My understanding is that both good and evil are from God-
So God created evil, in other words.
the difference is we have the choice between them and the test is basically our choices for which we will be judged
The standard answer, to which I have the standard reply: why would he create evil people in the first place, and then judge and punish those who exhibit it? Seems awfully cruel, considering that an omnipotent being could have just created perfect, good humans to begin with, and so skipped all the suffering and evil-doing.
And then there's all that suffering that isn't the result of human moral decisions: natural disaster ("acts of God," as it were), birth defects, predation, etc. Why would a just, loving God create a world with so much inherent, unchosen suffering?
The alignment of God to human morality is that God wants the humans to choose the good rather than the evil
So then why didn't he create humans that would always choose good over evil? Is he omnipotent, or not?
He isn't obliged to include anything, but he is not obliged to exclude it- why we are a certain way can be understood by understanding why God created us in the first place.
Indeed. The kicker here is that none of the standard explanations I've heard square with the purported properties of God as good and omnipotent. If he were good, but not omnipotent, that would be fine. Likewise if he were omnipotent but not good (which sounds like what you're suggesting, actually). But not both.
This is a intentional paradox created.
Created by the assertion of omnipotence. Just because you don't bother asking a question doesn't mean it isn't salient. The concept is ill-defined to begin with.
If something is not needed for an explanation its existence is to be reject....? This is not a very convincing argument.
And yet, it's produced a great deal of quality science of the years.
But the point is more that questions of existence in that case are not interesting: they have no bearing on reality. And so we see that almost all theists go much further in their descriptions of god, to include active intervention in nature. What's the point in believing in something that makes no difference one way or the other?
Oh actually I was referring to his interference in selected events. For example perhaps there is a saint living that did something unusual- of course scientists aren't there observing that. (I'm using saints as an example, just to say that these could be isolated events and not simply what occur in 'nature' in general).
Sure, but - again - scientists have been around for a long time. Longer than saints, I'd note. And they've certainly gone looking for evidence, and examined purported miracles where available. All to no avail.
But no time frame for the effect of prayer is usually given- and usually no guarantees are presented that the prayer will be 'accepted' so to speak. No experiment could 'control' for these variables, so such experiments have design flaws and such an experiment therefore bears no relevance.
It's true that the failure of any particular prayer isn't that compelling. But when you notice that
none of them appear to have been answered, for going-on thousands of years now... I mean, certainly
some of those prayers were from righteous people, asking for righteous things, no?
And carefully controlled experiments have been done to test the power of prayer to heal the sick. To no avail. Are we to infer that the people who prayed weren't sufficiently sincere? Wrong religion? God doesn't care about the afflicted? None of these explanations square well with the manner in which God is presented: good, omnipotent, and amenable to prayer.
