I recently read some essays on whether or not God was evil.
The first one basically said that the guy didn't care if God was going to bring
about salvation and forgiveness for everyone's sins. He told a story about a
child who accidentally hurt a prince's prized dog. The prince found the child,
stripped him, and in front of his mother had the child ripped apart by his dogs.
What the author of the essay was saying was that he didn't care if everyone was
forgiven in the end, he didn't want that child going unavenged. He wouldn't
accept that world becuase of his own rightous feelings of justice.
The second one said that God is evil. If there was a man standing in front of a
burning building and he knew that there was a baby inside, but still did nothing
even though he knew that he would not be hurt at all, would you consider that
man good? He would not be hurt even in the slightest by saving that baby, and he
is fully capable of saving it, but he chooses not to. Is he evil? So the author
went on to say that God is evil because even though he has the power to help
people he chooses not to even though it wouldn't hurt him. Would it have hurt
God to make Hitler fall down the stairs and save three million people? no. So is
he not evil?
The third essay said that God is good because if he helped everyone out, no one
would want to do anything anymore. We wouldn't have heroes or evil in the world
because God would have to always step in and save everyone.
So I want to know what you guys think, is God evil? Is he good?
merged: 11-10-2005 ~ 09:19am
Umm...Ignore the poll
I believe everything in this universe has positive and negative. As many people
described, satans or demons or whatever you call them... are evil
And so we have angels, a being with everything good
Then how about God?
I believe He's not either good or evil because God must be above these two
dualism concept
Lots of people believe that God is all good, forgiving, caring. If God is all
good, then this positive and negative balance will not work, surely.
True, God can be forgiving and caring, but God can also be punishing, and
carrying justice, cause He's not in either side of positive and negative, He's
creating them both to be in balance.
ummm....i don't really understand what the first essay is saying....but the
second person should look around and tell me something, what if no one died? or
a disease never spread through a country or civilization? everything happens for
a reason. if God were to interfere with every problem in the world alot of good
inventions and such wouldn't exsist.
also, if God appeared before us every now and then; i think we would just blow
him off. i mean, look at the Bible. they had jesus right in front of them and
what did they do? they killed him.
i'm not saying that i'm happy that there is war, or i'm exstatic about a
population dieing from a disease. i'm just saying that we do thing wrong and all
we can do is pray to God and go with the flow. have u ever hear the chinese
story about the farmer who lost his only horse and his nieghbor says 'what bad
luck! i feel sorry for u.' but the farmer says 'who knows what is good and what
is bad?' the next week the farmer's horse comes back and brings several more
horses with it and his nieghbor says 'oh! that was good luck!' and the farmer
replies 'who knows what is good and what is bad?' ...the story goes on about his
son breaking a leg and then because his leg is broken he doesn't get drafted
into the army and on and on.... i think i've made my point.
'then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed
are those who have not seen and yet have believed." John 20:29
I don't believe in God, and I'm not entirely sure of the point you're making
with the first one relative to the point of this thread (although that is a
terrible, terrible story... ), so I'll
just go here...
I think that you cannot be considered "evil" for something you did not
do; actually, I don't believe that a person can be "evil"--there is
never someone who is all good or all bad... there are evil actions, but not evil
people. Good people can do terrible things often without meaning too, and people
that some would consider terrible are prone to generous moments.
If the man did not go into the fire to save the baby, that isn't an evil
action--it's a nonaction, for one--but there are plently of reasons why someone
would not go into a burning building, first and foremost that we don't want to
die. That's not evil. It's survival. Maybe you think it's selfish, but it's not
evil. I know you say you would be selfless, but really, if you were in his
position, would you go inside, or would you run?
As for God, even though I don't believe in God, for the sake of this argument,
I'll ignore that...
The same as the man and the fire, a nonaction can't be evil. It just is. If I
believed in God, I would believe that God does not have the power to directly
interfere with the actions of humans, but merely to observe and perhaps to
subtly guide the course of someone's life.
So no, I don't think God is evil (I actually don't think there is a God, but
that's beside the point =S). But I understand where you're coming from.
God is not an evil person. God expects you to read his word, and follow it.
Evilness, and sin is a test (just like those awful math tests at school, eh?).
Evil is used to tempt you, to see wheather you are to do right or wrong,
wheather you've "studied the materials in your book". Although God
allows Satan to "test" you, he does not allow you to be tempted or
tested more than you can bear. It's like a school system. god is the principal,
always understanding. Jesus is the teacher, for God's word comes through him.
Satan is the math teacher, he gives you all those horrible tests to attempt to
lower your grade to a horrible fat F. The true evil person in this story here,
is Satan, our fallen angel here...
Principal God, gives you his word, Teacher Satan, attempts to get you to rebell
against Principal God, yet Principal God, having control over TEacher Satan,
does not allow you to be tempted more than you are able to bear.
