Not only robots could never become intentional, but neither can humans: humans too are just machines. Intentions (if present) always come from us, the machine's owner(s)/controller(s), never from a machine.

diver dan,

>>Catholics removed the book of Enoch from the apocrypha five hundred years ago.<<

I do not know much about this but Wikipedia says:

“Most Christian denominations and traditions may accept the Books of Enoch as having some historical or theological interest, but they generally regard the Books of Enoch as noncanonical or noninspired. It is regarded as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, but not by any other Christian groups.”

>>That book has all the answers to the question of evil, you would ever need.<<

I do not think the problem of evil, that occupied the minds of theologians and other Christian thinkers for ages, had all the answers already at the times the book of Enoch was written.

Besides, I think the problem of evil is not about how "God dealt with the question of evil" but about how humans could/should understand His creation in spite of an apparent enigma built into it. You need mathematics to deal with the enigmas built into quantum physics, and you need faith to deal with the enigma of evil in God’s creation.

Well George, it was part and parcel of the Christian belief system for fifteen hundred years. That's a longer period three times over than its period of rejection.

Maybe you should check it out!

Dan.

Dan,

>> it was part and parcel of the Christian belief system for fifteen hundred years <<

Whatever that means, it does not seem to contradict what I quoted from Wikipedia. However, as I said, I have not read it, and certainly am not a biblical historian or exegete.

>> That's a longer period three times over than its period of rejection.<<

There are many beliefs and interpretations of facts - e.g concerning cosmology - in the history of the West whose period of acceptance had been much longer than the “period of its rejection”. So one should not be surprised that this applies also to the acceptance of which parts of ancient scripture are to be accepted as “canonical”.

However, this is irrelevant to the philosophical attempts to reconcile the existence of evil with an appropriate interpretation of God’s omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence.

George.

I think your way of seeking answers to evil, (and other fundamental human questions), lacks acceptance that the human journey is a basic war of survival.

The whole of scripture could be disregarded on the same arguments used for the dismissal of Enoc. There were ulterior motives behind it IMO.

Christianity is based on a fundamental of "form".
The key word is fundamental. It's where Liberal Christians get it totally wrong.

Nobody George, is above the simple truth. The war in our society in the West, is raging between Fundamental Liberalism and Fundamentalist religion.
Rolling over to the enemy by denying the fundamental truth plainly spoken in the Bible, good is at war with evil, puts you in a position of compromise with your beliefs.

Dan

Dan,

I am not aware I was “seeking answers to evil”, at least not in this thread.

Otherwise I agree with much of what you wrote, especially about the tension between the two extreme ways of interpreting the Bible: Fundamental Liberalism and Fundamentalist religion. In my opinion, the right approach is - as is usual when dealing with opposite extremes - somewhere in between.