Diecast And Toy New Arrivals 04-20-12 from Toy Wonders

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God and the Art of Toy and Diecast Marketing
Finding God From the Dark Side (part 1)
By Lu Su

I've encountered lots of people who either do not believe in God or they are not sure if there is a God out there. So for many, the existence of God is in question. But so far, I"ve not encounter anyone who doubts the existence of evil. It's so prevalent. How could you miss it? The existence of evil actually serves as evidence that God exists. That’s a really big statement with lots of words starting with the letter “e”. Since this is an important statement, I want to state it again, but more slowly.

The existence of evil.................... serves as evidence............ that God exists.

However, I don’t many people think this way. In fact I think most non-theists would argue just the opposite: "There is just too much evil in this world for God to exist." Note that this conclusion has the built in assumption that a loving, omniscient, and all powerful God would do something it. So we have very opposite statements here. One camp is saying that evil provides evidence for God's existence. The other camp is saying God cannot exist because of all this evil. So who is right here?

First of all, I do not believe that anyone can be a true atheist. At best, people who claim to be atheists are agnostics who believe there is no god. A theist says there is a god (or gods). An agnostic says he doesn't know or that this knowledge is unknowable. But an atheist affirms an absolute negative: There is NO God;

To affirm the nonexistence of something, you need to be pretty smart. Smart to the point where you are omniscient. So far I have not heard any person claiming to be all knowing. Now realize that affirming a positive is far easier than affirming a negative. Let me give you an example.

I can claim that there are baseballs out there where if you pulled off the cover to the ball, you would find Mickey Mantle’s signature signed on the core of the ball. I'm picking on Mr. Mantle because I walk by his very modest three bedroom former home almost every day. Now agreed, how his signature got inside the ball would be very bizarre, but a person affirming the positive (like there is a God) only needs to show a single occurrence. But a person who affirms the negative (no God) has a much more difficult challenge (actually an impossible one) unless this person is all knowing. This person would have to have knowledge that no baseball out there has Mickey Mantel’s signature on the inside; Someone has knowledge of this?

I think many people get it into their head that it is totally up to the theist to prove their claim, but not the other way around. Prove to me that God does not exist. So a skeptic who does not think there are baseballs out there with Mickey Mantel’s signature signed on the inside of the ball may ask a reasonable question, “Why do you one exists? Have you seen one?”

My reply would be that I have not personally seen one myself, but multiple credible witnesses have claimed that they have seen one and I believe them. Furthermore, many of these eye-witnesses were persecuted, captured, and were given the option to withdraw their claim or be executed –but none did. It's very rare that people will die defending a lie.

When I study the arguments that professed atheist use to argue for God’s non-existence, I’ve come to the conclusion that most have rejected God for moral reasons.

So often they will say something like, “If God exists, then He is evil and maniacal.”

Realize that when a person uses words like "evil" or "maniacal", they are making moral judgment. So like myself, they observe something in our world but have arrived to the opposite conclusion that I have and say that God either does not exist or is not present. Or worse, many have experience great evil in their lives and conclude that there cannot be a loving God out there.

Since evil usually results in harming people and some people then go on to blame God, I think a reasonable question needs to be asked here. Is it wrong for the creator to destroy (or allow the destruction of) something he or she created? Is it morally wrong for the creator to destroy all or parts of his or her creation?

If you were standing by a beautiful vista and were in the process of painting a magnificent oil painting, would it be morally wrong for you to suddenly become angry or dissatisfied with, say, the tree you just painted and started taking globs of white paint and start whiting it out? Or would it be morally wrong for you to destroy parts or even the entire painting? I think everyone would agree that it would be wrong for me to suddenly put my foot through your canvas. I could make the argument that I was practicing to be the back up punter for the New York Giants. Or even better, I kicked your painting in the pursuit of happiness -the feeling of my foot going through canvas and seeing your facial expression provides me great amounts of pleasure.

It would be evil because I am not the creator. It would be evil of me because I am unable to perfectly restore the creation to the state it was in -before evil (sin) damaged it. But an all-powerful creator that transcends time (if one exists) could. So back to my thesis statement.

The existence of evil serves as evidence that God exists. The proof is quite simple.

If evil exists, then good exists.
If evil and good exists, then in order for you to differentiate between good and evil, a moral law must exist.
If a moral law exists, which transcends legal law, then a moral law giver (God) must exist.

Evil exists, therefore God must exists. The reverse is true too. If there is no God, then there is no moral law. If there is no moral law, then there is no such thing as good. If there is no good, then there is no evil. But we know there is evil (just turn on the news or read your newspaper). For this syllogistic proof to be wrong, at least one of the above premises must be wrong.

Next time lets look at a very specific example of evil. Let's see if we can find God by studying the dark side.