Evil

[Spartan]

I will then leave it to you to demonstrate that every person who has ever experienced a calamity has ended up in Heaven......

Whistle for it.

 

[Milton Platt]

Whistle for it.

I'd be whistling for a long time.....

 

[Jos]

Wait a minute, so God has no choice but to make a world in which humans can choose good or evil rather than making them with a perfectly good nature because He wouldn't be loving if He didn't?

 

[Spartan]

The god featured in the Bible is the epitome of evil, imo.

Richard Dawkins: “What do I think about God? The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Ravi Zacharias responds: “Now, he (Dawkins) just finished telling us God’s a fictional character! That’s half of the point. The other half of the point is what he thinks about humanity. He goes on to say that basically, he believes in the goodness of humanity without God watching over. Either I’m confused or he is. If God doesn’t exist and all these descriptions apply, then who did these things? Who wrote the Old Testament if God didn’t inspire the words? That would be his answer. And who ordered all these things? That would be humanity. Why are you (Dawkins) so positive about humanity and so down on God when it was humanity who manufactured the God that you deny?” And who killed all those people throughout history – hundreds of millions of them, if God is fictional? It was humanity. And you – Dawkins – believe humanity is ‘good’! Atheists….

By the way, according to the Bible, without God you wouldn't even be breathing today.

 

[Jos]

Richard Dawkins: “What do I think about God? The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Ravi Zacharias responds: “Now, he (Dawkins) just finished telling us God’s a fictional character! That’s half of the point. The other half of the point is what he thinks about humanity. He goes on to say that basically, he believes in the goodness of humanity without God watching over. Either I’m confused or he is. If God doesn’t exist and all these descriptions apply, then who did these things? Who wrote the Old Testament if God didn’t inspire the words? That would be his answer. And who ordered all these things? That would be humanity. Why are you (Dawkins) so positive about humanity and so down on God when it was humanity who manufactured the God that you deny?” And who killed all those people throughout history – hundreds of millions of them, if God is fictional? It was humanity. And you – Dawkins – believe humanity is ‘good’! Atheists….

By the way, according to the Bible, without God you wouldn't even be breathing today.

Can you answer my question please?

Wait a minute, so God has no choice but to make a world in which humans can choose good or evil rather than making them with a perfectly good nature because He wouldn't be loving if He didn't?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

"Those people on the outside; they don't know evil." - Shawcross
I tend to agree, as we can only speculate and we don't know it like those who live it. We can label actions as good and debate if they are evil or not, but fortunately most of us do not have to actually know it.

 

[Spartan]

Can you answer my question please?

Was this yours? "Wait a minute, so God has no choice but to make a world in which humans can choose good or evil rather than making them with a perfectly good nature because He wouldn't be loving if He didn't?"

So you want God to make pre-programmed robots who can only do good instead of creating people with free will to make their own choices? Not a good idea.

 

[Jos]

So you want God to make pre-programmed robots who can only do good instead of creating people with free will to make their own choices? Not a good idea.

Why is it a bad idea if the world wouldn't have as much evil as it does now?

 

[Spartan]

Why is it a bad idea if the world wouldn't have as much evil as it does now?

I think pre-programming people so they don't have fee will is evil.

The New Testament does say that believers will be raised incorruptible. Of course, that was their free will choice in life to accept that end.

 

[Jos]

I think pre-programming people so they don't have fee will is evil.

Why? If God determines what is moral, can't He make it so that creating people without free will isn't evil?

 

[Spartan]

Why? If God determines what is moral, can't He make it so that creating people without free will isn't evil?

You can't really love without free will. You'd only have one pre-programmed choice.

 

[Jos]

You can't really love without free will. You'd only have one pre-programmed choice.

So what? God is preprogrammed to love and has no choice but to love humans. He can't hate humans so why is not being able to do evil a bad thing?

 

[Spartan]

So what? God is preprogrammed to love and has no choice but to love humans. He can't hate humans so why is not being able to do evil a bad thing?

BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO FREE WILL.

 

[Jos]

BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO FREE WILL.

That's special pleading isn't it? God has no free will but to love humans and there's nothing wrong with that but if we humans were to not have free will but to love God and others, there's something wrong. That makes no sense.

 

[Ancient Soul]

What are your thoughts/ Do you think is evil the corruption of something good which already exists?


