EVIL
There exists an omnipotent, omniscient and maximally/infinitely good God. You call
this omnigod. Omnigod is clear enough about what it means. The word
God is no longer and can essentially mean anything!
Evil exists.
If we see evils that are not absolutely bad and useless that does not give us
the right to say that all evils are like that.
At least one evil may be absolutely bad and useless.
We may see it and not perceive that about it.
If it exists then it logically disproves God.
If you say evil and God fit you are claiming to know all evils
fit.
We conclude that giving credence to God is based on arrogance. If we need that
evil characteristic to validate faith in God then if God invites faith he is not good. He is
even worse if he demands and commands faith.
We cannot believe but merely guess that there is a God. We cannot invite others
to guess for no guess is that valuable. There is suffering to think about.
A God who allows suffering is a very serious matter indeed and it is
an insult to guess he exists.
If God is God he is God of all including the hypothetical.
The thought experiment can show flaws in the doctrine and show that
the believers in God are not as much about God as they are about
what they want to think of God.
If hypothetically belief in God were the greatest evil, we should hate the very idea of God.
But we are told that God is good in all possible scenarios including the hypothetical.
This is an evil assertion. It is not true. The claim that God is that good, that he would be good in all possible worlds, any world you can imagine, is evil.
If we know we should regard justice and love and compassion as
binding no matter who says they are not we may wonder how we can
justify that. If we cannot do it we are still doing our best.
We are in fact endorsing being fair and loving and compassionate as
much as we can. Religion says that morality cannot command the impossible so
there is no incoherence there. If all you can do is murder x
then murdering x is moral for you. This shows us that we don't
need God to make morality morality. It is evil to say we do.
It is evil to say suffering and injustice should be allowed by God
for a purpose when God is not that important in the first place.
It is failing to honour the human striving to be just, good and
caring.
Religion denies that evil was ever inevitable for it is God's will
that all be good and not just good but very good.
If evolution is true and evil is true then evolution makes evil inevitable.
Faith in God then mandates and risks ignoring that. It says that if
evolution is real then God guides it so it is not evil. It
denies God allows evil to be inevitable for that would imply he was
an agent working for it. Faith in God does not need the
hypothetical to show that it is flawed.
Religion does not act like it truly knows what evil is. It
pretends it does to justify its existence and its place in society.
It will reply, "The seven deadly sins give some idea of what moral evil is supposed to be. It
thinks it can outsmart reality and even God – pride. It is lazy for if you have
a goal you can put the hard work in to try and bring it about without doing it
in a bad way. It is a lie you tell yourself and by extension others. It is
greedy. It is anger against how you need to do things the right way but prefer
your own way. Envy and
jealousy and lust are all about gaining at the expense of another."
Their concern is that the sum-up of all those is that they are
trying to outsmart God. Atheists will worry about people
thinking they can defeat reality. And the sins do not tell us
that self-centredness and selfishness are not the same thing.
We are clearly each of us about himself or herself. Evolution
is based on that fact. Religion is clearly condemning human
nature.
Some argue that evil does not want to see itself as evil. The evil person is
blind to their own evil. But at some level they know for they hate anything
coming along that may reveal that evil. So they set out to destroy what is good
so that their illusion can be maintained. What if the person working evil is
neglecting to love and not trying to tear love and goodness down? You can call
them lazy and stupid but not evil. Or so it seems.
The most effective evil and the most effective destructiveness is
neglect. If you want to destroy your child it will be easier
for you if you neglect her rather than attack her.
And why can't we say that the person does want to see their own evil but in the way we have said? Maybe they just want to see it deep down?
And it is is true that some people do see their evil and want to see it.
Evil is always accompanied by some effort to contain it. It
is targeted. The evil person thinks it will not backfire on
them. It is the containing that allows the evil person to say
it was necessary under the circumstances. There is no evil but
evil that is intended to be contained. God belief argues that
evil has a purpose - ergo it advocates for God letting contained
evil happen. The containing does more than anything else to
make the evil evil and to empower it and produce it.
Some argue that you cannot have good without evil. That is saying that they are
just part of the way things are. Part of nature if you like. Part of us. There
is no reason why both cannot be part of a supreme creator either. This calls
evil an essential ingredient of some kind. It calls it necessary, it calls it
needed. If evil is part of the way things are then advocating a good God
is simply being a liar. It is saying evil can be vanquished in
your life by God when that is not true. Evil is best served by
those who pose as being immune to it or who pose as its conquerors.
Jesus are you listening?
Yet it is noted that we don’t react to evil as something that must happen or that is natural. We want it erased and good put in its place. To repress this is to attack the intuitive sense that is part of us.
Some explain this as the realisation that evil is a distortion of good. They allege, "Evil is not a thing or a person or a power but the empty space where good should be but is not. It is nothing." All that is wildly incoherent. If it’s empty that does not account for our outrage and how repulsed we are. The doctrine will ask us to become stoical do-nothings who have a calm disposition that we revel in instead of rushing to the aid of those who are suffering around us as the bombs hit. It will lead to many navel-gazers afflicting society with their passivity and indifference.
If the evil you know is an empty vacuum, a void, that does not mean that all evil is just an absence of good or a distortion of good. Evil as in evil power can step in to fill the void. Evil if it is a thing must be made by God. We are talking of evil as a thing here.
Some may think, “To say evil corrupts good is true but
can be misunderstood. It is not acting on good. It is just an absence. Even when
you do evil it is the good you want." The claim of people like
Augustine that evil is a parasite on good is then being called a
metaphor. Does that even make sense considering how
we react to evil? No. The parasite idea is problematic for you may
compare good to iron and bad to rust. But the iron is not that
good when it allows the rust to appear. The rust is a thing in
its own right.
The argument that evil can be in many of us and capture us and be instrumental
in getting others horrified by what they see so that they will turn away from it, to eject it
and do good is interesting. But you can put evil out and still not be
doing any positive good. You need to expel it and take action for its not
enough to just put it out. In the real world, the evil of say neglecting
the poor inspires people to object to that but not to step in and
feed the poor themselves. Some do but not enough.
To struggle with how a good God with all power can tolerate us suffering
innocently and to the hilt presupposes that evil is objectively wrong.
Neglecting creatures is wrong. Hurting them is wrong. We don't need God
for this supposition. Religion says we do knowing fine well it
is something we suppose before we even think of God. God
belief is built on it not it on God belief. This is another
reason why belief in God is disguised as good when it is not. Evil
is a more suitable word for it.
