God and Evil

I came across an interesting thought today: If God is all powerful and all good, then why does evil exist. For evil to exist means either God is not powerful enough to extinguish evil (therefore not all powerful) or God allows it to exist and therefore is not all good. I’ve been thinking about it and thinking I’ve come up with some sort of conclusion.

Beforehand, I should tell you I’m not really religious. I don’t follow any specific religion. Because, quite honestly, I don’t know who is right. However I do believe in God, at least the concept.

 

I’m not going to get detailed in this but for the sake of understanding, the idea I have of God is not a “person”; does not have limbs. God is merely an Idea/thought-form. Communication with said being would probably be incomprehensible. Definitely unlike talking. When I say “God”, think of when you say things like “nature”, “the universe”, or “fate”; a generalized being with absolutely no specific image attached to it. I think most concepts have been too corrupted by man. All religious texts are written though a human, who is inherently flawed. “Created in His image” may not (and probably does not) mean physically. We are the only species that has complex reasoning and has metacognition: we can think about our thoughts, as well as self-awareness. Those are the blueprints for which we are based off of.

 

To get to the point though, why does evil exist/ why do bad things happen? I have two answers:

 

Think about a videogame. You are playing and you are passing each level flawlessly. Then you get to a level that is really hard. You keep on dying and starting over. Eventually, you figure out that you were supposed to do some complex thing that you haven’t done before. What if you did not have that challenge? You would play that game and pass it within an hour and say “boy, what a waste of time” and I bet no one would be proud of your accomplishment. What if every day you just kept on taking soma and walked through your life easily without any challenges, and you always got what you wanted? It’d be a pretty boring life. But that’s not even it. Think back to the videogame. Normally when things got hard you learned some really cool technique or combo that helped you later in the game. That’s life exactly. You become homeless; you learn to appreciate what you have (not to envy others). You get hurt in a relationship, you learn to love better. A murderer tries to kill you and fails, you learn to appreciate existence.  Adversity causes growth.

 

The other side (more dealing with God and religion): Why does god allow evil to exist? That must mean he is not all good, right? Not necessarily. We are Its creation, or at least part of It (depending on what you believe). It decided it wanted best for us. I guess we could argue free will is not necessarily best for us or why it is best for us, but that is what we have. Evil exists because of choice. If only good were to exist, would we really even have choice, or just the perception of it? You could also argue that this evil exists because a truly benevolent being would see the good in everything. And if there is good in everything, then there is no evil. Why would I say NO evil? Because evil is the absolute absence of good, and if there is good in everything than there is no such thing as evil.

 

 

Nobody Knows Anything

I’m so tired of hearing about scientists and christians arguing who’s correct about subjects, and condemning the other when they find out that they are correct. Nobody really knows anything, ill try to explain the best i can my case:

 

Back in the middle ages the paradigm was based on scripture. If you could not find it in the bible, it was wrong. You can actually find old maps based on the bible that have jerusalem in the center with barely any water, because thats what the bible said (for an image: http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/images/462_medieval-mapJerusalemCenterC1250.jpg) . Now, this is literally wrong, you can use your eyes to figure this out. Same with the heliocentric universe, this is true, however you would have been condemned to believe otherwise. The church ruled for like 1000 years. You were raised using scripture to explain everything. Anything that was counter to it was not fathomable. Take a look at Flatland, its kind of like that: They are all circles in a 2d world. Trying to say that a 3d sphere (science) really exists did not make any sense. Eventually scientists poked holes into this view on the world to where science became the new paradigm.

 

Currently we are still in the science paradigm. Its based on mathematics. Now math and numbers are theoretical and man-made construct (dolphins dont ‘count’). You could say that they are the equivalent to gospel and scripture: the basis of the paradigm. Science has improved our life in many ways, and we need to have gone through this paradigm to get to where we are headed. But there are holes being poked into our paradigm.

 

Quantum theory is starting to prove things that science said were impossible. This theory, however, is still based on mathematics (hopefully meaning that we’re on the right path) and uses it to prove its theory. The ideas of multiverses, time travel, and the same atom being in two places at once (which could explain the existance of separate consciousness or ‘the soul’) are now theoretically possible. 

 

Now eventually this may be proved wrong based on something completely different. But why must we cut eachother down on ideas that may be disproven in the future. Let the scientist believe what they want, the religious what they want, and whatever future theorists say.

 

On a side note about the bible and probably other relgious texts as well. It was written by MAN, a inherently flawed creature. Now christians (or other religions) believe that its God’s word, however, man assembled it. The catholic church actually has taken out alot of chapters (apocraphal texts), and what was put in the bible was decided by men in power. Food for thought. Just everyone stop fighting.

 

“Man is the only creature who will kill over ideology” – Robert Sapolsky