and (a lighter book) A Wrinkle in Time
Now why do I recommend these books. The issue of suffering has been raised and is adequately addressed in the first book (PoP). The second book (WiT) is delightful and much easier to read but takes truths from PoP to their natural conclusions. The thesis of PoP is many-fold. Lewis starts with the idea that in an existence with only a Creator and a created being where the created being has free will implies the possibility of pain. He then discusses scenarios where the Creator attempts to remove the possibility of suffering, but the result is necessarily the removal of the free will of the created being.
This is borne out in WiT when the children find themselves on a planet that is entirely controlled by one mind. All suffering, mistakes, pain etc are removed from this society because all beings actions are controlled by the mind until their wills, having been forced into alignment with the mind, operate automatically. Any creature whose actions go against the mind is immediately destroyed. This planet is more a dystopian hell than the creation of a loving Creator, and yet, it is very similar to what BBBats laid out as the actions of a better God.
Next, Lewis argues in PoP that the fall, while being a necessary possibility for creatures with free will, was not a necessary outcome of creatures with free will. Lewis also very carefully discusses the idea of possibility and impossibility as it applies to God. People often pose questions or make statements that "God could..." but non-sense is still non-sense when applied to God. So while some things are impossible to man, but possible to God, some things are "intrinsically impossible". Thus if it is 'intrinsically impossible' for creatures to exist with free will and without the possibility of pain, then that applies to God.
So I've tried to briefly address here the problem of suffering that BBBats has raised as well as the question of God's omnipotence and other characteristics. I can only post in limited times so I can work.
Let me know if you are familiar with these books. I know that Toups knows WiT.
4 comments:
How can something be intrinsically impossible to God? Who made the rules which determine that God cannot do/be something? Don't those rules require a "cause"?
Non-sense is intrinsically impossible to God.
God can make something out of nothing. We cannot do that. That is not intrinsically impossible to God.
God can't make it logical that 10=11; it is intrinsically impossible that 10=11.
So the answer to the ancient mystery is... No. God cannot create a rock that he couldn't lift. This is nonsensical.
So you are saying that logic precedes God somehow. Where did logic come from?
First of all you are begging the question of time with regards to God. I am not saying that Logic precedes God and leave it to you to show me why this should be necessary. I am saying that Logic and Reason are of God and are good.
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