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 evil. It 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?
No for 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.
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.
