Did God create evil?

[Paulclem]

I disagree with your bit about the world being worse for religion. You said that there is no cosmic justice, and I agree. It is a dog eat dog world, and religion is just one tool that is used by the exploiters of power. It's not the religion or the truly religious themselves, but the power hungry and influential people who use it to their own ends. The world would be a poorer place without the massive amount of unacknowledged work done by religious people.

On the other hand, I too have always had a problem with a creator God, and couldn't believe in one.

[blazeofglory]

At times evil is deemed heroically and we sanctions it a great amount of authority and power in point of fact and at times keep it equaling God or alongside God. Even if we have God to protect us from the attack of evil yet we fear the presence of evil. We cannot think about the presence of God without the symmetrical presence of Evil

[TurquoiseSunset]

Nope, God created free will...evil was a choice made by the fallen angels and man...

[blazeofglory]

Nope, God created free will...evil was a choice made by the fallen angels and man...

This is trash. The idea of Freewill is the invention of some medieval Christians. Man is a victim of circumstances and no matter what conscience you have that does not work at the end of the day. No matter what amounts of morals, ethics your Christian sages instill in your mind under a certain situation you will just behave instinctively, not conscientiously. Freewill is drivel. You are under a pang of hunger and thirst and there is food and drinks near by and your Christian doctrines may warn you against the stuffs but your natural instincts or the powers of the hunger or thirst is too strong to be subdues you will consume against your canons of Freewill

[TurquoiseSunset]

Firstly, your tone is unnecessary. Secondly, how dare you call my beliefs trash? You don't have to agree, but you can respect me none the less.

I believe you always have a choice, faith or no faith. Sometimes you're between a rock and a hard place. When something happens that is beyond our control ("victims of circumstance") you can still choose how to react to the event. The God I believe in is not so unforgiving as you seem to think.

Besides that, are you trying to say that since there's no free will that people are not morally responsible for their actions????

[blazeofglory]

Who indoctrinated this idea first speaking historically? Let me know the history of this idea? I heard some biblical sages in the medieval age. Is this idea not just common to Biblical society only? I do not think it reaches beyond that frontier

[Paulclem]

Nope, God created free will...evil was a choice made by the fallen angels and man...

Hi Turquoise

The problem I see with this is that if a creator God creates a universe, how can anyhting that occurrs in that universe be the responsibility of others? The physics, the geology, the forms , the ideas -etc - must all be created or their potential created.

[blazeofglory]

Firstly, your tone is unnecessary. Secondly, how dare you call my beliefs trash? You don't have to agree, but you can respect me none the less.

I believe you always have a choice, faith or no faith. Sometimes you're between a rock and a hard place. When something happens that is beyond our control ("victims of circumstance") you can still choose how to react to the event. The God I believe in is not so unforgiving as you seem to think.

Besides that, are you trying to say that since there's no free will that people are not morally responsible for their actions????

My friend everyone’s tone counts here and is therefore necessary and you can comment upon my ideas. Everybody is at liberty to express himself or self. Not necessary that everybody must stick to your particular sets of ideas someone installed in your mind. You might have been indoctrinated into some dogmas and you cannot kind of rise above that canons, maybe that run through your veins. Try to keep yourself at a distance from all these doctrines things will be as clear to you as day instantly. You must first control your rage and cool or else your preoccupations will triumph over you and that provoked you to use “how dare you”. This is not necessary , is it?

[Leland Gaunt]

This is not necessary , is it?

Well when looking at your previous post, calling his beliefs trash was also not necessary. The rest of your post would have been perfectly fine, adding trash only brings a level of disrespect which is not at all helpful in a civil conversation.

you will just behave instinctively

Humans do not have instincts. We cannot behave instinctively.

You are under a pang of hunger and thirst and there is food and drinks near by and your Christian doctrines may warn you against the stuffs but your natural instincts or the powers of the hunger or thirst is too strong to be subdues you will consume against your canons of Freewill

These are called needs. You need food, yes? So your body puts you in a state of bodily tension, a drive, to motivate you to satisfy your need. But, humans are capable of ignoring these drives. As soon as you feel thirsty, do you set off to find something to quench your thirst? Or are you able to put it off for later? Ever hear of fasting? An instinctual animal is completely incapable of fasting. I suppose you could try to argue against free will using determinism, but recent scientific evidence has illuminated a certain randomness within nature.

