Did God create evil?

Tranquil Servant said:

.....It's not good for God; it's good for us.If the teachings and laws of God were never taught, we would still have human sacrifices and all kinds of savagery ravaging the world. Mankind would've destroyed itself a long time ago. Even now, with all the laws, education, and moral teachings we have and we're only a nuclear war away from destroying the world.

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You think short term suffering is worse than eternal suffering? If people who never heard about Jesus/God/etc dont go to hell then destroying the religion and ceasing all communication about its existence is the most selfless thing you could do. There is no reason at all to go on spreading your religion because you are damning people to an eternity in hell. I would think that is the most evil thing you could possibly do.

The idea that humans would go about raping,killing, etc without "your" God is completely unfounded. We have created laws and grown in spite of a large portion of what God commanded, reality would lead us to believe we would be fine.

The only one benefiting in any of this would be God. I know id rather not burn in hell because of my ignorance to the existence of something than to burn in hell because someone told me about that something. I imagine most rational people would agree.

InChrist said:

Have you considered the very real possibility that the human perspective is finite making it limited and lacking complete information, therefore resulting in the inability to make correct judgments? Could it not be that because God is infinite and has complete knowledge of any given situation that what you finitely perceive as something "terrible" done by God, may actually have been done with good reason based on His eternal wisdom and complete knowledge?

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So what you are saying is we can't even trust the moral code God placed inside us all? If my moral code (which God supposedly gave me) tells me that God commanding babies to be murdered is evil, but its not really evil because God knows more than me, then I have no grasp of what is good/evil. In that case you could be worshiping Satan himself who is proclaiming to be God and you would be none the wiser. Perhaps Satan is the holiest of all? Who am I to judge, I am just a lowly human. :sad:

Perhaps the serial killer who heard from God is doing right and my limited, human judgement is failing me because I can't see the full picture.

This is no way to go about day to day life. The only thing we have is our own knowledge and it is all we can judge things by. If a toad looks like a toad im gonna call it a toad and if God appears immoral I will see him as such.

InChrist said:

Have you stopped to ask yourself the reason that God commanded the Israelites to destroy the other tribes? Are you aware that they were preforming human sacrifice of their children to false gods? Do you realize that those other tribes had at least 40 years to repent from their sinful practices and submit to the Living God? Do you believe God has no right to judge His creation? Do you think He should He let evil grow and continue endlessly?

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So much for that freewill stuff. So why was evil necessary again?

Blackdog22 said:

So what you are saying is we can't even trust the moral code God placed inside us all? If my moral code (which God supposedly gave me) tells me that God commanding babies to be murdered is evil, but its not really evil because God knows more, then I have no grasp of what is good/evil. In that case you could be worshiping Satan himself who is proclaiming to be God and you would be none of the wiser. Perhaps Satan is the holiest of all? Who am I to judge, I am just a lowly human. :sad:

Perhaps the serial killer who heard from God is doing right and my limited, human judgement is failing me because I can't see the full picture.

This is no way to go about day to day life. The only thing we have is our own knowledge and it is all we can judge things by. If a toad looks like a toad im gonna call it a toad and if God appears immoral I will see him as such.

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And it pretty much sabotages the "free will" argument.

Humanity created evil, just as they created god.

LucifersLawyer said:

Humanity created evil, just as they created god.

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Hmm. Did we invent evil or create it by actually committing it? I.e., is the defining point of the creation of evil the formation of its definition, or the first act of evil ever committed, assuming that such an act could be identified?

Mercy Not Sacrifice said:

Hmm. Did we invent evil or create it by actually committing it? I.e., is the defining point of the creation of evil the formation of its definition, or the first act of evil ever committed, assuming that such an act could be identified?

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Re-phrasing this: human evolution gave rise to a biped capable of a very wide range of behaviours, from extreme altruism to its extreme opposite; it also gave that same biped the capacity to evaluate and categorise the actions of others; "evil" is just the name we give to one of those categories.

johnhanks said:

Re-phrasing this: human evolution gave rise to a biped capable of a very wide range of behaviours, from extreme altruism to its extreme opposite; it also gave that same biped the capacity to evaluate and categorise the actions of others; "evil" is just the name we give to one of those categories.

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OK, that makes sense. And evil can be rather difficult to define. When we claim what it is, usually we are listing criteria for what counts as being "evil," not defining the word itself.

Mercy Not Sacrifice said:

OK, that makes sense. And evil can be rather difficult to define. When we claim what it is, usually we are listing criteria for what counts as being "evil," not defining the word itself.

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Agreed. But this thread is premised on evil being a created "thing", rather than just the label we have for one extreme of human behaviour.

no-body said:

Who is this "we" I certainly didn't choose a path of misery and sin for myself. Some Rib woman and dust man did for all of us, I guess.

What kills me is this need to describe God in Abrahamic religions to human standards of ego but we aren't allowed to judge him on that level. Sorry but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

If God isn't going to follow the logic he created then his tests are nothing but sick psychological jokes. Those with reason are punished for using their brains.

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We is basically the human race since Adam. If you managed to choose righteousness and avoid sin, you saved yourself from the misery that others who do not avoid sin manage to bring onto themselves.

God in the Bible follows what He told us; His logic. Where he takes life the punishments of the Mosaic law agree with Him. He keeps vengeance for sin in His hands for the NT and the Hebrew Prophetic writings to prevent "us" from taking a life wrongly or committing some sin in retaliation for one committed against us. He is fair to the human race which is by and large corrupt.

If one uses one's brain to murder or steal, are they really using the brain God gave them.

I don't know if God created anything. All I know, within all of us , lies the devil and the divine : all men are capable of good, and all men are capable of evil - the root word divine also comes from the word Devil ..

Ouroboros said:

Isaiah 45:7 (KJV)
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

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Bad translation.