Did God Create Evil? Careful Now...
SI QVIDEM DEVS EST, VNDE MALA? BONA VERO VNDE, SI NON EST?
If there is a god, how can there be evil? And how can there be good if there is not?
(Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy i, 4)
Omniscience rears its ugly head again! The notion of good and evil is the foundation upon which Judeo-Christian and Islamic beliefs stand. There are two schools of thought on the subject: Evil is that which is against God (the devil) or evil is the absence of God. Amazingly, divine guidance leads to two opinions, and I intend to debunk both.
The idea that Satan is the root of all evil is impossible for the same reason free will is impossible. Why would a god who knows all things create the angel Lucifer? Wouldn't he know ahead of time about his betrayal? How could an all-good (or omnibenevolent) deity create such an evil beast? How could evil exist in a God-filled universe unless God created it?
If, as conventional theology teaches us, Satan left God and began tempting us mere mortals, many more questions arise. Why not, at the time of the "fall", destroy Satan altogether and prevent him from influencing God's creation? The answer is, either God wanted it that way or he couldn't do anything about it.
It seems ridiculous to view Jehovah and Satan as equal, dueling deities, with this existence and insignificant humans as their battleground. What arrogance to assume we would mean anything to powerful celestial beings. Unfortunately, this seems to be conventional wisdom.
I can remember Sunday School lessons in which I was told that Satan was on a leash held by God, and that he could only do what God allows. The question then becomes: "God allows evil? Pain? Suffering?" At a younger age I might have been content with the "mysterious ways" cop-out, but I'm not a kid anymore. I want answers.
God's not that upset about Satan, is he? He could eliminate him any time he feels like it, couldn't he? Ah, but, Satan serves an important function. God and he have worked out a deal. Satan takes all the damned souls, acting as God's trash collector. It's not like the Almighty sits helplessly by while Satan takes people from him to the depths of Hell; this is the system God came up with--he sends them there. (And by the way, why would Satan torture, instead of reward, people who did his wicked work on Earth?)
What's that? Evil is just the absence of God, you say? How can God be absent? I was told in Sunday School that God was everywhere. But say he's not. Why, exactly? God is absent where he is rejected. Oh, I see. So what! Human beings can tell a god where he can and cannot be? Doesn't sound like much of a god to me...
I have never rejected the Christian god. Most Christians can't quite understand this. I was a believer, but I came to find the very concept to be contradictory and childish. To this day I would welcome the presence of a benevolent deity, but I don't think such a thing exists. I don't reject the being, just the incoherent intellectual concept.
Christians love to tout the "everything has a cause" principle. They say that everything has a cause, and therefore so does the universe, and the cause of the universe is God. Seems like a good point, except that everything does not have a cause. This is no scientific principle, only a vast distortion of the action-reaction Law. Newton is spinning in his grave. What is my point? How did I get onto this topic? Well, if everything has a cause, as Christians say, then so does evil. And so does a god, for that matter.
No matter how you view it, human evil is said to have begun in the Garden of Eden; this is a tenet of all three major religions. Humans became evil when they disobeyed God and tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (that always gets me--knowledge is evil!!) The problem remains the same, just like free will and evil...God knew this would happen and allowed it, he couldn't prevent it, his creation was imperfect, or he had no way of knowing what would happen. God dislikes evil (he has emotion?) but can't get rid of evil? How is this possible? I mean how impotent (in the truest sense of the word) is this deity anyway?
Whether you view evil as against or without God, either way something exists in God's creation that he doesn't like. What? If God were all-knowing (omniscient) or all-powerful (omnipotent) such things would not be possible. The only option left is that evil exists because God created it, knowing the outcome. Maybe I'm not using logical reasoning. Maybe, emotionally, I don't want to believe that this type of deity would exist.
All of this is the religious view. Here's what's really going on: Evil is that which is immoral. Morals are the standards society places on itself. Nothing more, nothing less. The idea of a great cosmic battle between good and evil is simply an extension of the ideas of a few hunter/gatherers who agreed to treat each other nice for the good of the whole, a long time ago. Praise the Lord!
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