Can "Evil" come from nothing?

[Beto]

The Christian god supposedly created the Universe (everything?). To some this god didn't create "Evil" but simply allowed it to exist. If this god is the creator of the Universe but didn't create "Evil", than "Evil" appeared by itself from "somewhere" or "nowhere". Either "Evil" is an uncaused cause, like this god itself, or it came from the same place as this god did, a pre-existing platform of sorts. My point is that an omnipotent God, to be such, has to create absolutely everything in existence. From my perspective, there can either be two uncaused causes, or this god had to create everything, "Evil" included.

[ken1burton]

Beto.

Without all the Creating going on, And Scripture does not really show everything was created. God uses Similitudes, The Stars are for signs, so we do not hav to worry too much when all the stars or signs come to pass, the same as the Sun as the throne, the Moon as the Establishment of the Throne.

Just that there is a God, He exists. This world which we live in has a great deal to do with Him, He patented most of the designs, including us.

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

As far as evil. A 12 foot Crocodile is evil as far as I am concerned. Along with a lot of other creatures which share this planet with us. But they are here also.

God not only created a world, He created one which needs Him, and which needs each other. Our Bodies are terminal. There are a lot of problems we face in life. Other Humans might be the worst problem we have. But this is the setting we have been placed in.

There is no evil being aside for humans gone off track. The Devil, Satan, Lucifer, God uses Similitudes, Do not take them too personal, they are not what they appear. But God does not have a problem with saying “I created evil.” or any problems, See Me.

Ken

[Catharsis]

>>>The Christian god supposedly created the Universe (everything?). To some this god didn't create "Evil" but simply allowed it to exist. If this god is the creator of the Universe but didn't create "Evil", than "Evil" appeared by itself from "somewhere" or "nowhere". Either "Evil" is an uncaused cause, like this god itself, or it came from the same place as this god did, a pre-existing platform of sorts. My point is that an omnipotent God, to be such, has to create absolutely everything in existence. From my perspective, there can either be two uncaused causes, or this god had to create everything, "Evil" included.<<<

Evil entered into the world through the will. It is not a nature, but a condition. 'The nature of good is stronger than the habit of evil,' says Diadochus of Photike, 'for good exists, or rather it exists only at the moment in which it is practised.' According to St Gregory of Nyssa, sin is a disease of the will which is deceived, and takes a mere shadow of the good for the good itself. For this reason, the very desire to taste the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil was itself a sin, for, according to St Gregory, knowledge presupposes a certain disposition towards the object one wishes to know, and evil, being in itself non-existent, ought not to be known.

Evil becomes a reality only by means of the will, in which alone it subsists. It is the will which gives evil a certain being. That man, who was by nature disposed towards the knowledge and love of God, could in his will incline towards a non-existent good, and illusory goal, can only be explained by some external influence, by the persuasion of some alien will to which the human will consented.

Before entering the earthly world through Adam's will, evil had already had its beginnings in the spiritual world. It was the will of the angelic spirits, eternally fixed in their enmity to God, which first gave birth to evil. And evil is nothing other than an attraction of the will towards nothing, a negation of being, of creation, and above all of God, a hatred of grace against which is rebellious will puts up an implacable resistance. Even though they have become spirits of darkness, the fallen angels remain creatures of God, and their rejection of the will of God represents a despairing intercourse with the nothingness which they will never find.

Being angelic spirits, they possess enormous strength and they seek to destroy creation from within, by turning human freedom towards evil. St Seraphim of Sarov distinguishes three different wills at work in man: 1) the will of God, perfect and saving; 2) the will of man, not necessarily pernicious; 3) the demonic will, seeking our perdition. Orthodoxy has special terms to denote the different activities of evil spirits in the soul. Logismoi are thoughts or images which rise out of the lower regions of soul, the 'subconscious'. Prosvoli cannot be translated 'temptation', it is rather the presence of some alien thought, introduced into our conscsiousness from outside by the will of the adversary.