And abuot the fire story, just fit the man in as one of the students. The
Principal and the Teachers can't FORCE him to do what he wants, he does it on
what he's learned, what he's been taught.
By the way, you really don't give us much of a choice to pick in your poll, evil
and evil makes it hard for me to pick good if both of the answers are going to
result in the same thing...
And there are a couple people saying that they didn't understand the essays so
here's some clarification:
1.) The first essay is saying that the guy doesn't want the whole world to be
forgiven and for everyone's sins to go unpunished by God. He wants the man who
would do that to a child to be punished, and for that child's death to mean
something. If the prince was forgiven, then didn't that child die in vain? Could
you pick to have 'heaven on earth' if that one child had to die in
vain?
2.) remember, the man knows that he will undergo NO HARM! He will NOT DIE or BE
HURT IN ANYWAY. He just decides not to save the baby. Remember, he will NOT BE
HARMED if he saves the baby.
~sorry ' six million, i was typing fast
sorry for the mistake.
Mmmm interesting question, I guess my answer would be "neither". Both
good and evil are concepts we use to describe the things that either support or
offend our beliefs, and because of that they are subjective and human. God,
theorically speaking is a higher form of being, thus his motives and actions
can´t be evaluated in such imperfect concepts.
Well first you have to accept the fact that god exists, which I don't.
Even assuming a god, any god, exists there is the problem of determining what
you mean by "good" and "evil", as both are relative. Whether
or not you define apathy or inaction as evil for example. Then there is the fact
that any significantly advanced or alien being, god or not, would probably be
beyond any definition of good or evil from our perspective. Trying to hold such
a foreign existence to our definition of morality would be also be completely
unfair and judgmental.
really depends on his sense of humour he created the devil thus in part is
responsible for creating evil so in a way he's both good and evil (created
lucifer and look what the hell happened literally!)
Of course god exists! There is proof all around us! Miracles that happene
everyday! I just saw a ghost the other day, I don't know if that has anything to
do with the bible. But god does exist. Now here's the problem...HE'S OUT TO GET
ME! If I could destroy everything and start over as a god, I would. I would make
everything right, torture the ones that hurt and laugh at others. torture the
dads that beat their children and isolated them. Torture the evil children that
don't understand the scared, lonely, and confused child as it goes to school. I
would take the pain and suffering from that childs walk on the road of life.
For that child alone, god does not exist.
But I am not god.
What is more painful, The pain of death, or the pain of sorrow? Those that don't
know fear only death.
Quote by chengstaOf course god exists!
There is proof all around us! Miracles that happene everyday! I just saw a ghost
the other day, I don't know if that has anything to do with the bible. But god
does exist. Now here's the problem...HE'S OUT TO GET ME! If I could destroy
everything and start over as a god, I would. I would make everything right,
torture the ones that hurt and laugh at others. torture the dads that beat their
children and isolated them. Torture the evil children that don't understand the
scared, lonely, and confused child as it goes to school. I would take the pain
and suffering from that childs walk on the road of life.
For that child alone, god does not exist.
But I am not god.
What is more painful, The pain of death, or the pain of sorrow? Those that don't
know fear only death.
You make a good argument but how do you know that God exists. There could be
many gods or none at all. Whether God is good or not, if it helps everyone with
every problem people would become dependent on God. Likewise if nobody is helped
at all when an omnipotent force is needed, people begin to lose their faith.
This may sound stupid but I'm going to quote a line from "Futurama" in
the episode where Bender plays God, where the force Bender meets in the end
says.
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at
all."
I think that IF there is an omnipotent force that can change everything for the
better or worse that would be its point of view.
for me I will agree with first and the third essay.
cause idealy a world is run with the 3rd essay in mind.
but as we al know humans tends to go with the 1st essay. so my conclusion God is
good hey at least He/She or whatever created us. Man is evil cuz only human can
go way aboard our imagination.
First at all,i agree with kawaiisakura05.Maybe you should check your bible if
you have.God is always good.He allows all things happen(whether good or
bad)because he has reasons.
that is very right , there are a big diference between pemit to someting hapend
that cause, remember that, and that is the idea , know , why God permit the evil
, also, He got plans for fix all our problems.
see the world, we have no much time, all of us, have to investigate the
proposites of God.
well..first af all we have to believe into a god..
and then if we does..then i think we know he is not evil...in the bible for
example it say so many things that god is not evil, even we ppl think
so..
1.god has a plan for us,...even we think he hate us or this task is so diffcult
for us..he know how much we stand and after we "won" this task we c
that it was good..
2.so many ppl are asking "why alows god so much evil to this world"
..well of course the evil dont come from god..the evil come of the ppl..god
didnt say "make war bush" or soemthing..the ppl are evil inside or
want to get power..god is to kind to step inside our life and changes us into a
good+wounderfull person..he shows us ways we can go..we know theres a god+he
told us in the bible how we should live..but its our decission to go his way and
to say yes to him or not...
