Why does god let bad people to do bad things

At least you admit god and the tooth fairy are equal, that's good.

If God is all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing, why is there evil? A maximally good being eliminates evil and promotes good to its maximal ability and a maximally powerful being is capable of doing anything. Thus, a maximally good and powerful being should eliminate all evil. Yet it exists.

Free will excuse is bull, if their was free will then why was Jesus born (from a so called virgin that was married and never had sex with her husband yeah right) to spread the word of their god? Why wasn’t it left to free will?
:bnghd:

If there was this supposedly all-benevolent and omnipotent being that you seem to think is God, and he dropped a rock on every person before they were about to do something bad, then he'd be called evil for killing innocent people.

If there was this supposedly all-benevolent and omnipotent being that you seem to think is God, and he caused all babies who would do evil things in the future to be miscarried, then he'd be called evil for killing innocent babies.

If there was this supposedly all-benevolent and omnipotent being that you seem to think is God, and he only allowed people to do good things, then we'd call him evil for limiting our freedom, and our very existence (as being who are supposed to learn and experience) would be void.

Some things that are taken for granted that aren't necessarily true:
* Death is evil, death is punishment.
* Free-will and omnipotence/omniscience cannot exist together.
* The meaning of omnipotent is the ability to do anything.

[edit on 16-12-2007 by babloyi]

Originally posted by babloyi
Some things that are taken for granted that aren't necessarily true:
* Death is evil, death is punishment.
* Free-will and omnipotence/omniscience cannot exist together.
* The meaning of omnipotent is the ability to do anything.

*member applause*

you hit it right on .. i feel no need to speak on it.

big ups and high fives and stuff, man.

Silly question. How about changing it to:
1. Why does god let good people do bad things?
2. Why does god let bad people do good things?

We all recognize the law of cause and effect. One of the arguments for proof of god used by theists even calls god the first cause/b]. A correlary of this law must be that all actions are caused by prior events. In other words all our behavior is pre-determined by our genes, our upbringing, and myriad other causes. We can't recognize the result of this complex interaction so we have to behave as if we had free will. However, it is a chimera.

What this question is really asking appears to be, "If god is the embodiment of all that is good, and it has the power to prevent evil but doesn't, doesn't that demonstrate that a) god is not the embodiment of all good, b) god isn't omnipotent, c) that god doesn't give a damn, d) that god doesn't exist. I suppose one could come up with the old line of 'he gives us the opportunity to make our own decisions' but that's back to the fallacious claim of free-will.

Occam

if a religious person does something bad and then says god told them to do it does that mean god is not only telling a person to do a bad thing but that god is bad himself



[edit on 16-12-2007 by Dark_Ace]

reply to post by Dark_Ace



In that kind of situation most likely the person is just using God as an excuse, trying to justify his action by using Gods name.

reply to post by snowflake_obsidian


what i mean is that like in the quran it says you must defend you land by killing those who attack you so if the quran realy is the word of god does that mean every time some body does something by what is said in the book god says it is ok

so god wonts people to do bad things like defend your land which means killing people...

reply to post by Dark_Ace


You know, I would not consider defending oneself as being a bad thing. It's sad I know but I feel that if someone intrudes upon your home or if a country attacks and invades another country, then that country has the right to use force to defend themselves.

So I guess I'm not a good person to awnser that question for you since I disagree that the situation in your example is wrong. It's very sad but somethimes violence can be neccesary.

p1429:1 130:1.5 Jesus' last visit with Gadiah had to do with a discussion of good and evil. This young Philistine was much troubled by a feeling of injustice because of the presence of evil in the world alongside the good. He said: "How can God, if he is infinitely good, permit us to suffer the sorrows of evil; after all, who creates evil?" It was still believed by many in those days that God creates both good and evil, but Jesus never taught such error. In answering this question, Jesus said: "My brother, God is love; therefore he must be good, and his goodness is so great and real that it cannot contain the small and unreal things of evil. God is so positively good that there is absolutely no place in him for negative evil. Evil is the immature choosing and the unthinking misstep of those who are resistant to goodness, rejectful of beauty, and disloyal to truth. Evil is only the misadaptation of immaturity or the disruptive and distorting influence of ignorance. Evil is the inevitable darkness which follows upon the heels of the unwise rejection of light. Evil is that which is dark and untrue, and which, when consciously embraced and willfully endorsed, becomes sin.
p1429:2 130:1.6 "Your Father in heaven, by endowing you with the power to choose between truth and error, created the potential negative of the positive way of light and life; but such errors of evil are really nonexistent until such a time as an intelligent creature wills their existence by mischoosing the way of life. And then are such evils later exalted into sin by the knowing and deliberate choice of such a willful and rebellious creature. This is why our Father in heaven permits the good and the evil to go along together until the end of life, just as nature allows the wheat and the tares to grow side by side until the harvest." Gadiah was fully satisfied with Jesus' answer to his question after their subsequent discussion had made clear to his mind the real meaning of these momentous statements

The way I see it is that there has to be bad for there to be good. If everybody was good all the time, we wouldn't know that they were good because we wouldn't have "bad" to compare it to! There has to be a certain amount of bad in the world for us to want the good. It really seems that simple to me.

Sometimes through God's grace God will let those who suffer have a better eternity or gifts from God for what ever life they had. So all these negatives you see will end up in a positive light for you and you would probably never have got them had you or man kind been through it. Somethings may not be right, God does not want these things to happen but if they did then God has less blame on your soul.

Good question with an easy answer. Free Will. God didn't create us to be robots. He gave us Free Will so that we could decide for ourselves between right and wrong. The consequence is, judgment for choosing wrong. The gift is, Eternal Life for choosing right. And yes, people who do wrong affect other people, which is unfortunate but good things can still come of it. Strength, widsom, knowledge... it just boils down to having Faith and Trust in God.

[edit on 19-12-2007 by ReginaAdonnaAaron]

[edit on 19-12-2007 by ReginaAdonnaAaron]