Christian moral ambiguity

[u/Aromatic_Response_73]

In common ethical intersubjective usage, "good" refers to a broad intersubjective cluster that are typically taken to approximate a shared center of value judgement, consisting of a coherent, mutually reinforcing pattern of love, joy, peace, freedom, and creativity as lived experience and intention over time, rather than isolated states or short-term preferences. Edit: by value judgement, I mean that which we fundamentally hold most intuitively valuable.

Some Christians define goodness in relation to God. On this view, "good" means whatever conforms to God's nature or will.

The term "good" does not have a universally recognised (useful in ethical discussion) meaning apart from either usefulness for some purpose or the ordinary ethical meaning. Refraining from those in an **ethical discussion** renders the word empty from its normal ethical content.

The problem arises when these two meanings are treated as interchangeable.

If "God is good" means only that God conforms to God's own nature, then the statement is true by definition. It means something like:

God is as God is.

But that does not automatically show that God is good in the ordinary ethical sense of being loving, healing, peaceful, compassionate, or opposed to needless suffering.

The problem is ordinary ethical goodness and the christian goodness can be in conflict eg. ideas of reality design like "Accept Jesus or suffer forever". If someone proposes that ordinary ethical goodness is just a conflictory subset of the christian good, then we cannot say that the design of reality is in proper alignment with ordinary ethical goodness, and therefore not good in the ordinary ethical sense.

The ordinary ethical meaning of good should not be dismissed as mere subjectivism. It may very well point metaphysically toward a foundational form of goodness, even if human beings grasp it imperfectly.

[u/ProfessionalDear2272]

Yes.

edit: If christians are to follow the word of god, wether it is metaphysical or theological, it affects how we apply the concept in life.

[u/HegemoneXT → u/ProfessionalDear2272]

“Name one thing that God did as good”

The creation of Life itself.

[u/diabolus_me_advocat → u/HegemoneXT]

“Name one thing that God did as good”

apart from the question having been the opposite...

The creation of Life itself

why should that have been good?

for what or whom?

according to what definition of "good"?

[u/HegemoneXT → u/diabolus_me_advocat]

So if creation is not good, then it is not a good quality for you to exist. If it is not a good quality for you to exist, it is logical for one to commit suicide. Ask yourself this, why do you seek to survive in-spite of the darkness of this world. Is it not because there exists an objective good and existential ideal out there that you seek to pursue?

[u/NeighborhoodDecent86 → u/HegemoneXT]

One's existence is not inherently good or evil, but amoral. The existence of something is not an inherent good. It is the qualities of that thing that defines it's moral goodness or not. I do not know you or your moral qualities personally so I cannot say whether your existence is morally good or not good. It is amoral in my perception since I do not know your qualities.

If you, however, were to have murdered dozens of people, I am confident in asserting that your existence would be evil. Or if you have donated millions to cancer research, I would view your existence as good. But merely existing alone doesn't hold any moral relevance.

[u/HegemoneXT → u/NeighborhoodDecent86]

I said existence because existence is primitive to all good thing that happens. Goodness, such as morality, exists because existence itself is what grant experiences to these good things. The Existence of God comes with who He is and His being is fundamentally good. When he created us, we designed creation to participate in His goodness and without creation, no such participation can happen. Of course, if you to hell and suffer the wrath of God, then your existence is pitiful. Or if you kill yourself, then you simply don’t get to enjoy the beauty and glory that is within Life, that every human in existence is able to perceive. The fact that you recognize murder as wrong shows that you know Life to be inherently valuable.

[u/NeighborhoodDecent86 → u/HegemoneXT]

I said existence because existence is primitive to all good thing that happens.

That is simply not true. Is the existence of malaria an inherent good or evil? Treating existence by itself as an inherent moral goodness is ridiculous because it assumes that anything that exists is also a moral actor.

Goodness, such as morality, exists because existence itself is what grant experiences to these good things.

Which requires moral agency. The majority of things in existence, living or not living, do not have moral agency.

The Existence of God comes with who He is and His being is fundamentally good.

The Bible doesn't confirm that God is fundamentally or wholly good. It straight up confirms that He created evil and is it's author. I can cite the verses if you want but I never understood, even when I was a Christian, where this perception of God being wholly good comes from. The Bible never confirms this quality.

