Quote:
Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
I asked you a question in post #57 which you still haven't answered.  The first floor of the Irving hall is concrete poured onto cardboard boxes. Those boxes have long since disintegrated. Why would you build a foundation on such a flimsy substance as a cardboard box? Yet that cardboard plays a key role in making the structure more sound. In the same way God may be using evil to make his finished product more sound. |
I understand what you are trying to do with this example, but I feel that it is misapplied. I just can't see the comparison between the ability to do something that the natural mind doesn't understand (unless it has sufficient training in physics), and evil. The fact that the outcome might be good and desirable does not make the two parallel enough to be meaningful.
Have you seen a water bed set up on top of a series of paper cups? Surely if you exert some lateral pressure the cups will collapse. But with only vertical pressure of gravity and the weight of the water above, the cups are very capable of holding the bed in place, and even someone getting on it and sleeping. It is more the ignorance of the average person as to the strength of a slightly conical paper cup and the math that reduces the weight of water held by any one cup to quite a small amount that makes it work.
The structure of those cardboard boxes was much the same. I recall walking on them. Besides the ever-so light notice of lateral movement, the could hold a lot. For the smallest structural portion of those boxes, my weight was probably as much as the cement they would hold. I could probably stand briefly on the heel of one foot and exert much more pressure than they would receive from the cement, but with no evidence of failure of the boxes. But get the entire structure soaking wet and they would fail. Even the pouring of the cement did not involve enough moisture to damage the top surface. And once the cement dries, it is held up by a series of deep cement piers, and connected to those piers by a web of steel encased within the cement. The cardboard was irrelevant within no more than a few hours. And it probably took the effects of some significant rain over a significant amount of time to get under the foundation and start the rotting process.
How do we make a comparison of this to evil? I sure don't see it as giving a reason for there to be evil.
Yes God uses everything for our benefit. (We may fight him on it, but he is working anyway.) I just don't see it as an argument for the coexistence of God and evil. Oh, they coexist. And well. But the fact that God can use evil is not an argument for or against its existence, or for or against the existence of God. It simply doesn't make a statement. It leaves any possibility as plausible — both sides.