DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO SAY GOD TOLERATES EVIL BUT DOES NOT APPROVE IT IN ANY WAY TO ANY DEGREE?

A child is in a burning house. An agonising death is on the cards. There are two approaches God may take in permitting this to happen.

EP or Empowering Permission means that God is not helping for human nature or the child could do something about it. So the failure then when the child dies may be the child’s or somebody else’s.

NPP is Non-Preventive Permission is when God does not save the child for there is a greater purpose. The child’s life is outweighed by some value that God wants to concentrate on so the child is a sacrifice.

The problem is that only God knows which one applies in any situation so the rest of us have to say it could be either and make no choice.  This then as good as blames the child for not getting out of the fire.  Possibly blaming the child is insulting the child.  There is no concern for how some passerby is told to feel responsible for not noticing the child was in trouble.

The doctrines are evil and show faith in God intends harm to people.  And also, you can stand by and permit some evil while using this standing by as a weapon.  God standing by may make him as bad as a God who lights the fire and laughs as the child burns.  Anything can be a weapon even permitting.  Human beings use permission as a method of hurting people so us saying God permits evil in general or any specific evil is obscene.  It's a terrible thing to come from creatures who use bystanding to do harm.

Philosophers say that things such as God preventing the 2004 Asian tsunami were logically possible or that if it did not happen then you can say God prevented it and there is no self-contradiction in saying so.  This turns an is into an ought.  If it happens then it ought to happen no matter if it is saving lives or ending them.  This is an extremist view.  Pantheism suggests that as all is God then murdering a baby is something you ought to do but if you are not pantheist but theist you are well on your way to such a heinous and repulsive position. 

So if something happens or does not happen then it is logically possible for God to have ensured that either way. What about physically possible? Was it the physical that prevented the tsunami if it did not happen? Was it the physical that made it possible if it did? Would logically possible or physically possible (or if you like logically impossible or physically impossible) be equally important? Many say physical impossibility is more relevant to us than what is logically impossible and more about the world the way it is. Logical possibility matters most for there would be no other kind of possible or impossible without it.

Religion talks about the active will of God which is when God does something. The other will, the permissive will, of God refers to how you cannot do evil or nothing can without God letting you do it.

Permissive will matters more than active will for there can be no active will unless you permit yourself to use it.

Permissive will is the trick religion uses to make you feel that though God empowers people to sin if they choose it is not about him wanting them to sin but wanting them to be free. It does not work.

Permissive and active can combine so believers only assume that God when evil happens lets it happen but does not help it to happen intentionally.  But just because permissive and active are different does not mean God is not combining them.

Permissive will in the face of evil is only going to keep God in the clear if he is forced to tolerate it.  He is forced to tolerate evil for the sake of allowing us to freely love.

Believers hold that his basic purpose is for the sake of allowing you to be free. So when you murder and take a life or abuse a child God honours you by considering your freedom to be worth the damage and even how you impose your will on somebody else. It is not about consequences. It is not God thinking that restricting people is worse than letting them run too free. It can’t be for in principle he can give ten people the freedom to take away the freedom of millions. So freedom is just good in itself even if it abuses others and takes away theirs. That is the bottom line. Here Hitler’s freedom is such a wonderful good it has to be honoured by letting him use to to destroy the freedom of others. This is a totally solipsiic and psychopathic doctrine.

Let us leave that aside for the moment. Let us think now not about what freedom is worth but how people will respond to having it.

Most of us most of the time judge an act immoral if the results are terrible so we worry more about that.  But the trouble is God definitely does create the bad results.  It is he who programmes your liver to fail if you sin too much in drunkeness.  Right or wrong, human nature does regard God as evil and often lies about it.

God has to decide between not creating the power of a person to do harm or creating it. The person gets to act badly. But what about God? Does he not come first? If he does and is good then as choice does not ask for the impossible he cannot let the person do bad without being far more to blame than the person. The person is not creating – God is. God is all responsible for what the person does. It is not like a parent and child. The parent is not creator of the child.  People think of parents and children when they consider this active and permissive will.  But the analogy is a total failure.  It is not the same thing.  The analogy is a trick.

So God potentially regards your free will as worth his own degradation and you removing the free will of others.  That is a big compliment to you.  It amounts to you being seen as that important for free will what you are not just what you have.

Human nature being what it is, especially selfish and malicious human nature, CAN and WILL be attracted by this honour and thrive on it. That it should not be is not the point. The point is what will happen. God cannot just be complacent and say they should not do it for it is not that simple and it is disgraceful to say it is that simple. The attraction is part of the reason the abuser and killer is acting on his or her evil impulses. Surely it has to be a huge part at times! Plus God has to actively set up the permission so it is not really passive. How can it be when God is full creator of all things?

The theology of permissive will of a loving God tolerating evil is nonsense and based on errors about the meaning of creation.  It is passive aggressive and music to the ears of the tyrants and dictators who without fail, imagine they are chosen by God or fate for great things and to bring a big phoenix out the ashes.  Believers have no right to be so secure in their goodness and holiness when in fact they can't be dictators to see what they really are!

FINALLY

GOD STANDS FOR: our evil actions prove that not all things that happen are part of God's plan.  It is itself evil to use the harm done to innocent people to shore up a doctrine.

GOD STANDS FOR: God does not cause evil even to do a greater good for that would be itself evil.  The good would be hypocritical.  It is itself evil to put all the blame on us when it cannot be proven.  But who then creates the impulses that ensure we will sin?

GOD STANDS FOR: God directly does only good. His will is perfect.  He only puts up with evil for we need to be free and he knows how it can and will be turned to a worthwhile good. But there is no evidence that we have that kind of free will.  We know we are programmable to one degree or another.

GOD STANDS FOR: rejection of the notion that we don't need to take any action to help or hinder for if we sit back God will do it all anyway.  This is good for it is a fact that "not to decide is in fact making a decision." Not deciding is deciding.  Sitting on the fence is deciding.  You decide to sit back and let fate do all the work.  But who is to say that either decision is not what God wants you to do?  It is not obvious that God really stands for rejection of religious laziness.  If he has so much power to empower our decisions so that we just say yes and he shapes us into his sons and instruments then our decisions don't really matter at all.

GOD STANDS FOR: the view that nothing at all, no human good actions, or evil ones, would happen without him.  He doesn't really cause the evil but causes us to have the power to decide if we will engage in it.  He causes it only in the sense that he gives us the faculties to do it if we choose.  But we are the real causes.  This presupposes that evil is a failure and a void.  Why do we say that?  God is not to blame for our evil if it is just a void and a lack of what should be there.  If it is a real force and if we make that force that means he makes it too for he makes all.  But again you can be to blame for a void.  God could be to blame in the way you make a hole in the sand and you cannot say, "There is nothing there"  That is not the point.  You still made the emptiness.

All this is really rationalising.  Religion decides what it wants to think about God and callously twists everything, including innocent suffering, to fit it.  That is unfair in itself.  What is also unfair is that their conclusions are themselves ridiculous and offensive.

 



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