(The following is a comprehension explanation of the most sensible interpretation of christian mythology)
Because evil was an unavoidable glitch in the matrix. God created independent beings with the ability to make their own choices. He taught them how to be good, and made them perfect in every way possible. These were angels. The things is God saw it coming, if it wasn’t Lucifer it would have been some other angel. Angels were created never knowing suffering or pain, they didn’t even know that dying was a thing that was possible. So God made them in ranks and gave them different responsibilities, not based on character but in order of creation. Lucifer becomes one of the first angels created, along with Gabriel and other unnamed angels we don’t know. Like Gabriel, he stood close to God as a light-bearer or cherubim as some call them. These angels would spread their wings around the throne of God and sort of “hold” his immense power from overflowing. They never actually stopped any power from escaping but symbolized God’s immense energy, kind of like saying “I am so powerful i made someone to mediate my power”. Somewhere between the creation of heaven and earth, Lucifer began getting a little selfish. His position holding the power of God in his hands made him wonder why he was also worshipped. He had it all. One of the first angels, wisest angel, one of the most adorned angels. Like anyone today, it got to his head. Other angels struggled with this thought also. Feeling they were beautiful and deserving of some kind of throne. Lucifer was just the first to speak out, to represent what most angels were feeling inside (Like hitler and the germans). Long story short, evil is like cancer, you can’t just cut out the mass, but you need to destroy the cells that send the mixed signals. That’s what God is doing. He’s killing the cells but destroying the idealogies of evil. He’s not just killing lucifer and getting on with things because alot of angels felt like lucifer, and killing him alone would have made him a martyr. We got the short end because of Adam and Eve, but it’s not all their fault.
To conclude, God saw it coming a galaxy away.
“Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.” Isaiah 46:10.
It was gonna happen eventually. This was the best way to deal with it.
I am not religious, God to me means nothing more than what started everything in the beginning, which I also believe will be never answered, I don’t believe God is all good never and never was, right and wrong good and evil are what we as individuals or in packs decide what they should be.
Religion’s are Man made, Man has made up these stories to control us for one reason or another, human beings are predators like any other life form our basic instincts is to survive, humans are nothing more than predators trying to control other predators, it’s about survival.
Maybe because the “all good” part just isn’t true. Maybe we created that aspect of “god” so we could feel safe and warm and cared about. It’s obvious that the world in which we live is a violent place and death and suffering abound. Pawning it off on “evil” is an easy way for us to turn “god” into the good guy we like to believe in, we NEED to believe in, but what’s so difficult to understand -whatever is responsible for this world is just fine with the misery it includes. Maybe we shouldn’t have lied to ourselves and told ourselves there’s a separate force of goodness watching out for us, because there just isnt, and now we’re disappointed and angry at. . . what? Our own stupidity?
“Maybe because the “all good” part just isn’t true.”
That is SO spot-on.
Something created the universe. We can call it “God”. I’m fine with that. But then suddenly everyone started assuming that God is “all good” (meaning dedicated solely to making humans happy). What a bizarre assumption that is, totally corrupting a simple concept.
I am not an atheist. I believe in a “god” (meaning I believe in a force that created us). But beyond that, all assumptions of what “he” looks like & act like, or if this force is even still existing, is just fairy tale guesswork.
I don’t think this question matters personally. Even if you knew for a fact there was a god or not, your life would still continue the same way as it always has. Would knowing one exists make you not depressed anymore? Things happen in this world, and whether it’s by a god or by coincidence, we still have to experiance them.
God is a loaded word with too many meanings and too few letters. Religion and God are mutually exclusive as well. But I am assuming you are coming from a Judeo-Christian POV. So a few things to keep in mind
Perfection (God) and Paradise (all-good) are not the same thing. In fact, for Paradise to be actually understood by humans, the existence of non-paradise is a necessity. That both exist is the true work of Perfection.
Good and Evil can be very subjective across time and space. There are a few things that nearly everyone would agree are purely one or the other, but there are many, many more that will be described (and legitimately experienced) as one or the other at one point in time or one location and the very same thing will be experienced differently by different people at different locations or times. Descriptive moral relativism is just a fact.
Humans have existed for an infinitesimal fraction of the time that the universe has and as far as we can tell, good and evil are only experienced and labeled by us. Death and destruction have rained down and wiped out countless species before we got here and it all led to the evolution of the species here now including us. Is that good or evil? Or just nature? What exactly do we experience on a scale approaching anywhere near that and what makes it different? Is that Gods fault?
God created our lives to be finite so we will pass on someday. Sounds like a good God to me. I won’t be bringing this failing body or any of these other flawed creatures with me. That also sounds good.
We humans tend to look to others to explain God to us when we all have the ability to find out for ourselves. I never understood that. We also tend to blame God for what man has created and I never understood that either. And if God was going to do anything for us would he have not begun each of our lives with complete understanding, wisdom and knowledge?
