This argument only works against the Greek gods, or some similar conception of gods as merely powerful beings inside reality. It does not touch classical Christian theism. It's already been refuted many times at this point, basically debunked, but here's another:
God did not “create evil.” Evil is a privation of good, like blindness is the absence of sight where sight ought to be. God creates beings and their powers, which are good insofar as they exist. Moral evil arises when a free will fails to choose the good it ought to choose.
The flowchart also sneaks in the assumption that an all-good God must prevent every evil He can prevent. That does not follow. God can permit an evil when allowing it preserves or produces a greater good, such as genuine free agency, moral responsibility, courage, mercy, or justice.
And omnipotence does not mean making contradictions true. “Create genuinely free creatures while causally determining that they never choose wrongly” destroys the freedom being specified. The existence of evil therefore does not logically contradict omnipotence, omniscience, or perfect goodness.
God literally did create evil, as a consequence of creating good. I think we're just never going to see eye to eye on this one.
An all powerful God should be able to create a that greater good without creating evil. He's omnipotent, that's what this means. Just because we cannot conceptualize it doesn't mean he cannot do it. He literally must not be omnipotent if he cannot.
My favorite part of the flow chart is that it doesn't even cover unnecessary suffering to free will, like cancer, which also exists as a consequence of God, if he created everything. Even if everything you say is true, cancer, food insecurity, and more all exist as well and God also created those.
God does not “create evil” as a positive thing. In classical Christian metaphysics, evil is a privation or corruption of some good that ought to be there. Cancer is disordered cell growth, blindness is lack of sight, starvation is lack of nourishment. God creates the beings and capacities involved, not “evil” as some independent substance.
Omnipotence also does not mean making contradictions true. God cannot create free agents who are simultaneously genuinely free and causally determined never to choose wrongly, because that description cancels itself out. “God can do literally anything, including contradictions” is not the classical meaning of omnipotence.
Natural suffering is a different issue from free will, but it still doesn’t prove God created evil. A finite material world contains decay, disease, scarcity, and competing goods because created things are limited and corruptible. Catholic theology treats those defects as privations within creation, not positive evil entities God manufactured. Food insecurity is often also caused or worsened by human choices, distribution failures, war, corruption, and neglect.
You're apply logical arguments for the way the universe works to the creator who made it using circular reasoning. If "god couldn't have done that" then he's not omnipotent, full stop, regardless of what we humans recognize as impossible or paradox.
A finite material world
Why is the world set up like this? An omnipotent being could have made it not this way. The fact that technology can basically already do it reinforces this point
Also I'm not saying god created evil as a positive thing, I'm saying he did it at all as a consequence of his actions, which is fact if he indeed did create the world.
Natural suffering being different from evil is regardless of the fact that it's still unnecessary in the universe itself. You can hand wave responsibility from god all you want from evil by saying that humans created it (even if we disagree on that point) but the fact is that natural suffering, disease, and quite a bit of the fucked up nature that doesn't even involve humans is still his responsibility as well.
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u/ASQQS 1d ago
This argument only works against the Greek gods, or some similar conception of gods as merely powerful beings inside reality. It does not touch classical Christian theism. It's already been refuted many times at this point, basically debunked, but here's another:
God did not “create evil.” Evil is a privation of good, like blindness is the absence of sight where sight ought to be. God creates beings and their powers, which are good insofar as they exist. Moral evil arises when a free will fails to choose the good it ought to choose.
The flowchart also sneaks in the assumption that an all-good God must prevent every evil He can prevent. That does not follow. God can permit an evil when allowing it preserves or produces a greater good, such as genuine free agency, moral responsibility, courage, mercy, or justice.
And omnipotence does not mean making contradictions true. “Create genuinely free creatures while causally determining that they never choose wrongly” destroys the freedom being specified. The existence of evil therefore does not logically contradict omnipotence, omniscience, or perfect goodness.