[blazeofglory]

[QUOTE=Leland Gaunt;934993]Well when looking at your previous post, calling his beliefs trash was also not necessary. The rest of your post would have been perfectly fine, adding trash only brings a level of disrespect which is not at all helpful in a civil conversation.

Humans do not have instincts. We cannot behave instinctively.

QUOTE]

I apologize for all this!!!

[IceM]

Yes, regardless of what secular scientists may speculate about human origins, the Catholic Church believes in Adam and Eve. Some take it literal; some take it metaphysically. That said, I don't see the "Out of Africa" theory as genetically impossible-- but again-- these are natural sciences theories; not theology. As long as a Catholic believes in the "Fall of Man" and "Original sin", then a literary, metaphysical interpretation of Genesis is permissible. Suffice to say, Catholic theology provides a structure in which the belief in Adam and Eve makes sense, given the foundational system in which the question arises. This is all I will say on the matter, the question isn't relevant to "Did God create Evil".




Breakthrough! (If we agree that "inherent evil" is the turning away from God, not the turning to the "dark side/Evil".)


By the way: are you some secular evolutionist or a quasi-Christian of some sort? Your initial posts on specific Church doctrine led me to believe you were a Protestant. However, your recent posts aren't quite of the Christian viewpoint.

I raised the Adam and Eve issue to show how "Church Theology" can be proven wrong. It is genetically impossible for our diversification of ethnicities to arise from two people. Yes, this doesn't pertain to "Did God Create Evil" directly, but seen as a comparison to the faults of "Church Theology," it can be used as an example for my point.

It increasingly sounds like you're willing to pardon any illogical notion as long as its origins are Biblical. You say the "Out of Africa" notion is permissable as long as a Catholic believes. In any other realm of study other than religion, this is impossible. It would be dismissed as illogical. Yet you're willing to accept it as truth because it was in the Bible?

My point throughout my posts has been that, if God created good, He created the existence of the other extreme. One who commits to blocking or destroying goodness is evil, not a lesser good. And if free will exists, God gave Man the chance to commit evil. Because He is responsible for all creation, He is responsible for evil. This doesn't discredit God, or refute His existence--it justs demonstrates that perhaps the strictly Biblical version of a Creator is antiquated and slightly inaccurate. I'm still waiting for a reason why this idea itself can't be valid.

To answer your final question: I grew up a Catholic and am now atheist. I typically waver between atheism and non-denominational approaches to God. Hopefully that's sufficient.

[IceM]

Nope, God created free will...evil was a choice made by the fallen angels and man...

Man would be unable to choose evil if it were not created.

[Manalive]

I raised the Adam and Eve issue to show how "Church Theology" can be proven wrong. It is genetically impossible for our diversification of ethnicities to arise from two people. Yes, this doesn't pertain to "Did God Create Evil" directly, but seen as a comparison to the faults of "Church Theology," it can be used as an example for my point.

It increasingly sounds like you're willing to pardon any illogical notion as long as its origins are Biblical. You say the "Out of Africa" notion is permissable as long as a Catholic believes. In any other realm of study other than religion, this is impossible. It would be dismissed as illogical. Yet you're willing to accept it as truth because it was in the Bible?

It's illogical to believe the "Out of Africa" theory or it's illogical to be Catholic and believe the "Out of Africa" theory? The Bible is filled with allegory and the Church accepts different interpretations of Biblical stories as long as the metaphysical truths do not conflict with the literal truths. I.E. Murder is a sin, there is no different interpretation of this. Jonah and the whale is a parable "instructing the Jews to go out of their comfort zone and share their faith with other nations". That's one way of looking at the story and it's valid because the truths of the story aren't contradicted by that belief. The truths of the story isn't necessarily that Jonah was in a whale.

My point throughout my posts has been that, if God created good, He created the existence of the other extreme. One who commits to blocking or destroying goodness is evil, not a lesser good. And if free will exists, God gave Man the chance to commit evil. Because He is responsible for all creation, He is responsible for evil. This doesn't discredit God, or refute His existence--it justs demonstrates that perhaps the strictly Biblical version of a Creator is antiquated and slightly inaccurate. I'm still waiting for a reason why this idea itself can't be valid.

It's a valid argument, but it's not Catholic. Theologically: can you give me a purely intrinsically evil feeling? A feeling-- not an act. We all agree that murder is evil. But it's not a feeling, it's an act. The murderer is "feeling" something, what intrinsically evil feeling is he feeling? Pleasure? Pleasure, in and of it's self, isn't something that is usually considered evil. Can give me a feeling that is, in and of itself, "Evil"?

