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Why does evil exist?

bricklayer

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There are beings with "free will" and they have have no sin (people in Heaven and some angels).

Couldn't God have made everyone like them, as to make them have a free will, yet not sin?

We do not choose from undetermined possibilities, if that is what you mean by "free will".

Evil is not an actual thing. Evil is the privation of good. Evil is the absence of good where good could be present. Even as cold is the absence of heat and darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of good where good could be present.

God's purpose for God's creation is the revelation of God's glory.
God's creation is God's description of God's glory.
A thing is described just as much by what it is not as it is by what it is.
Evil serves the very good purpose of revealing what God is not.

God made Adam and Eve "very good". Adam and Eve sinned BEFORE THEY WERE SINNERS.
One of the things God cannot do is that God cannot create something that does not change. That would be tantamount to making another God, which is absurd.

In Adam, before I was a sinner, I sinned. Because I was a sinner, I died. While I was yet dead in my sin, God saved me from sin and death.
 
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hdssh

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This discussion touches on that of duality ... evil is not the opposite of good, evil is the absence of good. Just as cold does not exist, it's only the absence of warm.

Duality is a dangerous prevailing paradigm of todays culture.

My expanded thoughts: hdssh.weebly.com/1/post/2013/08/mind-the-gap.html
 
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BelievingIsObeying

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hdssh said:
This discussion touches on that of duality ... evil is not the opposite of good, evil is the absence of good. Just as cold does not exist, it's only the absence of warm.

Duality is a dangerous prevailing paradigm of todays culture.

My expanded thoughts: hdssh.weebly.com/1/post/2013/08/mind-the-gap.html

Your cold/ warm theory would mean that everything is warm except absolute zero, when particles stop moving. Cold is a term that describes very little warmth, like hot is a term that describes very much warmth.

I see a rock on the ground, it doesn't appear to be good or doing anything good, does that make it evil?

My dog is sitting here, he doesn't appear to be doing anything good, are his actions thus evil?

I just woke up, while I was asleep I wasn't doing anything good, nor was I a good person while asleep, does this make my actions and me both evil while sleeping?
 
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bricklayer

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Your cold/ warm theory would mean that everything is warm except absolute zero, when particles stop moving. Cold is a term that describes very little warmth, like hot is a term that describes very much warmth.

I see a rock on the ground, it doesn't appear to be good or doing anything good, does that make it evil?

My dog is sitting here, he doesn't appear to be doing anything good, are his actions thus evil?

I just woke up, while I was asleep I wasn't doing anything good, nor was I a good person while asleep, does this make my actions and me both evil while sleeping?

Evil is not the absence of good; it is the privation of good. Evil is the absence of good that could be present.

By the way, the 4th law of thermodynamics states that absolute zero cannot be achieved.
 
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BelievingIsObeying

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bricklayer said:
Evil is not the absence of good; it is the privation of good. Evil is the absence of good that could be present.

By the way, the 4th law of thermodynamics states that absolute zero cannot be achieved.

The other poster said that evil was the absence of good.

Wait...

"evil is not the absence of good" "evil is the absence of good that could be present". You really confused me there, so is it the absence of good or not?

Yes I know the law, but people also thought forever that human flight could not be achieved. It will be rather intriguing if at absolute zero gravity stops having an effect and thus true absolute zero will be achieved. But if gravity still has an effect on the object then its molecules will still be moving, through space at least as the earth moves and rotates. The only impossible things are that which haven't been done yet.
 
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bricklayer

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The other poster said that evil was the absence of good.

Wait...

"evil is not the absence of good" "evil is the absence of good that could be present". You really confused me there, so is it the absence of good or not?

Yes I know the law, but people also thought forever that human flight could not be achieved. It will be rather intriguing if at absolute zero gravity stops having an effect and thus true absolute zero will be achieved. But if gravity still has an effect on the object then its molecules will still be moving, through space at least as the earth moves and rotates. The only impossible things are that which haven't been done yet.

One expects good to be present in a person. If there is no good in a person then there is a privation of good; there is evil. One does not expect to find good in a stone. If there is no good in a stone, then there is an absence of good. That is not evil.

There many things that cannot be done. No particle of matter can occupy the same position relative to the balance of matter in any two increments of time. In other words, nothing can occupy the same space twice.

