(Originally written November 18, 2005 in Book 1)
Recently I was asked by a friend about a topic that was intriguing. She said that she was having a very interesting conversation with a friend of hers about life and God. The conversation turned deep and 'philosophical' very quickly. It left me to think about what my friend's friend had said. She had posed the question, 'Who created sin?' My friend answered 'Satan'. The girl then replied, "Wrong, it was God; because God made Satan".
Is God responsible for sin? Is this a logical assumption? I thought and discussed aloud that a belief in God is faith-based and not always rooted in man's rationality. (I am not arguing that a belief in God cannot be proven rationally, I am simply stating that sometimes man's logic and rationality and logic is flawed and warped). My friend told me that her friend would not accept that answer because she only thinks on a logical and rational level.
So I now had two premises for her friend's argument. First that her friend was always rational and would not accept anything based on faith. Second, I knew that she believed God was the author of sin. I decided then to see if I could logically disprove one or both of her statements.
Written out an argument for hers would look like this: (We'll name her Penny)
Penny's Argument I
Premise A - I am always logical and rational in my thinking.
Premise B - God created sin.
Conclusion: The statement that 'God created sin' is a logical one.
This is basically her argument, but to arrive at the premise 'B' there must be a few presuppositions or an argument leading up to it. This argument would be as follows:
Premise A - God created Satan
Premise B - Satan contained Evil
Premise C - Evil caused Sin
Conclusion: God created sin
Now there is a solid argument showing that Penny is logical and that Penny believes that God created sin; and, since Penny is always logical her conclusion is logical. Now that we have an argument to check for logical correctness and rationality let's start.
To disprove this logical argument I am going to pose an argument that uses the same form. First, let's look at the form of Penny's arguments.
The argument I is a deductive argument. The argument affirms the antecedent. "IF Penny is always logical in her thinking, then her arguments are always logical. Penny is logical, therefore her argument that 'God created sin' is logical."
The argument for God's creation of sin has this form:
A created B
B contained C
C caused D
A therefore created D
To disprove this argument I will pose an argument using the same form that this argument uses. Since this is a deductive argument if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. But if the conclusion is false, then one of the premises (or more) must be false. Using this form I will pose this argument:
Bobby created a grilled cheese sandwich
The grilled cheese contained bacteria X
The bacteria X caused the virus Y
Bobby therefore created virus Y
This is obviously a false conclusion. A person cannot create a physical virus inadvertently by cooking a sandwich. Since this argument is false and it uses the same form as Penny's argument for God's creation of sin, Penny's argument is illogical. Since this argument is illogical it cannot serve as a premise for a logical argument. Premise B in argument I is false, rendering argument I false. That leaves us now with a dilemma.
Either God is not the creator of sin or Penny does not always think logically. We now know from my counter argument that Penny doesn't always think logically because she uses a false premise to prove a conclusion. Therefor, God is not the creator of sin. This may seem like a large jump but there is no way of logically defending the statement that God created sin. This is an indefensible argument and to take a belief that is logically indefensible is illogical.
