The Problem of Evil

well it goes right to the heart of the matter - God creates Satan and knows that he will be evil - now if satan has no other choise, the case has to be that God with purpose creates evil.

First define for me what you thik evil is. Was Hitler evil? Is Satan evil?This message has been edited by Jasonb, 08-12-2004 01:06 PM

Thanks for the comments and discussion. I understand your point, but I'm not sure that I agree with it - I might agree that God "passively" created evil (as opposed to actively doing so.)To return to my car accident analogy (let me know if you think it is flawed):
- If I am driving and purposefully steer my car into oncoming traffic, I am actively "creating" an accident.
- If I am driving and put the cruise control on and climb into the back seat, I am passively "creating" an accident, because I know that an accident is inevitable, though I am not directly causing the where/how/when of the accident.From your earlier replies it seems that you would agree that evil was an inevitable part of God's creation. Thus, an inherent component in the act of the totality of creation was the creation of evil.As a side note, do think God hardening the pharoah's heart was actively creating evil? Even if in only preventing the pharoah from choosing to cease he evil ways?

Sas,This caught me by surprise, hadn't expected talk of the soul from you.

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Since we can't look directly into someone's soul we can't see the evil without the acts.

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You know I gotta ask for your definition of "soul".In an earlier reply you mentioned semantics. I have always been impressed with Korzybski's insights. Jar is fond of quoting one of his basic premises for general semantics "the map is not the territory". Language is abstraction. And an awful lot of inaccurate or confusing mapping arises with the use of the "IS" of identity. Is the statement "the sky is blue" true or false? Well under what conditions? Korzbski recommended a more explicit statement that avoided using "is" as an identity. "In the daylight after sunrise and before sunset if the sky is not overcast it will appear blue to a human with normal color vision".(an example I just made up) Now yes of course we know that that is what is meant when we say the sky is blue. All that is implied and that example is harmless. But problems can arise in other situations.From my personal viewpoint inspired by whatever misunderstanding I have of eastern thought, semantics, Wittgenstein etc I'm going to ask some questions about persons and entities.My viewpoint is that persons are processes in time. A living body with very complex brain functioning. Grossly change that brain function and the total organism and it's personality will change drastically. Would you consider Hitler evil after some trauma to his brain eliminated his ability to feel anger or be aggessive? You could still judge policies and actions under his direction that occurred before his brain was changed as evil. Would you say that he still possessed an evil soul?A key but rarely examined concept that many western religions depend on is the soul, or a concept of a person as a discreet entity.Buddhist philosophy has a resonance with contemporary scientific understanding of organisms. Page Not Found: 404 Error | Humboldt State UniversityI use the analogy of a tapestry. Imagine one of those popular mass produced ones of the Last Supper. The brown threads that make up Jesus's beard also run through Judas's hair and Peter's chair. None of the figures are made independently, only the pattern of the threads identify them. We write and think in the language we learned. I didn't create this language, nor most of the ideas. Yes unique phenomena arise.One of the core insights of the Buddha was that there was no permanent self, no soul. He spent some years watching his mind at work thinking, sensing, feeling and saw that it is a flux, a stream whose contents are constantly changing albeit at differing rates. This is just like the universe, like life on this planet. A complex series of mutually interdependent interactions. Our lungs would make no sense if plants did not provide oxygen. Our lungs our only part of that total functioning.My fundanmental criticism of near eastern religions is not even that they claim books written by humans were infallible information provided by god when the books contain easily falsified information. But rather the religions are built on a concept of a person that can't be supported.There are no permanent entities such as persons, and I'm not speaking of just the physical organism. This of course is not the way I experience myself, and it's not the everyday commonsense way of looking at the world. But common sense can't always be depended on to be accurate and this fallacy which does seem to be a key component in our human functioning is the source of many errors. The Buddha's prime teaching is that this fallacious sense of being an entity, the ego, is suffering.This is badly put I know. I am beginning to see that my interactions on this forum have the function of me clarifying my thoughts for my own understanding if no one elses. And yes references to loci such as lfen, Sasquatch make sense even when self referential. It's only when that self referecne is taken as evidence that a permanent entity exists that it results in error.lfen

I agree that we disagree about what constitutes sin and evil.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I apologize if I caused people to argue because of my questions but in fairness to all, I really am now understanding the last article I posted a lot clearer... so thanks.
I kind of thought maybe I should post the other parts connected to the article that I first posted that I haven't totally understood yet. I need help getting a grip on these paragraphs again

