Did God create evil?

[Redzeppelin]

hello there zep

nice post. i notice you use some logic to make your point, and a good job of it i must admit.

Thank you, kind sir. I think you are the first person here to accuse me of using logic.

yet, your reasoning is based on a proposition that i find impossible to say whether its true or false, ie...god's character is good bc the bible tells me so. shouldn't profound issues such as good vs evil and god's character have their foundations based in the present day god/good/evil rather than 2000 year old references to said issues? i'm assuming its the same god today as it was back in bible times. so why not bring forth some syllogisms with logic rooted in the present day?

The Bible is our only guide to the character of God - it is the only book that asserts to describe who God is by telling the history of His chosen people and the revelation of His character through Jesus Christ. If we are to make sense of good and evil, we must put those ideas through the filter of God's character - and without the Bible, God's character becomes victim to our impressions (or worse, our desires) of Him. That leads to chaos. There must be a foundational "ground" to the identity of God, something objective in nature - otherwise, discussions of the character of God becomes meaningless.

[Pendragon]

Prov.16

1. [4] The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.

There seems to be some purpose that evil will be required to do before the end of all things...

God bless

Pen

[RG57]

Missed that one, nice quote.

[blazeofglory]

God, evil or devil and man all are part of the cosmic system, and no can remain out of the system.

Man suffers limitations in point of fact, and he can not escape it.

What we call God is the creation of man's thought.

I do not mean there is no God, and there can be some God or no God we can not comprehend beyond the range of our thinking capacity, and we are circumscribed by a periphery of our mind and capacity.

But all of us want to know our origin and afterlives.
We are not satisfied with the scientific explanations we have and we want to know something unknowable, ordinarily unthinkable.

God, heaven, hell, the devil and the like fascinate us and we therefore are romanticized to know all these mysteries.

In fact both God and Devil birth from our existence. If we do exist the rest exist.

[Redzeppelin]

God, evil or devil and man all are part of the cosmic system, and no can remain out of the system.

The Creator of a system cannot be a part of that system. The creator of a computer is not part of the computer; God created the cosmic system - He cannot logically be a part of it.

What we call God is the creation of man's thought.

That is the cart before the horse. God provided us with the ability to think. Since we're capable of "arguing God out of existence," we tend to think that we are the sole arbiters of what is real and what is not. One must possess exhaustive knowledge of the universe and its contents in order to rule out the existence of God.

In fact both God and Devil birth from our existence. If we do exist the rest exist.

There is no reason for earthbound, terrestial creatures to dream up such entities. The fact that we can conceive of such entities suggests that they indeed exist - just as hunger suggests that I was created to eat food.

[Pendragon]

While I firmly believe in both God and the Devil and preach from the Bible, I would like to pose this question:

If everything is the creation of man, who then created man? An organisim as complex as humanity just didn't happen by chance, the odds are too great.

And if everything then is illusion, is it illusion that I live and am typing this note to you?

God bless

Pendragon

[RG57]

While I firmly believe in both God and the Devil and preach from the Bible, I would like to pose this question:

If everything is the creation of man, who then created man? An organisim as complex as humanity just didn't happen by chance, the odds are too great.

And if everything then is illusion, is it illusion that I live and am typing this note to you?

God bless

Pendragon

Very cleverly put, it took a few reads to get it right in my head, I think it is a question that has been asked since man has been able to reason. Those without God will always ask and those with God has no need.

As for illusion, well if everything is illusion then this is biggest mass illusion known to man (or the illusion of him).

[Bitterfly]

There is no reason for earthbound, terrestial creatures to dream up such entities. The fact that we can conceive of such entities suggests that they indeed exist - just as hunger suggests that I was created to eat food.

That's no argument, as you probably know: I can imagine a chimaera, but that doesn't mean one actually exists. I'm rather pleased that all the monsters I used to imagine aren't real!

I went to look up Freud since the last time I came onto the religion pages, and he seems to classifies the religious phenomenon as an illusion, something dreamt up by man in order to reconcile himself with the ideas of death, deprivation or danger. God the Father, in monotheistic religions, is a projection of our need to have protection and meaning. I don't always agree with Freud, but here he does seem to have a point...

The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.

There seems to be some purpose that evil will be required to do before the end of all things...

Nice quote, but it could very well point to the need to understand - without really understanding, since God's ways are unpenetrable - the existence of evil which, if you're logical, seems to contradict the reality of a benevolent God. It's a little too easy to say that God created evil, and that we just don't understand why.

[Pendragon]

There is no reason for earthbound, terrestial creatures to dream up such entities. The fact that we can conceive of such entities suggests that they indeed exist - just as hunger suggests that I was created to eat food.

Now Red, you are a dear friend and brother, yet I am going to have to call you on this argument. Many might call the urge to eat "instinct", after all even microbes feed. The human body requires so much sustanence to survive, of various types. We could take it in supplments, but that would not savor the palete would it? This is a poor argument all the way around.

Man dreams up much that could never exist, much less those that do not exist. I believe God's existing is because of what the world is and contains, I cannot accept chance as a basis of creation of all this complexity.

God Bless

Pen

[March Hare]

Some individually numbered thoughts.

1. If God created Man and Man created Evil then God must have imbued Man with the capacity for evil. Therefore God has the capacity for evil.
Question. Does the capacity for Evil make God less than perfect?
2. God created. Evil and Good are simply constructs of the human mind.
3. God either allows Evil, proving Himself inbenevolent or cannot contain Evil, proving Himself unomnipotent. [spellchecker says that 'inbenevolent' and 'unomnipotent' aren't words, but I like 'em.] Many years ago I read John Hick. This may have been an argument of his.

[Rozzy]

Those of us who are Christians believe that God created everything.
If that is so did He create evil?
If so, to what purpose?
Or was it something that just happened?

I have to admit I am not sure

I did not go and read all the previous posts so I hope I am duplicating a previous one here.

In some ancient Jewish thought and texts it is explained something like this.

God being infinite is all in all everywhere so in order for him to create the space and world we now live in He actually had to withdraw his presence from an area that He already existed in. When He withdrew himself from that given area He left a void that now was open to chaos, that made it possible for evil to exist where it had not been possible to exist before. Though evil does not exist in God or with God the possibilty of evil outside of Him does exist.

Rozzy

[1n50mn14]

You can run yourself in circles over this question for a lifetime and more, and still never come up with a definitive answer, because there are holes and paradoxes in every possible answer.

What do >you< believe in: a compassionate God, or a vengeful God?

[RG57]

Personally for me a compassionate God, but again a question like this will a great many answers.

Looking at the Old Testament many will say that God was full of wrath and quick on the vengence. But in the New Testament God appears to have changed, he is loving and compassionate to the point of sacrificing His own Son.

It is easy see why a lot of people are unable to connect both the Old and New Testaments with the same God.

[M. Caldwell]

I think this question hinges entirely on the God Hypothesis. Since I refute God, I refute its capacity for the creation of evil. Meh.

[JBI]

The Book of Job is there to justify no matter what happens in the world as "part of the plan". a rather convenient thing for a religion which preaches the goodness of god to have. It basically says, whatever happens, it is for the "Greater good" in a sort of Panglossian moronishness. The truth is, the evil is a contradiction - how can someone so "good" have made something so evil, as this world is. Don't say "free will", because, if god is all-knowing, he would have known creating "free will" (which doesn't logically make sense) would have evil implications. Thereby, if you suffer, he wants you to suffer. If your loved ones die, he wants them to die. If you have nothing left, and wish yourself dead, he wants you to feel that way. If you are tortured, and undergoing unknowable pain, he wants you to suffer. Etc. Etc.