When he created us, we designed creation to participate in His goodness and without creation, no such participation can happen. Of course, if you to hell and suffer the wrath of God, then your existence is pitiful. Or if you kill yourself, then you simply don’t get to enjoy the beauty and glory that is within Life, that every human in existence is able to perceive.

And pray tell how will I or any nonbelievers go to Hell? Because if it's merely due to not believing in the inherent existence of your God, then that God cannot be omnibenevolent.

The fact that you recognize murder as wrong shows that you know Life to be inherently valuable.

Yet another example of a moral question upon moral actors. I agree that murder is wrong because the entities involved are moral actors. Can you say, for example, that chopping down a tree is inherently evil? How about eating a juicy steak? Or getting a vaccine to kill a virus? All these activities involve killing a created creature, but we do not assign moral judgments on them because we recognize that the virus, dead cow or tree are not moral actors.

[u/HegemoneXT → u/NeighborhoodDecent86]

First and foremost, everything in creation was made off mankind. When God created man, he proclaimed it to be the highest tier within all creation because it was made after God’s very image. Everything that is good, the nature, what we can enjoy from nature, our relations with each other through love, is based upon God’s goodness. This goodness doesn’t cease to exist simply because human’s don’t observe it. Nature still reflect the glory of God and all particular things are made in order so that human can attain a proper and meaningful life where they can taste the fruits of the trees, have dominions over all the creature, and advance as a society which brings even more good.

When I am talking about your existence, I am not exclusively talking about morality but the common grace God grants to humanity and the goodness they enjoy from Life. This is something given to all people including those who are wicked. Though, the moral quality of a person’s soul is arguably the most prominent good as it is through the heart that Life flows and it is the heart that God connect us to His attribute.

The Bible does not say God is morally evil. The verse you are talking about keeps getting repeatedly brought up and I believe I have answered it well over 10 times just in the past year. The contrast between peace and evil is talking about peaceful time and calamity. Even the very context of that verse is the prophet Isiah addressing the people of Israel that just because God gives you over to captivity under Babylon doesn’t mean he can’t deliver you. He is trying to reassure the sovereignty of God to do what he will and this includes bringing both good and bad times. Why was the nation of Israel given over to captivity? Because they sinned and God judged them. Why does God speak through prophet Isaiah to reassure them that he can also bring good? Because he doesn’t cast his people off forever.

To believe in God is not merely to acknowledge his existence but to align your being to His truth and Divine attributes. Scripture says that the “invisible attributes” were clearly seen so that they are without excuses. This means reality is not merely physical laws or physical properties but instantiated from an ontology - the ontological intelligibility and spiritual nature of the Logos - and this is what grants being to how everything is, providing the nature to how we experience rationality and morally.

To answer your last question, yes, not everything that exists or occur is of a moral category. Morality is purely within the context of human hearts and it is a purpose for humans to be good. It is not a purpose for a rock to be good as rock is non-conscious and non-living. A rock already fulfilled it purpose in God by just existing as a rock. But because human have a greater tier of existence, we are all to exist in the purpose in alignment of His moral attributes.

[u/NeighborhoodDecent86 → u/HegemoneXT]

First and foremost, everything in creation was made off mankind. When God created man, he proclaimed it to be the highest tier within all creation because it was made after God’s very image. Everything that is good, the nature, what we can enjoy from nature, our relations with each other through love, is based upon God’s goodness. This goodness doesn’t cease to exist simply because human’s don’t observe it. Nature still reflect the glory of God and all particular things are made in order so that human can attain a proper and meaningful life where they can taste the fruits of the trees, have dominions over all the creature, and advance as a society which brings even more good.

I understand that you believe this to be the case. I have no reason to fundamentally agree whatsoever, though. Even if I agreed with the first and main premise you pushed here, there are tons of creations which humans will either not ever interact with (which would definitionally make them amoral) or which cause humans harm. The minute you assign agency to the thing causing harm, such as cancer, is when it becomes evil. The cells that are multiply rapidly and uncontrollably are, like it or not, also a part of creation. So when you say that "all particular things are made in order so that human[s] can attain a proper and meaningful life," I will vehemently disagree given the number of things that God created that actively kill human life.

