How could God possibly exist?

All-powerful God means he can do anything that is meaningful, everything that is possible, everything that makes sense at all. God cannot make himself to cease to exist. He cannot make good evil. There are some things he can't do even though he's all-powerful. He can't make mistakes. Only weak and stupid beings make mistakes. One such mistake would be to try to create a self-contradiction, like two plus two equals five or a round square.

Now, the classic defense of God against the problem of evil is that it's not logically possible to have free will and no possibility of moral evil. In other words, once God choose to create human beings with free will, then it was to them, rather than to God, as to whether there was sin or not. That's what free will means. Built unto the situation of God deciding to create human beings is the chance of evil and, consequently, the suffering that results. God is not the creator of evil, he created the possibility of evil; people actualized that potentiality. The source of evil is not God's power but mankind's freedom. Even an all-powerful could not have created a world in which people had genuine freedom and yet there was no potentiality for sin, because our freedom includes the possibility of sin within its own meaning. It's a self-contraction, a meaningless nothing, to have a world where there's real choice while at the same time no possibility of choosing evil. To ask why God didn't create such a world is like asking why God didn't create colorless color or round squares.

Then why didn't God create a world without human freedom? Because that would have been a world without humans. Would it have been a place without chaos and hate? Yes. A place without suffering? Yes. But it also would have been a place without love, which is the highest value in the universe. The highest good never could have been experienced. Real love, our love of God and our love of each other, must involve a choice. But the granting of that choice comes the possibility that people would choose instead to hate. Look a Genesis. God did create a world where people were free and yet there was no sin. After creation, he declared that the world was good. People were free to choose to love God to turn away from him.

However, such a world is necessarily a place where sin is freely possible, and, indeed, that potentiality for sin was actualized not by God, but by people. The blame, ultimately, lies with us. He did his part perfectly; we're the ones who messed up. The point to remember is that creating a world where there's free will and no possibility of sin is a self-contradiction. And that opens the door to people choosing evil over God, with suffering being the result. The overwhelming majority of the pain in the world is caused by our choices to kill, to slander, to be selfish, to stray sexually, to break our promises, to be reckless.

Edit: God could eliminate all objects of desire. Without objects of desire, humans would not be led astray to do moral evil. However, to eradicate all objects of desire, God would have destroy the world and everything in it.

Since sin ultimately stems from desires, another way for God to remove moral evil would be to remove human desires, Problems with this solution are obvious. God intended to create creatures who have desires, but if he removed all human desires, such as act would contradict his intentions about the creature we wanted to create. Moreover, removing desires would also remove the ultimate basis of action so that people wouldn't act. This would contradict God's intention to create beings who perform the various actions necessary to remain alive.

God could allow us to have desires but never allow them to be aroused to the point at which we would do moral evil. If God chose this option, he could accomplish it in one of two ways. He would perform a miracle to stop our desires whenever they started to run rampant, or he could give us the capacity to have desires that can be aroused only to a certain degree, a degree that would never lead to evil.

I shall address the former option when I discuss in general the option of God removing evil by performing a miracle. As for the second option, there are several problems. For one thing, it contradicts God's intention to create people who aren't stereotypes of one another. Whenever someone's desires would be allured in regard to something forbidden, those desires could be enticed only up to a point that would not be and lead to evil. What would be true of one person would be true of all. In every case, we would have to be pre-programmed to squelch the desire before it went too far.

There is another problem with God making us this way. When a desire would start to run amuck, one would have to stop having the desire, or at least not follow it, change desires, and begin a new course of action. A person's daily routine would be constantly interrupted, if not stopped altogether, and new courses of action implemented only to be interrupted again. Life as we know it would come to a standstill, contradicting God's intention to create us so as to function in this world.

Perhaps the greatest objection to this option is that for us to function this way God would have to make us supernatural both morally and intellectually. We would have to be willing to squelch our desires whenever they would lead to evil, and we would also need to know when desires would lead to evil so that we could stop them from being overly enticed. To do so, we would need to be more than human. Of course, such an situaution would contradict God's intention to make non-glorified human beings, not superhuman beings.

God could remove evil by removing intentions that lead to evil in either of the ways mentioned for handling evil-producing desires, by miracles or by making us so we would never develop intentions that lead to evil. However, this option creates the same problems raised with respect to desires.

God could eliminate evil by removing any act of the will that would produce evil. We could will good things freely, but whenever we willed evil, the willing would be eliminated. God could do this either by miraculous intervention or by making us so we would never will evil. However, this option again faces the same objections that confront the desire and intention options.

God could eliminate moral evil by stopping our bodily movement whenever we try to carry out evil. He could do this either by a miracle or by making us in such a away that we would stop our bodily movement when it would lead to evil. The same problems result as with the desire, intention, and will options.

You realize that this argument has been debunked so many times already right?

Even is caused by humans. To stop the evil God would have to abolish free will and make us all robots forever. He doesn't want us to be robots because we would be miserable. So he lets us have free will.

@Amy- You can't havefree will and sinless life together. The fact is that some people wil always use their free will for evil. We can be robots or have sin. We can't have it both ways. You are one of those people that want to be able to commit any crime you want and not go to jail.

The argument is a sound one. The God of the Bible cannot exist.

Quoting the "free will" argument is pointless. How would your perfect god create imperfect being and then ignore them as they go about hurting themselves unless he was callous?

Do parents have children and then blissfully ignore them as the kids go about doing dangerous things (competent parents at any rate)?

See the universe is thought to have created itself we exist inside a universe that is described as things existing in states of all or nothing alpha and omega . We can describe forces as existing in states of flux like wind or a bomb forces can never exist in states of alpha and omega the always exist in a state of flux like lighting energy never still never one piece of it describing the whole like matter for instance. When broken down. Energy cannot cause a complete reaction to jump into alpha and omega you see so no amount of energy could cause creation the only thing that can fully and completely exert itself to cause a finite reaction to complete a state of all or nothing is a being like god for example

the freewill argument? exactly how does that apply to an all loving god not stepping in when a baby is being raped by a pervert? i've told this to christians who believe the freewill argument and it's like they are too stupid to get it.

You're a poet and you don't even know it!

That donkey is dead already!

Hello. I'm right here.

He doesn't.

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because people are retarded

I Bless you in LORD JESUS CHRIST NAME.............