If god is everything, doesn't that make him evil as well as good?

[nasir]

We may have our grievances, but they can never be laid at God's door. Now when I say "door" that's just a figurative sense. I don't intend to give him any location for God is everywhere. Again, that's not easy to explain. When I say "everywhere" I don't want to sound as if God is physical or that He makes movements like us human being. He is as He was and as He will be Always. He is with us in his Knowledge.

Our petty grievances or complaints or the so called intellect or intelligence - all these don't entitle us to call God "evil". God is absolute Goodness. Being judgmental about God is, in my opinion, digging a hellish pit of everlasting suffering and torment. Now, does that make God evil? No! The bottom line is that the God's Mercy precedes His Wrath. He is Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful, and Most Benevolent. Who knows we might find ourselves in the everlasting Paradise despite our sins - subject to the fact that we first believe in Him as our Creator, be aware of our shortcomings and sins and ask His forgiveness time and again. Surely, that's not tough for gaining the Bliss of Paradise! What say?

[blazeofglory]

We may have our grievances, but they can never be laid at God's door. Now when I say "door" that's just a figurative sense. I don't intend to give him any location for God is everywhere. Again, that's not easy to explain. When I say "everywhere" I don't want to sound as if God is physical or that He makes movements like us human being. He is as He was and as He will be Always. He is with us in his Knowledge.

Our petty grievances or complaints or the so called intellect or intelligence - all these don't entitle us to call God "evil". God is absolute Goodness. Being judgmental about God is, in my opinion, digging a hellish pit of everlasting suffering and torment. Now, does that make God evil? No! The bottom line is that the God's Mercy precedes His Wrath. He is Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful, and Most Benevolent. Who knows we might find ourselves in the everlasting Paradise despite our sins - subject to the fact that we first believe in Him as our Creator, be aware of our shortcomings and sins and ask His forgiveness time and again. Surely, that's not tough for gaining the Bliss of Paradise! What say?

I agree to a certain extent if not wholly with your views on God. God is to me rather different than what you construed It to be. God is above all these attributes of goodness and badness and what we call good or bad is just our interpretation of phenomena. Even in nature there is no anything good or evil and God is far over and above these worldly attributes of goodness and badness and to liken God to worldly attributes is to misunderstand God totally.

I do not say God is kind and unkind and I do not believe God is just or unjust to us. Moreover I do not say God is pleased with our prayers. God is indifferent to us and our understanding of God is rooted in what we gleaned from the scriptures we have read or from what we have learned from our elders.

I do not subscribe to the Biblical or mythological God and God to me is universal not a personal one.

Karma is a good word that tells us lots of things about worldly affairs and phenomena and things happen to us owing to Karma. If we behave properly with your neighbors you are likely to get similar treatments from your neighbors and if you misbehave you will receive likewise.

Of course God has nothing to do with your actions and your fortunes and what is more you cannot comprehend the nature of God through your three dimensional mind and God is all above and over these dimensions.

[Redzeppelin]

God has nothing to do with goodness and badness. It is nature that does everything.

Respectfully disagree. "Good" and "evil" cannot be completely divorced from God, because then they become merely subjective. "Good" is defined by that which is consistent with the character of God: justice, mercy, compassion, generosity, sacrifice, courage, love. "Evil" is that which is inconsistent with the character of God: betrayal, slander, selfishness, cowardice, malice, injustice.

Nature is amoral. It cannot "do" anything.

[mazHur]

well duh!

Doesnt every one think that?? Well not evil but then God not exactly good either. God is God. Not Good or evil as we understand it, its soooo much more complicated. My 6 year old sister asked me somthing similar this morning what is this the day of religious questions?

Anyway my point is as Muslim that is pretty much what I belive for us god has 99 names and some of them are a bit contradictry until you put it in this context like The Giver, The Taker, The Merciful, The Strict, The Forgiving, The Unforgiving, The aparnt, The hidden, The first The Last , just to mention a few that are translateable, I can off the top of my ead only think of a handful that dont have oposites, The Iternal, The One, The all-Knowing, and a few like that.

Those 99 names are infact traits of Allah, the God. Since Man is created in the image of God he is believed to have all those 99 traits as mentioned in the Quran.

Respectfully disagree. "Good" and "evil" cannot be completely divorced from God, because then they become merely subjective. "Good" is defined by that which is consistent with the character of God: justice, mercy, compassion, generosity, sacrifice, courage, love. "Evil" is that which is inconsistent with the character of God: betrayal, slander, selfishness, cowardice, malice, injustice.

Nature is amoral. It cannot "do" anything.

You have a point there!!

[Babbalanja]

"Good" and "evil" cannot be completely divorced from God, because then they become merely subjective.

Got that backward, didn't you? It's actually the believer who is making the concept of good and evil meaningless by subordinating them to his definition of God. The binding of Isaac demonstrates that the believer needs to think that whatever God orders is good, regardless of how reprehensible we humans may think it is.