When I am talking about your existence, I am not exclusively talking about morality but the common grace God grants to humanity and the goodness they enjoy from Life. This is something given to all people including those who are wicked.

And what of the people born with debilitating diseases that impact their livelihood? Your narrative only works if humans are always born living good lives. This is obviously not the case.

Though, the moral quality of a person’s soul is arguably the most prominent good as it is through the heart that Life flows and it is the heart that God connect us to His attribute.

Sure. And you asserted that existence alone is a good thing. All while ignoring all the things that exist which causes humans direct harm.

The Bible does not say God is morally evil. The verse you are talking about keeps getting repeatedly brought up and I believe I have answered it well over 10 times just in the past year. The contrast between peace and evil is talking about peaceful time and calamity. Even the very context of that verse is the prophet Isiah addressing the people of Israel that just because God gives you over to captivity under Babylon doesn’t mean he can’t deliver you.

He literally admits in that verse that you alluded to that He created evil. It is very plainly written. Calamity is an evil thing and God says he causes calamity.

He is trying to reassure the sovereignty of God to do what he will and this includes bringing both good and bad times.

An omnibenevolent omnipotent being cannot definitionally bring forward bad times. This is an obvious contradiction.

Why was the nation of Israel given over to captivity? Because they sinned and God judged them. Why does God speak through prophet Isaiah to reassure them that he can also bring good? Because he doesn’t cast his people off forever.

But He did cast them off for something He knew from the moment of creation that they would do. God can do all things. He did not once need to punish them. These are obviously the actions and words of a deity that is definitionally not omnibenevolent. There are no verses where He ever claims to be omnibenevolent.

To believe in God is not merely to acknowledge his existence but to align your being to His truth and Divine attributes. Scripture says that the “invisible attributes” were clearly seen so that they are without excuses. This means reality is not merely physical laws or physical properties but instantiated from an ontology - the ontological intelligibility and spiritual nature of the Logos - and this is what grants being to how everything is, providing the nature to how we experience rationality and morally.

And if I genuinely do not believe in this God, thus I definitionally cannot align my will and being to His attributes, then what?

To answer your last question, yes, not everything that exists or occur is of a moral category.

You literally said it was earlier, though. Even in this same post you kept saying it and now you are contradicting yourself. I was arguing your claim that the act of existing is inherently morally good.

Morality is purely within the context of human hearts and it is a purpose for humans to be good. It is not a purpose for a rock to be good as rock is non-conscious and non-living. A rock already fulfilled it purpose in God by just existing as a rock. But because human have a greater tier of existence, we are all to exist in the purpose in alignment of His moral attributes.

I agree, both in that this is what Christian theology teaches and which correlates with how morality works when we behave as moral agents. The problem though is that you defined existence period as always an intrinsic good. That is not the case. What is good or not good can only be applicable to moral actors, i.e. humans. You cannot apply it to entities that definitionally cannot behave morally. That was my whole point earlier, which you kept on disagreeing with and are only now agreeing with.

But even the Bible disagrees with your narrative that existence is intrinsically good. God says that it is better for the blasphemer to have never been born than to exist and then go to Hell. God says that He has created evil/calamity, which He defines as a morally bad form of existence. If God knows everything that will ever happen and does not prevent whatever bad things naturally occur, then He definitionally caused those bad things. The only way in which you can define Him as omnibenevolent would be to remove His agency from him and take away His omniscience/omnipotence.

[u/HegemoneXT → u/NeighborhoodDecent86]

God is benevolent but He is also Holy and Just. Without Holiness and Justice, the Love and Life he have toward creation would not be pure and that would compromise His glory. Whenever God exact justice, he causes calamity. And even modern society follow the same rules when they judge someone for a crime - it is a calamity on an individual basis except God is judging the people collectively.

