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Lv 5

So there is no god....?

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?

-Epicurus

15 Answers

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  • 8 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    BG 2.11: The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: While speaking learned words, you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief. Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor for the dead.

    BG 2.14: The nonpermanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, O scion of Bharata, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.

    BG 2.15: O best among men [Arjuna], the person who is not disturbed by happiness and distress and is steady in both is certainly eligible for liberation.

    BG 2.16: Those who are seers of the truth have concluded that of the nonexistent [the material body] there is no endurance and of the eternal [the soul] there is no change. This they have concluded by studying the nature of both.

    BG 2.17: That which pervades the entire body you should know to be indestructible. No one is able to destroy that imperishable soul.

    BG 2.18: The material body of the indestructible, immeasurable and eternal living entity is sure to come to an end

    BG 2.19: Neither he who thinks the living entity the slayer nor he who thinks it slain is in knowledge, for the self slays not nor is slain.

    BG 2.20: For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time. He has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.

    BG 2.21: O Pārtha, how can a person who knows that the soul is indestructible, eternal, unborn and immutable kill anyone or cause anyone to kill?

    BG 2.23: The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.

    BG 2.24: This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, present everywhere, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same.

    BG 2.25: It is said that the soul is invisible, inconceivable and immutable. Knowing this, you should not grieve for the body.

    BG 2.26: If, however, you think that the soul [or the symptoms of life] is always born and dies forever, you still have no reason to lament, O mighty-armed.

    BG 2.27: One who has taken his birth is sure to die, and after death one is sure to take birth again.

    BG 2.30: O descendant of Bharata, he who dwells in the body can never be slain. Therefore you need not grieve for any living being.

    BG 2.42-43: Men of small knowledge are very much attached to the flowery words of the Knowledge, which recommend various fruitive activities for elevation to heavenly planets, resultant good birth, power, and so forth. Being desirous of sense gratification and opulent life, they say that there is nothing more than this.

    BG 2.52: When your intelligence has passed out of the dense forest of delusion, you shall become indifferent to all that has been heard and all that is to be heard.

    BG 2.53: When your mind is no longer disturbed by the flowery language of the Knowledge, and when it remains fixed in the trance of self-realization, then you will have attained the divine consciousness.

    BG 2.56: One who is not disturbed in mind even amidst the threefold miseries or elated when there is happiness, and who is free from attachment, fear and anger, is called a sage of steady mind.

    BG 2.57: In the material world, one who is unaffected by whatever good or evil he may obtain, neither praising it nor despising it, is firmly fixed in perfect knowledge.

    BG 2.72: That is the way of the spiritual and godly life, after attaining which a man is not bewildered. If one is thus situated even at the hour of death, one can enter into the kingdom of God.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    8 years ago

    Not watertight I'm afraid, having the power to interfere in other peoples actions to prevent something you consider evil, and refraining from doing so, is not automatically malevolent behaviour. There are effectively infinite possible situations where there might be a good reason to allow humans to play out their own choices.

    If you consider God as some sort of mollycoddling nanny who hovers above humanity making sure bad things don't happen, then yes, it's unlikely that God exists, but that's not how many see it.

  • Anonymous
    8 years ago

    My argument is even more simple than that, in physics everything can exist, except when it is divided by 0. In the universe, there should be an equal division between matter and anti matter, but we cannot witness it physically, when an anti proton and a proton combine they annihilate into pure energy. What this tells me is that there is nothing. Like a sine wave, it fluctuates between 1 0 and -1 but always resolves on 0, there is 'something' on either side of the wave, but it resolves at 0. To me that means there is 0, the reason physics can't accommodate 0 is because the universal theory of everything is precisely that, 0. Anything entirely material is just waiting for it's anti-material negative to resolve it into 0. If there is a God, then 'god' represents 0. But 0 is nothing. So God does not exist. This also means, opposing our 'material universe', there is an equal 'anti-material universe' but we can't see it, as in the sine wave, it operates at opposite. I hope this helps. It's not philosophical, just resolute.

    Source(s): The +matter brain I possess.
  • 8 years ago

    God is able to prevent evil. All He has to do is revoke the gift of free will from humans, thereby changing us into mere animals with no moral capacity and no hope of eternal salvation. But He loves us too much to do that, which is the essential truth Epicurus was ignorant of.

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  • ?
    Lv 6
    8 years ago

    firstly existence proceeds nature. at best this argument questions the nature of "god". secondly this argument is not universal as any argument it has a context. Epicurus was not arguing against Christianity but rather against the ancient greek gods. who were seen as merely super beings. thus his conclusion if such gods could not prevent evil then why even call them gods. to him to be a god meant having power being the strongest. just read homers Iliad. all of the greek gods were warriors. thus what use is calling a weak being god if your definition of god is a sort of super being.

    This argument is useless against Christianity (eastern Orthodox). why? because God is not contingent. classical christianity is panenteistic (all in God). God is not understood as some being that may or may not exist. God is being. God is existence. "I Am". The one in whom all things live and move and have their being. to use the words of the psalmist. thus as stated above this only puts into question the nature of God not the existence of God. It merely raises the age old mystery of evil. why is their evil in light of the good. the real question is can we tell the difference between the two. this is were the argument completely breaks down. if God is understood as being the source of good. then to acknowledge evil is to acknowledge the good. that there is a way things ought to be. thus to acknowledge God. you can only tell darkness from light in the presence of light. unless you believe good and evil are subjective which makes the argument question begging. evil is a problem but the existence of the good (what christians define as God) is not contingent on that problem.

  • 8 years ago

    God is omnipotent, so he can do anything. I would not label Him as malevolent just because he doesn't prevent evil. Us as humans brought evil into the world, and death is our penalty for doing so. Its the same thing when a parent punishes a child. They could send them to a time out because the did something wrong. They will not let them out, because that is their punishment. And they do it out of love. But what the awesome thing about God is, he let us out of our time out, He loves us so much He sent His son to die for us so we can be free from our punishment.

    Source(s): The Bible, my personal experience.
  • 8 years ago

    God is able and willing, but not willing until the rapture. evil(or sin rather) happens because we were gifted with freedom of choice.

  • 8 years ago

    Correct.

  • 8 years ago

    God can do all things. If one God can create the whole earth, humans, and everything you see then how can you not believe in God and that he can do all? The real evil is in ourselves. Yes the devil does tempt us, and may even put things in our mind, but we allow it.

  • Anonymous
    8 years ago

    Epicurus speaks for me - eloquently.

    Source(s): Atheist
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