2 ms·

I'm confused what you mean by that. Basic escatology (God and believers win at the end, Satan and sinners lose) is extremely well addressed.

eropple 9y ago
If you treat the generally accepted Gospels as, well, gospel, then sure. But these are literary and ethical works, too, and that hangs on an "at the end" that is neither justified textually nor earned ethically. The god of the Abrahamic faiths has, what with the "omnipotent" label and all, no need to allow evil to exist, or to exist, at any point. Yet an omnipotent god can't make a burrito so hot that they can't eat it. So it goes with evil; the power to end evil must be circumscribed or there's no goddamn point to any of it. "Well, we're gonna just wrap this up now but we could have at any point" is nutty; the only reasonable explanation that I've ever seen come down the pike--unless you invite ones that make the Abrahamic deity a real shithead, and I can't stop you from that--is that there is a can't somewhere in that causal chain, even if the authors who dreamed it up didn't want to circumscribe the powers of their deity.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  In Abrahamic ethics, evil is the absence of good, you describe all of it negatively: lack of love, lack of respect for life, lack of belief, lack of generosity, etc. So from that perspective, God created evil but only in the sense that he created vacuum by putting matter next to it. > "Well, we're gonna just wrap this up now but we could have at any point" is nutty. That's explained in 2 Peter 3:9: "The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance." From that perspective, God has the motivation of a captain refusing to launch the last lifeboat until the last ensign is in it. People construct ethics different than biblical ethics, sure. Biblical ethics is entirely about fidelity to God. Some people hate that ethical framework, but good literature is allowed to be divisive.

eropple 9y ago

If you treat the generally accepted Gospels as, well, gospel, then sure. But these are literary and ethical works, too, and that hangs on an "at the end" that is neither justified textually nor earned ethically. The god of the Abrahamic faiths has, what with the "omnipotent" label and all, no need to allow evil to exist, or to exist, at any point. Yet an omnipotent god can't make a burrito so hot that they can't eat it. So it goes with evil; the power to end evil must be circumscribed or there's no goddamn point to any of it. "Well, we're gonna just wrap this up now but we could have at any point" is nutty; the only reasonable explanation that I've ever seen come down the pike--unless you invite ones that make the Abrahamic deity a real shithead, and I can't stop you from that--is that there is a can't somewhere in that causal chain, even if the authors who dreamed it up didn't want to circumscribe the powers of their deity.

humanrebar 9y ago
In Abrahamic ethics, evil is the absence of good, you describe all of it negatively: lack of love, lack of respect for life, lack of belief, lack of generosity, etc. So from that perspective, God created evil but only in the sense that he created vacuum by putting matter next to it. > "Well, we're gonna just wrap this up now but we could have at any point" is nutty. That's explained in 2 Peter 3:9: "The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance." From that perspective, God has the motivation of a captain refusing to launch the last lifeboat until the last ensign is in it. People construct ethics different than biblical ethics, sure. Biblical ethics is entirely about fidelity to God. Some people hate that ethical framework, but good literature is allowed to be divisive.