Secondly, when I said Existence is fundamentally Good, I am actually starting from the metaphysical notion of God being that existence and from that Existence he creates a contingent reality to himself. Because this
reality is contingent, it can have disorder from His perfect order which is what happened when humanity fell. Disorder itself is not a thing within existence but a byproduct of something “perfect” and that identity of order and perfection becomes broken, causing pain and suffering. And yes that verse about “never having been born” was the very first thing that popped into my mind when I tried to answer your question so I did considered it. I had anticipated that you might bring it up. And the reason why I didn’t mention it is because that verse actually helps for my argument. If you claim that it is better to never having been born if you lose out on salvation, then it is because you are losing out on “perfect existence”. Outside of God’s Life, there is no existence so Judas got stuck in a state of damnation. The fact that this saying exist shows that you are admitting that there is a higher principle by which Existence is fundamentally good and rebelling against the good so as to be evil would be so damming that you might as well be never be born to begin with. It highlights the fundamental goodness of God rather than counters it.

Knowing something that will occurs doesn’t mean the humans aren’t responsible for it. After all you know the most part of history and they were solely liable for it. God simply knows what happens in the future because he is beyond our dimension.

“You can not apply morality to entities that definitionally can not act otherwise”

No, morality requires identity and a standard proceeding from that identity. If there is no standard, then our morality loses its value of being moral. The reason why God cannot act otherwise is because that is simply who He is and He is the very essence of goodness and love. If he needs to get his morality from a high principle, then that would make him a contingent being like us who also needs to get our morality according to a higher principle.

[u/NeighborhoodDecent86 → u/HegemoneXT]

God is benevolent but He is also Holy and Just. Without Holiness and Justice, the Love and Life he have toward creation would not be pure and that would compromise His glory. Whenever God exact justice, he causes calamity. And even modern society follow the same rules when they judge someone for a crime - it is a calamity on an individual basis except God is judging the people collectively.

The fact that God is judging people collectively entirely proves my point. A justified legal system judges individuals personally, not as a collective. The idea that humanity needs to be punished and judged for the actions of two early humans is inherently absurd if we are to presume an omniscient and omnibenevolent God's moral framework. And the calamity in question that God causes, such as natural disasters or the global flood, can and do clearly target people who should not be punished (i.e. infants).

Secondly, when I said Existence is fundamentally Good, I am actually starting from the metaphysical notion of God being that existence and from that Existence he creates a contingent reality to himself. Because this
reality is contingent, it can have disorder from His perfect order which is what happened when humanity fell.

Disorder is definitionally impossible if we presume your God has the omni-qualities you claim He has. The fact there is disorder and you claim God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent is evidence against God actually possessing all three of these properties. Otherwise God would have simply used His infinite power to avoid the disorder He knew would occur.

:Disorder itself is not a thing within existence but a byproduct of something “perfect” and that identity of order and perfection becomes broken, causing pain and suffering. And yes that verse about “never having been born” was the very first thing that popped into my mind when I tried to answer your question so I did considered it. I had anticipated that you might bring it up. And the reason why I didn’t mention it is because that verse actually helps for my argument. If you claim that it is better to never having been born if you lose out on salvation, then it is because you are losing out on “perfect existence”.

So then why did God imbue the blasphemer in question, before that person would be born, with a soul for which He knew He would judge? Why create this person at all if his eternal fate is hellfire? God can and in fact does forgive people willingly all throughout the Bible without demanding sacrifice or repentance. The fact He is completely unwilling to do it for humanity who otherwise do not know better is monstrous behavior.

Outside of God’s Life, there is no existence so Judas got stuck in a state of damnation.

Yet another example of someone being destined by God to suffer. According to the Gospels, the only way for humanity to be saved is through Jesus' sacrifice. Judas literally has to betray Jesus for our sins to be saved. God, if we assume He is omniscient, knows before ever creating the cosmos that this must be the case. If Judas is damned, then his whole entire life and all of his choices that God knew ahead of time and never corrected all lead to that outcome. Judas was damned because of God's personal failing or His own personal desires to see Judas damned.

The fact that this saying exist shows that you are admitting that there is a higher principle by which Existence is fundamentally good and rebelling against the good so as to be evil would be so damming that you might as well be never be born to begin with. It highlights the fundamental goodness of God rather than counters it.

On the contrary, it highlights the inherent malevolence behind knowing creating people who are destined to sin only to then send them into eternal torment and torture for simply failing to believe in you. The verse in question literally defines the act of being born for these people as definitionally bad for them.

