epicurean paradox

Epicurean Paradox

The problem of evil, also known as the Riddle of Epicurus, states:
If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to
Then He is not omnipotent.
If He is able, but not willing
Then He is malevolent.
If He is both able and willing
Then whence cometh evil.
If He is neither able nor willing
Then why call Him God?
I can give my opinion as a Christian, and can't speak for other religions. But for us, God’s “will” revolves around Who He is. In short, God IS Love. We believe that everything He does, everything He is ,is steeped in His being Love. But what is love? That’s really the question, because it has everything to do with any understanding of His will. Love creates. It can’t help itself. Where there is love, there is birth, or creativity, or life… love abounds and overflows. It does not hold itself in. So, to keep it simple, let me just say that God created us out of this overflowing Love.
But there’s something else about love that one must understand. Love requires freedom in the sense that one must be able to CHOOSE to love. You’ve heard the saying, “You can’t force someone to fall in love with you.” Very true. Love must be given freely. So for God to create a people in love that He wishes to truly love Him in return, He had to create us with a free will. Otherwise, any “love” we might have for Him couldn’t REALLY be love. It could only be fear of reprisal, or a robotic sort of thing. It wouldn’t be our choice. It wouldn’t be love. God knew the risk, that there would be those who would not love Him, but His desire for us to love Him in return was worth the risk for Him.
So, is God willing and able? Yes. But, the time has not come yet for Him to display His ability again, because the ultimate working out of His great plan of salvation has not yet bourne all of the desired fruit. Remember, He did it once before in the days of Noah, God is a gentleman. He does not force us to love Him. If there is evil in the world, it is our doing. God allows it, yes, because we are free, and we take our chances. Why do innocents suffer? Because the guilty are exercising their free will to make bad choices, and there is often collateral damage . But the Good News is that, according to Scriptures, “God works everything to the good for those who love Him.” In short, we believe that there is more to Life than this life, and that's what we have to live for.
The evil is the strongest weapon of the atheism against the Christianity faith and it is. If God allows all that bad things and evil in the world is because he gave us the FREE WILL, God tolerates the evil of the world on a temporary basis for Him one day, the ones who choose loving Him freely will live with Him on heaven and they will be free of any evil, but with their free will intact. God intentions of evil is that someday he will destroy it.
God doesn't create evil, according to the Christian belief, man was created in a state of perfection, yet man followed temptation away from God, sinned committed evil, and fell. Man caused its own problems from the start. When someone gets shot it is not God pulling the trigger, but rather a man who chooses to do so of his own free will. And in regards to why God doesn't act against evil, He does. For starters, those people will be punished, because it is in God's power to do so and just that He does. In the same capacity, God is merciful and forgives those who repent, because that too is within His realm of power and falls under who He is as an omnibenevolent being. Lastly, it seems to me that God permits the existence of evil because otherwise the afterlife would be pointless. We show who we are as beings when we resist evil for a higher purpose or choose to follow God through faith. What would be the point of being puppets on a string forced to do good and love God if it is just a hollow existence? To this extent, free will is a necessity to do good and part of free will is the option to do bad.
I was watching a video of a teacher and a student that the teacher says that if God exists than he is evil,he says that if God creates everything than he creates the evil than the student stands up and says that if the cold exists, the professor answers to him that of course the cold exits, the student answer him that the cold doesn’t exist that according to the laws of physics cold is only the absence of heat. Then he asked if the darkness exist, the professor answer again that of course it exists, the student replies that he is wrong again that the darkness is only the absence of light, he says that the evil doesn’t exist, such as the cold and the darkness, God doesn’t create the evil he says that the evil is the answer when men doesn’t have the love of God in their hearts.
Evil exists only as a privation or absence of the good. Ignorance is an evil, but is merely the absence of knowledge, which is good; disease is the absence of health; callousness an absence of compassion. Since evil has no positive reality of its own, it cannot be caused to exist, and so God cannot be held responsible for causing it to exist. In its strongest form, this view may identify evil as an absence of God, who is the sole source of that which is good. Both evil and good have positive reality, but maintains that they are complementary opposites, where the existence of each is dependent on the existence of the other. Compassion, a valuable virtue, can only exist if there is suffering; bravery only exists if we sometimes face danger; self-sacrifice is called for only where others are in need.
So, why call him God? God gave us an ability to govern our own destiny. People chose evil instead of good. Evil is the absence of God. We have chosen to try and live without God, work without God and go to school without God. He isn't allowed in any public cooperation. So, He allows us to have our way. He is a gentleman. He is not going to force good choices on anyone. As far as suffering and death, that came because of the curse Adam brought on himself when he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Our mission here is simple: to teach us to love under depraved conditions for spiritual growth according to God's plan, not our own. When we question how it interferes with our plan, such logical problems develop. Epicurus' riddle assumes certain parameters based on the logical constraints of believing that only what we see is true. The God of love would never permit such things on a permanent basis. That is the message of the Christ upon the cross. For atheists death is a termination point that inverts the moral reality of the universes. For those that believe, death is a transition inverting what appears to be a cruel morality. Second, if God intervened it would compromise our free will. If he created a world in which we never experienced evil or suffering, we would not be able to train spiritually to learn how to love. Could we learn to love truly in a world devoid in suffering and evil? Of course not...we would never be able to identify it. The present universe reflects the best conditions for spiritual training (love) and free will that could exist without intervention. Third, God is larger than the riddle allows. Since good can come of evil, is this not a defeat in of itself? Is not the persistence of good depite evil's destruction prove its resilience and overarching strength? Lastly, the riddle if confined to this realm of course paints God as a supernatural fairy that has a cruel streak. The atheist says "prove it". Some things are unknowable scientifically about the spirit realm. However, all that one needs to do is open the heart and use the Bible as an anagram of human personality through the prism of what God expects from us, and why we are here. Atheists are not tuned to his word, and simply use the concrete errancy of interpretation as some sort of proof that God is mythological.
Epicurus surely go to hell.
Luke 6:35
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.

Josselyn Pineda