It is up to us to ‘do’ in this world and pass on. What comes next is a matter of the soul and nothing less.
If you want proof of God you must look inside, for what spiritual proof do you expect to find in this physical world if not inside your own being?
All is God but all is not great. Hence, God is not great. He is not a person, maybe It is not even a thing. God is not good and also not just. God just is, or perhaps isn’t. Doesn’t matter either way. We’re only matter. Why should It care?
This is a tricky question, especially for a site like this. Devoid of any hope, how can we believe in any good god? So many people have their own interpretations of God, with various levels of goodness. If you are, indeed, asking about the Christian God, I can try to explain what He is like, and what the Bible says about this subject 🙂
First, I’m far from a pastor, so don’t judge what I say as something all christians believe. I am a born-again christian, but hey, I’m here on this site, aren’t I?
God isn’t solely a God of goodness; he’s a God of love. For there to be love, there must be a choice. It would be easy to create a robot who can only do certain things, but there would be a lack of meaning behind it. For there to be good, there must also be evil, or “good” would just be normal. You can’t appreciate all the wonderful things if there was never anything wrong that could possibly happen. Evil must exist for there to be good.
Getting to the point I’m sure you had in asking this question, why is there suffering? Why must there be pain and hurt, and why does God allow it?
Humans were given a choice. As I’m sure everyone knows, Eve took the apple allowing Sin and Evil into the world. But beyond that, so many choices that we ourselves make today also impact the world, good and bad. Most of the time, choices made by others impact us, and we make more based on the hurt caused to us, and it spirals our of control and into the world we have now. It’s horrible we have to suffer being born into this, but we still get choices, such as choosing to follow God. He gives us the choice to be given His grace and salvation, but we don’t have to accept it. If you do accept it, it won’t take you away from everything right now. You’ll still live in a broken world. But you can better understand how it fits in His plan and the purpose of suffering, and find some hope in that. We as humans value our choices, and this is ours. He wouldn’t be a good God if we didn’t get a choice, and He wants us to choose His love.
He would absolutely be a good god if we didn’t get a choice. Screw having a choice. Choices are the literal worst thing ever. Screw choice. Screw free will. Screw the whole thing. Why would a god make a bunch of stupid monkeys able to recognize their own mortality, their own foibles, their own failures, and then condemn them for being the thing that they are? That makes no sense at all. If god were a good god, he’d descend from Heaven on day 1 and assert his existence as a plain, unarguable fact to everybody, on every level possible. There would be no ambiguity about it. The fact that there is ambiguity tells me that either A) god is just a mean jerk, B) god gave up on this stupid, stupid world of stupid monkeys and went off to make something somewhere else, far away from this whole mess, or C) there is no god and this temporal, short life is all we’ll ever know, and there is no purpose or meaning to any of it, and that’s not a bad thing.
Sorry, I wasn’t asking you to! This site is very clear about no religious trying-to-win-you-over-ness, I’m only attempting to explain how we see it. 🙂
God does not want to condemn us. But He does want us to have free will, and if you hate the idea of choices and free will (something I could totally understand,) I do see where it would seem cruel. I’m certainly no expert on this though, so I can’t give a full argument on all of your points, and I really don’t want to violate any site rules. Im sure there are others somewhere else on the internet who could answer any questions if wanted to have a full discussion about this!
But why would anyone need to talk about god on his behalf? That just seems like a really poor plan on his part. I mean, the entire Bible is basically one long story of people usurping authority from god by claiming to represent him, and then abusing that authority repeatedly and consistently. You’d think eventually god would learn his lesson and make it clear to everyone, for all time, without any ambiguity. I think god – and not a person claiming to speak for him – has some explaining to do.
If there was a God you wouldn’t have to ask that question, because you’d be able to talk to him directly. But obviously there is no God, there never was, it was simply an invention of primitive human cultures that were trying to make sense of the world.
They imagined that just as they create and reshape materials to make tools, there might’ve been a being that created our universe. This was an idea, a theory, nothing more.
For a God to be a fact, what is required is evidence. If I told you I’m a superhero and I can jump into a volcano and then fly out of it unharmed, that’s merely a claim, I would actually have to demonstrate for that to be believed and accepted.
To prove a God is real, you have to make this being appear and confirm all of his magic powers. Now consider the question of good and evil without worrying about the nonsensical notion of an invisible space ghost.
Evil is basically when people act in their own self-interest which leads to the harm or suffering of others. People try to be ‘good’ because they don’t wish to be harmed themselves (like robbed, beaten, killed).
