How Does The Manichean View Of Evil

The concept of Evil is something that has puzzled mankind for many centuries. But what exactly is evil? What is the problem of evil? Lastly, what is the purpose of evil existing? Questions like these have been around since man could critically think about social issues. Throughout time, many speculations and theories have arisen around the thought of what exactly evil is and why exactly is it a problem. Or even if it is a problem at all in the first place? Evil and Good are two things that are always mentioned together. Are they dependent of each other or complete polar opposites? Two views of evil are the Manichean and Augustinian views. The Manichean view of evil which came to be from Persian Philosopher Mani, (Davison 100) can be clearly

Natural evil is the evil that occurs in the natural world that causes pain such as natural disasters that result in the loss of life. Moral evil is the evil that describes someone choosing to cause harm onto others. Natural evil can be looked at as the evil that is necessary in the world to keep things balanced. To keep mother nature itself running its cycle and maintaining the earth at a certain level. When moral evil is looked at a deeper level, it can be seen that maybe all humans are born with the capacity to be evil and do horrendous evil acts. But then, if all humans have the capacity then are all humans born evil? That is where religion begins to play a role in the concept of evil and

But then, with Satan being a former angel of God, why does God even allow Satan to exist and cause havoc among the living (God’s children)? Maybe God has personal gain with evil itself existing. It has been said that God himself allows evil to thrive and exist to punish those wrong doers. Punishing these evildoers themselves might give God a self-gratification. But then if God is achieving this self-gratification then isn’t God portraying human qualities that Christianity has portrayed him not to have. Rather that God is an all knowing being who sees all and knows all. Diving into Christianity, it seen that there is a book that was claimed to explain the problem of evil. The book of Job is that mighty book that was in the Old Testament. In this book, God allows Satan to hurt Job and do all these things as a test of his faith. Throughout all the horrible things, Job still manages to keep his faith in God strong. This goes back to the reason why God allows Satan to even exist but this time he is allowing him to exist to not only punish but to also test his