What do you think of this quote?

Question

And im being serious. This quote comes from one of the greatest thinkers in Greek History. Epicurus. For those of you who are religious, don't call me a blasphemer or resort to old Bible cliches, try to give me a reasonable, thought out response. Ok. here's the quote (this is not EXACT, but basically it):

Is God willing but not able to prevent evil? Then he is incompetent.
Is God able but not willing to prevent evil? Then he is malevolent
Is He able and willing to prevent evil? Then why does evil exist?
Is He neither able nor willing to prevent evil? Then why call him God?


I happen to love this quote (and yes, im an Agnostic for those of you who wonder). I just want to see what other's think.

Answer 1

I've read this quote many times and the first time I heard it, it did make me think. The second time I heard it, I pondered about what caused Epicurus to write it. The third time I heard it I had began to study Eastern religions and their philosophies and outlook on the world and on God and it caused to me rethink the entire quote.

"Is God willing but not able to prevent evil?" The question posed implies that there is a universally accepted concept of evil that all people and cultures share, but this is proven to not be true. In some cultures, past and present, what one people in a culture would view as being evil another people in another culture might view as good. So then the question of "Is God willing but not able to prevent evil?" then raises the question "what is evil?" According to Eastern religions good and evil are subjective to the individual or individuals who experience the event, place, time, action, etc. And even then the same people can be experiencing the same thing and yet some might declare it bad, evil and others might declare it good. Yet in truth it is never either, it is merely what it is and it is us, the individuals, that make that subjective determination. Thus how can God prevent evil when evil is determined not by God, but by us. Thus we are the only ones who can prevent evil, but because we each have a different idea of what is evil, bad, good, etc then truly the only thing we can do is to try to the reality of what is happening and not try to judge it. Thus how can God be willing but not able to prevent what is not real, but merely judgements made by us about situations, etc? How then is God incompetent? This all then answers the rest of Epicurus's questions: "Is God able but not willing to prevent evil?" God can only deal with reality, not with our perceptions and judgements of reality. A flood can be seen by city dwellers as being very bad, an act of evil, and yet the farmer can view a flood as a blessing as the rich nutrients needed for his/her crops are now pouring over his land. The city dweller may have a damaged home and feel that the flood is evil because it took things away and they feel that they gained nothing while the farmer may have some damage to the crop, but gained the rich nutrients which will help the crops. For the farmer it isn't an act of evil at all. It may not have been how the farmer had planned to get those nutrients, but a slight inconvenience of a little damage to some of the crop to help gain a benefit for the larger crop and crops to come certainly doesn't seem like evil. So should God have never allowed the Earth's water system to cause a flood to happen? Should God have intervened? "Is He able and willing to prevent evil? Then why does evil exist?" Evil, like good, is a judgement each of us makes about reality. Reality is all the exists, whether it is good, bad, or evil is based upon our own perceptions and judgements that we place upon that reality. "Is He neither able nor willing to prevent evil? Then why call Him God?" If the entire universe manifested out of the very being of God, then does not that make the entire universe God? And yet at the same time God also remains unmanifested beyond the universe. So God is both unmanifested outside of the universe and at the same time manifesting the very universe and everything in it from that unmanifested point. And if everything in the universe, including you and I, are manifestations of God, then should we not be treating and respecting each other the same way we claim to treat and respect God? And if we do this, then should not people be suffering because we would not desire God to suffer? And if we do this, then should not people be killing or fighting wars because we would not desire to this to God? And yet the question remains then, why do these things happen? Eastern religions make it clear that the reason these things happen is due to our own ignorance. We have forgotten our true nature as a manifestation of God. We have allowed ourselves to be consumed by our selfish ego and to think of ourselves as seperate from each other and everything else and that by thinking we are seperate we think that our actions, thoughts, words, etc upon other people, things, etc have no effect on us....and yet they do. And our actions, thoughts, words, etc are always being judged by people as good, bad, or even evil just like all of us perceive and judge reality as good, bad, or even evil. In the end God is always all around us, working all around us in the systems, the stars, the many amazing ways the universe works and functions and is still unmanifested beyond the entire universe waiting for the us and everything else in the universe to find its way back to It (God).

So that's my honest opinion of the quote.

Peace be with you.

Answer 2

The question is:
Is He able and willing to prevent evil? Then why does evil exist?

God is both able and willing to prevent evil but that is only if man agrees to the conditions. Since people have decided to take their free will, allow temptation to have the best of them, and use their free will for evil purposes then evil will always be present. God is able to stop evil but then that would mean stop the agent's through which evil is committed. Since man is the agent through which evil acts are committed that would mean that God would have to call back His grace and mercy and totally destroy man altogether.