17 comments
(The following is a comprehension explanation of the most sensible interpretation of christian mythology)
Because evil was an unavoidable glitch in the matrix. God created independent beings with the ability to make their own choices. He taught them how to be good, and made them perfect in every way possible. These were angels. The things is God saw it coming, if it wasn’t Lucifer it would have been some other angel. Angels were created never knowing suffering or pain, they didn’t even know that dying was a thing that was possible. So God made them in ranks and gave them different responsibilities, not based on character but in order of creation. Lucifer becomes one of the first angels created, along with Gabriel and other unnamed angels we don’t know. Like Gabriel, he stood close to God as a light-bearer or cherubim as some call them. These angels would spread their wings around the throne of God and sort of “hold” his immense power from overflowing. They never actually stopped any power from escaping but symbolized God’s immense energy, kind of like saying “I am so powerful i made someone to mediate my power”. Somewhere between the creation of heaven and earth, Lucifer began getting a little selfish. His position holding the power of God in his hands made him wonder why he was also worshipped. He had it all. One of the first angels, wisest angel, one of the most adorned angels. Like anyone today, it got to his head. Other angels struggled with this thought also. Feeling they were beautiful and deserving of some kind of throne. Lucifer was just the first to speak out, to represent what most angels were feeling inside (Like hitler and the germans). Long story short, evil is like cancer, you can’t just cut out the mass, but you need to destroy the cells that send the mixed signals. That’s what God is doing. He’s killing the cells but destroying the idealogies of evil. He’s not just killing lucifer and getting on with things because alot of angels felt like lucifer, and killing him alone would have made him a martyr. We got the short end because of Adam and Eve, but it’s not all their fault.
To conclude, God saw it coming a galaxy away.
“Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.” Isaiah 46:10.
It was gonna happen eventually. This was the best way to deal with it.
Correction: Holding God’s power made Lucifer wonder why he WASNT ALSO worshipped
I am not religious, God to me means nothing more than what started everything in the beginning, which I also believe will be never answered, I don’t believe God is all good never and never was, right and wrong good and evil are what we as individuals or in packs decide what they should be.
Religion’s are Man made, Man has made up these stories to control us for one reason or another, human beings are predators like any other life form our basic instincts is to survive, humans are nothing more than predators trying to control other predators, it’s about survival.
Maybe because the “all good” part just isn’t true. Maybe we created that aspect of “god” so we could feel safe and warm and cared about. It’s obvious that the world in which we live is a violent place and death and suffering abound. Pawning it off on “evil” is an easy way for us to turn “god” into the good guy we like to believe in, we NEED to believe in, but what’s so difficult to understand -whatever is responsible for this world is just fine with the misery it includes. Maybe we shouldn’t have lied to ourselves and told ourselves there’s a separate force of goodness watching out for us, because there just isnt, and now we’re disappointed and angry at. . . what? Our own stupidity?
“Maybe because the “all good” part just isn’t true.”
That is SO spot-on.
Something created the universe. We can call it “God”. I’m fine with that. But then suddenly everyone started assuming that God is “all good” (meaning dedicated solely to making humans happy). What a bizarre assumption that is, totally corrupting a simple concept.
I am not an atheist. I believe in a “god” (meaning I believe in a force that created us). But beyond that, all assumptions of what “he” looks like & act like, or if this force is even still existing, is just fairy tale guesswork.
I don’t think this question matters personally. Even if you knew for a fact there was a god or not, your life would still continue the same way as it always has. Would knowing one exists make you not depressed anymore? Things happen in this world, and whether it’s by a god or by coincidence, we still have to experiance them.
God is a loaded word with too many meanings and too few letters. Religion and God are mutually exclusive as well. But I am assuming you are coming from a Judeo-Christian POV. So a few things to keep in mind
Perfection (God) and Paradise (all-good) are not the same thing. In fact, for Paradise to be actually understood by humans, the existence of non-paradise is a necessity. That both exist is the true work of Perfection.
Good and Evil can be very subjective across time and space. There are a few things that nearly everyone would agree are purely one or the other, but there are many, many more that will be described (and legitimately experienced) as one or the other at one point in time or one location and the very same thing will be experienced differently by different people at different locations or times. Descriptive moral relativism is just a fact.
Humans have existed for an infinitesimal fraction of the time that the universe has and as far as we can tell, good and evil are only experienced and labeled by us. Death and destruction have rained down and wiped out countless species before we got here and it all led to the evolution of the species here now including us. Is that good or evil? Or just nature? What exactly do we experience on a scale approaching anywhere near that and what makes it different? Is that Gods fault?
God created our lives to be finite so we will pass on someday. Sounds like a good God to me. I won’t be bringing this failing body or any of these other flawed creatures with me. That also sounds good.
We humans tend to look to others to explain God to us when we all have the ability to find out for ourselves. I never understood that. We also tend to blame God for what man has created and I never understood that either. And if God was going to do anything for us would he have not begun each of our lives with complete understanding, wisdom and knowledge?
