Why Do People Discount The Theory Of An Evil God?

[rach]

Why do most people presume that there is either a good, loving god or else none at all?  Why not suspect an evil god or a god who has mixed attributes?  Yesterday I saw two insects wrapped around each other, one eating the other's face.  It was horrifying.  I thought about how evil the whole thing was and how all over every inch of ground we walk on, in their little insect world these evils are happening trillions of times a day.  I thought maybe the creator (presuming, I know, there happens to be one) gets a thrill out of seeing these creatures cannibalise each other.  When you look closely at these creatures they're built like little soldiers, now either this is explained by evolution or else it means their creator intended them to fight to the death. 

 

I am a bit confused when I read at websites like 'Why Won't God Heal Amputees' and the arguments are such as: if a loving god exists, he'd heal them.  Therefore there is not a god.  I don't draw the same conclusions though.  So tell me why are people convinced that god is either loving or nonexistent? 

[GoddessOfWisdom]

Because if you want to invent something to comfort you, a cosmic father/savior works a hell of a lot better than a cosmic boogieman.

 

As an aside: before I'd even started questioning even the existence of Yahweh I had decided, in the face of eternal torment, not to worship him.

[duderonomy]

There is an evil God, rach. He has a Book, called the Bible. Believe it or not.

 

But who wrote it? The Great God or the Great Deceiver?

[Serendipity Rose]

What you call evil, ensured the survival of the insect eating the other insects face. I wouldn't call that evil, just nature. 

 

Did you eat a cow, pig or chicken today? Or maybe you sliced through the heart of a tomato and devoured it guts. 

 

Survival is not evil.

[Guest Marty]

Evil is a human concept from human minds and is completely relative.  You see an insect eating another as evil, but that insect is only trying to survive.  It is no more evil than a lion is evil for taking down a zebra.  Are you evil for eating chicken and cow?  Perhaps an alien coming to this planet would consider you evil for eating lower animals, would that alien be incorrect?

 

Many in the west consider Islamic terrorists as evil, but they are only rebelling and attacking what they perceive is their enemy.  They see the west as evil and the west views them the same.  Who is correct?

 

The world looks a lot different and gets a whole lot more complicated when you realize "evil" doesn't really exist.

[amateur]

Maybe an apathetic god?  "Hmm, someone just prayed for a new arm.  Meh, it looks good enough as is."

 

A procrastinating god?  "Ten more prayer requests for arms today.  Another 20 for legs.  1500 for starving children.  I have got to get around to this backlog...."

 

A vacationing god?  "Ring ring...."  "Hello, you have reached god.  God will be out of the office until further notice.  To leave prayers of thanksgiving, press 1.  To leave intecessory prayers, press 2 . . . ."

 

If we're going to anthropomorphize god, which we surely do with our "jealous," "angry," "vengeful," "loving," "good," "bad," etc, god, then we may as well go all the way.

[mwc]

     The idea of a loving god has evolved even in the bible.  Earlier on it was acknowledged that the bible god was the source of both good and evil but as time progressed (and other ideas were brought into the religion), the god was thought to be only good and the evil moved to elsewhere (ie. evil spirits and the like).

 

          mwc

[Ravenstar]

We are very sheltered in the modern world, we don't see the slaughtering of the animals we eat, or the sweat of those who grow our food. We don't get out in nature enough to see the great recycling, or we don't notice that all life is food (energy) for other life forms.

 

This is not evil, it is nature, and nature wastes nothing. Our compassion and repulsion at the violence of nature is because we have the capacity to empathize, basically to put ourselves in another's shoes and IMAGINE things happening to us and then projecting that onto others (yes, even animals and insects)... and we have little exposure to the realities of survival, with everything we consume being bloodless and neatly packaged so it's origin is nigh invisible.

 

Evil is destruction for no other reason than enjoying the suffering of other life forms... the insect doesn't ENJOY the suffering of it's prey, it's just eating to survive... only man seems to be capable of destruction for enjoyment.

 

It wasn't too long ago that (most) people had to kill their own food, or sweat and toil to grow and harvest it... life was short, hard and brutal for the most part.

 

However, this has nothing to do with 'god'... a deity could very well be malignant... the modern view of a rainbows and sparkle unicorn-like god is infantile at best, delusional at worst... it does not reflect the reality of the universe we live in. The ancients had a more pragmatic view of the divine, and there are many examples of gods and goddesses that were far more based in the reality that nature can be brutal, capricious and violent as well as nurturing and beautiful.

 

The god of the Bible, early on, was much more based in reality than later on... he was 'sanitized'... and as life got easier for us (through science and technology I might add) and we had the LUXURY of empathy, so did the concept of a 'loving' god evolve. BUT religious people cherry-pick the parts of their book that reinforces the 'loving' part and ignore the bulk of it which describes something much different.. so, I agree that the god described is probably closer to what we would define as evil.. but not because of natures circle of life.

