Is God evil?

[Compassionist]

There are many verses in the Bible about God's predestination. https://www.openbible.info/topics/predestination Why would a good God predestine anyone to do evil? Surely, a good God would predestine all to do good? Does the existence of evil prove that God is evil? Surely, a good God would have made all living things to be autotrophs instead of making some autotrophs, some herbivores, some carnivores, some omnivores, and some parasites? Here are some examples of evil events which caused or are causing suffering, deaths, and injustices:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_n ... death_toll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_g ... death_toll
https://thevegancalculator.com/animal-slaughter

[The Tanager]

I disagree. We don't act like we have free will. We act like we have constrained will. At least, I do. I am not 100% sure anyone else even exists. You could be a simulation or an illusion. I have no way to verify your true nature.

The simulation/illusion question aside, Id like to explore this more. You talked about donating to the homeless at times and not at others. Ive done the same. Some of those times I would have an inner discussion about whether I should stop or not. Have you never deliberated about that? Or deliberate about what you should write in response to me?

Definition of free will: A will that is free from all constraints and is not determined by any variables e.g. genes, environments, nutrients and experiences.

Definition of constrained will: A will that is constrained and is determined by variables e.g. genes, environments, nutrients and experiences. Biological organisms have constrained will.

What about the third option I spoke of, which is what most people mean when they say they believe in free will? The influenced but not determined kind of will?

Your wife would not be loving you if she had the genes of a black widow spider. If she had the genes of a black widow spider, she would have happily devoured you after sex. She is not free from causality.

Yes, I very much like the genes she does have. She looks quite nice in them, I must say. But, having the genes she does, it still seems that she could have made a different choice. She could have ignored me or made a breakfast she loves or thrown a bagel at me. This doesnt prove she has free will, but it definitely doesnt point straight to determinism.

I disagree with your belief about God's innocence. I think God is either evil and imaginary or evil and real. I can't decide which.

Thats your right to do so. Id love to hear why so that, at the least, I could challenge my own views on why I think God is real and not evil. Im not saying weve got to try to convince each other that we are right. I think its interesting to see why others think the way they dol and to reflect on if I should change my beliefs.

[Compassionist]

[Replying to The Tanager in post #51]
I don't need to deliberate about donating to homeless people. I believe that those who are more fortunate have a duty to help those who are less fortunate. So, I just donate except when I am in a rush e.g. I am going to late for the bus, etc. We don't choose the thoughts that pop up. We do have a degree of choice about what to do with the thoughts that pop up. So, I do some deliberating about my responses to you and others. All living things have biases. I try to get to the truth about reality to the best of my abilities.

The problem with your third option about free will is that it ignores the fact that no organism chooses the genes they inherit or the environment they grow in e.g. if your Mum is addicted to heroin while you are in the womb, it will make you an addict from the womb. Also, if you are malnourished because your parents were too poor to afford food, it will affect how your body and mind function. Also, if you have traumatic experiences as a child, it will affect how you feel about yourself, others, and the world. I think the third option is an illusion you have.

I am glad you like your wife's genes, you can't credit her or blame her for them. Unfortunately, her genes doom her to aging and death.

Why do you think that God is real and not evil?

As I said before, I can't decide whether God is evil and imaginary or evil and real. A real and good God who is all-knowing and all-powerful would have prevented all suffering, injustice, and deaths by making all living things autotrophs and all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful. Have you looked at https://www.evilbible.com and http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/list.html ? What are your thoughts and feelings about the contents of the websites?

[Compassionist]

Compassionist: "I think God is either evil and imaginary or evil and real. I can't decide which."

Thomas123: You want to know what other people think?
How does evil and imaginary work for you?

When God converses with the Devil(Evil), before persecuting Job, wilfully, he is portrayed in a Hellinistic way. They are having a philosophical debate about their man-puppet. God set up an obedience test for Adam in Genesis 1, and then punished him to do better in the future.

Kid yourself not! All this is imaginary, and all evil belongs to man. If there is an indefinable entity to which we appropriate the term God, then it is at the very least, objective in nature.(not man-centric)

Our own subjectivity has branded the realness of our existence as evil, our original mission was just to get on with it, but now we want to rationalise it.

We see our mortality and our vunerability and we do not want to accept it. We make it illogical?
Why is it illogical,that we suffer, strive and die to procreate our species like all other life forms?

Evil is a human thing. We use an external entity with an absence of all human weaknesses to monitor and contain our levels of perceived evil within us,....as God is my judge.
God only works if he/it is deemed 'as is',...ie everything at once, and real.

