Today, on the podcast, I spoke with Fr. Thomas Joseph White about his new book Principles of Catholic Theology, Book 2: On the Rational Credibility of Christianity. It was, I think, a great conversation.
Another reason why "evil" has nothing to do with creation is that the entity that created the universe does not have to be the Judeo/Christian God.
There is no reason to start out the debate with the either/or being materialism or the Judeo/Christian God. Many have argued for Deism and Deist do not believe in the Judeo/Christian God.
Now like you, I believe this entity is the Judeo/Christian God but that is not what the basic argument is about. The argument is about whether materialism is the explanation for the universe or there is an intelligent entity that created the universe. Keep it at these two options.
Once materialism is eliminated, then the next steps would be to understand the nature of this creator. Maybe the creator could care less about the creation and the eventual development of life so "evil" is not an issue. Only certain versions of this creator would be inconsistent with "evil."
If the materialist were to give up on natural causes for the universe, that would be a huge win. They would have to argue that there was a creator but this creator was not the Judeo/Christian God but some other entity. So the argument would then be on a completely different playing field.
So when discussing how the universe came into being, keep away from the nature of the entity doing the creation other than it must have been extremely powerful and extremely knowledgeable.
I ordered both of Fr. White's books and they will arrive tomorrow.
Neither is available as an ebook. Would be nice if they were. There apparently will be a third one this summer.
As I have mentioned before, there is no problem with evil. It just doesn't exist. Yes there are bad things about this world and all our lives. But if we were able to eliminate most of what would be called evil or bad, something else would replace them as unwanted and they would then be evil. The process would be endless.
It is a meaningless concept especially since the accepted definition is a deprivation of the good. Everything is this world is less than optimal/good so everything is a deprivation or evil.
We are then forced to look at what this world is meant to be. And it has to be sub-optimal in many ways to have meaning. If it wasn't, why would anyone want anything different. The best answer is that this is the best of all possible worlds to achieve God's objectives. It is a collection optimal sub-optimal. A world of trade-offs meant to in their collection to be optimal.
Aside: Is natural selection evil? Natural selection supposedly eliminates all sorts of options to achieve a local solution. Were all the other options eliminated, evil? They supposedly were less than optimal or else they would have survived. And the current winner will eventually be eliminated by natural selection because it will be sub-optimal in another future scenario.
By the way, I can argue very persuasively that natural selection had little to do with Evolution. It cannot explain the origin of proteins, the essential building blocks of life. That's why mathematics defeats naturalistic Evolution all the time.
Another reason why "evil" has nothing to do with creation is that the entity that created the universe does not have to be the Judeo/Christian God.
There is no reason to start out the debate with the either/or being materialism or the Judeo/Christian God. Many have argued for Deism and Deist do not believe in the Judeo/Christian God.
Now like you, I believe this entity is the Judeo/Christian God but that is not what the basic argument is about. The argument is about whether materialism is the explanation for the universe or there is an intelligent entity that created the universe. Keep it at these two options.
Once materialism is eliminated, then the next steps would be to understand the nature of this creator. Maybe the creator could care less about the creation and the eventual development of life so "evil" is not an issue. Only certain versions of this creator would be inconsistent with "evil."
If the materialist were to give up on natural causes for the universe, that would be a huge win. They would have to argue that there was a creator but this creator was not the Judeo/Christian God but some other entity. So the argument would then be on a completely different playing field.
So when discussing how the universe came into being, keep away from the nature of the entity doing the creation other than it must have been extremely powerful and extremely knowledgeable.
I ordered both of Fr. White's books and they will arrive tomorrow.
Neither is available as an ebook. Would be nice if they were. There apparently will be a third one this summer.
As I have mentioned before, there is no problem with evil. It just doesn't exist. Yes there are bad things about this world and all our lives. But if we were able to eliminate most of what would be called evil or bad, something else would replace them as unwanted and they would then be evil. The process would be endless.
It is a meaningless concept especially since the accepted definition is a deprivation of the good. Everything is this world is less than optimal/good so everything is a deprivation or evil.
We are then forced to look at what this world is meant to be. And it has to be sub-optimal in many ways to have meaning. If it wasn't, why would anyone want anything different. The best answer is that this is the best of all possible worlds to achieve God's objectives. It is a collection optimal sub-optimal. A world of trade-offs meant to in their collection to be optimal.
Aside: Is natural selection evil? Natural selection supposedly eliminates all sorts of options to achieve a local solution. Were all the other options eliminated, evil? They supposedly were less than optimal or else they would have survived. And the current winner will eventually be eliminated by natural selection because it will be sub-optimal in another future scenario.
By the way, I can argue very persuasively that natural selection had little to do with Evolution. It cannot explain the origin of proteins, the essential building blocks of life. That's why mathematics defeats naturalistic Evolution all the time.