Regards,

Istvan

[Redzeppelin]

Got that backward, didn't you? It's actually the believer who is making the concept of good and evil meaningless by subordinating them to his definition of God. The binding of Isaac demonstrates that the believer needs to think that whatever God orders is good, regardless of how reprehensible we humans may think it is.

Regards,

Istvan

Hardly; because humans are selfish, sinful and self-interested, leaving such definitions up to us leaves them liable to abuses of the worst kind. Only by defining good and evil as something transcendant beyond mere human opinion can it have a stable definition. Nowhere is it indicated that we are to see the binding of Isaac as "good." What we are encouraged to see as "good" was Abraham's faith that God would rescue his son.

[Babbalanja]

Hardly; because humans are selfish, sinful and self-interested, leaving such definitions up to us leaves them liable to abuses of the worst kind.

Well, we made God in our image, so I guess that's what we should expect.

Only by defining good and evil as something transcendant beyond mere human opinion can it have a stable definition.

Oh, that's right. That must be why God exhorts the Israelites to genocide in Deuteronomy 20:16.

However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you.

So even mass murder is just fine as long as the Big Guy orders it?

Nowhere is it indicated that we are to see the binding of Isaac as "good." What we are encouraged to see as "good" was Abraham's faith that God would rescue his son.

Wow! That's quite a rationalization!

But the message that millions upon millions of mainstream Christians take away from the episode is that it was a test of Abraham's faith. To Christians, it was in fact "good" because it indicated that Abraham put his obedience to God above humanistic values and logic. Wouldn't it have spoken volumes about Abraham's regard for God's infinite love if he had refused to kill his son, since his God would never have asked him to do such a thing?

Regards,

Istvan

[Radha Krsna]

Looked as evil but it is not...
God is everything ...

[hellsapoppin]

From an atheist:


Little-Known Bible Verses V: God Creates Evil


The passage that today's edition of "Little-Known Bible Verses" will examine is, if I say so myself, one of the most shocking in the entire Bible. In a book that contains talking snakes and donkeys, a man taking two of every living species to survive a flood in a wooden boat, and a god who hates pillows, shrimp, mixed fabrics, and fig trees for some reason, that is no mean feat, but I believe this verse lives up to that promise.

The problem of evil has vexed Christian theologians for nearly two millennia, burdening them with the impossible task of explaining how so much evil and suffering could exist in a cosmos overseen by an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good deity. A wide variety of answers have been proposed to this problem, all of which are as imaginative as they are insufficient. But all this scholarly ink need not have been spilled: the Bible itself tells Jews and Christians exactly where evil comes from.

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

—Isaiah 45:7

There you have it, folks - straight, as it were, from the horse's mouth. Evil exists because God created it. All you theologians can pack it in and go home now.

Of course, the story does not end there. The translators of many modern Bible editions, aware of the unsettling implications this verse holds for their faith, have attempted to soften the blow by translating it in a more palatable way. The New International Version, for example, has this passage say that God creates "disaster", while the English Standard Version has it as "calamity", and the Revised Standard Version says "woe". The Message translation creatively renders this verse as "I make harmonies and create discords".

Although these alternate translations wouldn't seem to solve much, they are still not as faithful to the original Hebrew than the KJV's unflinching translation. The Hebrew word translated by the KJV writers as "evil" in Isaiah 45:7 is "ra", and from textual evidence, it is clear that in the Bible this word does mean evil in a moral sense. Here are some of the other contexts in which it is used:

•In Genesis 2:17, God instructs Adam and Eve not to eat from "the tree of good and ra". The tree of good and disaster? The tree of good and calamity? Clearly not: it is the tree of good and evil.
•In Genesis 6:5, God resolves to destroy humankind in the great flood because "the wickedness (ra) of man was great in the earth".
•In Genesis 13:13, the men of Sodom were "wicked (ra) and sinners before the Lord exceedingly".
•In Deuteronomy 1:35, a furious God threatens the Israelites, "Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil (ra) generation see that good land, which I sware to give unto your fathers."
•In Judges 2:11, "the children of Israel did evil (ra) in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim".
•In 1 Kings 16:30, the wicked king Ahab (husband of the infamous Jezebel) "did evil (ra) in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him".
These and many other references make it clear that the primary meaning of ra is indeed evil in the sense of wickedness or sin. For believers who hold to the textual inerrancy of the Bible, therefore, there is no choice but to admit that God created evil. And in a way, this makes a great deal of sense. If an all-powerful, all-knowing god created everything, what other explanation for evil could there be, other than that he caused it?

Even the Bible's theology bears this out. The text offers numerous occasions where God could have intervened to turn events to good and chose not to. He could, for example, have obliterated Satan and the rebel angels entirely, or at the very least confined them to Hell and not allowed them to escape, so that they could never have escaped to lead humanity into temptation. And God's behavior in the whole Eden affair, in any case, smacks strongly of either extreme incompetence or deliberate malice - not least, his choice to transmit the curse of original sin to all subsequent generations rather than letting every human start off with a morally clean slate.