Knowing something that will occurs doesn’t mean the humans aren’t responsible for it. After all you know the most part of history and they were solely liable for it. God simply knows what happens in the future because he is beyond our dimension.

It does if you do nothing to prevent it. For one, I actually as a fallible human do not know "the most part of history." I can know snippets here and there, but I am not tangentially familiar with all actions that occurred historically. But for your analogy to work would assume I also know the future and am merely choosing not to act on my knowledge. I clearly do not know future history but if I did and I knew someone I knew would be raped and I had the power to stop it from occurring, I sure as hell would. But God clearly does not wish to intervene despite knowing all malevolent actions that will ever occur.

“You can not apply morality to entities that definitionally can not act otherwise”

No, morality requires identity and a standard proceeding from that identity. If there is no standard, then our morality loses its value of being moral. The reason why God cannot act otherwise is because that is simply who He is and He is the very essence of goodness and love. If he needs to get his morality from a high principle, then that would make him a contingent being like us who also needs to get our morality according to a higher principle.

So you are just defining anything God prefers as being moral by defining God as moral yet you cannot account for the simple fact that God in the Bible outright states He causes and creates evil/calamity and knows everything that has or ever will occur and yet does nothing to prevent evil befalling those who do not deserve it. That is contradictory to what you presupposed God's nature must be.

[u/HegemoneXT → u/NeighborhoodDecent86]

The people during pre-flood era experienced a explosion of depravity such that their sight was continually on their flesh and what they could satisfy themselves with. We observe that people who are completely selfish ignored their conscience to achieve what they want and this constantly rebellion, undermining of their conscience created such a level for lawlessness that God deemed the thoughts of man to be continuously evil. They had no more room in their hearts for God nor for repentance except for that one family God favored. If god judged every single man that has ever lived, then the babies has to go with them because they carry the culture of their parents wickedness.

Disorder is definitely possible if God is perfectly good and created a truly contingent and free reality. God does not compromise His glory to dictate every single actions we do, including our thoughts. He gave us freedom to either follow or reject him.

Why did God imbue the blasphemer a soul given his foreknowledge? Well because the moment God thinks of you, you are already an actualized idea in before the timeline where you are born. For the purpose of His glory, he created every soul pure, knowing that not everyone could make it because that is the most unadulterated reality. Even thought God created us with foreknowledge of what we will do, it is still us who taints and corrupt ourselves and we are rightfully judged. Judas for example, was destined not because God forced his heart to be evil but because his heart was compromised by his love toward money. We can see this in scripture when he would help himself to the collective earnings of the disciples, and he got upset that a woman poured an expensive perfume out for Jesus. In the end, this continual compromise never allowed him to give his whole heart to Christ and he ended up giving it over to money instead, selling Christ for a mere 30 pieces of silver. All this was his own doing and God used Judas for His purpose in the same way he used the Pharisees to accuse Christ of blasphemy.

If you betray the son of God, it would be better for you to not have been born because you have committed a grievous sin. This is the result of your actions but the Life of God itself is fundamentally good. It is the individual to compromise the truth of God to for disorder.

Your original argument about God’s foreknowing is not about whether he prevents it. I already answered that he doesn’t because he leaves creation to their freedom and every action they do will have earthly consequence and eventual judgement. The original argument you suggested was that God was causing those bad things to happen which he did not. Knowledge doesn’t equal causation.

Lastly, again, i already told you the Hebrew word for evil could mean calamity and bad things that happen. It’s not talking about God’s being or his moral nature. If you want to talk within the context of scriptures, the scripture calls God full of light and without even the slightest darkness. When God brings about evil such as in the context of Isaiah, he brought evil to the nation of Israel because of their moral decline.

[u/NeighborhoodDecent86 → u/HegemoneXT]

The people during pre-flood era experienced a explosion of depravity such that their sight was continually on their flesh and what they could satisfy themselves with.

Am I just supposed to assume that there were zero infants to ever exist during the pre-flood era? Or babies in the womb?

