very soon i hope to take a college course on the role of God in the idea of good and evil. to give me a little sneak peak to some of the different ideas i’d be presented with for this seemingly simple question,im looking to u ppls for help. if there is a god (even i don’t really believe in a high power, but please anyone answering this question assume that there exists God, good and evil in the world) why would he want to have evil in the world. what is the point of evil and how does this relate to the goodness of the world and the good that god does within society. the most extreme example would be, Y would god let such things as the holocost and mass genocide in general happen to his children?
So, just for the sake of your future education you want us to review the various threads on seven or eight of the weightiest philosophical subjects in the history of thought? And for this you propose to do . . . what?
I tell you what. For every post you put here, with proper punctuation, capitalization, and something approaching High School Senior level grammar and spelling, I will put a longer one giving one side of the issue you present. (I have never had any trouble finding someone willing to give the other, around here.) If you propose a fairly interesting question, I will try to make my response classical in it’s point of view, rather than my personal take on things, since that one might not get you far in school.
My belief is that God “lets” things like the Holocaust etc etc happen, because He gave humans “free will”, that is, the ability to think and deduce on our own. Without giving us this ability, we would merely be marionettes in His hands.
Along with the many great things that come along with free will, it carries huge responsibilities (kinda sounds like Uncle Ben from the Spider-Man comics, doesn’t it). Some people become overwhelmed by greed and/or anger, or anything at all really, and they go and start things like the Holocaust.
If God were to suddenly “force” a particular person to change their ways (i.e. “Hitler, you don’t really want to do all that. Why don’t you open an ice cream parlor instead?”) He would be taking away their ability to make their own decisions.
wtf is “mass genocide”? how do you kill an entire race of people massively?
the ultra short version.
god made lucifer, he made him to be the guy that opposed gods ideas. kinda like someone to bounce ideas off of when you want a diferent look at it.
satan used to mean “adversary” not “evil incarnate”
devil and diobolical both are derived from the root diabalein which means “to oppose”
so basicly its all gods fault that we have evil in the world since satan is just doing what god made him for in the first place.
now go take a friggin english class or two.
Well, there are several theories that I know of. I’m not going to expound on them, though; that will be your job in the course. Hey, I’m not doing your work for you ;).
First of all, there’s the idea of free will. All the evil and suffering on this planet is caused by Satan and/or man’s corrupt nature. God doesn’t stop it because he’s given human beings free will. This, I believe is mostly a Judeo-Christian-Islamic view.
Then, there’s the idea that any suffering and evil in this world is meant to either strengthen us or punish us. This is often reflected in Christianity (that I know of). It also seems to have a foothold in karma.
There’s the idea that God is both good and evil, and that suffering and death is just as necessary as flourishing and life. I believe this view is often found in Hinduism, and I think Jews of an earlier time frame also believed this. This is, by the way, NOT a common Christian viewpoint in my experience.
That’s about it. I’m sure there are other views on this, as well as other threads you could look up. BTW, when I say God, I mean whoever the Big Cheese or Cheeses are in the heirarchy. Not just Jesus/G-d/Allah.
Seriously, though, in the highly unlikely case that there actually is a reality behind the traditional conception of God (i.e., omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent), then in my opinion the only logical solution to the Problem of Evil is a bifurcated deity: part good, part evil, and ultimately not worshipworthy.
I don’t really beleive in any god, but if there was one, i would have to say he is good and evil. Of course, that is just to say that god is the balance. If god created everything, he must have created viruses along with anti-bodies, poison along with sugar (those aren’t the best comparisons, but i’m tired :P). In a system that has not been horribly deformed by humans, there is a balance. Life and death are one in the same. Until civilization came along, the balance was fine. But now it’s not. Therefore, either there is no god, or it just doesn’t care.
To ask the question about why GOD lets bad things happen is to assume that he’s constantly involved in this world.
This is a natural world and GOD doesn’t have too much to do with what goes on, except for the occasional miracle which is rare.
Since we have free will, then we are free to do evil, and if GOD interfered, then it wouldn’t be truly free will.
But then there’s bad things that happen that aren’t a result of a persons choice, but maybe something like a natural disaster, or something out of someone’s control. Why doesn’t GOD step in and help somebody in a situation like this? Once again, this is a natural world, and GOD isn’t an active participant. He’s more like a spectator.
It is also important to look at the origin of the very notion of good vs evil.
This idea rises with the invention of monotheism. Before that the Gods just did their thing, some did nice things some did things that were harmfull. Most did both. But hardly any would be viewed as ‘Evil’. Their fury could be attoned via the right rituals, hopefuly.
Now when you place one God before the Others and claim he is superior in power and better then the rest, it logically follows that he is the good guy. Bad things that generally tend to happen then get to be attributed to someone else, who becomes the bad guy. When the Persians placed Ahuramazda in charge of all the Gods, Ahriman became the opponent, the bad guy, the evil God.
When they started to write down the Bible, Israel was a part of the Persian empire. I’m not that familiar with the origins of all the parts of the bible but it seems logical that a lot was borrowed from the ruling views on theology. Thus we get God vs Satan.
At this point in time there is still no true ‘monotheism’ as in that there is only one supra-natural being. God is first among others, who have become his little helpers (angels) and his opponent(s).
So we have God is good and Satan is bad, God does good things Satan the bad things.
Although the trend was that monotheism grew to be a form of religion where there was indeed only one God and nothing else, the notion of the good god has lingered and we are left with the question, ‘well where do bad things come from then?’
If you still believe in more than one god than you can attribute it to Satan. If you believe that there is only one God then you are stuck with the question ‘Why does our good God let bad things happen?’
