contemplans wrote:You can't have it both ways.
Either Hitler was free to do evil or he wasn't. If he wasn't, but God made him,
Given an omniscient, omnipotent god, free will is meaningless. Hitler, being god's creation, acted as an expression of god's creation.
then the the Buddhist path of liberation is impossible (AN 3.110).
That would be true if there were a god responsible for it all. Fortunately the Buddha rejected such an idea as a creator god, thus the Buddha's teachings are not saddled with such a remarkably incoherent notion.
If he was free, then how could God be imputed with the evil?
The Buddhist texts offer several responses to that:
Anguttara Nikaya 3.61: "Again, monks, I
[the Buddha] approached those ascetic and brahmins and said to them: 'Is it true, as they say, that you venerable ones teach and hold the view that whatever a person experiences...all that is caused by God's creation?' When they affirmed it, I said to them: 'If that is so, venerable sirs, then it is due to God's creation that people kill, steal ...
[and otherwise act badly]. But those who have recourse to God's creation as the decisive factor, will lack the impulse and the effort doing this or not doing that. Since for them, really and truly, no (motive) obtains that this or that ought to be done or not be done...."'"If the pleasure and pain that beings feel are caused the creative act of a Supreme God
[Issara-nimmana-hetu], then the Niganthas
[Jains] surely must have been created by an evil Supreme God."
MajjhimaNikaya II 222."The universe is without a refuge, without a Supreme God."
MN II 68.
And then let us add these statement from the Pali Canon:"He who eyes can see the sickening sight, why does not God set his creatures right? If his wide power no limits can restrain, why is his hand so rarely spread to bless? Why are his creatures all condemned to pain? Why does he not to all give happiness? Why do fraud, lies, and ignorance prevail? Why triumphs falsehood, - truth and justice fail? I count your God unjust in making a world in which to shelter wrong."
J VI.208"If God designs the life of the entire world -- the glory and the misery, the good and the evil acts, man is but an instrument of his will and God alone is responsible."
But another answer to your question is, what can exist that god does not will to exist? If god is omnipotent and omniscient, nothing. If something existed that god did not will to exist, then god certainly is not omnipotent, and likely not omniscient. So, "how could God be imputed with the evil?" By the fact that all the pain and suffering done by the likes of a Hitler or a pedophile is because god wills it to be. God's choice.
It seems like you want a perfect atheistic argument. God is evil no matter what. He is evil if he restricts action. He is evil if he doesn't. Along your lie of reasoning, we'd conclude that God was good because the Buddha lived an exemplary life, since God willed it. But if you look at your own reasoning, if we admit free will, then we must admit that humans are responsible for their actions.
This is, of course, not my argument, and as usual you do not engage the actual argument made; rather, you go after your strawman arguments.
Also, why would I say that "God was good because the Buddha lived an exemplary life, since God willed it
?" I wouldn't. I'd be more inclined to Robert Frost's response:
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.
Fortunately, I do not have to deal with such a massive incoherence as an omniscient, omnipotent creator god.