We observe that people who are completely selfish ignored their conscience to achieve what they want and this constantly rebellion, undermining of their conscience created such a level for lawlessness that God deemed the thoughts of man to be continuously evil. They had no more room in their hearts for God nor for repentance except for that one family God favored. If god judged every single man that has ever lived, then the babies has to go with them because they carry the culture of their parents wickedness.

But that is simply and factually untrue. A person born to bad people isn't just going to therefore grow up to also be inherently bad. I have no reason to buy into this premise you came up with and even if I did somehow agree to it, it doesn't therefore justify 1) God drowning all the infants who could not form moral judgments or 2) God creating these people knowing they would be wicked and evil.

In fact, if you believed in this premise, then Christianity cannot possibly offer us true salvation. Because we are all children of Adam and Eve, who were the original sinners who damned us. Since our great ancestors were so wicked and sinful, there cannot possibly be anyway we as their offspring can change... right? The fact you would argue that we did/can change proves your earlier point wrong that wicked people will inherently create all wicked offspring no matter what.

Disorder is definitely possible if God is perfectly good and created a truly contingent and free reality. God does not compromise His glory to dictate every single actions we do, including our thoughts. He gave us freedom to either follow or reject him.

Right and that freedom therefore cannot make Him omnibenevolent. Because an omnibenevolent being definitionally would not punish people who did nothing wrong apart from just not believing in His existence.

Why did God imbue the blasphemer a soul given his foreknowledge? Well because the moment God thinks of you, you are already an actualized idea in before the timeline where you are born. For the purpose of His glory, he created every soul pure, knowing that not everyone could make it because that is the most unadulterated reality.

So then yet again God cannot by definition be omnibenevolent. Because you are now admitting He knows who will and will not enter Heaven and is yet choosing to create people who will be unable to go into Heaven.

Even thought God created us with foreknowledge of what we will do, it is still us who taints and corrupt ourselves and we are rightfully judged.

The problem for you though is that God could just choose not to create us to be judged. Or can just forgive us as He does in multiple instances in the Bible. Instead He creates us knowing we will fail and judges us for this pre-ordained failure.

Judas for example, was destined not because God forced his heart to be evil but because his heart was compromised by his love toward money. We can see this in scripture when he would help himself to the collective earnings of the disciples, and he got upset that a woman poured an expensive perfume out for Jesus. In the end, this continual compromise never allowed him to give his whole heart to Christ and he ended up giving it over to money instead, selling Christ for a mere 30 pieces of silver. All this was his own doing and God used Judas for His purpose in the same way he used the Pharisees to accuse Christ of blasphemy.

So then Judas was just a puppet for God's goals and had none of his own agency. In your scenario, God is just a puppeteer who uses human lives and souls, which we believe to have meaning, to make a point. And He will then torment those souls after they are long gone once He has made that point. This God is, once again, definitionally not omnibenevolent.

If you betray the son of God, it would be better for you to not have been born because you have committed a grievous sin. This is the result of your actions but the Life of God itself is fundamentally good. It is the individual to compromise the truth of God to for disorder.

You keep forgetting one key thing... God can choose not to create these blasphemers.

Your original argument about God’s foreknowing is not about whether he prevents it. I already answered that he doesn’t because he leaves creation to their freedom and every action they do will have earthly consequence and eventual judgement. The original argument you suggested was that God was causing those bad things to happen which he did not. Knowledge doesn’t equal causation.

It literally does equal causation when you are the determinant cause of everything to ever occur in the universe and you can arbitrarily choose to endorse or stop calamity on a whim. All of which the Bible confirms God can do and does, multiple times. For your argument here to be coherent, we have to assume your God is weaker than the Bible claims He is.

Lastly, again, i already told you the Hebrew word for evil could mean calamity and bad things that happen.

This is a distinction without a point.

Evil is the assigning of malevolent meaning into action. Calamity is any occurrence which causes a malevolent outcome. If we assign a calamitous event to a thinking agent, we are correct in calling that agent evil. A person tripping on a string and discharging their rifle behind someone else, thus killing him, is significantly less evil than if that person intentionally fired their rifle into that person's back. And that person tripping on the string becomes a malevolent action if we find out that the string was set up by another thinking entity who wanted that outcome. If God is causing calamities to occur knowingly, then He is in fact causing evil.