[twobitsmedia]

The Christian god supposedly created the Universe (everything?). To some this god didn't create "Evil" but simply allowed it to exist. If this god is the creator of the Universe but didn't create "Evil", than "Evil" appeared by itself from "somewhere" or "nowhere". Either "Evil" is an uncaused cause, like this god itself, or it came from the same place as this god did, a pre-existing platform of sorts. My point is that an omnipotent God, to be such, has to create absolutely everything in existence. From my perspective, there can either be two uncaused causes, or this god had to create everything, "Evil" included.

I agree. Evil cannot exist except that God created it if God is the creator of all things. If evil is a deviation that came from somewhere else, then God is NOT sovereign.

[Greatest I Am]

Scripture says that the first evil appeared in Heaven in the form of Satan.
I do not read the Bible literally and see Satan as just a word that encompasses all the evil thoughts and notions that we can name.

This evil Satan was then brought down to earth where his first task as assigned by God was to pester Eve till she ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

To start us on the road of "to be as Gods, knowing good and evil."
God is our great teacher.

His main instruction and desire is for us to reproduce and learn of good and evil.
This has been going on since day one and should tell us that this is exactly what His first wishes are.
If they were not then logically He would stop this process.

I believe this is a truth.

Do you?

Regards
DL

[Sender]

The Christian god supposedly created the Universe (everything?). To some this god didn't create "Evil" but simply allowed it to exist. If this god is the creator of the Universe but didn't create "Evil", than "Evil" appeared by itself from "somewhere" or "nowhere". Either "Evil" is an uncaused cause, like this god itself, or it came from the same place as this god did, a pre-existing platform of sorts. My point is that an omnipotent God, to be such, has to create absolutely everything in existence. From my perspective, there can either be two uncaused causes, or this god had to create everything, "Evil" included.

The phrase "state of nothingness" evolutionist like to use in explaining the origin of life reminds me of an analogy (below) I came across a while back...

...Have you ever thought about the beginning? You know -- whatever it was that showed up first. Or whatever it was that was here first, at the earliest moment in time. A difficult concept to get your head around, but have you ever thought about it?

Isn't it possible that in the beginning there was nothing? Isn't it possible that kazillions of years ago, there wasn't anything at all? That's certainly a theory to consider. So let's consider it -- but first by way of analogy.

Let's say you have a large room. It's fully enclosed and is about the size of a football field. The room is locked, permanently, and has no doors or windows, and no holes in its walls.

Inside the room there is...nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a particle of anything. No air at all. No dust at all. No light at all. It's a sealed room that's pitch black inside. Then what happens?

Well, let's say your goal is to get something -- anything at all -- into the room. But the rules are: you can't use anything from outside the room to do that. So what do you do?

Well, you think, what if I try to create a spark inside the room? Then the room would have light in it, even for just a moment. That would qualify as something. Yes, but you are outside the room. So that's not allowed.

Here again is the dilemma: you have to get something inside the room using only what's in the room. And, in this case, what's in the room is nothing.

Well, you say, maybe a tiny particle of something will just show up inside the room if given enough time.

There's three problems with this theory. First, time by itself doesn't do anything. Things happen over time, but it's not time that makes them happen. For example, if you wait 15 minutes for cookies to bake, it's not the 15 minutes that bakes them, it's the heat in the oven. If you set them on the counter for 15 minutes, they're not going to bake.

In our analogy, we've got a fully enclosed room with absolutely nothing in it. Waiting 15 minutes will not, in and of itself, change the situation. Well, you say, what if we wait eons? An eon is merely a bunch of 15-minute segments all pressed together. If you waited an eon with your cookies on the counter, would the eon bake them?

The second problem is this: why would anything just "show up" in the empty room? It would need a reason why it came to be. But there is nothing inside the room at all. So what's to stop that from remaining the case? There would be nothing inside the room to cause something to show up (and yet the reason must come from inside the room).

Well, you say, what about a tiny particle of something? Wouldn't that have a greater chance of materializing in the room than something larger like, for example, a football?