Yes God is able and willing to stop evil! The question is:

Is man, who IS able, WILLING to stop evil?

Answer 3

God does not intervene because to do so would be to deny man's greatest gift - his own self-will. For God to govern a man or woman's life, that man or woman has to make the conscious decision to allow him to do so. In giving this gift, it allows for people to not accept it - and those are the people who commit atrocities (and priests who molest and Sunday School teachers who rape have not made a decision to allow God to be their Governor - they have merely instituted themselves into positions that get them close to children - the religious aspect is a means to an end, basically).

AFA natural disasters, I feel this way - God set in motion an earth that would sustain humanity, if humanity could follow His lead and behave responsibly. God set the laws of physics into motion, which is all natural catastrophes are - they are part of the "set" God designed. Without physics, our world could not exist. God does not pick and choose where He intervenes. He allows us free will and to do that, we must live within the confines of the world we need to survive.

I hope this helps a bit.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

i think that if he is willing but not able, that doesn't make him incompetent. but if he wasn't able, why would we call him god? The rest of it are some good questions.

of course one can argue: why do we expect to be able to understand God? we are lowly mortals and he is an all-powerful entity. Maybe he is able, but is not willing for his own reasons.

i personally prefer to find scientific reasons to argue against the bible, rather than things like this for that exact reason. if there is a god we shouldn't be able to understand what goes through his head.

Answer 6

He is able and willing... But he made a promise. He gave us authority over our dominion, earth. He gave us the keys, so to say. Breaking that promise would mean he doesn't love us, and if he doesn't love us, he isn't God.

Evil exsists because we allowed it to. God has all the power, but he gave us authority. That's why we need to to the right things.

I praise God that he made a way out of all this evil I have not only committed but let happen. His name is Jesus, and he bore every sin that mankind ever committed, will commit, or is committing.

Here's something.

Would a good, loving father that has a son, knowing that his son will make mistakes (even huge ones), stop loving him and break his promises to love his son?

No, He loves sin son no matter what, even when he knows his son's faults.

Answer 7

God is able to, but not always willing to prevent evil because we need evil and opposites in this world if we're ever going to learn anything.

Good parents won't just give their kids everything and spoil them rotten (or they turn out rotten) they make their kids work, and let them struggle sometimes so they can become something better.

Answer 8

One problem we are trying to describe something that is infinite with a finite brain and finite reasoning.
It can't be done.

If you want to see what you are up against read the last couple of chapters of the book of Job.

Where G-d confronts Job for about 4 chapters asking him where was he when the foundation of the world was lay....

Maybe you will get a small understanding of what I am talking about.

Answer 9

That is a fair enough question. Let me see if I can do this in reader's digest condensed version: In the Garden of Eden, Adam & Eve disobeyed God's direct command not to eat of a certain tree that was in the middle of the garden. They disobeyed. Why? Because Satan the Devil, in the form of a serpent, got them to question the rightness of God's rule. Centuries later, while he still had direct access to God, Satan pointed to Job, a righteous man and accused him of serving God, essentially because of what God did for him. You see Job was prosperous, with lots of children & good health. Stop protecting him, Satan said and see if he wont turn his back on you. By questioning Job, he brought every human into the same issue. So those those two questions were raised:

- God's right to rule
- Human's worshiping God out of pure selfishness

So God has allowed time to pass to allow an answer to those two issues. Clearly our world is a mess because we decided we could be just fine independent of God. And people like Abraham and Job and Jesus Christ put the lie to Satan's accusation that no-one would serve God if he had to struggle, suffer, etc.

Now the time is near when God will restore that original paradise to the earth and faithful humans will live the life God originally planned.

Answer 10

I don't like it. Yes, I am Christian, but I am not going to sit here and throw scripture verses in your face because I don't like people who do that. I can merely speak for myself and say that I don't agree with this quote at all and my faith is very important to me. I think you have a responsible way of asking, and I'm giving you a responsible way of answering. I think that you might find Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis intriguing if you are interested at all in, well, "mere" Christianity. He rejects the bounds of denominations and is well-spoken and gets his point clearly across. I think you should really try reading that book sometime.

I believe because my faith is the driving force within me and I have experienced the Holy Spirit in my life.

I believe that we are given free will and though God may not like what we do, it is up to us whether we follow Him or not. He loves us so much that He does not make us love Him, for a forced love is not a welcome love, but one that we may proclaim to Him ourselves is true. This pretty much sums it up for me.

Good question though, even though I despise that quote, I think your question is a good one.