Sorry, but there's too many loaded questions (i.e. questions based on false or misleading premises) for me to answer them.

David

1st question isn't good God didn't create evil.. evil is the absent of good. like dark is the absent of light it isn't dark is seperate from light. dark is light but not enough of it to sustain light for us to see. goes the same way with good vs. evil. but I think we understand what is bad so that we can understand what is good. .. 2nd answer is YHWH and the rest pretty much proves you don't have any knowledge at all about what the Bible really says.. God spoke in many parables why? to keep the enemy from understanding Gods plans. why is that? well God is all-powerful He can kick satan into the next millinium if God chooses to do so. but like a fair person He decides to fight this battle the right way.

wouldn't mind you changing those answer and putting up the correct ones.. thanks

Isaiah 45:7

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

I am too in awe that this makes sense to anyone. Is the Christian's view of a God akin to that in the Baldur's Gate series? Where Gods are subject to rulings of other Gods and they all fight fairly on an even battleground? Next we'll hear that a mortal can kill God.

I should really go to church sometime, it would be better than reading a good fantasy novel the way some people preach.

LOL, I've been saying that for years now: the Bible is a great fictional Fantasy book, and a great source of ideas for D&D adventures... Wait, I just admitted that I played D&D on a public forum. Wow, I'm pathetic sometimes. Hahhah. "Dungeons and Dragons, Satan's game..."

God,all-knowing and all-powerful, created the fuck-ups in the Bible... to confuse his enemies? Wow. Just... wow. There's so many things wrong with that statement that I'm stunned that someone really believes that.

So a self-evident god, the omnipotent Creator is afraid of his enemies (what enemies?) so he made his entire message garbled and illogical so as to confuse them to his plans? Why would an all-powerful source of all reality need to confound anyone? If he's afraid his "enemies" could unravel his Plan somehow then he isn't "all-powerful" or "all-knowing" (since he isn't sure which ones are going to unravel his plans, obviously), which them means that God isn't God... An all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing God (a) Would know who was going to try to thwart him, (b) Make a plan that can't be thwarted, (c) Just in case it turns out he could be thwarted he'd know about it beforehand and change reality, (d) know about the change ahead of time, so it'd already be woven into His Plan. Or God isn't really a god...

...interesting.

-=Grim=-

Also, JesusSaves mentioned that dark is simply the absence of light, they are not separate. True. But doesn't the Bible in Genesis directly say God separated the light from the dark?

I'm going to assume, drawing from what you've said, that you're implying Satan is God's enemy.

So, for arguments sake, lets assume everything in that statement is right. Given the description of Satan in the Bible, surely you're not saying that you can see through God's parables and understand his true motives, but Satan can't?

*whistles* Talk about arrogance.

Isn't it obvious? Actually reading the Bible is a step towards atheism.

well God would make a way for me and others to see and understand Gods parables it isn't I who would understand them by myself those who weren't born again wouldn't understand them at all. but of course like paul said you can be born again but still do not understand them. it just depends on where you are in your spiritual growth. its not on my understanding of things but its the Holy Spirit or Gods understanding of things. so I either let him teach me (and then go to another Christian who is older) or I go to another Christian and then go double check if he was right or not.

Lol, thats what makes us Atheists. You'd think a normal person would believe a man was eaten by a whale.

I've read that there have been incidences where a human being was written by a whale.

For the sake of argument, let us presume for a moment that God does not create "the absence of goodness", which you define to be evil. Therefore, this evil would have to either not exist, or to appear intrinsically out of something that God created (also presuming God created EVERYTHING). The second option is quite obviously a fallacy, since the concept of evil exists, and its practice is punished (why woyuld you punish someone for doing something that does not exist?).

The second option is that evil derives out of something that God created (be it Adam or Eve, or Satan or whatever, that does not matter), thus it is also part of God's responsibility (had He not created the "root" of it, evil would not have appeared as a concept).

I leave only these two options. There would be another option that evil simply appeared, but that would mean that there is another creational force (an entity that can create itself) around here. To what laws does it stick? How powerful is it relationing to God? Can it cross God's will? This problem, when posted by yours truly, was said to be far too complexe and unlikely by theists I've asked, therefore the only two options reside above.