That brings up the third problem: size. Like time, size is an abstract. It's relative. Let's say you have three footballs, all ranging in size. One is ten feet wide, one is five feet wide, one is normal size. Which one is more likely to materialize in the room?

The normal-size football? No! It would be the same likelihood for all three. The size wouldn't matter. It's not the issue. The issue is whether or not any football of any size could just "show up" in our sealed, empty room.

If you don't think the smallest football could just show up in the room, no matter how much time passed, then you must conclude the same thing even for an atom. Size is not an issue. The likelihood of a small particle materializing without cause is no different than a refrigerator materializing without cause!

Now let's stretch our analogy further, literally. Let's take our large, pitch-black room and remove its walls. And let's extend the room so that it goes on infinitely in all directions. Now there is nothing outside the room, because the room is all there is.

This black infinite room has no light, no dust, no particles of any kind, no air, no elements, no molecules. It's absolute nothingness. In fact, we can call it Absolutely Nothing.

So here's the question: if originally -- trillions of years ago -- there was Absolutely Nothing, wouldn't there be Absolutely Nothing now?

For something -- no matter how small -- cannot come from Absolutely Nothing. We would still have Absolutely Nothing.

What does that tell us? That Absolutely Nothing never existed. Why? Because, if Absolutely Nothing ever existed, there would still be Absolutely Nothing!

If Absolutely Nothing ever existed, there would not be anything outside it to cause the existence of anything.

Again, if Absolutely Nothing ever existed, there would still be Absolutely Nothing.

However, something exists. Actually, many things exist. You, for example, are something that exists, a very important something. Therefore, you are proof that Absolutely Nothing never existed.

Now, if Absolutely Nothing never existed, that means there was always a time when there was at least Something in existence. What was it?
------------------
My answer would be the same. Nothing came from nothing nor can nothing come from nothing. However, evil does exist.

[Sender]

The Christian god supposedly created the Universe (everything?). To some this god didn't create "Evil" but simply allowed it to exist. If this god is the creator of the Universe but didn't create "Evil", than "Evil" appeared by itself from "somewhere" or "nowhere". Either "Evil" is an uncaused cause, like this god itself, or it came from the same place as this god did, a pre-existing platform of sorts. My point is that an omnipotent God, to be such, has to create absolutely everything in existence. From my perspective, there can either be two uncaused causes, or this god had to create everything, "Evil" included.

This great analogy below tells you my believe about rather something can come from a "state of nothingness"?

================
Have you ever thought about the beginning? You know -- whatever it was that showed up first. Or whatever it was that was here first, at the earliest moment in time. A difficult concept to get your head around, but have you ever thought about it?

Isn't it possible that in the beginning there was nothing? Isn't it possible that kazillions of years ago, there wasn't anything at all? That's certainly a theory to consider. So let's consider it -- but first by way of analogy.

Let's say you have a large room. It's fully enclosed and is about the size of a football field. The room is locked, permanently, and has no doors or windows, and no holes in its walls.

Inside the room there is...nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a particle of anything. No air at all. No dust at all. No light at all. It's a sealed room that's pitch black inside. Then what happens?

Well, let's say your goal is to get something -- anything at all -- into the room. But the rules are: you can't use anything from outside the room to do that. So what do you do?



Well, you think, what if I try to create a spark inside the room? Then the room would have light in it, even for just a moment. That would qualify as something. Yes, but you are outside the room. So that's not allowed.

Here again is the dilemma: you have to get something inside the room using only what's in the room. And, in this case, what's in the room is nothing.

Well, you say, maybe a tiny particle of something will just show up inside the room if given enough time.

There's three problems with this theory. First, time by itself doesn't do anything. Things happen over time, but it's not time that makes them happen. For example, if you wait 15 minutes for cookies to bake, it's not the 15 minutes that bakes them, it's the heat in the oven. If you set them on the counter for 15 minutes, they're not going to bake.

In our analogy, we've got a fully enclosed room with absolutely nothing in it. Waiting 15 minutes will not, in and of itself, change the situation. Well, you say, what if we wait eons? An eon is merely a bunch of 15-minute segments all pressed together. If you waited an eon with your cookies on the counter, would the eon bake them?



