So the Rockies lost the World Series and I blame all of you for not praying hard enough. I expect a cake from each of you in penence.
I was listening to Guerilla Radio today, if you get the chance they do a podcast that is alot of fun, and I started thinking about the power of God.
So we know that evil things happen, hence God allows them to happen or does not have the capability to stop them from happening. Simply put, this is an old debate, does God have the capability to stop bad things from happening?
It seems to me that many beleive that God intervenes to keep bad things from happening at times and to make good things happen. Now if you beleive this then the next question should be why God always some bad things to happen and not others.
So if God does have the capability to stop all bad things from happening, as we believe God to be all powerful, then the bad things that do happen either happen because they have a role in the design of God, or God just did not stop them from happening which might be a wrong in and of itself hence God would cease to be God. So should we focus afresh on the bad things that happen in this world and what role they might have in the design of God?
Now what if God does not have the ability to stop all bad things from happening? Does this contravene the idea of God being all powerful?
THe Euthphro question asks whether Right is Right because God says it is Right or whether God says it is Right because it is already Right? So does God make what is right or does God follow what is right? If God creates what is right God is truly all powerful, if God follows some kind of higher law God's status as an all-powerful being needs much closer examination.
But if God does have to follow a higher law then the bad things that are allowed to happen are outside God's capability to alter. I say it is outside of God's capability because if God follows a higher law then God, while having a choice to follow the law or not, cannot break that law and remain God.
So the question is, if God has to follow a higher law, and stopping some bad things from happening is outside God's capability, because stopping those bad things would violate the higher law, then is God really all powerful? Do we need to redefine all powerful since we can only think of power in the temporal terms of our mortal experience?
Would love to hear your guy's comments on this. Thanks and you all keep rockin.
2 comments:
Here's what BH Roberts would say:
God's omnipotence = God is capable of
doing all that can be done.
Bad things happen because humans have free will. God is not capable of abrogating our free will, because free will derives from that part of us which is uncreated, and co-exists with God. He cannot take it from us.
I like that definition of Roberts, but in saying that God can do all that can be done implies that there is something limiting God's ability to do some things.
There are two questions relating to this, both have many forms in which they are asked, I have heard it put this way:
Is God capable of making a burrito so big that even he can't eat it?
Can God make a mistake?
The first I still don't have a good answer for but I don't think it is nearly as important as the second. But in saying that God can do all that can be done means that either God just can not do some things, like create a burrito or a world in such and such a way or size, or God can not do certain things and remain God. Like God can not commit evil either actively or passively.
In your comment you said that free will is somethign God can not take from us, in LDS doctrine this is what seperated the the eventual Messiah from the eventual devil. To me all this points to some kid of law that God must follow in order to remain God. You wrote in your coment that free will is "uncreated" (I want to have a discussion on the idea of something being uncreated with an expert in intelligent design), it seems to me that this law that even God must follow would have to be uncreated as well in order to escape the idea of all that is good being subjectively created.
This still leaves the question of why God allows certain bad things to happen and not others?
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