Less-literalist believers might say that the imputation of evil to God is just textual corruption in the Bible, the product of fallible humans and not a divine revelation. And while this explanation might help the cause of theodicy, it can only do so at the cost of hugely undermining the Bible itself. After all, if God would allow as basic and fundamental a distortion of his nature as this, for what reason should we believe that the Bible reflects any of his words? If the biography of some great human being contained a distortion as blatantly slanderous as this, by attributing to that person an attitude that is totally contrary to all they believed and stood for, would it be wise or prudent to simply disregard that passage and then continue to trust the rest of the book as accurate?

The attribution of evil to God's handiwork, while it may solve the problem of theodicy, raises an even more difficult question for Jews and Christians in its place. Namely, why would such a deity be worthy of our belief? Why would any believer want to worship a god who accepts responsibility for evil and suffering? Because he's the most powerful and will punish people who don't do what he says? But what assurance would we have that the afterlife is not also a place of torment and sorrow, even for the good?

This is a nightmare of a dilemma for anyone to have to face. Fortunately, there is another way out: the door that opens onto atheism. It is in our power to cast aside these bleak and malevolent fantasies, and to recognize that the specters that menace us are illusions of our own imagination. They have no more reality or substance than shadows, and are just as easily dispelled by the light.

For those who wish to cease the futile obsession with the words of ancient texts and face reality as it truly is, the gate is open and the path is clear. There are no gods, no devils or angels, no heaven or hell. There is only us, human beings, living together in the natural world. Once we recognize this, the next step - a lifelong step - is to forsake fantasy, treat others with kindness and make the most of the one life we are fortunate to have.



http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/...ates-evil.html


Some may not like it or want to agree but if the Bible is to be believed, then it's true.

[Leonidas300]

Also from an atheist:

Faith without secular knowledge is immorality.
The more time one spens reading scripture and the less time one spends studying, the less moral one has the potential to be.
The spreading of religious faith at the expense of formal education is the spreading of evil.
Therefore the spreading of faith is intrinsically evil.

For evidence of this, we need only turn to Socratic Method - kudos to the author. Refute this if you can.
http://www.socraticmethod.net/morality/page1.htm

And please, for those of you that are faithful, consider how far this kind of argument could go. Don't just blindly believe what you believe because you always have; question those beliefs for the sake of your common man.

Consider that for every one Islamic or Christian moderate arguing on this forum, there are hundreds of hard-liners willing and intending to kill 'infidels' and 'heretics'. By the time I have finished typing this message, more humans will have been killed by other humans from other religions.

How many words are in the Bible? How many in the Koran? I don't know how many there are, but I do know that more people have been killed for religion than there are words in both of these books. Is a word worth ten lives?

If there were a God, if he created us in his image, and if he could see what we do to each other in his name, he would weep.

[mazHur]

there are hundreds of hard-liners willing and intending to kill 'infidels' and 'heretics'.

Please define 'Infidels' and 'heretics'.

By the time I have finished typing this message, more humans will have been killed by other humans from other religions

.


I think more people are being killed by people of their own religion..
Apart from religion or religious sects most killings have been committed in history on ethnic, sectarian, linguistic, racial divisions and expansionist whims....why then only blame religion??

How many words are in the Bible? How many in the Koran? I don't know how many there are, but I do know that more people have been killed for religion than there are words in both of these books. Is a word worth ten lives?

All that is history...now people die because of 'political reasons' and unfounded treatment of neo-diseases, famine and poverty.....

If there were a God, if he created us in his image, and if he could see what we do to each other in his name, he would weep

Why should he weep and not smile at human follies??

[Neo_Sephiroth]

And please, for those of you that are faithful, consider how far this kind of argument could go. Don't just blindly believe what you believe because you always have; question those beliefs for the sake of your common man.

If there were a God, if he created us in his image, and if he could see what we do to each other in his name, he would weep.

I don't think anyone "blindly" believes. They believe because they know. And, yes, I agree: If there were a God and we were using his name for justification of bloodshed He would weep and has and is.

[BienvenuJDC]

To lump all religions together is foolish. One cannot judge all religions OR any one religion based on the actions that have happened throughout all of history by people of many walks of life. Often there are actions that have multiple reasons and many facets. What may have been done in the name of a god, may also have political and economic reasons behind it. The foundation of your arguments may be more efficiently productive if they were narrowed to one religion at a time, and document your claims with some facts. Otherwise, you comments are just baseless rants.

[mazHur]

I don't think anyone "blindly" believes. They believe because they know. And, yes, I agree: If there were a God and we were using his name for justification of bloodshed He would weep and has and is.

God is the master of Life and Death.
Natural calamities kill millions
Why attribute him to feeble-heartedness?
HE controls life and death
Life after death
There's nothing for him to weep on!

[BienvenuJDC]

God is the master of Life and Death.
Natural calamities kill millions
Why attribute him to feeble-heartedness?
HE controls life and death
Life after death
There's nothing for him to weep on!

Under my belief system, Jesus Christ is the Son of God...also Deity Himself. Jesus wept.