I recently read some essays on whether or not God was evil.
The first one basically said that the guy didn't care if God was going to bring about salvation and forgiveness for everyone's sins. He told a story about a child who accidentally hurt a prince's prized dog. The prince found the child, stripped him, and in front of his mother had the child ripped apart by his dogs. What the author of the essay was saying was that he didn't care if everyone was forgiven in the end, he didn't want that child going unavenged. He wouldn't accept that world becuase of his own rightous feelings of justice.
The second one said that God is evil. If there was a man standing in front of a burning building and he knew that there was a baby inside, but still did nothing even though he knew that he would not be hurt at all, would you consider that man good? He would not be hurt even in the slightest by saving that baby, and he is fully capable of saving it, but he chooses not to. Is he evil? So the author went on to say that God is evil because even though he has the power to help people he chooses not to even though it wouldn't hurt him. Would it have hurt God to make Hitler fall down the stairs and save three million people? no. So is he not evil?
The third essay said that God is good because if he helped everyone out, no one would want to do anything anymore. We wouldn't have heroes or evil in the world because God would have to always step in and save everyone.
So I want to know what you guys think, is God evil? Is he good?
merged: 11-10-2005 ~ 09:19am
Umm...Ignore the poll
I can't really decide you made a good arguement .
God will only laugh at his minute creatures of oblivion....
us....who are bounded with time and death and the eventual destruction.
merged: 11-10-2005 ~ 09:38am
god is not evil, he is just plain an observer.
yeah good arguement
but get your facts right
hitler killed at least 6 million people
he was aweful and as bad as 3 million is
he was worse still
Instead, my conscience is evil. It's always telling me the wrong things.
I believe everything in this universe has positive and negative. As many people described, satans or demons or whatever you call them... are evil
And so we have angels, a being with everything good
Then how about God?
I believe He's not either good or evil because God must be above these two dualism concept
Lots of people believe that God is all good, forgiving, caring. If God is all good, then this positive and negative balance will not work, surely.
True, God can be forgiving and caring, but God can also be punishing, and carrying justice, cause He's not in either side of positive and negative, He's creating them both to be in balance.
ummm....i don't really understand what the first essay is saying....but the second person should look around and tell me something, what if no one died? or a disease never spread through a country or civilization? everything happens for a reason. if God were to interfere with every problem in the world alot of good inventions and such wouldn't exsist.
also, if God appeared before us every now and then; i think we would just blow him off. i mean, look at the Bible. they had jesus right in front of them and what did they do? they killed him.
i'm not saying that i'm happy that there is war, or i'm exstatic about a population dieing from a disease. i'm just saying that we do thing wrong and all we can do is pray to God and go with the flow. have u ever hear the chinese story about the farmer who lost his only horse and his nieghbor says 'what bad luck! i feel sorry for u.' but the farmer says 'who knows what is good and what is bad?' the next week the farmer's horse comes back and brings several more horses with it and his nieghbor says 'oh! that was good luck!' and the farmer replies 'who knows what is good and what is bad?' ...the story goes on about his son breaking a leg and then because his leg is broken he doesn't get drafted into the army and on and on.... i think i've made my point.
'then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." John 20:29
I don't believe in God, and I'm not entirely sure of the point you're making with the first one relative to the point of this thread (although that is a terrible, terrible story...
), so I'll
just go here...
I think that you cannot be considered "evil" for something you did not do; actually, I don't believe that a person can be "evil"--there is never someone who is all good or all bad... there are evil actions, but not evil people. Good people can do terrible things often without meaning too, and people that some would consider terrible are prone to generous moments.
If the man did not go into the fire to save the baby, that isn't an evil action--it's a nonaction, for one--but there are plently of reasons why someone would not go into a burning building, first and foremost that we don't want to die. That's not evil. It's survival. Maybe you think it's selfish, but it's not evil. I know you say you would be selfless, but really, if you were in his position, would you go inside, or would you run?
As for God, even though I don't believe in God, for the sake of this argument, I'll ignore that...
The same as the man and the fire, a nonaction can't be evil. It just is. If I believed in God, I would believe that God does not have the power to directly interfere with the actions of humans, but merely to observe and perhaps to subtly guide the course of someone's life.
So no, I don't think God is evil (I actually don't think there is a God, but that's beside the point =S). But I understand where you're coming from.
God is not an evil person. God expects you to read his word, and follow it. Evilness, and sin is a test (just like those awful math tests at school, eh?). Evil is used to tempt you, to see wheather you are to do right or wrong, wheather you've "studied the materials in your book". Although God allows Satan to "test" you, he does not allow you to be tempted or tested more than you can bear. It's like a school system. god is the principal, always understanding. Jesus is the teacher, for God's word comes through him. Satan is the math teacher, he gives you all those horrible tests to attempt to lower your grade to a horrible fat F. The true evil person in this story here, is Satan, our fallen angel here...