Also the Bible states clearly that God creates evil as he wishes, as Sapient quoted, therefore the third option totally fails. Therefore the debate on who created evil is pointless, unless you're willing to assume that the Bible's word is not what you should listen to, or that the Bible shouldn't be subject to logical understanding, in which case we are talking at totally different levels.

Yes, I would really agree on the answers part... with reference. I fancy knowing quite something about the Bible, but there are certain things that have really blown my mind.

If you're a mean'ol'atheist, it's not difficult to guess the correct answers if you don't know much about the Bible... in most cases just pick the least likely from a moral or logical point of view

Who is responsible for ALL of the evil ever created on this Earth... GOD... the buck stops there.

we just talked about this for a while today, but first to understand who created evil we need to know "what is evil?"

That's a good point. One problem is that we're talking here about the English translation of a Hebrew word. We all know that words in other languages don't always have the exact same set of meanings as they do in English. When translating, people choose the closest word, even though it may have connotations in Hebrew that it doesn't have in English. The word translated as "evil" in the KJV (the Hebrew "ra" can mean evil as we understand it, or it could mean punishment, adversity, trouble, sorrows, suffering or misfortune.

For example, "ra" is translated as "grievous" in Proverbs 15:10: "Correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way: and he that hateth reproof shall die." But that clearly doesn't mean that correction is evil or wrong - in fact, it's clearly a good thing in this event. It's just that it causes sorrow for the one being corrected.

And since, in Isaiah 45:7, "ra" is used as an opposite for "peace", something along the lines of "trouble" or "suffering" is a better translation than "evil", since "peace" and "evil" aren't opposites. I know some translations use other words, like "disaster" (NIV), "calamity" (NAS, NKJ), "bad times" (New Living Translation), "sorrow" (Contemporary English version), and "hard times" (New International).

David

That's a moot issue. God is responsible for everything, good bad, evil, and non-evil. It really doesn't matter what's evil, whatever it is, God is responsible for it all. At least if we entertain the notion that Bible God is real.

RED HERRING.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/red-herring.html

Also Known as: Smoke Screen, Wild Goose Chase.
Description of Red Herring

A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

1. Topic A is under discussion.
2. Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).
3. Topic A is abandoned.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim.

BACK ON TOPIC: GOD IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THE EVIL EVER CAUSED!

Oh, yeah. Another question on the quiz that's incorrect is #3, "Which of the following dictators was most genocidal - i.e. killed the most people. Yes, this requires some knowledge outside the Bible."

The answer would be Stalin, who killed about 13 million (though Mao Tse Tung, though not given as an option, killed about 49 million)

Even if I were to give you Noah's Flood (though it wasn't genocide - God specifically chose individuals to survive, and I also believe this is parable, not history) and those killed by the Israelites (also not genocide - it was self-defense), you wouldn't come anywhere near 13,000,000. Though no even approximate number is given for the flood in the Bible, the best estimates would be around one or two million.

David

See my response in the part you called a "red herring".

David

I will, but I'm guessing ahead of time, you will still dodge the reality of the blood that remains on your gods hands.

EDIT IN: WTF, I just looked. You were referring to the previous post in this thread? I thought you were referring to another thread. Holy shit, not only was I right about you dodging reality, you actually threw out something very close to ANOTHER red herring in the process. Wow, just fucking wow.

Once again...

Q. Who created us knowing the evil we'd commit?
A. God!

Therefore God is ultimately responsible for all evil. The buck stops at God.

Considering that God (per the Bible, at least) created life - even if He ended people's lives, they at least got to live in the first place because of Him.

Isn't it better to live and die, than not to live at all?

David

And that my friend is a complete dodge of reality. Any rational person can see that.

The buck doesn't stop with us. That is just ridiculous. That dodge of reality, is what seperates you from honest and rational people.

It answers it, just exactly as I would expect a dishonest person to answer it. Thanks for the answer.

so how do you judge what is evil and what isn't evil? who or what gave you that incite to know?

In several ways, utility, empathy, cultural and societal edicts and relativeness....but that is really beside the point.

The question we really need to ask here since it seems you are touching on the subject of objective morallity is the Euthyphro dillemma: Is what is moral commanded by god because it is moral, or is it moral because it's commanded by god? Either choice you make leads to problems. Problems for the theist that is.