God is Evil: Hard Facts and Misconceptions
Many people believe God is evil by the evidence of evil which is manifested in the world. In fact, some go as far as to claim the Bible proves God is evil. Can we rightly accuse God as being evil? Are there any proofs that substantiate beyond any doubt God is evil? I have read various articles that try to justify this belief. However, I have noted many people have the wrong conception of who God is, and why evil exists. Thus, this article aims to prove God is not evil, and is not the inventor of evil.
The Creation Story
Genesis 1
The first chapter of Genesis narrates how God created the heavens and the earth, light and darkness, animals and plants, and human beings. On the sixth day He completed
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He positioned the Tree of Knowledge in order to test man. As evidenced by the Bible, man failed the test God had placed for him. Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the fruit from the Tree of knowledge. Thus, they were banished from the Garden of Eden. The result of their disobedience against God has resulted to the many evils we experience in the …show more content…
The serpent! Yah, blame Satan for the woes we face in the world but not wholly. Adam and Eve, the first human beings also contributed to the evil we face in the world because they heeded the devil’s lie instead of obeying God’s commands.
Did Satan, in form of a serpent deceive Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of Conscience? No! He told her the truth but in a perverse manner. Have you ever come across a person who is saying the truth but is in effect lying to you?
Why didn’t Satan approach Adam? He knew very well Adam wouldn’t give in to his lies. Did Eve deceive his husband to eat the fruit? No! She told Adam what the Devil had told her and that she had eaten the fruit. When Adam ate the fruit both their spiritual eyes were opened. They realized they were naked, a sign they could differentiate between good and bad. It was the commencement of spiritual and physical death.
Someone might ask, “If God knew Satan would rebel against Him, why did He create him?” God created angels to serve Him. What’s more, we fail to notice one of the many aspects of God – He never wants to be served or worshipped or to have a relationship with ‘robots’ which don’t have a mind of their own. This is understandable. How would you feel if you are married to a man or woman who doesn’t have a mind of his/her own? You would divorce
It is perhaps the most difficult intellectual challenge to a Christian how God and evil can both exist. Many of the greatest minds of the Christian church and intellects such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas spent their entire lives trying to solve this problem, and were unsuccessful (Erickson, 2009, p.439). However, this dilemma is not only an intellectual challenge, but it is emotional. Man feels it, lives it. Failing to identify the religious form of the problem of evil will appear insensitive; failure to address the theological form will seem intellectually insulting. This conundrum will never be completely met during our earthly life, but there are many biblical and philosophical resources that help mitigate it.
In this scripture, the serpent said,” you will not die” is referring to a spiritual death. Rather than a spiritual death, neither Adam nor Eve had experienced evil. Their eyes were opened and they became like God having knowledge of good and evil. Their nakedness became an occasion of shame, which was impossible before they sinned in the garden. The day that they fell from grace, signifies that they were no longer in compliance with God’s commands.
Suppose he had a reason to permit evil, a reason that was compatible with his never doing wrong and his being perfect in love, what I 'll call a justifying reason. For example, suppose that if he prevented evil completely, then we would miss out on a greater good, a good whose goodness was so great that it far surpassed the badness of evil. In that case, he might not prevent evil as far as he can, for he would have a justifying reason to permit it” (5). Even if God had a reason to allow evil, he who is all loving and powerful would want the least amount of people to suffer and feel pain. Since God knows what is going to happen before it actually happens, would he not be morally obligated to stop people from doing something evil to others, or preventing suffering by those who have been hurt by evil?
Now, to the untrained eye, it may be possible to interpret the aforementioned text as having certain "scheisty" tendencies coming from both the serpent and, believe it or not, God himself. As possible as it may seem, the main theme of the passages of Genesis are not trying to show God as being greedy with the knowledge of good and evil. It isn't like God was worried that Adam and Eve would gain knowledge that would empower them and make them as gods. That is almost preposterous to think that God, the almighty creator of heaven and earth, would be worried about two mortals obtaining a little bit of information. In all actuality, that idea is incredibly far from the truth. God gave Adam and Eve the world, literally. This perfect world, a "heaven on earth", was just given to them out of the goodness of his heart. All they had to do was look over God's creations and enjoy true eternal bliss. As a matter of fact, the only rule that God gave to Adam and Eve was to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All they had to do to live in the eternal paradise, with all the cookies and milk they could stomach, was to follow that one freakin' rule. Acknowledging the fact that the serpent (a.k.a. Satan Incarnate) did do its part in persuading Eve to eat the fruit and to give the fruit to her husband. Even still, Eve should have realized that she was risking eternal happiness for the words of a snake.