Principal God, gives you his word, Teacher Satan, attempts to get you to rebell against Principal God, yet Principal God, having control over TEacher Satan, does not allow you to be tempted more than you are able to bear.
And abuot the fire story, just fit the man in as one of the students. The Principal and the Teachers can't FORCE him to do what he wants, he does it on what he's learned, what he's been taught.
By the way, you really don't give us much of a choice to pick in your poll,
evil
and evil makes it hard for me to pick good if both of the answers are going to
result in the same thing...
Ignore the poll please!
And there are a couple people saying that they didn't understand the essays so here's some clarification:
1.) The first essay is saying that the guy doesn't want the whole world to be forgiven and for everyone's sins to go unpunished by God. He wants the man who would do that to a child to be punished, and for that child's death to mean something. If the prince was forgiven, then didn't that child die in vain? Could you pick to have 'heaven on earth' if that one child had to die in vain?
2.) remember, the man knows that he will undergo NO HARM! He will NOT DIE or BE HURT IN ANYWAY. He just decides not to save the baby. Remember, he will NOT BE HARMED if he saves the baby.
~sorry
' six million, i was typing fast 
sorry for the mistake.
God is not Evil, Humans is Evil.
Mmmm interesting question, I guess my answer would be "neither". Both good and evil are concepts we use to describe the things that either support or offend our beliefs, and because of that they are subjective and human. God, theorically speaking is a higher form of being, thus his motives and actions can´t be evaluated in such imperfect concepts.
I totally agree with it!
Well first you have to accept the fact that god exists, which I don't.
Even assuming a god, any god, exists there is the problem of determining what you mean by "good" and "evil", as both are relative. Whether or not you define apathy or inaction as evil for example. Then there is the fact that any significantly advanced or alien being, god or not, would probably be beyond any definition of good or evil from our perspective. Trying to hold such a foreign existence to our definition of morality would be also be completely unfair and judgmental.
I believe God is a good entity, pure and whole.
really depends on his sense of humour he created the devil thus in part is responsible for creating evil so in a way he's both good and evil (created lucifer and look what the hell happened literally!)
Of course god exists! There is proof all around us! Miracles that happene everyday! I just saw a ghost the other day, I don't know if that has anything to do with the bible. But god does exist. Now here's the problem...HE'S OUT TO GET ME! If I could destroy everything and start over as a god, I would. I would make everything right, torture the ones that hurt and laugh at others. torture the dads that beat their children and isolated them. Torture the evil children that don't understand the scared, lonely, and confused child as it goes to school. I would take the pain and suffering from that childs walk on the road of life.
For that child alone, god does not exist.
But I am not god.
What is more painful, The pain of death, or the pain of sorrow? Those that don't know fear only death.
I wonder what kind of pills you just took
Who is this God Guy anyway?
You make a good argument but how do you know that God exists. There could be many gods or none at all. Whether God is good or not, if it helps everyone with every problem people would become dependent on God. Likewise if nobody is helped at all when an omnipotent force is needed, people begin to lose their faith. This may sound stupid but I'm going to quote a line from "Futurama" in the episode where Bender plays God, where the force Bender meets in the end says.
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
I think that IF there is an omnipotent force that can change everything for the better or worse that would be its point of view.
depends on which god you are talking about...
for me I will agree with first and the third essay.
cause idealy a world is run with the 3rd essay in mind.
but as we al know humans tends to go with the 1st essay. so my conclusion God is good hey at least He/She or whatever created us. Man is evil cuz only human can go way aboard our imagination.
First at all,i agree with kawaiisakura05.Maybe you should check your bible if you have.God is always good.He allows all things happen(whether good or bad)because he has reasons.
that is very right , there are a big diference between pemit to someting hapend that cause, remember that, and that is the idea , know , why God permit the evil , also, He got plans for fix all our problems.
see the world, we have no much time, all of us, have to investigate the proposites of God.
And then, and only then, we will now the truth.
well..first af all we have to believe into a god..
and then if we does..then i think we know he is not evil...in the bible for example it say so many things that god is not evil, even we ppl think so..
1.god has a plan for us,...even we think he hate us or this task is so diffcult for us..he know how much we stand and after we "won" this task we c that it was good..
2.so many ppl are asking "why alows god so much evil to this world" ..well of course the evil dont come from god..the evil come of the ppl..god didnt say "make war bush" or soemthing..the ppl are evil inside or want to get power..god is to kind to step inside our life and changes us into a good+wounderfull person..he shows us ways we can go..we know theres a god+he told us in the bible how we should live..but its our decission to go his way and to say yes to him or not...
at leats its our decission what we do..