The second problem is this: why would anything just "show up" in the empty room? It would need a reason why it came to be. But there is nothing inside the room at all. So what's to stop that from remaining the case? There would be nothing inside the room to cause something to show up (and yet the reason must come from inside the room).

Well, you say, what about a tiny particle of something? Wouldn't that have a greater chance of materializing in the room than something larger like, for example, a football?

That brings up the third problem: size. Like time, size is an abstract. It's relative. Let's say you have three footballs, all ranging in size. One is ten feet wide, one is five feet wide, one is normal size. Which one is more likely to materialize in the room?

The normal-size football? No! It would be the same likelihood for all three. The size wouldn't matter. It's not the issue. The issue is whether or not any football of any size could just "show up" in our sealed, empty room.

If you don't think the smallest football could just show up in the room, no matter how much time passed, then you must conclude the same thing even for an atom. Size is not an issue. The likelihood of a small particle materializing without cause is no different than a refrigerator materializing without cause!



Now let's stretch our analogy further, literally. Let's take our large, pitch-black room and remove its walls. And let's extend the room so that it goes on infinitely in all directions. Now there is nothing outside the room, because the room is all there is.

This black infinite room has no light, no dust, no particles of any kind, no air, no elements, no molecules. It's absolute nothingness. In fact, we can call it Absolutely Nothing.

So here's the question: if originally -- trillions of years ago -- there was Absolutely Nothing, wouldn't there be Absolutely Nothing now?

For something -- no matter how small -- cannot come from Absolutely Nothing. We would still have Absolutely Nothing.



What does that tell us? That Absolutely Nothing never existed. Why? Because, if Absolutely Nothing ever existed, there would still be Absolutely Nothing!

If Absolutely Nothing ever existed, there would not be anything outside it to cause the existence of anything.

Again, if Absolutely Nothing ever existed, there would still be Absolutely Nothing.

However, something exists. Actually, many things exist. You, for example, are something that exists, a very important something. Therefore, you are proof that Absolutely Nothing never existed.

=============

However I will say though that Evil does exist on many forms.

[atdcross]

I agree. Evil cannot exist except that God created it if God is the creator of all things. If evil is a deviation that came from somewhere else, then God is NOT sovereign.

Who created the car - God or man? If God, then His sovereignty remains intact. However, if the answer is "man" and keeping with the above assertion, this would mean God is not sovereign, would it not? How does this take away God's sovereignty? If it doesn't, then it must be asserted that God create the car, not man- would this be correct?

If one conlcudes, in defense of God's sovereignty (i.e. God created evil), that this argument regarding the creation of a car does not logically follow the creation of evil, how does it not follow?

[ST_JB]

I agree. Evil cannot exist except that God created it if God is the creator of all things. If evil is a deviation that came from somewhere else, then God is NOT sovereign.

Who created the car - God or man? If God, then His sovereignty remains intact. However, if the answer is "man" and keeping with the above assertion, this would mean God is not sovereign, would it not? How does this take away God's sovereignty? If it doesn't, then it must be asserted that God create the car, not man- would this be correct?

If one conlcudes, in defense of God's sovereignty (i.e. God created evil), that this argument regarding the creation of a car does not logically follow the creation of evil, how does it not follow?

This is ridiculous.

Please note that creation can be either:

1. Creation of something out from nothing.
2. Creation of something out from something already in existence.

Hope this solves your small problem.

[ST_JB]

The Christian god supposedly created the Universe (everything?). To some this god didn't create "Evil" but simply allowed it to exist. If this god is the creator of the Universe but didn't create "Evil", than "Evil" appeared by itself from "somewhere" or "nowhere". Either "Evil" is an uncaused cause, like this god itself, or it came from the same place as this god did, a pre-existing platform of sorts. My point is that an omnipotent God, to be such, has to create absolutely everything in existence. From my perspective, there can either be two uncaused causes, or this god had to create everything, "Evil" included.

Evil is simply the absence of good. Just as darkness is the absence of light.