" 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?"
what say you, bay12ers?
Ahh, today I come to this debate armed with an Islamic theological point of view of God. Because it is a good question indeed, and I'm not happy with people trying to twist around the question without a good answer.
For one thing, Islam never claims that God is "omnipotent". In fact, there are plenty of
specific labels, but not omnipotent. The closest you get "The Creator" and "The Mighty", but even nowhere near "all-powerful". The "Al-Qadir" there sounds close, but Wikipedia makes it misleading. It really means, "the one who can resurrect the dead/the creator" in context, which random people just simplified to "all-powerful".
Now this alone says that God is very powerful, but certainly not all-powerful. He created everything and lasts before and after time, which qualifies him to be labeled a God. But He does not claim to be infinitely powerful. So, that whole argument is invalid, because it makes some invalid assumptions (about god being omnipowerful, or non-omnipowerfulness equals weakness).
This alone should cancel out that whole argument. But let's go with the "where came evil" argument. Theologically, God seems to treat this life as a temporary thing, just as we treat a game. Evil is simply a test. But the Islamic version of God clearly knows everything you think, why should he even bother to test you when he knows how you'd do?
Well, there's three reasons schools make you take tests:
1. To test your competence
2. To force you to study
3. To have concrete evidence for those who challenge your qualifications
God knows that you're (in)competent, so (1) is invalid. Part (2) is valid as people would put their faith to question when confronted by evil. It is painful to improve, which is also why God gave us math. Part (3) is most important. God, knowing whether or not people deserve hell or heaven could just toss them wherever he wanted. But being "The Utterly Just", he has to prove to us that we're not qualified for heaven. Otherwise the nice people in heaven would be questioning God's authority to toss people into hell.
As life would be just a test, there is no true evil. Life is a temporary thing, you could beat others at it, you could conquer Earth and feed the poor, or go around and genocide people. It's still just a game, and you're only judged by your intentions. It doesn't matter if you were raped or killed or had your family and friends murdered in life. The criminal would obviously be sent to hell for proving that he had bad intentions. The victim, if they had lost faith in God from the test, would also be sentenced to hell for failing. But if they still stood firm and maintained faith, then they've passed and gained a free pass to heaven.
Those who die early, before getting a chance to prove themselves, as victims of genocide, murder, and other evils get an automatic free pass into heaven because of being disqualified. You know those suicide bombers? They attempt to instantly disqualify themselves from the game and incorrectly assume that it gets them to heaven.
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Topic: Atheists (Read 409568 times)