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Summary of the role played by Satan in the Scriptures
Satan is an angel (Job 1-2). God made him before the world began (Job 38:4-7). Satan was very powerful (Revelation 12:3: "ten horns") and very wise (Revelation 12:3: "seven heads"). But he became the first sinner (1 John 3:8). Apparently at one point in the past (or possibly future) he led a rebellion in heaven against God (Revelation 12:7). In Satan’s fall, he drew a vast number of angels with him (Revelation 12:4, 9). Some of the fallen angels are loose and some are bound in a place called the Abyss (Luke 8:31). The loose ones we call "demons". Of the bound ones, there are two kinds, permanently bound (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6) and temporarily bound (Revelation 9:1-11). Satan and his demons now wage war against God’s kingdom (Revelation 12:17). Some people think that Satan lives in hell, but hell is where Satan and the wicked will be sent at the last judgment. Satan now dwells on earth (Job 1:7). At the Second Coming of Christ, he will be bound for 1,000 years (Revelation 20:1-3). After the thousand years, he will be set free for a short time and will go out to deceive the nations (Revelation 20:7-9). The devil’s final end will be in the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10), which was prepared by God for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41).

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Satan’s Fall
But what exactly was the character or nature of Satan’s iniquity? As suggested by 1 Timothy 3:6-7 and Ezekiel 28:17, though created perfect by God (Ezek. 28:13-15), it was conceit or pride that welled up in his heart because of his beauty and high position that led to arrogant aspirations and to his sin and fall. In Isaiah 14:12-15 and in Ezekiel 28:12-19, we have a remarkable account of the original place which Satan once had as "Lucifer, son of the morning." His fall from this original, exalted place, of perhaps the greatest of created angelic beings, is given in these Scriptures. These arrogant aspirations are described for us in Isaiah 14:12-17 : pride, selfwill, iniquity, rebellion, and violence are the reasons. Because of his pride and aspirations to be like God, he became God’s chief adversary (Heb. Satan). After this, he is never again called by any of these prestigious titles. Instead, he is called by terms that reflect his fallen character and hostility to God and men, like liar, murderer, Satan (adversary), the evil one, Abaddon (destruction), Apollyon (destroyer), Belial (worthless), serpent, and dragon.

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Scotus, however points out that this sin was not pride properly so called, but should rather be described as a species of spiritual lust.

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Although nothing definite can be known as to the precise nature of the probation of the angels and the manner in which many of them fell, many theologians have conjectured, with some show of probability, that the mystery of the Divine Incarnation was revealed to them, that they saw that a nature lower than their own was to be hypostatically united to the Person of God the Son, and that all the hierarchy of heaven must bow in adoration before the majesty of the Incarnate Word; and this, it is supposed, was the occasion of the pride of Lucifer.

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Furthermore, we learn from Ezekiel 28 that Lucifer engaged in a multitude of traffic, which means "going about." He filled heaven with violence and sinned.
"Thou has defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic"

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Thus Lucifer instigated violence and rebellion among the heavenly hosts before man was created, and those who followed him became his angels or demons. Seeking to overthrow God and rule heaven, Lucifer assembled an army of apostate angels and initiated a war in heaven.

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In the book of Revelation we read about a war in heaven between Michael and the angels who remained loyal to God and the dragon, "called the Devil, and Satan," and his angels. Then Satan and his angels were defeated by Michael, and were thrown down from heaven to hell.

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And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. And the dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. Revelation 12:7-9

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It made me confused again. Did Lucifer create "evil" when he started thinking of rebelling against "God" or was evil already present (already created by "God") before Lucifer stared to follow that vile path? Sorry, my mind is still jumbled on where "evil" came from.

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The Apocalypse
In the future, at the end of the Tribulation, an angel will descend from heaven with the key of the abyss and with a great chain in his hand (Rev. 20:1). The fact he has the key and the chain shows he has been given authority and power from heaven to carry out this assignment. This angel will then lay hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan and will bind him for a thousand years. The emphasis here is that this angel, operating under God’s authority and with His power, will possess the strength necessary to seize, hold firmly, and restrain the devil and bind him in the abyss for a thousand years with no possibility of escape.

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Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit [abussou] and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit [abusson], and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while. Revelation 20:1

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So it will happen in that day, that the Lord will punish the host of heaven on high, and the kings of the earth on earth. They will be gathered together like prisoners in the dungeon, and will be confined in prison; and after many days they will be punished.Isaiah 24:21

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Revelation 19 describes the battle between the forces of the Antichrist and Yeshua at the end of this age. After the defeat and destruction of "the beast" and "the false prophet," the Bible reveals that Satan himself will be captured and imprisoned for a thousand years.