I would love for there to be a real and good God who prevents all suffering, injustice, and deaths. Sadly, that's not what happens in the real world. The real world is full of suffering, injustice, and deaths.

A God that is evil and imaginary is just as disappointing as a God that is evil and real.

[Compassionist]

IS GOD EVIL?

If we take "evil" as the absence if goodness, then no, biblically God is not evil.




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To learn more please go to other posts related to ....

GOD, "BAD" GOD and ...THE DIVINE PERSONALITY

All the apologetics are full of special pleading. "It's ok if God commits atrocities because he is God." It's not ok. Atrocities are atrocities, regardless of who does them.

[Thomas123]

My mother is predicted to die in the next few days. Her name is Molly, she is 94 and she has been in a Nursing Home for the last 5 years. During her life she experienced extreme poverty, affluence, etc. She had 6 children and four of the births were very difficult, including my own. She was placed into an orphanage when she was 3 and adopted at 5.

There is no evil God within this story. I feel heart wrenching anguish but this is tempered with overwhelming gratitude and pride. Molly is loved by her extended family and friends and death is just another challenge for her brave spirit.

[The Tanager]

We don't choose the thoughts that pop up. We do have a degree of choice about what to do with the thoughts that pop up. So, I do some deliberating about my responses to you and others. All living things have biases. I try to get to the truth about reality to the best of my abilities.

Why, if our decisions are controlled, would we deliberate at all? It accomplishes nothing or would be a very inefficient way to determine our will.

The problem with your third option about free will is that it ignores the fact that no organism chooses the genes they inherit or the environment they grow in

No, it doesnt ignore that at all. It accepts that. It says those genes and environment are very influential in limiting what choices are available to the will. It just says there is no reason to think those things determine our actual choices.

Why do you think that God is real and not evil?

As I said before, I can't decide whether God is evil and imaginary or evil and real. A real and good God who is all-knowing and all-powerful would have prevented all suffering, injustice, and deaths by making all living things autotrophs and all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful.

The main reason is that a God who did this would seem to me to destroy the possibility of love. I think a world with love (which necessarily provides the ability for evil) is better than a world without love and perfect moral actions.

Have you looked at https://www.evilbible.com and http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/list.html ? What are your thoughts and feelings about the contents of the websites?

I am very familiar with the content, if not directly from reading these sites in full. I've read bits and pieces as people have brought them up. Large picture, I think most of their interpretations rest on reading the stories out of context. Not just the direct context of some of these passages, but also by reading these stories as though they werent written thousands of years ago by people in a very different culture. If you have more specific questions, Im always open to sharing those thoughts.

[JehovahsWitness]

My mother is predicted to die in the next few days. Her name is Molly, she is 94 and she has been in a Nursing Home for the last 5 years. During her life she experienced extreme poverty, affluence, etc. She had 6 children and four of the births were very difficult, including my own. She was placed into an orphanage when she was 3 and adopted at 5.

There is no evil God within this story. I feel heart wrenching anguish but this is tempered with overwhelming gratitude and pride. Molly is loved by her extended family and friends and death is just another challenge for her brave spirit.

I'm sorry to hear you are facing this Thomas, your mum sounds like an amazing woman. I lost my brother to Covid last year so I know the pain of losing a loved one.


JW

[William]

[Replying to Compassionist in post #35]

Thank you for sharing those thoughts and book/talk recommendations. Ill check some of those out that I havent already.

I agree with you about the lack of certainty. The only things I know of that one can be certain about are definitions and pure mathematics. Everything else is less than certain and thats okay. I see no problem in making choices based on what is more reasonable than alternatives. Scientific testing plays a very important role in many physical things, but there are other kinds of sources of reasonableness than that, especially since the reliability of science relies on philosophical beliefs being true. I think we can come to reasonable beliefs on what is objectively true.

Im still not sure why you think the will is constrained/determined rather than just influenced. Your listed testing shows that our choices can be effected and influenced, but they arent evidence that our wills are determined/constrained. Im aware of no research that makes a constrained/determined will the most reasonable position to take, but Id love to hear a case for it.

As to love requiring free will, how would you define love? Why would you not distinguish "love" from "caring for" (or some other synonym)? It seems to me that we have people doing good things for each other with and without love. Some do it out of dutys sake. My wife recently made me a wonderful breakfast for my birthday. There seems to be a difference to me if my wife willingly chose to do that for me because she wanted me to experience goodness and if she said "I have to because Im your wife." To me love, by definition, requires a free will. Otherwise, people are doing good because they have to (for whatever reasons).

