Comparing Marx And Nietzsche's Analysis
Introduction
A young child cries, for her mother has just been brutally murdered. An orphan weeps, as he despairs of living another day alone. A beautiful woman lies down to die, for there is no food to be had. A mother shakes her fist towards the sky, as she has just lost her only child in an earthquake. The skeptic shakes his head, unable to understand all the pain in the world. This is the 21st century, and yet the problem of evil and suffering is nearly as old as time itself. While the atheist is “wasting his breath to complain, because in his view there is no-one to complain to,”[1] the Christian is faced with a much more difficult conundrum. The age-old question is this, “How can there be an all-loving and all-powerful God …show more content…
Augustine records over a thousand years earlier that evil is “nothing else than corruption, either of the measure, or the form, or the order, that belong to nature.”[7] He also writes that “God did not cause the first evil will.”[8] Even further back, the Old Testament has much to say about evil in the world. The Israelites were intimately familiar with pain and suffering, and this is reflected in their writings. “The concept of evil in the OT has both qualitative (natural) and moral categories…evil is misfortune, particularly injury or threat to life or standing in society…it is also used in a moral and spiritual sense as the designation for immorality and unfaithfulness to the covenant.”[9] It was through many years of hardship and oppression …show more content…
Its strength is found in the plethora of biblical texts that support the idea of God’s absolute control over the universe. It holds that God is beyond man’s understanding in many regards, and God’s control over the universe is one of these areas. However, it too is fraught with problems. The idea of hard determinism means men and women are not truly free; they are more akin to robots than to anything else. With no free will, the love that people have towards God is not genuine; it is a forced love. Furthermore, the advocate of determinism must work through all the passages of Scripture where man is told that he ought to do something, commanded by God to live a certain way, and then punished for not obeying.[37] To entirely throw out man’s freedom is a difficult task
A young child cries, for her mother has just been brutally murdered. An orphan weeps, as he despairs of living another day alone. A beautiful woman lies down to die, for there is no food to be had. A mother shakes her fist towards the sky, as she has just lost her only child in an earthquake. The skeptic shakes his head, unable to understand all the pain in the world. This is the 21st century, and yet the problem of evil and suffering is nearly as old as time itself. While the atheist is “wasting his breath to complain, because in his view there is no-one to complain to,”[1] the Christian is faced with a much more difficult conundrum. The age-old question is this, “How can there be an all-loving and all-powerful God …show more content…
Augustine records over a thousand years earlier that evil is “nothing else than corruption, either of the measure, or the form, or the order, that belong to nature.”[7] He also writes that “God did not cause the first evil will.”[8] Even further back, the Old Testament has much to say about evil in the world. The Israelites were intimately familiar with pain and suffering, and this is reflected in their writings. “The concept of evil in the OT has both qualitative (natural) and moral categories…evil is misfortune, particularly injury or threat to life or standing in society…it is also used in a moral and spiritual sense as the designation for immorality and unfaithfulness to the covenant.”[9] It was through many years of hardship and oppression …show more content…
Its strength is found in the plethora of biblical texts that support the idea of God’s absolute control over the universe. It holds that God is beyond man’s understanding in many regards, and God’s control over the universe is one of these areas. However, it too is fraught with problems. The idea of hard determinism means men and women are not truly free; they are more akin to robots than to anything else. With no free will, the love that people have towards God is not genuine; it is a forced love. Furthermore, the advocate of determinism must work through all the passages of Scripture where man is told that he ought to do something, commanded by God to live a certain way, and then punished for not obeying.[37] To entirely throw out man’s freedom is a difficult task