There exists many ideas that have no potential to be actualized.
No effect can transcend its cause.
Contingent-being cannot produce necessary-being.
Necessary-being cannot change.
Contingent-being must change.

Many, many ideas cannot be.
 
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Emmy

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Dear steamforthis. God is Love and Love brings forth more Love. God made us in His image, and God made us Good. Adam and Eve were with God in the Garden of Eden, and all seemed right. Then appeared the Serpent with its many lies and promises, and Adam and Eve hid from God, and instead loving God enough to withstand the lies of the Serpent, they became easy prey and
succumbed to the Tempter.
God banished them and all who followed, to Earth. Instead of repenting, they and all Mankind grew farther and farther from God. In time Jesus came and showed us God, as God really is: our Loving Heavenly Father, who wants us back again. Jesus told a Lawyer in Matthew 22: 35-40: " The first and great Commandment is: Love God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. The second is like it: Love thy neighbour as thyself." Then Jesus
gave us this great truth: " On these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." Jesus our Saviour showed us what God wants from us:
JESUS IS THE WAY. Love God with all our beings, and love our neighbour as
ourselves. Start by treating all we know and all we meet, treat them as we would love to be treated: with kindness and always friendly words. Jesus will give us His Love and Joy, and the Holy Spirit will empower us with His Love, also. We are told to: "ask and ye shall receive," ( Matthew 7: 7-8) then we thank God and share all Love and Joy with our neighbour: all we know and all we meet, friends as well not-friends.
A Christian`s great weapon is Love, Love will overcome all enmity and wrongs.
We are God`s only representatives in this imperfect world, and we can become God`s sign-posts to all around us. Evil is No Love or Compassion,
Evil is to be selfish and unloving, God did Not make us like this, we have to learn to say NO to all temptation. Jesus will help and guide us, and when we stumble or forget, we ask God to forgive us, then we thank God and carry on
Loving and Caring. God will see or efforts and God will approve and bless us.
I say this with love, steamforthis. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.
 
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x141

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There are beings with "free will" and they have have no sin (people in Heaven and some angels).

Couldn't God have made everyone like them, as to make them have a free will, yet not sin?

It would appear that the planting of the tree of knowledge is like putting a loaded gun with a hair trigger in a babies crib.

The answers why only comes from one source, to reason with anything less than this one source is an adding of sin unto sin, and God calls everyone to reason with Him, and promises those who do, that their sins will be white as snow, even though they were as scarlet.
 
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Noxot

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when freedom reduces itself to being it's own will it has already cut itself off from the one who gave her the real freedom. since our true nature is based in being given to by God, then our TRUE nature is to give to God who gave to us. when this does not occur we become deceived through our own conceit. our free will turns into slavery when we are not attached to the source of freedom. a law that is anything less than God himself, say, an shadow of the law rather than the reality who is God, will put you into such a bondage, for everything without God is a great and terrible hell. for God is the good and that is our natural state, we being his children, but sin is a veil that blinds us from the truth. and so you can say that evil is ignorance and not knowledge. knowledge of good is just as wicked as knowledge of evil, if you are trying to be good without the only one who is good, that way, you exalt yourself above Gods throne and it shows that evil and good can not be mixed, the tree of life is the truth, not the separation from God and having knowledge of good and evil. trust and obedience in God rather than anything else is what real life and reality is. if god tells you that you don't need knowledge of evil, but then disobey him, then you wonder why you are in hell and you blame God, it just goes to show that you ought rather to have listened to God and not partaken of evil in the first place. but all humans in this world except Jesus were deceived by the serpents cunning, for all he had to do was get you to obey something besides God and that will make you fall away from perfection. it does not have to be that way any longer.

