certainly you may- if I knew what a ~good action was, or what "~" meant here... sorry, don't know everything, you know (here that, rlumley? I DON'T!) ;)

And nice THHGTTG reference... ahould I worry what I should get if I multiply six by nine next? ;)

I'm not religious, but for the sake of the argument, riddle me this:

I am God

I have no concept of good and evil - this is something you came up with. I work with right and wrong - something one can measure. Then again, your Earthly lives are just a fraction of a my second - so your perspective on time and the causal effect is quite limited. No wonder it took you thousands of years to understand it might not be the best idea to slap your kid or hold him off every time he is about to fall. Welcome to the concepts of time and learning.

I gave you free will, isn't this what you wanted? It implies the freedom to be a mortal moron. If I wanted a creature that would make no mistakes, always listen to me, and be virtually indestructible... well, I'd just get another angel, or a dog. Don't ask me why I made you like that - I do remember giving you a brain also. With great power comes great responsibility :), time to figure it out my son.

I have a gazillion of 'children'. All living creatures are my children, and there's even more in the next life, you know. Oh, you don't know.... well, believe me, there are. When you grow up and are ready I'll take you there. What happens before that is just your childhood, so yeah, there'll be some falling - that's how you grow up.

What you refer to as suffering caused by some evil is actually nothing more than the result of what you and my other children are doing.

Yeah, the bible is not 100% accurate, but it's the best you've got. Try asking a 6-year-old to explain your world view to a 4-year old and you'll know what I mean. Just as any first-grader you'll have to simply memorize some basics at the beginning. Btw, if you had followed the dietary instructions you wouldn't have gotten so fat.

P.S. It's not my fault you decided to dogmatize everything and forget the basic nature of creation and life - it's based on movement and change. So, please, don't ask me about good and evil or why I made you like that - I do remember giving you a brain also. With great power comes great responsibility :)

Sorry for copy-pasting the same sentence twice :) - I'm also a mortal moron :)

Hmmm... interesting and definitely entertaining...

And I like a lot of that, especially the idea WE came up with Good and Evil, and not a god- I agree with that idea (and that's actually what my oft-quoted hero, Mr. Nietzsche, said... hence BEYOND Good and Evil was his mantra, get BEYOND what you yourself created for yourself, get over it and get on with life already...)

But your statement that right and wrong can be measured, as if it is completely clear cut- that I have an issue with, as right and wrong would seem to fall prey to the same interpretation issues as good and evil, that it, too, is a constuct, something we made up.

Seems ratehr arbitrary that good and evil are constructs and not right and wrong, unless you are suggesting that there IS an absolute, objective morality, in which case...

We're back to square one in asking what right and wrong is, and how a God could feel that way, for if its absoulte and objective, it must, then, come from an absolute and objective source, ie God...?

@largeham
Yes, an omnipotent God could allow humans to learn gratitude, not take things for granted, take care of things, etc, without experiencing 'evil' in the first place. He could create these humans that have perfect understanding from the moment they are born, live for a second, then die and go to heaven. However, God and myself seem to be in agreement that there is very little point in this.

...We should also acknowledge the possibility that we do indeed live in a world without evil that was created a few moments ago from scratch by God, who has decided that only a belief that evil can happen is important.

Yes, I would assume that God, having power over time, has the capacity to actually 'see' what is right and wrong. It's a matter of short-term v.s long-term (infinite in this case).

We just operate within a limit and can't see it.

Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents didn't let you take ice-cream to the movies and you felt like it's the end of the world and wondered how can they be so bad (evil)...

Good and evil is nothing more than a stereotype we've come up with to make decision-making easier. Clearly, the only result of such a stereotype, given enough time and pressure, is to breed mass stupidity and create tons of exception errors.

Right and wrong on the other side are measurable given unlimited time and allow for an improvement through learning, creativity and innovation... which leads us back to the 'I gave you a brain' argument :)

In logic problems ~ means not. In this context I was thinking if scenario like walking past a beggar; a good action would be to give him some money, a not good action is to walk past whereas an evil action is to kick him in the balls.

@diplomat
I disagree with that quite strongly. The opposite of good is most certainly evil. Not good and not evil is, from my view at least, the hideous emtpy nothing option which scares me far more than evil.

In terms of what makes an action evil, is it the action itself or the intent behind the action? If I was to give money to a begger under the naive assumption he would by food and try to improve his lot I would say it was a good, if slightly stupid, action. If I gave money to a begger in the hope he would buy drugs and remove himself from society via an overdose I'd describe it as evil.

That was essentially my point by quoting Rand. Good and evil have no meaning outside of the context of a living thing, which faces the constant alternative of life or death. Matter is indestructible. It changes forms but it is always conserved. Because of this, "good" and "evil" hold no meaning to a inanimate object.

Good things contribute to my life, evil things detract from it. It is that simple.

@ diplomat: You're just wrong. (To be blunt). In most contexts (I can't speak intelligently on logic problems) "~" means "approximately", not "not". And I furthermore disagree that it would be both good to give him money and not good to not give him money.