How would we find out for sure if our choices are just influenced by our genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences or are actually determined by them?

The word 'love' has many meanings. Which one do you mean?

I am 100% certain that there are things that I can't do e.g. I can't go back in time and prevent all suffering, injustice, and deaths and make all living things all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful, and forever happy. As far as I can tell, no one else can do them either. Biological organisms are clearly constrained.

Alpha female meerkats murder the babies of other meerkats so that their own babies would have less competition. Selfish genes make selfish organisms. Humans have carried out horrific atrocities e.g. genocides, slavery, slave trade, torture, rape, robbery, fraud, theft, assault, intimidation, extortion, etc. We have outlawed these things but people still do illegal things and often get away with them, too. They also murder and exploit other species. If God is real and good why not prevent all of these evils? The fact that God failed to prevent all evil despite being all-knowing and all-powerful, makes him evil. With omniscience and omnipotence come omniculpability.

My term of being a theist had me struggling with such questions and pointing out's as you write about, Compassionist.

Below is a poem I wrote during that time.

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

Forgotten? Impossible! How can that be?!
Did I forget You or did You forget Me?
Was I lost in a dream? Did you make the dream real?
Was it something I did? Is it something You feel?
Is it unrecognizable, heard to detect?
Does it help us to know who created this mess?

Is It really a mess or The Truth in disguise?
Is It something that opens or closes Our eyes?
Does It sneak in the shadows and rob Me of choice?
Does it scare Me so badly that it stifles My Voice?

Are We so darned alone in the big Universe,
That everything You can do, I can do worse?
Am I so scared of Life I'm afraid to let go?
Does it act against Faith, just 'cause I need to know?
Am I something You thought about, just to explore?
So You can be somewhere like never before?

To have a beginning - a middle - an end
To embrace the whole concept as a Lover and Friend
Does the reason regarding Space being so dark
Have something to do with You being the Bright Spark?

Is it all just a clever Joke....Seriously so...
Did You speak the Punchline - eons ago?
Am I too slow to Trust - Are you too fast a Friend?
Are We enemies still, are there places to mend?
Is "God" and the "Devil" One and the same?
With one half to adore and the other, to blame?

Do I see Prime Creator below and above
One Item Alone - Unconditional Love?
Do I know what it is that I need to Accept?
Should I never assume, or come to expect?

Is my Soul full of memories locked up and sealed?
Will the Secret Within, one day be revealed?
Can I help the process...or get in the way?
Should I learn to be quiet? Should I learn how to play?
There is something about It All I like a lot...
...Like a Thing I have known, then somehow forgot...

Must I learn to Trust the Thoughts that I have
As being something that isn't at all to call "bad"
How else but happy should This Person be?
Free to seek Freedom. Free to be Me!

[William]

[Replying to The Tanager in post #56]

P1: Why do you think that God is real and not evil?

As I said before, I can't decide whether God is evil and imaginary or evil and real. A real and good God who is all-knowing and all-powerful would have prevented all suffering, injustice, and deaths by making all living things autotrophs and all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful.


P2: The main reason is that a God who did this would seem to me to destroy the possibility of love. I think a world with love (which necessarily provides the ability for evil) is better than a world without love and perfect moral actions.

P3: P1 gives no other option for God, except that God must be evil, if God exists
P2 expresses the idea that if P2 had of created the universe, that is the way P2 would-a done it.

It is possible that GOD came from a world without love and perfect moral actions, and thus created the Universe which provided said GOD with a way in which to examine those experiences...but then there are all those 'before the beginning" mythologies to incorporate...talk of Angels fighting and such...and how humans were created and thrown into that mix...how the evil was around long before humans came along an invented their version of it.

[The Tanager]

[Replying to The Tanager in post #56]P2: The main reason is that a God who did this would seem to me to destroy the possibility of love. I think a world with love (which necessarily provides the ability for evil) is better than a world without love and perfect moral actions.

P3: P1 gives no other option for God, except that God must be evil, if God exists
P2 expresses the idea that if P2 had of created the universe, that is the way P2 would-a done it.

It is possible that GOD came from a world without love and perfect moral actions, and thus created the Universe which provided said GOD with a way in which to examine those experiences...but then there are all those 'before the beginning" mythologies to incorporate...talk of Angels fighting and such...and how humans were created and thrown into that mix...how the evil was around long before humans came along an invented their version of it.

Are you saying that P2 (my view) is saying that this is the only option available to God? If so, it doesn't. It simply says that I believe it is a better option. If not, then I'm missing the point of your post, unless it is simply to summarize our positions and then add your own to it.