THE SOPHISTRY OF CLAIMING THAT EVIL IS SIMPLY GOOD THAT IS IN THE WRONG PLACE SO YOU CAN SAY GOD IS GOOD

The doctrine of Christianity is:

God does not make or intend evil and that creatures make it by distorting the power of good.  Evil is nothing but a perversion of good.  The iron bar is good but is meant to be straight but it has a bend.  The bend is not a thing like the bar is.  We are meant to belong to God straight out but we fail to. 

CRITIQUE:

If evil is just a falling short of good it follows that evil is just good in the wrong place. When evil is good of an inferior kind that turns it into a mere word that does not seem very useful practically or otherwise.   If all that matters is that evil is not real or not real in the way good is real then they are admitting to not caring if there is a difference between slapping John and tormenting him to death.

They are calling the bar good and the bend bad.  But in reality, it is a bad bar.  You cannot mess around with words and just see the good bar.

Does it make any sense to say that the knife that cuts you by accident is good but is just in the wrong place and that that shows that evil is just a negation/non-thing?

To say that God makes all and sustains all means there are no real accidents. That they won't call God evil for it shows their argument is sophistry and incoherent and dishonest.

Be careful of the following reasoning, "The wrong place bit shows that evil exists and is real. That’s where the evil is. It is madness to hold that evil is not real by considering it to be good that is just in the wrong place for the wrongness is still there is real. To distract people from evil in this way by saying it is not real and ignoring the wrongness is simply a conjuring trick and one that depends on a degree of callousness at that rate. 2+2=5 is as real an equation as 2+2=4. It is more than just a falling short of correctness. It is real but wrong. We know it is real in the sense that it communicates information."

In fact 2+2=5 is only script and has no meaning and is in fact nothing.  It is true that the argument seeks to distract from evil but not in the way that reasoning says.  Look at it this way.  You look at 1=0 and because you see a 1 and an = and an 0 that it is something.  You are confusing symbols for the real thing.  Here there is no real thing at all for 1 is not = 0.

If the sharpness of a blade is only bad when it is in the wrong place at the wrong time and cuts you accidentally what is it when nobody is using it or nobody needs it or even sees it? Is it good, is it evil or is it neither?  It is stupid to call something bad only when an accident happens.  That is like saying that it is good to rob a bank but bad when you rob a bank when caught!

Cutting a carrot with the blade is evil in a way. It causes damage to the carrot and destruction to a living thing for the carrot is alive. The blade is evil even when it is just lying there because it is meant to be used and is not being used. The same could be said about anything. The argument implies that creation is nearly wholly evil unless you want to believe that things disappear and cease to exist when nobody is looking at them. The whole point of the argument is to explain how God allows evil that has a purpose for it presupposes that God cannot fall short of his own perfection and that is why evil needs explaining. He would fall short if he did needless evil.

The believers say that existence is always good for it is better to be real than unreal. They say the evil thing that cuts or hurts you is not evil for existing but for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Evil by definition should not exist. Then evil should not exist in that place and time so its existence there in that time and place is evil at least when it hurts you. Existence then is not always good. The argument says that evil is not just a falling short of good but a form of good. It condones evil.

The existence of things then is a part of goodness. Yet if something could exist but does not you do not say that is evil for it not to exist for there is nothing there to get a raw deal by not being created. There is a sense in which it is evil but we are on about the sense in which it is not.

The argument is nonsense. To say God can let evil happen for evil is merely good that is in the wrong place and not real, forgets that wrong has still happened and it is real wrong. It is insulting and cruel. It implies that God is evil and we should be blind to that evil and welcome it.



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