God only births God, he has no reason to create something other than the perfection he produces, it is when humans submit to something besides God that they turn the image of God into something less than God, and thus it is a falling away from God. in a world where we have a human body, if the higher part of us conforms to the world and to things that are not God, it turns him into a slave. evil is darkness and darkness happens when someone does not believe that they are sons of God. this world of evil is more like a dream than true reality, once the spiritual person made in the image of God wakes up he will see reality instead of a dream. the reality is that we are sons of God and if we are sons of God like Jesus is, then we do not sin. sin comes from conforming to something less than God.

by partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, we were trapped in a pit of the devils own insanity and falling away from God. evil is what happens when people exist in fallen illusionary realities of spiritual psychosis rather than living in God who is our Father and whom it is truly impossible to be separated from which is why lies are lies and not truth. most human beings are insane and don't even know it, that is how you know they are really really insane.

angels have freedom but it did not prevent some of them from falling away from God. if God takes away our freedom then he makes us not into his image. if we abuse our freedom by not being free and in love with God and loving all others as God loves all others then we already become a shadow of the reality of the truth that we are. because the highest reality that we are made out of, who is God himself that does not change, can not be altered, but lower illusion worlds such as the one most humans exist in due to having spiritually fallen to sleep, only exist because if all darkness knows is darkness, then how can it be light? but the light penetrates all things and when the shadows fade away we all see that evil is not real, it is merely what we see when we see ourselves without God. so evils state is one of imperfection, and God is the only one who can complete it. think, if we fall away from God, then we are imperfect, the natural outcome is to imagine ourselves to be something less than Gods children. God is not to be blamed for evils existences, it's not even real, but humans think it is, and thus they make it to have a sort of being or if you prefer, a lack of being, a falling apart of the creation God made, inasmuch as that is possible. and from an good angels point of view it's like a speck of dust trying to destroy the entire superverse/universe/multiverse/whatever you want to call a large collection of various realities that God creates with no effort at all.
 
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grasping the after wind

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How does one define evil? Is it simply damage that might occur to a person from any cause or is it as I would define it the purposeful infliction of harm. To me, evil is a thing unto itself not simply the absence of good. The absense of good is not evil, it may be a varity if things that are simply not good and possibly not evil as well like nothingness or indifference. Evil is an active pursuit of that which is not good. It is also the active pursuit of that which is not God's Will. It is genuine sin. To sin is an action in complete defience of what is good. To refrain from sinning is the absence of evil but is not necessarily the presence of good. If I do not murder my neighbor it does not mean that I am good or that goodness has been displayed it only means that evil has not occurred. If my neighbor is injured in an earthquake has evil occurred? Or has an indifferent force of nature simply caused physical harm and since no evil intent was present is it bad but not evil?
 
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2ndRateMind

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No, contrary to some opinions so far, I believe in 'positive' evil. Evil is not just the absence of good, evil is an entity of it's own. Consider child welfare as an example. Good is looking after it's interests. Absence of good is it's neglect. Presence of evil is it's abuse and torture. These all seem to me to be distinctive states, and should be recognised so.

So why does evil exist? Why would a good God allow it, even build it into His creation?

Seems to me that if only good could exist, and all we could do was good, there would be no merit in being good. And I think God puts a lot of weight on, and rewards, freely chosen merit.

Cheers, 2RM.
 
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Emmy

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Dear steamforthis. God is Love, and God wants Loving children/sons and daughters. God wants our Love, freely given and No puppet-love. Satan and all satanic beings are evil, and run away from Love. Why does evil exist?
We live in an imperfect world, and are surrounded by temptations of all sorts.
We do not want to give in to temptations, if they make us feel uncomfortable,
but sadly we often give in. It seems to be quite acceptable to do as many others do, but it still makes us think.
God wants us to love, Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. Jesus told us in Matthew 22: 35-40: " The first and great Commandment is: Love God, and the second is: Love our neighbour as ourselves." We also know that Love is a Christian`s great weapon, Love overcomes all enmity and wrong behaviour. What we have to learn is: to treat our neighbour as we would love to be treated: kindly and always with
friendly words. God will bless us, and God will know: we Love God, because
we are following His Commandments to Love. Everything we say or do, must be from Love and Compassion. Love is very catching, and Love will slowly change us into the men and women, which God wants us to become.
Jesus will give us His Love and Joy, and the Holy Spirit will empower us with His Love, also. We keep asking God in prayer, then we thank God, and share
all Love and Joy with our neighbour. Evil does exist, but Love is stronger.
With Jesus on our side, we can overcome all evil: JESUS IS THE WAY.
Matthew 7: 7-8: we have to ask, and receive. And with God for us: who or what can be against us. I say this with love, steamforthis. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.
 
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