@Octavious. Well, I disagree with you quite strongly. Try it this way: the opposite of good is bad; the opposite of evil is kindness. Evil and kindness have intent, good & bad do not. Giving a beggar money with the hope that he buys drugs is evil. A flood is a bad thing but not evil (unless deliberately caused).

@rlumley: if you know that you can't speak intelligently on something why tell someone they are wrong? Check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_logic_symbols about half way down. Also, check here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximation and you will see that proper symbol for approximately is ≈, the use of ~ is informal. Is your second point is that there are circumstances where giving is not good (e.g. Octavious's drugs example)?

@all: applause to the first person to mention 1066.

I'm going to make a few disjointed points here, and separate them into different posts to avoid an obiwan-esque block.

@ rlumley, in logic ~, ¬ and ! all are used to mean "not"

@ TGM, and Logic != most contexts.

RE the argument that evil is a privation of good.

This just doesn't stand up to reason. A non-trivial, obvious counter is that being infected is not a privation of health, but health is a privation of infections (among other things).

Furthermore, even if it were true, one can still ask why god is willing to allow privations of good. It doesn't make the problem go away, because you aren't really talking about principles. The discussion of privation of good vs evil is one of bookkeeping only.

@rlumley, to be fair to diplomat, he was discussing logic...... If I discuss tea in the context of plants, I'm not discussing a drink.

RE dave bishop's argument: "Tell that to someone who's daughter's just been raped, husband's been killed at war and son's drowned in a flood." in response to Octavious.

This seems to imply that if the worst thing that ever happened to a human was a pin-prick, that would make the argument Octavious makes now valid. It is widely held however that if this were the case, then people would be truly devastated at a pinprick. I'm not so sure that this counter-argument works, however.

What is true to say is that your argument won't be convincing to a theist who believes that eternal union with God is made achievable by free will. Each side makes a value judgement, and since a theist is able to place infinite value on free will, you cannot convince him with this kind of argument.

@TGM: thanks.

@rlumley: I know a lot more about tea than formal logic, so be careful.

RE attempts to rationalise God in this way more generally.

I am inclined to agree with the position of Descartes and seemingly obiwan too, that one cannot impose logical limitations on God. We can only maintain logical axioms to be true where we have evidence for them, and that evidence is always empirical. (why exactly can mutually contradictory statements not be maintained simultaneously?)

God being outside any material universe is also outside logic.

RE the original question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irenaean_theodicy

That is well worth the reading. I do not think it successful, however, since there are instances of rather trivial evils that do not present any opportunity for spiritual development (how exactly can a pin prick help me develop?). Also, the torture of a lone, lost man is totally pointless from my view.

@obi: your comments are really long, one of them is 4081 words. 4 pages on a word document.

If God could stop evil he would stop obiwanobiwan from making such devilish long posts.

@obiwan
I read through your answer. It nearly killed me doing so, but I read it all.

I agreed with most of what you said, and your point that an all powerful God would be to create good without evil, and allow people to be brave etc, without evil.
I'd contest you when you say friends getting together to watch football and being morally 'good' though. I'd say they are neutral, and only good when they get each other a drink etc, things that wouldn't be possible in a world where there are no negatives to getting the drink.

first off, this is a stupid riddle. I believe that God is good and could prevent evil but does not. Why? Not because he is malevolent, but because he allows us to screw ourselves over. If God prevented all evil from occuring we'd hardly have free will would we?

@Ivo_ivanov
you actually have the best point here (dispite it's length). If God wanted robots to always do right, he would have done so. It's sad to say this, but I think you understand God a lot better than many people at my church.

warsprite +10 billion

asian -1 for not saying anything new

Everyone -1 for not replying to my arguments. :-P

@rlumley -1 for writing alsan as asian
and to reply to your arguement, no one disagrees that good and evil can only apply to living objects which have a choice. There was nothing to disagree with in your statements, so I didn't, and I'm assuming that is the reason no one else did.

@aslan -1 for not being able to properly spell aslan :-)

maybe god allows evil but only because it is the lesser of two evils and sometimes we know what the other evil that he didn't allow to happen is and somtimes we don't.

For example maybe god allows wars because otherwise we would have an unsustainable population and would have accellerated global warming. (global warming being a greater evil than wars)

Maybe a murdering father is allowed to kill his child because god knows that the child would've done something even worse later in life.

@rlumley: that good and evil do not apply to inanimate objects is a statement of the bleeding obvious not an argument. As Aslan says there was nothing to comment on.

You haven't answered my question as to why you would tell someone they are completely wrong about something you admit to having no knowledge about.

... I'm not going to discuss trivialities. I've already pointed out why I said it. It would be impolite to Obi to spam his thread with trash. (Which means you should probably stop talking. *Burn* :-P )

You say that's obvious, but everyone is contradicting what I say with every post. They're insisting that "good" and "evil" exist outside the context of how an action affects a person's life. That is the only context in which it is appropriate to discuss "good" or "evil".