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And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the earth, that is, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city; but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.Revelation 20:7

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During the millennial kingdom Satan will be bound, but at the close of that period he will be released and will attempt to lead the world in a final revolt against Christ’s kingdom. Finally God will cast Satan into the lake of fire and brimstone where he will be tormented for ever and ever Revelation.

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I have another silly question regarding this. Ummm, does "God" already know about all of these and that these will all happen to the denizens of the world he created along with the Devils even before he created Lucifer and the universe or were all of these only predicted after Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan and all became chaotic?Also, will Satan become free from imprisonment by himself or will someone set him free. I think it would be nicer if "God" would prevent him from breaking loose.I was just thinking maybe He should have skipped... err... creating Lucifer... hee hee... just to have prevented all the endless suffering of His beloved creations that became sinners for eternity.
Sigh, I don't know about anyone... but to me... it just seems so cruel to not prevent something that you already know would bring tragedy. Or maybe... ummm... He could have deleted evil in case Lucifer created it before He created us. I know my thoughts are silly so don't mind me.Oh... just my opinion, so don't be mad. Peace.

lfen,Thanks for the comments - I don't think they were badly put, when one tries to place sometimes nebulous or abstract concepts of spirituality or existence into language form things quickly become complicated and easily misconstrued.As an example, perhaps my use of the word "soul" was not well thought out, since I do not personally believe in a discrete, constant, infinite entity - and you are correct that this is the common implication of the word. My use of "soul" was more intended to describe the intent of what you would call a "loci" - it was also used in the framework of a discussion with a particular theme and audience.I do agree with some of your comments/definitions regarding the permanency of "entities", though perhaps my beliefs would grant more lasting (but not unchanging) identity to such entities/loci.Since our discussion includes "eastern" philosophy, I would say that my personal concept of "evil" is more of an issue of an entity being very off-balance, or perhaps maintaining the intent to destroy the balance of others (though the latter likely follows from the first). I agree, and would add Taoism to the comment as well, not just for the understanding of organisms, but the nature of space and matter as well.I may try to comment more on your thoughts, but must finish now - I tend to adopt others language in discussion even if I maintain my own meanings of that language, and tend to argue from within hypothetical frameworks at times. (Though I've avoided that in this reply).I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on balance and evil...

Sasq!Good topic. I wonder what my thoughts on it will be?Taoism yes. And Buddhism and Taosim have influenced each other in China and Japan. A bit of a digression here. My interest in dancing phrased movement to the melodic phrases of songs led me to a book by Alexandra and Roger Pierce, EXPRESSIVE MOVEMENT. A key overarching concept of the book is "phrase". Now Alexandra is a muscian and so this book addresses phrasing in movement with attention to music (not dance though) and sports, but also how this affects personality and character or is expressive of the same. Movement has beginning building to a climax and then moving to a resolution and a juncture to another movement.The thing about his concept is how scalable it is. The life of a star can be thought of a phrase. As in music and speech phrases are built of smaller phrases and can be incorporated into larger phrases. Some sub atomic particle appearing and disappearing in fractions of a second can also be a phrase.[Circling back] I've dipped into the I CHING from time to time, I prefer the Wilhelm translation. That book is a source for Taoism, yin yang 5 phase theory, Confucianism, etc. It is the source of Chinese written culture. And after I read Alexandra I realized that it is a book that returns a value referencing a postition in a phrase. Before the beginning, the begining, the climax, before completion, completion,etc 64 different points [2^6] often with transitions to another hexagram.So to balance. This is very interesting because instead of choosing one end as good and the other as evil and as soon as you have one you have the other, you ask if a system is in or out of balance. I like this very much. I'm not sure where it goes, but dang, you've hit on something.And my preference for the east vs the west approaches may be summed up by the difference between an imbalanced system of choosing one end, one side, vs a balanced system such as yin yang where the question is not which end is right and which wrong, but are the ends, the qualities out of balance. So instead of absolute good and absolute evil, we have in or out of balance.So the Tao te Ching when it deals with statecraft warns against pushing values and making the ruler or righteousness important as that unbalances things and results in bringing about the opposite. Which is a criticism I will apply to Judaisn, Christianity, and Islam. If believers of those religions try too hard to push for their good they often call forth the opposite such as wars, or inquistions, or strife in a family.BAP, back to you, Sasq.lfen

To Tel Rinsiel: By the assumptions of omniscience (God knows everything, in the past, present and future) and consistency (God's attributes are unchanging), God must have known everything that will happen from the moment He was...well, from when He "came into being".Of course, this begs the question of whether God is ever in control, if at all.Consider:If you know every single minute detail of everything that has and will ever happen, you can't really behave in any other way but the one that you have foreseen.For example, if you foresee youself walking in a park tomorrow afternoon, and your predictions are always 100% correct, do you have the freedom to not go down to the park tomorrow?What do you think?

