Evil isn’t a separate entity apart from us; it’s within us all through dishonesty, unfairness, etc. In other words, not all evil is sin, but all sin is evil.
God is good and evil is rampant; both of these are true. Theodicy questions how both statements are true; there couldn’t be a just God and evil in the same world. My logic is that since we know what good and evil is, that proves the existence of God. God created an instinctive sense of right and wrong in our minds from our birth that goes deep into our nature as humans. C.S. Lewis calls this the “Law of Human Nature” since, like gravity, “the subject is governed by the law.” So I believe that God exists, and evil is a result of our free will which is given to us by God. Without free
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The grey areas of evil that aren’t caused by direct sin can be explained by the “fall of man” in Genesis. No person is perfectly pure because of Adam and Eve’s sin, which I believe we have would have committed in the same circumstance. “Sin entered the world through one man” (Romans 5:12) and mankind is cursed because of it. Although someone could try to be perfect (which Pelagius teaches is obtainable), they could never reach perfection since it is not in human nature. I believe that we entered the world with original sin but through God’s grace, we can be made good, although not fully pure. Our free will that God gave us leads to sin since humans are not fully pure. Sin then leads to evil. I believe that God allows evil to exist. He can handle evil, it’s below him. If God is capable of mediating as I trust, then He must not for reasons. First, it would curtail our free will if He intervened. If he destroyed evil now, then there would be no more goodness since one can’t exist without the other. Second, we wouldn’t learn from our mistakes; we learn from suffering and hardships. Perseverance makes us stronger, not
It is perhaps the most difficult intellectual challenge to a Christian how God and evil can both exist. Many of the greatest minds of the Christian church and intellects such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas spent their entire lives trying to solve this problem, and were unsuccessful (Erickson, 2009, p.439). However, this dilemma is not only an intellectual challenge, but it is emotional. Man feels it, lives it. Failing to identify the religious form of the problem of evil will appear insensitive; failure to address the theological form will seem intellectually insulting. This conundrum will never be completely met during our earthly life, but there are many biblical and philosophical resources that help mitigate it.
There are two kinds of evil, moral and natural. Moral evil is things like murder, rape, stealing, terrorism, etc. Natural evil is things like suffering and unpleasantness typically as a result of moral evil. Evil is that which has no power of its own. Evil is darkness, a negation of light. Its power is in us, in our fear of it, in that we consider it a "something" worth responding to.
Bad things are bound to happen; it’s just a matter of when. I agree with his particular view on this matter, “Some are caused by bad luck. Some are caused by bad people, and others are silly an inevitable consequence of our being human and being mortal, living in a world of flexible natural laws” (pg.134). I believe the presence of God does not change the existence of good or evil, but may influence humans to have great faith, and therefore act accordingly. I do think people abandon their faith because of the problem with evil than for any other reason. It is certainly a test of faith, and temptation to unbelief. This world is way too random and unpredictable. Things interact in complex ways so their will always be room for the unexpected, and that’s why I think bad things happen to good people. But I don’t have the true answer, Kushner does not have the true answer, and I don’t believe anyone will ever have the true answer. Although I was raised believing in God and having faith, I don’t think there is a higher power interacting with the world causing whatever bad thing to happen. Like Kushner, I think God gives us the strength to cope with bad things when they come our way. Ultimately, I believe the nature of reality is blind as to weather you’re a good or evil. You could be a good person your whole life and then one day something tragic happens; you lose your job, your house
Good and evil make the world we are living in today. However evil stands out more than good and people tend to focus on the evil behavior of humans more often. Human nature tends to decide that if someone looks evil they will be evil. The good and the bad make up the goodness in life. It is impossible to always be good or evil but there are things that can make us better or worse as a person. For one to be free, one must live in a world of evil and good.
Authors' Conceptions of Human Nature. Philosophers, politicians, and writers throughout the western world. across all of our written history have discovered the importance of knowing human nature. Human nature is responsible for our definitions of abstract concepts that are surprisingly universal across the western world, like justice, equity, and law. Human nature must also be carefully studied in an effort to understand, obtain, or maintain power within society.
