Boomsticker wrote:
Subject: ALBERT EINSTEIN QUOTE
Did God create everything that exists?
Does evil exist?
Did God create evil?
A University professor at a well known institution of higher
learning challenged his students with this question. "Did God create
everything that exists?"
A student bravely replied, "Yes he did!"
[Big long story.]
To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist, sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God.
It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat, or the darkness that comes when there is no light."
The professor sat down.
The young man's name -- Albert Einstein.
I think there's a fairly uniform consensus among theologians that there is no place in the universe where God is not. There is no place where God doesn't exist. God is by definition omnipresent at all times. God is the stuff of which the universe is made, or more poetically: God is the dwellingplace of the universe.
By theological definition, God is always present in people's hearts, whether they are aware of God or not, or whether they believe in God or not. If a human doesn't love God, that is entirely immaterial. God loves that human, and that human heart. God's love is present there.
I'm sorry, there's just no getting away from the paradox of an omnipresent/omnipotent god who is also a benevolent god, and the existence of "evil", unless you posit God as far less like a human consciousness than is popular among many of the religious. It's not a problem reducible by reason without throwing out the god hypothesis, or without radically redefining the identity of God and the physical universe, and redefining Gods permeation of or power over the physical universe. The paradox ultimately has to go into one of those "mysteries" boxes, that the faithful finally accept, and that others ponder on their journey to agnosticism or atheism.
Edited, Aug 21st 2008 5:20am by Aripyanfar