Good & Evil - Circular Semantics

[zippy2006]

This assumes that God is good and moral. Plenty of cultures have gone to very dark places when they decide that their leader or chosen religious beliefs can't be wrong. What you are really describing is obedience to God, which isn't much better a group of followers who once used the excuse, "I was just following orders".

To say that evil is what goes against God says nothing about our ability to exhaustively know good and evil.

If we can't determine for ourselves what is moral and immoral, then we have no real way of saying what is good and evil. However, I think most of us agree that we are moral agents capable of making that judgment.

"All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus" (Romans 2:12-16, RSV).​

 

[com7fy8]

About good and evil >

how would you go about defining these terms?

Well, first of all, we have how Adam and Eve were told not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But they disobeyed God. This was evil . . . to disobey God; so one definition of evil is simply disobeying God.

Also . . . a note . . . after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they hid from God. God is good, but they hid from Him. So, somehow, they got messed up with something evil in them, which made them able to avoid good. And, like this, now, we see how people can be afraid of what is good, for example rain which is so needed in order for us to have life in this planet.

So, part of what is evil is what messes up people, in themselves, so they take what is good in a bad way. People can call rain "bad" weather and get dismal when it is raining, even though rain can be bringing them life. And people can avoid God, because of their own nature dictating.

There are dictatorial feelings and emotions witch keep people from being quiet and enjoying God. Such dictatorial stuff is also evil.

 

[Loudmouth]

To say that evil is what goes against God says nothing about our ability to exhaustively know good and evil.

"All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus" (Romans 2:12-16, RSV).​

When muslims stone women to death for adultery, they are following the law.

What happens when our sense of what is evil goes against what the Bible teaches, or what any religion teaches? What then?

 

[zippy2006]

When muslims stone women to death for adultery, they are following the law.

What happens when our sense of what is evil goes against what the Bible teaches, or what any religion teaches? What then?

Then things get interesting.