There is evil. 3. So, God does not exist”. Since there is evil, then that means God does not exist.
Beginning with the understanding that God as written in biblical text is all powerful, all knowing, and good we then seek to more deeply understand how it is that God allows evil to exist. From the initial text in the Bible referring to the creation of Adam and Eve we are able to see the step-by-step creation of the different elements in our world. With the creation of elements came the assimilation of a guideline or law to follow. Understanding of this initial and key guideline could be one of the main contexts to understanding the first concept of wrong, how wrong came to exist, and why it is allowed to continue. Also the generalizations that are made and the multiple interpretations they hold in different contexts is another example of how we are encouraged to come about our own perception and belief based on what we understand overall of God being good and seeking love for us and from us, and the desire for God to give us the opportunity to learn, make mistakes, and return to him as the prodigal son did. I do not intend
The discussion of whether evil exists is dependent on the definition of evil. In the sense of human action, evil can be seen as consciously doing harmful acts. The idea of what constitutes evil is then subjective to what a person perceives as harmful. If a society believes that an act is harmful, then it could be constituted as evil. However, this disparages the idea that evil can be universal, because what is harmful to one person or society may be perfectly acceptable to another. How can it be that the same act is considered both evil and not evil? It may be that in every act, there is a mix between evil, and its counterpart, good.
If God exists and is all-knowing, then there is no evil that God does not know about. If God exists and is morally perfect, then there is no evil that God would permit that He cannot prevent.
The lines that define good and evil are not written in black and white; these lines tend to blur allowing good and evil to intermingle with each another in a single human being.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a novel about a man named Henry Jekyll who
Evil exists. This bizarre conundrum has perplexed philosophers since the dawn of civilization, and remains in hot debate today because of the theological implications inherent in the statement. To many on this planet, the source of life is an all-loving, all-powerful, omniscient god who created the universe – and all the laws therein – in seven days, as described in the Bible. And yet still, evil exists. How can these two premises be simultaneously true? Surely, an all-loving god would want to do something about this problem, and an all-powerful god could absolutely remedy a situation if it so desired. It seems as though the common perception of the Bible’s god is inaccurate. However, it could be argued that the Bible’s god is accurate, and that said perception is somewhat skewed, considering that on numerous occasions, God claims responsibility for evil. “I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7). The Greek philosopher Epicurus put the Good God’s Evil puzzle in a very clear logical progression:
Sin can be used as another word for evil, but in this context of sin is the betrayal of God, so does this mean evil only exist if God exist; this is a large part of the argument on the side of the theologian. Sober states that there are two types of evil; natural and moral, natural being pain and death, and moral being more “sinly”, as in stealing or committing murder. If Sober had contemplated the Adam and Eve theodicy, he may have believed that according to the story natural evil was around before Adam and Eve, and that humans are responsible for moral evil. So if humans are the only things capable of sinning, are humans the only beings that can commit moral evils; I would have to say yes. I say that this theodicy does not explain why or how exist, as there is no way of proving, or ever proving, unless there was proof that there was no evil in the world until the first came to
Good versus evil is an eternal struggle, conflict, war, or a unification. Good exists while evil does as well, this is because without evil, there can be no such thing as good, and without good, there can also be no evil. The question exists that if there is an all-good & powerful God who is omniscient; omnipotent; omni-benevolent; then how can evil exist within such absolute terms?
In our world today, we come across all sorts of people. Some you see do evil actions and some you see do good actions. The person doing a good action might be a psychotic killer-- you never know. The other person doing the evil action, could be a priest. Not everything you see people do shows what type of person they really are inside. These people may look one way on the outside, but the world can change the way they see the world and their ultimate actions. Regardless of how someone seems, they are consistently changing because of the evil energies of the world. Humans are all born good and pure, although as we grow up we are corrupted by the evil world around us.