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"Respect is like money, it can only be earned. When it is given, it becomes pittance"

Thanks for your reply. This is an example of someone passively creating an accident, but it is also an example of someone purposely doing evil. Anyone who would jump in the back seat while driving a car has evil intensions and an evil heart.Did God passively create evil? I don’t know.But he did not create the universe with evil intensions and I know he does not have an evil heart. He created us with something very glorious, the ability to love. He also gave us free will. He knew not all of us would choose love, some of us would choose evil. So he also created us with the ability to do evil. The fact that he knew who would choose evil and who would choose love does not really matter to me, though it matters greatly to some. I am speaking about my faith and beliefs.Can I ask you this if it is not too far off topic? If there was no evil in the world, could there be love and would we or could we know or appreciate it?

Ooohhh, yes... I see. That makes sense. So, no matter how much the bible says God loves His creation, he wouldn't be able to alter what he foresaw no matter how horrible the event that will occur. I guess that would contradict to the idea of Him being omnipotent. Or maybe... he could alter the future events but just refuses to? I don't know, maybe it's a possibility.I'm getting dizzy again. Tee hee... I shouldn't think too much.This message has been edited by Tel Rinsiel, 08-13-2004 03:39 PM

To Tel Rinsiel:Actually, the story desn't end there. God is also often referred to as a timeless entity (existing outside the temporal bounds of this world). Thus He would be able to, at least in theory, "warp" from one time frame to another.This means that when time flows from past to present to future for us mere mortals, God can, apparently, go to any "time" He wants to. This suggests the existence of a "Divine Plan" where God manipulates everything in all time frames to exactly the way He wanted.An anology would be like God setting up a Rube Goldberg device, taking an indefinite amount of time to make sure that all the pieces go exactly where He wanted to go, and behave exactly how he wanted them to behave (omniscience really helps here) before triggering the domino.In short, this would mean that everything that ever and will happen to the world is directly attributable to God, including all the good and the bad - thus violating the omnibenevolence assumption.How's that for a contradiction?

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"Respect is like money, it can only be earned. When it is given, it becomes pittance"

Tel,You are a subtle thinker and I am both amused and in awe of your "tee hee" mental akido debating style.Is your avatar from anime? My neices like anime but I know very little about it.keep on dancing this debate, I'm really enjoying this.lfen

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An anology would be like God setting up a Rube Goldberg device, taking an indefinite amount of time to make sure that all the pieces go exactly where He wanted to go, and behave exactly how he wanted them to behave (omniscience really helps here) before triggering the domino.

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In short, this would mean that everything that ever and will happen to the world is directly attributable to God, including all the good and the bad - thus violating the omnibenevolence assumption.

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Would the paragraph I quoted from you imply that all the suffering in the world that happened and will happen in the future are part of God's plan so He wouldn't "choose" to alter those?So God plans everything and everything that will happen is already known by Him since He's omniscient... so, in the Revelations, the eternal suffering of all the supposed sinners after the apocalypse is still a part of His "Divine Plan"? Sigh, that seems so harsh and do not sound divine at all.This message has been edited by Tel Rinsiel, 08-14-2004 06:14 AM

I'm not really the "debating" type. I just have so many questions that I like having answered. I usually don't have the capacity to verbally defend what I believe in so I just ask questions, instead.Is it in Buddhist culture or in Hinduism where a person bows his head to greet another while saying "I bless the divinity in you"? I really like their way of greeting... it's so positive... it kind of says that every person is naturally divine/high upon birth instead of -born-sinful-unless-baptism-is-received like in Christianity. And that, you greet his soul instead of the body.My avatar isn't from an anime (the Japanese made cartoons?). I found it from a website that gives additional portraits for characters in their game "Neverwinter Nights". It's a sort of PC role-playing game, fully three dimensional where you play a character and follows a storyline. The setting is like in the Lord of the Rings... medieval.This message has been edited by Tel Rinsiel, 08-14-2004 06:19 AM