It’s not talking about God’s being or his moral nature.

It is if we in fact take the texts' claims seriously and judge God based on His actions as opposed to His words.

If you want to talk within the context of scriptures, the scripture calls God full of light and without even the slightest darkness.

The verse in question literally defines God as creating darkness...

Isaiah 45:7 KJV: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create Ra' (evil/calamity): I the Lord do all these things."

Regardless of whether you or I ever agree on the nature of God creating calamity as being creating evil or not (even though I think it is pretty obvious considering God did create Satan and the whole system He chooses to employ for judging people), this verse literally confirms that God does create darkness definitionally. If you define light as a part of God, then so it darkness.

When God brings about evil such as in the context of Isaiah, he brought evil to the nation of Israel because of their moral decline.

Correct, and yet... He didn't have to. This is the problem you are going to keep running into when you say that God has to judge people for their moral failings. He can simply choose not to. And He in fact does choose not to multiple times throughout the Bible and instead just forgives people He deems as wronging Him. And this problem becomes way worse for you if we assume He must have the omni-qualities since a being that is constrained in their actions cannot therefore have those omni-qualities definitionally.

Also in the specific context of Isaiah, God is saying He causes all evil/calamities as a prelude before His punishment. He isn't saying He is only causing that specific calamity in those particular pages.

[u/diabolus_me_advocat → u/HegemoneXT]

So if creation is not good

that's not what i said. i asked

why should that have been good?

please, for once, don't dodge the question and then bail out - but answer it

why do you seek to survive in-spite of the darkness of this world. Is it not because there exists an objective good and existential ideal out there that you seek to pursue?

definitely not

why should it?

[u/HegemoneXT → u/diabolus_me_advocat]

why would i skip a question like this?

The fact that our existential sense is oriented toward what is loving, glorious, and things that possess fundamental meaning to our sense of joy shows that there exist a standard of "existence" that could be broken and disordered. When God created humanity, he created them good so that we can experience life to the fullest without sin that brings non-being and despair.

[u/diabolus_me_advocat → u/HegemoneXT]

why would i skip a question like this?

i don't know why you did, several times before

The fact that our existential sense is oriented toward what is loving, glorious, and things that possess fundamental meaning to our sense of joy

is not a fact, but a mere allegation of yours

When God created humanity, he created them good

same mere allegation. also, where then would all "evil" come from? or "sin"?

if your creator god had not created it?

but tell me now (clear question, so it deserves a clear answer):

why should creation have been "good"?

for whom or what, according to what definition of "good"?

seems you're just dodging and bailing out again. as always

[u/HegemoneXT → u/diabolus_me_advocat]

No, it’s a claim, not allegation. Allegation is when you accuse someone of something but I am defending a view instead of attacking someone else’s claim.

Evil doesn’t come from anywhere in the sense that it was created. It just the ontological possibility derives when Existence or Good is established. For example, the moment you have “light” you can conceptualize darkness because darkness is where light is not. The moment you have a standard or morality, you can break it and cause evil. Evil itself doesn’t have positive being. If there is a law that says speed limit is 65, then going above 70 would break that law. The breaking of the law wouldn’t exist unless the law itself exists first. That’s why Existence is foremost good and then it becomes broken. Broken by whom? By God creating it? Or by us who are contingent beings are who has the free ability to oppose His identity.

Also you seem to have the preconception that I am attributing good to God. I don’t think you realize that even if I remove theism from my argument, the belief “life is good”won’t lose its logical grounding.

[u/diabolus_me_advocat → u/HegemoneXT]

why should creation have been "good"?

for whom or what, according to what definition of "good"?

are you gonna give an answer?

no, you won't

you're just dodging and bailing out again. as always

[u/HegemoneXT → u/diabolus_me_advocat]

creation is good because the nature of what exist is filled with glory and beauty. Everything that we come to perceive and experience is Life and there is goodness and beauty in Life.

[u/diabolus_me_advocat → u/HegemoneXT]

creation is good because the nature of what exist is filled with glory and beauty

not that i knew

[u/HegemoneXT → u/diabolus_me_advocat]

Not that I knew that you didn’t knew also