What is evil?

Evil is not something that has an existence of its own; rather it is a corruption of that which already exists. EVIL IS THE ABSENCE OR PRIVATION OF SOMETHING GOOD. Rot, for example, can only exist as long as the tree exists. Tooth decay can only exist as long as the tooth exists. Rust on a car and a decaying carcass illustrate the same point. Evil exists as a corruption of something good; it is a privation and does not have essence by itself. Norman Geisler tells us, "Evil is like a wound in an arm or moth-holes in a garment. It exists only in another but not in itself."
Notes on the Problem of Evil, by Ron Rhodes

The premise of your question is faulty.

"Evil" is NOT part of, or a "corruption" of something physical. Evil is most often defined as some malicious thought/intent to do something harmful to some object, living creature, or most commonly to someone else.

So an earthquake, flood, tornado, bridge collapsing, etc, is not an "evil" act, they just happen. And nobody made them happen.

 

[Ancient Soul]

What are your thoughts/ Do you think is evil the corruption of something good which already exists?


What is evil?

Evil is not something that has an existence of its own; rather it is a corruption of that which already exists. EVIL IS THE ABSENCE OR PRIVATION OF SOMETHING GOOD. Rot, for example, can only exist as long as the tree exists. Tooth decay can only exist as long as the tooth exists. Rust on a car and a decaying carcass illustrate the same point. Evil exists as a corruption of something good; it is a privation and does not have essence by itself. Norman Geisler tells us, "Evil is like a wound in an arm or moth-holes in a garment. It exists only in another but not in itself."
Notes on the Problem of Evil, by Ron Rhodes

The premise of your question is faulty.

"Evil" is NOT part of, or a "corruption" of something physical. Evil is most often defined as some malicious thought/intent to do something harmful to some object, living creature, or most commonly to someone else.

So an earthquake, flood, tornado, bridge collapsing, etc, is not an "evil" act, they just happen. And nobody made them happen.

 

[Ancient Soul]

Evil can be in the words, actions or thoughts toward one self or others. All evil leads to suffering, all good lead to compassion and love for everything around us.

When we remove the evil from our mind we will understand it was what made us suffer

Good point.

This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately, mostly because of so much growing division and hatred in America.

Now the way I've always looked at life is to get the most out of this grand experience of life as possible. So even when just a child I contemplated a great deal upon who "I" was, then defined how "I" wanted to live my life on my terms. Most of which revolved around experiencing all that I could and putting back as much "good works" into this world as I could.

So I just cannot fathom why anyone would want to spent their lives so consumed with hating some group of people or another, wishing or actually doing violence to them, ranting and raving about how "evil" they think they are, etc. To me that's a miserable way to exist. They are doing more harm to themselves by keeping up such rage and hatred bottled up inside of them, then they probably are to anyone else.

 

[Spirit of Light]

Good point.

This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately, mostly because of so much growing division and hatred in America.

Now the way I've always looked at life is to get the most out of this grand experience of life as possible. So even when just a child I contemplated a great deal upon who "I" was, then defined how "I" wanted to live my life on my terms. Most of which revolved around experiencing all that I could and putting back as much "good works" into this world as I could.

So I just cannot fathom why anyone would want to spent their lives so consumed with hating some group of people or another, wishing or actually doing violence to them, ranting and raving about how "evil" they think they are, etc. To me that's a miserable way to exist. They are doing more harm to themselves by keeping up such rage and hatred bottled up inside of them, then they probably are to anyone else.

Maybe they have so much hate within them, because they can not see that we are all the same. we are all in human body. Or put in a different way. We are all beings. But some people have a lot of attachments to who they are, nationality and to skin color.

 

[InChrist]

The premise of your question is faulty.

"Evil" is NOT part of, or a "corruption" of something physical. Evil is most often defined as some malicious thought/intent to do something harmful to some object, living creature, or most commonly to someone else.

So an earthquake, flood, tornado, bridge collapsing, etc, is not an "evil" act, they just happen. And nobody made them happen.

Maybe you didn't read the entire article. I don't think earthquakes, tornadoes, tooth decay or rusty metal is evil. I believe those were only given in the article as physical examples of the spiritual reality when corruption of something good occurs due to sinful or malicious intent.