We are created with evil and good

[Bahman]

I had a long discussion about God creation and concept of evil in another thread which unfortunately I was not satisfied with its conclusion so I am opening a new thread.

First question, are we able to perform an action, lets say X (neither good nor evil), if we neither have knowledge on X nor have the ability to experience X when X appears as an actuality. Free will in this case could be defined as ability to resist or perform X.

Second question, how we could perform X if it is not part of creation considering the previous argument? I mean how something could be experienced/performed which is not part of creation. This means that X could be experienced and performed only if it is part of creation.

Now consider X as evil and see what you would conclude.

 

[ServantPD]

I had a long discussion about God creation and concept of evil in another thread which unfortunately I was not satisfied with its conclusion so I am opening a new thread.

First question, are we able to perform an action, lets say X (neither good nor evil), if we neither have knowledge on X nor have the ability to experience X when X appears as an actuality. Free will in this case could be defined as ability to resist or perform X.

Second question, how we could perform X if it is not part of creation considering the previous argument? I mean how something could be experienced/performed which is not part of creation. This means that X could be experienced and performed only if it is part of creation.

Now consider X as evil and see what you would conclude.

Just because free will causes evil, that doesn’t exactly mean that evil was created in order to be incorporated in free will. Rather, evil is a sort of a by-product of the bad usage of free will by human beings. God created all good, and as part of God’s creation, we received an ability which allowed the creation of evil, but it wasn’t exactly God who gave us both good and evil; we created it ourselves.

Tools can be used for intentions that aren’t what they were intended to be created for, like using a hammer to beat me up instead of nailing something, as it was the intention of its creation. Can we really blame the creator of hammers, or the man/woman that used badly the hammer?

 

[bzkoss236]

Evil and good are not separate entities where one opposes the other, it is more like heat and cold. Cold doesn’t actually exist as a combatting force to heat, but rather is the absence of heat. Similarly, evil is the absence of good.

 

[Beryllos]

Evil and good are not separate entities where one opposes the other, it is more like heat and cold. Cold doesn’t actually exist as a combatting force to heat, but rather is the absence of heat. Similarly, evil is the absence of good.

So, responding to the title of this thread, we are not created with evil and good, but with the capacity to choose or reject good.

 

[ffg]

My sig is my contribution here.

 

[BertBlyleven]

Though I can’t answer all your questions, I can chime in on a bit. Evil can only be done under the pretense of doing good. No person, animal, etc can do an evil because they view it to be evil…because even within that, the person sees the evil as good. Similarly nothing created can be in itself evil and cannot be absolutely evil.

Ultimately the standard for evil is sin. There are many things evil, but not sinful in themselves. They are evil because they are the result of fallen man and a fallen world, but not because they were created so. A good example is animals killing for food. Evil because it is the result of the fall (we don’t hear of this before the sin of Adam). But is it sinful in itself? No, in fact God ordered it. There are many different degrees of evil and many cases where we use the term evil. In the sense of things being essentially or absolutely good or evil, there is nothing that can be absolutely evil, again because it could only be willed under the pretense of good. Even the fallen angels are not essentially evil, but commit evil (eternally) doing what they see as good (or rather see it as evil yet find goodness in doing so…though their wills are forever turned from God; perhaps not the best example).

Are you a Manichean, perchance?

 

[Bahman]

Just because free will causes evil, that doesn’t exactly mean that evil was created in order to be incorporated in free will.

Free will does not cause evil, and instead is the ability/power to resist/release evil as it is the power that we can resist/release good too. Good and evil are our important attributes since they could lead to actualities inside our minds when we reach to a situation before decision is made, using free will.

Rather, evil is a sort of a by-product of the bad usage of free will by human beings.

Evil and good is by-product of intuition not free will as free will by definition is the ability to choose between two options.

God created all good

God creation is perfect, neither good nor evil. Good and evil has to be there since without that we could not have a sense of good and evil using our intuition.

and as part of God’s creation, we received an ability which allowed the creation of evil, but it wasn’t exactly God who gave us both good and evil; we created it ourselves.

We can’t create evil as we can’t create good. Evil and good as it was mentioned are byproduct of intuition in our subconscious mind when dealing with a situation. The byproduct is sent to conscious mind to be experienced and for further judgement.

 

[Bahman]

Evil and good are not separate entities where one opposes the other, it is more like heat and cold. Cold doesn’t actually exist as a combatting force to heat, but rather is the absence of heat. Similarly, evil is the absence of good.

First, you didn’t read my argument precisely. Could you please say that what was wrong with my argument. As it was clearly stated: “We are not able to perform an action, lets say evil, if we neither have knowledge of evil nor have the ability to experience evil when evil appears as an actuality in a situation. Free will in this case could be defined as ability to resist or perform evil.”

First evil is an entity that we clearly experience it when we are dealing with a situation which is evil, second we judge it using our sense of good and evil, then realize that situation is evil.

 

[Bahman]

So, responding to the title of this thread, we are not created with evil and good, but with the capacity to choose or reject good.

This is logically total nonsense. Haven’t you ever experience a situation in your life that you feel evil inside? Have you read the argument very precisely:** “We are not able to perform an action, lets say evil, if we neither have knowledge of evil nor have the ability to experience evil when evil appears as an actuality in a situation. Free will in this case could be defined as ability to resist or perform evil.”**

 

[Bahman]

Though I can’t answer all your questions, I can chime in on a bit. Evil can only be done under the pretense of doing good.

Evil is an entity as good is an entity. Lack of good means that we could not have a sense of judgement about good as it applies to evil.

Can you tell me how do we realize that an action is evil or good in a simple manner?

Ultimately the standard for evil is sin. There are many things evil, but not sinful in themselves.

So you agree that there is a difference between evil and sin because of your second sentence. Can you please explain me a situation that an evil action is done which is not sinful? Can you please explain me what is sin?

They are evil because they are the result of fallen man and a fallen world, but not because they were created so. A good example is animals killing for food. Evil because it is the result of the fall (we don’t hear of this before the sin of Adam). But is it sinful in itself? No, in fact God ordered it. There are many different degrees of evil and many cases where we use the term evil. In the sense of things being essentially or absolutely good or evil, there is nothing that can be absolutely evil, again because it could only be willed under the pretense of good. Even the fallen angels are not essentially evil, but commit evil (eternally) doing what they see as good (or rather see it as evil yet find goodness in doing so…though their wills are forever turned from God; perhaps not the best example).

I don’t understand what this has to do with my argument. Either you agree with the argument or not.

Are you a Manichean, perchance?

No I am not.