Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
[116] [117] As he clarified, "When we say that good is what all desire, it is not to be understood that every kind of good thing is desired by all, but that whatever is desired has the nature of good." [118] In other words, even those who desire evil desire it "only under the aspect of good," i.e., of what is desirable. [119]
Epicurus was not an atheist, although he rejected the idea of a god concerned with human affairs; followers of Epicureanism denied the idea that there was no god. While the conception of a supreme, happy and blessed god was the most popular during his time, Epicurus rejected such a notion, as he considered it too heavy a burden for a god to have to worry about all the problems in the world.
According to this tradition, "evil, though real, is not a 'thing', but rather a direction away from the goodness of the One"; [11] evil is the absence of good, and accordingly, it is technically wrong to say that God created evil, properly speaking. Rather, he created a world which was imperfectly good.
However, Edwards' theology presumes a God whose vengeance and contempt are directed toward evil and its manifestation in fallen humanity. To Edwards, a deity that ignores moral corruption or shows indifference to evil would be closer to the deity espoused by dystheism, that is, evil, because justice is an extension of love and moral goodness.
The logical form of the argument tries to show a logical impossibility in the coexistence of a god and evil, [2] [10] while the evidential form tries to show that given the evil in the world, it is improbable that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and a wholly good god. [3] Concerning the evidential problem, many theodicies have been proposed ...
The saying Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad, sometimes given in Latin as Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat (literally: Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first deprives of reason) or Quem Iuppiter vult perdere, dementat prius (literally: Those whom Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first deprives of reason) has been used in English literature since at least the 17th century.
[3] [4] This inaction may be due to procrastination, laziness, or another subversive vice. [5] As such, the saying is an admonishment that a good intention is meaningless unless followed through. [6] This is consistent with another saying, often attributed to Edmund Burke: "the only thing necessary for evil to win is for good men to do nothing."
Omnibenevolence is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "unlimited or infinite benevolence".Some philosophers, such as Epicurus, have argued that it is impossible, or at least improbable, for a deity to exhibit such a property alongside omniscience and omnipotence, as a result of the problem of evil.