In Paradise Lost, one of the differences God is aware of the betrayal his creations unlike Frankenstein. There is a point where Adam desires a companion to share the world with, thus God creates Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. He is in a predicament now, due to there are now two beings to love now, but who deserves the more affection. He “can neither love himself adequately nor love Eve as himself unless have love God adequately – and so make his love for Eve, the unity of their shared self, an expression of that higher love” (Gross 95). This scene displays one of Adam’s limitations of his free will. Thus creating her in being the submissive which eventually became her downfall, Adam’s and the rest of humanity. Eve is flawed, she has the inclination of self-love, a quality she should not be capable of possessing or acting upon. The only love that she should be expressing is her love for Adam in a way also loving God. This becomes their weakness. Satan learns about this weakness and exploits it as his advantage to enact his scheme. He influences a susceptible Eve, by coercing her into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge. He claims to Eve about the fruit “By the fruit? It gives you life To knowledge by the threat’ner? Look on me, Me, who have touched and tasted; yet both live” (Book 9 l. 686-688). Satan is able to persuade them to consume the fruit that provides them
If God exists and is all-knowing, then there is no evil that God does not know about. If God exists and is morally perfect, then there is no evil that God would permit that He cannot prevent.
the tree of knowledge of good and evil he became more human like. Eve was
Within the Garden of Eden God placed two exquisite trees. Each quite different in its purpose, however both proved to play an integral role in the tale of man?s beginning. Perhaps the better known of the two, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, was the only one, which God imposed a contingency upon. ?You many freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of if you shall die.? Is this to imply that knowledge is perhaps more important and therefore more closely guarded than life?
She finally was convinced and ate the fruit. Eve was to busy be devouring the fruit. Maybe it was the best fruit she ever tasted, or maybe she just imagined it because she expected it to be since Satan insisted it was. Eve honestly thought she will grow smarter and smarter till she is like a God who knows everything. Eve said “Till dieted by thee I grow mature in knowledge, as the Gods who all things know” (Book IX, lines 803-804). Eve was convinced with Satan arguments completely.
The witch, indicative of the serpent, tempts the mother and father with her rampion so that she might steal their child. In the story of creation, the serpent has the same idea in mind for Adam and Eve. The serpent knows that if man sins against God, he is unable to enter heaven and therefore must face the alternative, a life of eternal suffering in hell. In eating the forbidden fruit, the parents are cursing their child, humanity, to a life apart from God. But, just as with Adam and Eve, the parents must also endure earthly hardships, characterized by childbirth. In Genesis 3:17, Eve is cursed to bear children through intense pain; consequently, Rapunzel was born. ...
And He [God] said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Eve’s language is drastically altered when she partakes of the forbidden fruit. It becomes permeated with blasphemy, self-praise and selfish words.
The serpent even states to Eve that “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (NIV, Gen 3:5). The next few lines are completely different from what is shown by Milton. It says that when Eve saw that the fruit was good and she began to desire wisdom she took some and ate it. Then she game some to Adam who was with her. This is a very large contrast from Milton’s work because this shows that Adam was present the whole time of the serpent and Eve’s discussion. In the poem “Verses for Madonna of humility with the temptation of Eve” Lynn Powell takes a very graphic and almost nostalgic look at the story of Adam and Eve. Her poem states “Eve 's lying at eye level, propped up on an elbow./And never has abyss been so good to pink,/ the void a perfect foil for her foreground flesh./She fits into the black like a woman/ ready to be skewered in a vaudeville act./ You can tell the painter loves her, the way/ You can tell the painter loves her/ he 's touched her every place he can with paint./ And he 's noticed what she 's thinking:/ holding the pear, as Hamlet did the skull,/ while gazing up at someone who 's got everything to lose./ Eve 's about to make the choice Mary has to live with./
3.1-5). God’s forbin law stated that, “Ye [Adam and Eve] shall not eat of it [the tree of good and evil], neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die (Gen. 3.3).” With the law in the forefront of Eve’s mind, Satan still deceived the women into eating the forbidden fruit by saying, “ye eat...then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil (Bowers 273 & Gen. 3.6).” Satan's deceptive nature convinced Eve to eat from the restricted tree, leading to her own, Adam’s and mankind’s separation from God (Bowers 265). This disobedience presented sin to the world and strengthened Satan's goal to, “wage by force or guile eternal war (Milton 309).” Although the Serpent destroyed the perfect relationship between God and man, by causing Eve to sin, both accounts of the fall gives mankind future hope of redemption (Rosenblatt 28 &
...to this seduction because she wishes for an alternate world, a world where she would understand her identity, shed her naïveté, and gain independence from Adam. God and Adam try to conquer Eve by imposing rules and ownership upon her, but this does not work. The mother of all mankind falls from her state of grace and innocence when she perceives that she will gain from her seduction by Satan and by disobeying God and Adam.