From the Thomistic perspective, evil can generally be understood as the absence or lacking of a good, i.e., the absence of some trait that perfects or completes a thing’s being. For example, blindness is a physical evil because it entails the absence of sight and prevents the completion of a person’s physical constitution. To say that blindness is a physical evil, however, does not imply that individuals who are blind are morally bad or lead less valuable lives; only that they lack a physical capability that normally accompanies a complete human life. Moral evil, on the other hand, concerns the disordered nature or defect of a voluntary action (also known as a human act) that in some way fails to correspond to the will of God or proper human fulfillment. For St. Thomas Aquinas, every morally evil act is good in a certain respect, but is a deficient good and so is evil simply (see Summa Theologica I-II Question 18, Article 1, reply to 1). The greater the absence of perfection or completion, the greater the evil. In other words, the more the act fails to correspond to the will of God or proper human fulfillment, the more evil it is. It follows that some evil acts are worse than others.

For an appropriate understanding of the concept of intrinsic evil, one must appreciate first the Catholic understanding of goodness. From the perspective of the Catholic moral tradition, in order for a human act to be morally good, it must be good in all three of its aspects: in its deliberately chosen object, in the agent’s circumstantial intention and in the circumstances of the act. In order for a human act to be considered morally evil it need be defective in only one of these three aspects.

Intrinsic Evil

[Leland Gaunt]

I apologize for all this!!!

Good. Still waiting on a thank you.

[TurquoiseSunset]

Who indoctrinated this idea first speaking historically? Let me know the history of this idea? I heard some biblical sages in the medieval age. Is this idea not just common to Biblical society only? I do not think it reaches beyond that frontier

The concept of free will, or at least that it exists, is not exclusive to “Biblical society”, but is part of other religions as well. It’s not just a religious concept, but scientific and ethical as well.

Hi Turquoise

The problem I see with this is that if a creator God creates a universe, how can anyhting that occurrs in that universe be the responsibility of others? The physics, the geology, the forms , the ideas -etc - must all be created or their potential created.

I see what you are saying. I don’t think God created evil per se, as evil really isn’t a thing, but a concept and I also think it existed, as an concept, before the creation of the universe. Evil is the absence of good. However, God allows evil, in order for free will to exist. So obviously he created us with the potential to be evil, His idea being that we have to choose... I would therefore not say he created evil, but that really depends on one’s definition of create, I guess. That is also why I said that evil was a choice made by man, etc., so I then also don’t believe that God is responsible for evil, because man can still choose to be good, i.e. man is responsible for his actions none the less. Does that make sense? I always know what I mean, but I’m not always sure I’m able to express it properly ...maybe I should have phrased it like this to begin with, lol.

My friend everyone’s tone counts here and is therefore necessary and you can comment upon my ideas. Everybody is at liberty to express himself or self. Not necessary that everybody must stick to your particular sets of ideas someone installed in your mind. You might have been indoctrinated into some dogmas and you cannot kind of rise above that canons, maybe that run through your veins. Try to keep yourself at a distance from all these doctrines things will be as clear to you as day instantly. You must first control your rage and cool or else your preoccupations will triumph over you and that provoked you to use “how dare you”. This is not necessary , is it?

Hon, I do not have a problem with controlling my rage, thanks, but I still do not take kindly to people being so disrespectful. Otherwise, apology accepted.

Well when looking at your previous post, calling his beliefs trash was also not necessary. The rest of your post would have been perfectly fine, adding trash only brings a level of disrespect which is not at all helpful in a civil conversation.

Humans do not have instincts. We cannot behave instinctively.

These are called needs. You need food, yes? So your body puts you in a state of bodily tension, a drive, to motivate you to satisfy your need. But, humans are capable of ignoring these drives. As soon as you feel thirsty, do you set off to find something to quench your thirst? Or are you able to put it off for later? Ever hear of fasting? An instinctual animal is completely incapable of fasting. I suppose you could try to argue against free will using determinism, but recent scientific evidence has illuminated a certain randomness within nature.

Good. Still waiting on a thank you.

Lol, thanks Leland. I usually only check Litnet during the day, on weekdays (work days), and it happened to be a long weekend for SA (National Women’s Day) so that’s why I’m only posting today