EVIL IS TOO SERIOUS TO BE TRIVIALISED BY GUESSING THAT GOD CAN ALLOW IT AND QUARANTINES IT TO MAKE SURE GOOD RISES FROM THE ASHES

To say God is absolute love and nothing at all exists without him, meaning he has power over all, seems to mask a failure to take evil and suffering seriously enough.  Religion says that sin and suffering and death and evil and Satan all make up a defeated foe and God has no fear where they are concerned.  That is a very strong claim.  You can fear an evil though it will not last long. Having the better of a foe does not mean you don't fear them.  But we are told that God does not fear evil full stop.  Only a God who is part of evil and has inside control who lives in evil can have that much power over it that he has no fear at all.  There is no suggestion that if God is not the kind of being that experiences fear that if he could he would.  Faith in God then would imply that you refuse to fear evil too.  It is in his hands. If religion does not fear evil then what it is preaching for?  What does it exist for?  Jesus claimed to hate sin which was what he meant by saying he had come to divide mother from daughter etc.  The idea is that you never sin or go against Jesus even if somebody falls out with you.  Hating sin comes from fearing it.  If religion fears sin when it should not then clearly hating sin is about more than hating sin and must be more personal than that.  That is the reason for the effort to hate it.  It is passive-aggressive towards THE SINNER!

Some thinkers see evil as so bad that it refutes God outright.   Others say there are some evils so vile that they make it improbable that God exists but they say that does not mean there is no God.

The answer from religion is that unless we say God is real and good is real we have no grounds for calling anything unjust or evil.  If evil is forbidden and God is against it and is not responsible then this is claiming that God gives us free agency, that he will not interfere with our choices, so we are accountable for evil.

The religionists say for example that if you say suffering is evil and don't recognise God's authority to condemn it then you are saying it is forbidden when you have nothing to forbid it.  They say that if you choose suffering or like it then what?  They argue that how horrible suffering is is not enough to make it evil.  They say we are confusing, "Suffering is immoral and unfair and unloving" with, "I don't like suffering."  It is like saying that 1 and 1 make 2 because you like them to make 2.  Maths is not about your likes but about the truth.

If you are really that blind to evil that you only care about what you want to feel then you are a very immoral person, though you may be socially agreeable.  Your values are screwed up.

See what is happening now?  The atheist is being accused of having no morals and insulting evil by not caring about it but how she or he feels about it.  The believer is the one who at least knows what morality is and knows its value.

This is very polarising.  It shows that the religious claim that atheists can be good but fail to really understand why they are good for they don't see that only God makes morality real is whitewash.  It also blackmails people to believe in good and live it and thus contradicts the notion that its meant to be a free choice.

Worse, at the same time they admit free will is controversial and nobody knows exactly how it works and all admit that belief in it might be wrong.  This matters because it means they cannot explain what moral evil is when they are so unclear and opinion based on what free will is for they tell us free will is about choosing to be moral or immoral.

Make no mistake.  Crime and moral evil are not as clear as they want you to think.  They do not really know what to do with people who do grave harm.  And it shows.  One murderer goes to jail forever and the same judge goes light on a worse one.  The criminal suffers the punishment that somebody wants them to have never the punishment they should have.  How do you measure out the right punishment?  There is no objective test.

The religionists say good is real and is the standard so evil is whatever is not reaching its full good potential.  So evil is not a power but a lapse, an absence.  This too makes evil rather vague.  You might be horrified by what it does and may feel the fear it causes. That tells you that something bad is there not exactly what it is.  What evil does and what it is are not the same thing.  A vampire, an occult illusion, a zombie may cause extreme horrible emotions in you but that does not tell you what the creature is and how it is evil or what kind of evil it has got or even if the evil is real.  Talk of evil is really not about diagnosing evil but pretending you diagnose it.  So not only does evil come across as vague you cannot believe in it without some "sin" or doing some evil yourself.  You are lying that you know what you are dealing with and what how it should be punished. 

The problems go on.  They say God is good but then say that you can only describe God by what he is not.  He is not physical.  He is not evil.  He is not a lifeless thing.  They say God is too different from us for us to describe him directly.  To say this God shows the validity of evil means you can't know what evil really is.  It's a judgment you put on something you do not see clearly or understand.  You say you recognise the humanity of the evil person but do you?  You mime the words, "I understand them, but I don't condone."  You don't understand them.

After all this religionists say evil needs to be seen clearly and its activity to be clearly discerned in order to be diagnosed correctly so that you can work against it and suggest good treatment and yet they say we all have moral blindness to some degree.  They do not highlight these issues.  And the unwary are not guided which makes this hideous indeed.  Religionists are too manipulative.

Finally, guessing that evil fits God is not just a guess.  It's a collection of guesses.  And the guesses all undermine each other.  One guess is one thing but why guess so much?  What do you hope to achieve by it?  Why is it so important to get evil to fit your idea that there is a God you can have a relationship with?  Guesses are used to make yourself feel you believe.  If you had clear evidence that evil does fit God it would be okay and it would being responsible.  This is not something that should be about your guesses and your wishes.  Real people are crying and bleeding.

Surely if evil does not necessarily disprove God that cannot be applied to every evil!  There has to be an evil that is too intolerable to be allowed even by God.  If God is good then that is necessarily true.  It is evil to disagree with this argument.  To be a believer means that you believe that this evil does not exist.  Yet you don't know either way.  Saying this evil does not exist is cuts both way for you are implying it might.  It is as much for God as against him so you still have no right to guess that belief is a real option.  Suspend judgment.  Take evil seriously and you will suspend it.
  
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THE WEB
 
www.colorado.edu/philosophy/wes/Tooley2.html
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM EVIL AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD by Michael Tooley.
 
http://www.nd.edu/~rpotter/courses/finitism.htm
 
FINITISM AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL, R Dennis Potter,
 
 www.ffrf.org/fttoday/august97/barker.html
 
THE FREE WILL ARGUMENT FOR THE NON-EXISTENCE OF GOD by Dan Barker

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