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Religious responses to the problem of evil are concerned with reconciling the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God. [1] [2] The problem of evil is acute for monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism whose religion is based on such a God.
Dystheistic speculation arises from consideration of the problem of evil — the question of why God, who is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, would allow evil to exist in the world. Koons notes that this is a theological problem only for a eutheist, since a dystheist would not find the existence of evil (or God's ...
One standard of sufficient reason for allowing evil is by asserting that God allows an evil in order to prevent a greater evil or cause a greater good. [145] Pointless evil, then, is an evil that does not meet this standard; it is an evil God permitted where there is no outweighing good or greater evil. The existence of such pointless evils ...
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.
The devil, in opposition to the will of God, represents evil and tempts Christ, the personification of the character and will of God. Ary Scheffer, 1854. Christian theology draws its concept of evil from the Old and New Testaments. The Christian Bible exercises "the dominant influence upon ideas about God and evil in the Western world."
They write that, "[i]n numerous Old Testament texts the power and glory of Israel's God is described in the language of violence." They assert that more than one thousand passages refer to YHWH as acting violently or supporting the violence of humans and that more than one hundred passages involve divine commands to kill humans.
German theologian Heinrich Meyer suggests that Jesus' challenge to his disciples is to "turn round upon [the] road, and to acquire a moral disposition similar to the nature of little children". [3] Christ blessing the Children by Lucas Cranach the Younger. The Kingdom of Heaven is compared to little children at other places in the New Testament:
In The Sydney Morning Herald, Matt Buchanan dubbed it "a thundering 300-page cannonade; a thrillingly fearless, impressively wide-ranging, thoroughly bilious and angry book against the idea of God"; Buchanan found the work to be "easily the most impressive of the present crop of atheistic and anti-theistic books: clever, broad, witty and ...