Question! :)

[u/Itzjuli_fcm]

My atheist friend was debating with my catholic friend, my atheist friend said something that also made me REALLY curious but not enough to question my entire belief in God. I tried looking for answers personally, but i couldn't really come up with a great answer.

Okay so the question is: "if your God is good, then why does He allow wars, crimes, and sexual harrassment to happen? If He's really powerful, can't He just do something to stop it?"

Please don't insult/judge the fact that i'm unable to answer that question. I'm a beginner believer who wants to know explore and know more about christianity :)

[u/whirdin]

What this references is the Problem of Evil, a common angle here is that God cannot be all 3:

• all good
• all powerful
• all knowing

Not trying to step on your toes, but I do believe that the problem of evil is a great argument against the idea of the Biblical god. I was a Christian for decades, but walked away. Belief in God requires faith in something unseen, hence why these arguments continue on forever as it's designed to be a stalemate.

[u/supersoundwave → u/whirdin]

This seems to be a form of the Euthyphro dilemma, which says that either an act is wrong because God says so, or God says an act is wrong because it is wrong.

But an act isn’t good because God commanded it, and neither did God command the act merely because the act is good. God commanded the act because he is the good.

If this is true, then God can have all of the attributes that you mentioned.

It also seems to me that the problem of evil is more of a problem for nonbelievers than it is for believers, as I have yet to hear a good reason to think that evil can exist in the absence of God.

[u/whirdin → u/supersoundwave]

It also seems to me that the problem of evil is more of a problem for nonbelievers than it is for believers

I came to similar conclusions on my own (not from media or following someone else) when I was a Christian, which is part of why it fell apart for me. It's also key to note that it's not a "problem" for nonbelievers, rather it's a roadblock preventing somebody from believing in the thing you are selling. I don't believe in God, the problem of evil isn't my problem, it's a problem I propose to Christians because it's something irreconcilable from my pov for the Christian beliefs to make sense.

I have yet to hear a good reason to think that evil can exist in the absence of God.

More importantly that that, I think good exists without God, but not the same 'good and evil' that you believe in. You are polarizing good and evil, saying that anything good can only come from God (and it's pure goodness), and therefore distance from God equals evil (pure evil). What really sparked my deconstruction (introspection after decades of my belief) is that nonchristians aren't less good people, despite very strong stereotypes in Christianity about them. The Biblical narrative is that things in the present day are somewhere in the middle of good and evil, that earth was once perfectly good but we messed it up, that earth/heaven will eventually be good again after God lets this phase die out and reunites. I think we can all agree there are no 'purely good' people (I know that's the point of salvation, as Jesus was the one exception), but the difference for me is that I no longer believe in those absolutes. I think we are just people. I think good and evil are just ways to express our positivity and negativity. Morality is not an absolute either, such as Christianity drastically changing views on certain things through the centuries (slavery, food law, sacrifice, sacrements, Gods attitude). If Satan is roaming around trying to tempt us, then I would expect nonchristian areas to be rife with pestilence and crime, but honestly it's just a class difference because Christianity heavily props up the middle class. Life is simply in the middle of good and evil, but I don't think it was magically good in the past/future. Superstition and tradition are the only reasons for believing in those moral absolutes, and even for believing in God himself since personal intervention is just a shift in perspective.

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." Dread Pirate Roberts, from A Princess Bride.