It is up to us to ‘do’ in this world and pass on. What comes next is a matter of the soul and nothing less.
If you want proof of God you must look inside, for what spiritual proof do you expect to find in this physical world if not inside your own being?
All is God but all is not great. Hence, God is not great. He is not a person, maybe It is not even a thing. God is not good and also not just. God just is, or perhaps isn’t. Doesn’t matter either way. We’re only matter. Why should It care?
This is a tricky question, especially for a site like this. Devoid of any hope, how can we believe in any good god? So many people have their own interpretations of God, with various levels of goodness. If you are, indeed, asking about the Christian God, I can try to explain what He is like, and what the Bible says about this subject 🙂
First, I’m far from a pastor, so don’t judge what I say as something all christians believe. I am a born-again christian, but hey, I’m here on this site, aren’t I?
God isn’t solely a God of goodness; he’s a God of love. For there to be love, there must be a choice. It would be easy to create a robot who can only do certain things, but there would be a lack of meaning behind it. For there to be good, there must also be evil, or “good” would just be normal. You can’t appreciate all the wonderful things if there was never anything wrong that could possibly happen. Evil must exist for there to be good.
Getting to the point I’m sure you had in asking this question, why is there suffering? Why must there be pain and hurt, and why does God allow it?
Humans were given a choice. As I’m sure everyone knows, Eve took the apple allowing Sin and Evil into the world. But beyond that, so many choices that we ourselves make today also impact the world, good and bad. Most of the time, choices made by others impact us, and we make more based on the hurt caused to us, and it spirals our of control and into the world we have now. It’s horrible we have to suffer being born into this, but we still get choices, such as choosing to follow God. He gives us the choice to be given His grace and salvation, but we don’t have to accept it. If you do accept it, it won’t take you away from everything right now. You’ll still live in a broken world. But you can better understand how it fits in His plan and the purpose of suffering, and find some hope in that. We as humans value our choices, and this is ours. He wouldn’t be a good God if we didn’t get a choice, and He wants us to choose His love.
He would absolutely be a good god if we didn’t get a choice. Screw having a choice. Choices are the literal worst thing ever. Screw choice. Screw free will. Screw the whole thing. Why would a god make a bunch of stupid monkeys able to recognize their own mortality, their own foibles, their own failures, and then condemn them for being the thing that they are? That makes no sense at all. If god were a good god, he’d descend from Heaven on day 1 and assert his existence as a plain, unarguable fact to everybody, on every level possible. There would be no ambiguity about it. The fact that there is ambiguity tells me that either A) god is just a mean jerk, B) god gave up on this stupid, stupid world of stupid monkeys and went off to make something somewhere else, far away from this whole mess, or C) there is no god and this temporal, short life is all we’ll ever know, and there is no purpose or meaning to any of it, and that’s not a bad thing.
notwanted, Sorry not buying it. 🙂
Sorry, I wasn’t asking you to! This site is very clear about no religious trying-to-win-you-over-ness, I’m only attempting to explain how we see it. 🙂
God does not want to condemn us. But He does want us to have free will, and if you hate the idea of choices and free will (something I could totally understand,) I do see where it would seem cruel. I’m certainly no expert on this though, so I can’t give a full argument on all of your points, and I really don’t want to violate any site rules. Im sure there are others somewhere else on the internet who could answer any questions if wanted to have a full discussion about this!
Wishing you all the best 🙂
But why would anyone need to talk about god on his behalf? That just seems like a really poor plan on his part. I mean, the entire Bible is basically one long story of people usurping authority from god by claiming to represent him, and then abusing that authority repeatedly and consistently. You’d think eventually god would learn his lesson and make it clear to everyone, for all time, without any ambiguity. I think god – and not a person claiming to speak for him – has some explaining to do.
God is a Tomato and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are his prophets. (look it up)
What, you didn’t think I’d offer a meaningful reply to a god thing, did you?
If there was a God you wouldn’t have to ask that question, because you’d be able to talk to him directly. But obviously there is no God, there never was, it was simply an invention of primitive human cultures that were trying to make sense of the world.
They imagined that just as they create and reshape materials to make tools, there might’ve been a being that created our universe. This was an idea, a theory, nothing more.
For a God to be a fact, what is required is evidence. If I told you I’m a superhero and I can jump into a volcano and then fly out of it unharmed, that’s merely a claim, I would actually have to demonstrate for that to be believed and accepted.
To prove a God is real, you have to make this being appear and confirm all of his magic powers. Now consider the question of good and evil without worrying about the nonsensical notion of an invisible space ghost.
Evil is basically when people act in their own self-interest which leads to the harm or suffering of others. People try to be ‘good’ because they don’t wish to be harmed themselves (like robbed, beaten, killed).
So no there is no go
disregard the last 6 words I forgot to delete them.