggling mightily in his hot desire to kill an innocent person. His will remains what it was, he has just been prevented from exercising his will to the detriment of another person.
Please discuss.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
― Epicurus
The most serious argument against this, generally speaking, is the "free will" excuse. God wants us to have free will, and so cannot intervene when evil happens. There are two very serious problems with this apology, which need to be explored.
The first, which is really very easy, is that free will has nothing whatever to do with natural calamity. An undersea earthquake raises a tsunami that kills a quarter million innocent people, including infants, children, nuns and murderers alike. Unless we are going to assign "free will" to the earth (and call her Gaia), this is simply not applicable.
But let's look at it from the perspective of a person doing evil, from free will. To do that, let us, just for a moment, take this argument down from its lofty heights to a merely human level -- meaning, let's leave God out of it.
Here's the scenario: there are a young woman, a young man with a knife, and police officer (armed) at night on a dark section of the street. In plain view of the officer, the young man runs towards the woman (this takes several seconds) brandishing his knife, and when he gets to her, stabs her multiple times until she falls to the ground and bleeds to death. The officer, throughout this event, does nothing. Perhaps he's religious and thinks, "who am I to interfere with his free will?"
So let's reframe old Epicurus' argument to fit this situation:
“Is the officer willing to prevent this murder, but not able? Then he is not competent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is a bad officer.
Is he both able and willing? Then how could the stabbing have taken place?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him a police officer?”
― Evangelicalhumanist (with apologies to Epicurus)
Please discuss.
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