[ExCBooster]

Related, in a round-about way, to what SerendipityRose and Marty said, "people" think a single, all-powerful creator God is good, or, maybe, more to the point, comfortably human-like (because that's what "good" in this sense ultimately means), because, by and large, the "people" we're talking about are human ones. As pointed out earlier, nature does what nature does, and only when it's run through a human perspective does it become "good" or "evil." Even these concepts are moderated somewhat by cultural differences within humanity.

So, ultimately, the question becomes, why do they assume that an all-powerful, all-knowing creator God would be, even remotely, close to something humanity can deal with? Yet, they pray. They have a "relationship with God" they "walk with God" they imagine a God, incarnate as Jesus. Even an evil God would have to be somehow reachable with the human mind, for it to be worshipped out of a hope of bribing it for mercy. That's why, the more people see and understand of "nature red in tooth and claw," the less a concept of God in general makes sense. The existence of the parasitoid wasps was a famous example from Charles Darwin. (Didn't provide a link for the parasitoid wasps, because everything I found was either written in a dry and boring way, or stuffed with incredibly gristly photos, for obvious reasons. A mother wasp with eggs to lay finds a caterpillar of a target species, pins it down, and injects her eggs into it, where the eggs hatch, and eat the caterpillar slowly, carefully sparing internal organs, while a virus associated with the wasps keeps the caterpillar docile and zombie-like. In some cases, the brainwashed caterpillars sometimes even guard the baby wasps while the wasps pupate and turn into more adult wasps. It's not a nice process, but darned interesting, and gardeners love 'em.)

So, to sum up, whether God is "good" ultimately boils down to the assumption that such a thing would be even remotely approachable for the human intellect or intuition. Statistically, the answer's No. There are, however, Other points of view. Misotheism - the belief that God is evil. Or, in a lot of polytheistic religions, Gods are much more complex things. The storm god that might bring your boat to safe harbour is the same one that could flatten the house. Or, for a more modern example, the "cosmic horror" works of H. P. Lovecraft, heavily influenced by the upheaval in physics in the first few years of the 20th Century. Everything we thought we knew turned out to be a LOT weirder and more complicated.

 

Good reading, but maybe not at night... all alone... in the dark...

 

The Call of Cthulhu - H. P. Lovecraft, 1926.

 

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

[Overcame Faith]

So tell me why are people convinced that god is either loving or nonexistent? 

 

I think it is because the concept of a god who is evil is so overwhelming, so terrifying, that many people simply cannot or will not accept the concept.  If people thought god was evil with malevolent intentions, we could never be safe.  Far more comforting to think of a "good" god doing battle for our benefit against an evil being like Satan.  At least in that there is hope.

[Guest Marty]

 

So tell me why are people convinced that god is either loving or nonexistent? 

 

I think it is because the concept of a god who is evil is so overwhelming, so terrifying, that many people simply cannot or will not accept the concept.  If people thought god was evil with malevolent intentions, we could never be safe.  Far more comforting to think of a "good" god doing battle for our benefit against an evil being like Satan.  At least in that there is hope.

 

 

Satan is an evil god though.  It doesn't matter if christians define him as a "demon" or "being", they give him power over human events, human minds, and power in this "physical realm".  The only god like power they do not attribute to him is creation.  In all ways that matter, christianity has the 3 gods of the trinity plus a pure evil god in satan.

[Aggie]

Maybe Satan wrote large hunks of the Bible and has fooled multitudes by getting the whole thing marked as a holy book.  Would explain all the divinely-sanctioned bloodlust, brutality, holy warfare, cruelty, hellfire, factual mistakes, contradictions in there...

 

Here's "proof" from the Bible...

 

“Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14).

[RipVanWinkle]

Rach: I have asked myself the very same question. We say that when we look around it is is easy to see that there is no perfectly good god because of all the bad things we see around us and what we learned

from history. It is not such a big step to say the opposite for evil for the same reasons we decided there is no good god. Arguing about whether there is "evil" or not is in in the abstract for me. When I

know of things so horrible I wish I had never heard of them, like soldiers using their swords to cut

and impale an unborn baby in front of the mother who is still alive, the argument of "What is evil?"

does not appeal to me.

 

I don't care what you call it. We all know what we're talking about. The world in many times and places is horrible. Isn't that consistent with an evil (or whatever word you want to use)god? My conclusion

is that it is more consistent with nature being wholly indifferent to pain and death of any kind of

life, including human. I don't see an "evil intent in nature, and as to humans, we are still and

always will be animals. bill

[Kurari]

I think it's just more people trying to avoid reality. The Bible is very, very clear about both the good and evil aspects of God. God even created whole beings of evil (Satan and demons).

But as usual, nobody ever wants to acknowledge that until it suits them to do so.

[mymistake]

I think there is too much good in the world for an all evil, all powerful, all knowing God to exist.  It's the Problem of Evil working the other way.  If there is something like a god or gods then it (or they) probably haven't noticed life on Earth.  Stars and black holes and dark energy and dark matter are farm more worthy of attention.

[megasamurai]

My thoughts are that Christians already believe in an evil God. He promises to stir fry 70% of the population. They just interpret an evil action as good. They just say something like, "These people have sinned and deserve it, or these people want to be sent to hell. Justice is more important than compassion. Fuck compassion. Compassion makes you corrupt and evil and blinds you from the reality of God's mercy". I cannot condone hell. The idea makes me sad.

[Deva]

People like to "look on the bright side".  Most people want to believe their lives are going to get better, positive thinking and all that.  An evil god would not fit into that picture.  How many people, even Christians, actually believe in the devil or a powerful personified force of evil?  Certainly not in the more liberal churches and not among the positive thinking New Agers either.  

 

In fact, Lovecraft was correct.  Science has opened doors and many people don't really want to look at it. So far it doesn't fit with the idea of a loving god.  That's why the fundamentalist Christians don't want to look too closely at evolution. It simply doesn't fit with the Biblical picture. Not only no loving god, but if there is one, perhaps one that is indifferent or worse. Upon further discoveries, it will most likely become more and more difficult to tranquilize ourselves with the idea of a loving god.

[RipVanWinkle]

Unless bad things stop happening at the rate they always have, I think it is virtually impossible to

honestly believe in a good god, unless he/she/it is virtually powerless. bill

[◊ crazyguy123 ◊]

Evil is a human concept from human minds and is completely relative.  You see an insect eating another as evil, but that insect is only trying to survive.  It is no more evil than a lion is evil for taking down a zebra.  Are you evil for eating chicken and cow?  Perhaps an alien coming to this planet would consider you evil for eating lower animals, would that alien be incorrect?

 

Many in the west consider Islamic terrorists as evil, but they are only rebelling and attacking what they perceive is their enemy.  They see the west as evil and the west views them the same.  Who is correct?

 

The world looks a lot different and gets a whole lot more complicated when you realize "evil" doesn't really exist.

 

If there is a such thing as evil, I don't think a lion is necessarily evil for taking down a zebra or that a human is evil for eating a chicken or a cow. The evil would likely to have only been committed by the god that set up a system in which living things must rip each other to shreds to ensure their own survival. It's sort of like he/she/it created life this way for the entertainment of watching living things kill each other.

 

Of course, it works far better to put the word "sadistic" or "cruel" in there because, like you said, evil is completely relative. I could say that eating peanut butter is evil (because I hate the taste of the stuff) and I would be correct.

[rach]

 The evil would likely to have only been committed by the god that set up a system in which living things must rip each other to shreds to ensure their own survival. It's sort of like he/she/it created life this way for the entertainment of watching living things kill each other.

 

 

Crazyguy I think you hit the nail on the head.  I am very worried that there is a god of some sort who designed animals to kill each other so he can be entertained. 

[RogueScholar]

If you really dig deep into biology and look at natural selection, much of what occurs in the animal kingdom is not evil in a biblical sense but rather a complex interplay of trying to survive with the most helpful traits generally winning out. At least in a probabilistic sense over many generations. The order and complexity of selection pressures and traits does not seem to be so much an amusing game to an outside divine ruler but rather a process resulting from conditions that favour certain types of chemistry along with concepts that are not yet well understood.

 

There is no evidence of a divine mechanism at work and this "behaviour" is highly self consistent and is even seen among microscopic life. I see no need to attribute anything to a god mechanism good or evil. When taken into context, what occurs on this planet is so provencial compared to the universe that it's just a tiny footnote among a possibly uncountable number of processes.

[bornagainathiest]

To Rach and ExCBooster...

 

Today I reached back thru the aeons and recalled a short story I read in my youth about a Good/Evil god. 

It's by Clark Ashton Smith, a friend of H.P. Lovecraft and a fellow writer of weird tales. 

Enjoy! 

 

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/188/

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

[ExCanadianReformed]

Satan is an evil god though.  It doesn't matter if christians define him as a "demon" or "being", they give him power over human events, human minds, and power in this "physical realm".  The only god like power they do not attribute to him is creation.  In all ways that matter, christianity has the 3 gods of the trinity plus a pure evil god in satan.

 

+1

[rach]

BAA thanks for sharing the story!  It sort of reminded me of part of the movie Lord of the Rings where the king is put under an evil spell (remember that guy?  Theoden)

[ExCBooster]

That was a great story, and I loved the early psychiatry angle. Thank you!