If God is good, why so much evil? -my own faith crisis

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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If God is good, why is there so much evil? As a believer, I had heard this question posed many times, but I had always been able to dismiss it as the grumblings of those who were simply unwilling, for one reason or other, to accept the possibility of a god. As a Christian, I had been taught that you just had to accept certain things, without questioning them. And while I thought about it, and read what others had said about this, I never could come up with a satisfactory answer. Nevertheless, I remained loyal to the belief in a good, kind, loving God. This all changed when my faith was put to the test.

Jesus had said that his followers would be able to perform miracles greater than those he himself had done. This would entail healing the sick, raising the dead, making the blind to see etc. Of course, in all my years as a Christian, I never saw any of this sort of stuff, but I had always dismissed it as the shortcomings of a people whose faith was weak. Then there was this young woman who got sick with cancer. She believed in the power of prayer, as did her friends and family, and they all prayed devotedly for her recovery, and she got the best of treatment. Still, her cancer kept getting worse, and she eventually died. Seeing as their prayers had failed her, I was ready to conclude that their faith must have been weak, and so now they would all abandon religion. But not so. If anything, the experience seemed to strengthen their faith. So I had to ask myself, if that’s not faith, what is? And if faith can’t really heal the sick, then why do we say that it can?

That’s when I began to look at the Bible more critically. This supposedly infallible book, as it turns out, is replete with errors, self-contradictions, stories written sometimes centuries after the alleged events, supposed historic events that cannot be corroborated by any archaeological evidence or by the histories of contemporary civilizations. The Bible, it seems, is a collection of allegories, myths, legends, midrashes, or just gross exaggerations of persons and events that were just a little extraordinary, but probably not miraculous.

I found myself, for the first time, seriously questioning the very existence of God. Now when some people begin to question what they had been taught about God, they often end up dismissing the possibility of a god altogether, rather than asking themselves if their perception of God had merely been flawed. I could no longer accept the Bible as fact, but still, I had seen too much in my lifetime to know that some things cannot be explained by science. So I was forced to confront this question, if there is a God, is he good. And since I could no longer just blindly accept what the Bible has to say about God, I needed something I could see with my own eyes to tell me what kind of God he really is. My search led me to a most unexpected source.

TO BE CONTINUED …

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Hi, welcome to the forums!

You might be interested in this thread, I struggled with the same thing some 2 years ago: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=185125#p2450825

Although I no longer defend the deductive version of the argument, that post surmises my position, more or less, and some people have made good challenges to my argument. I think the issue has really been discussed in depth and from many perspectives.

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The exact same question:

[i]"Since (if) the universe is made entirely of energy (which it is), why isn’t everything hot? How could such a huge field of pure energy have so much cold in it?

Atheist: The universe must not be made of energy, instead they lied to me. They are always lying to us. They do nothing but lie to us. We should not believe anything they say. They are the only real evil. Of course, there is no chance whatsoever that I am merely too stupid to actually see what I am talking about."[/i]

Good and evil are relative to one’s intentions. God is not.
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Think (and/or feel) not in terms of good and evil, least ye die.”

Hot and cold are not fixed properties of objects, but rather the behavior of their current state. The same is true of the good and the evil. They are merely current behaviors. The “gift of God” is the ability to alter such behaviors. But without faith in such an effort (often requiring very many), evil prevails.

Evil is merely anything that is anti-life. Life is not the most fundamental existence in the universe. There are a great many activities that must occur below the level we call “life”. Only some of those activities are pro-life (“good”), most are not (“evil”). But without all of them, the universe could not exist at all, much less any life. Life cannot exist without at very lest, a perception or degree of its antithesis. Life is guided by its perception of hope and threat. Life cannot have one without the other merely because they are relative concepts and perceptions.

And no doubt, you actually experience “miracles” quite often. A miracle is merely an uplifting event that no one thought possible. A miracle can also be relative in that what some people expect vs what others expect can vary greatly and is never entirely accurate. The fact that one can examine the details in retrospect and perceive a cause, is irrelevant to it being an actual miracle. The message is to strive and hope for what good things that you don’t really expect, because by holding out such hope, by “having faith” (maintaining hope), miracles DO happen … merely because someone kept trying.

The universe (via God) favors those who maintain hope over maintaining fear. Fear scatters and destroys. Hope gathers and protects.

…and Jesus was right. People have done more than even his miracles. You have merely been tricked into thinking they are not “miracles” merely because there is someone, somewhere who has some knowledge of why they happen, or at least is willing to claim that he does.

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God can be good and the world still contain ‘evil’, same as a person can be.

It comes down to this for me; a creator god could make a world with his absolute word where everything does what the God says ~ and we would be puppets.
Or
A creator god can create a world which grows and lives through its own volition, and in us that’s through our own wills. He would want his children to have their own successes n all that.

Or
The infinite reality/world has both body and soul, ergo divinity is the spiritual side of a world which is still a world and is not generated nor controlled by a god/dess or any kind of divinity. It is not created and has no first cause.

divinity could be more Tao-like here, although that philosophy also implies beginnings.

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First, I’d like to thank everybody for their insights which they contributed to this discussion.

Now to resume where I last left off, I was having problems with this omnipotent god found in the Bible, and which I was brought up to believe in. As it now seems to me that the Bible cannot be taken literally, I am left with the question of who God really is. Seeking credible sources as to who or what this God is, I next turned to science. Now science has traditionally been the enemy of the concept of God and spirits, but there is a growing body of scientists who are willing to concede the possibility of an existence outside this physical universe. See for example:

spiritscienceandmetaphysics. … -at-death/

Accepting the possibility that consciousness may survive death, or the notion that consciousness created the physical, and not vice versa, we then ask ourselves what this entails about the beings responsible for our physical universe, and/or the kind of beings that went before us and who have now moved on to different realms. Addressing the notion that consciousness created the physical, this implies a kind of sadist-masochistic consciousness that would come up with this dog-eat-dog world in which we live. Scientifically speaking, there is no reason to limit this consciousness to human consciousness, so just remember that for the vast majority of earth’s history, this planet has been dominated by those beasts we saw in Jurassic Park. If the JP dinosaurs were the consciousness responsible for this world, then these same beings would also have preceded us into the afterlife. And so if our earth reflects the make-up of all conscious beings, then we might expect the afterlife to also be dominated by beings from Jurassic Park, given that the dinosaurs ruled hundreds of millions of years before man came along.

So my conclusion is that there are both good beings and evil beings in the afterlife, but all in all, the afterlife must be dominated by guys like tyrannosaurus rex, the apex predator of earth history. But I don’t think that this is the end of the story. Think of the elephant, the largest animal on our planet today, who is a vegetarian, and whom the fiercest of predators will not tangle with (except of course man, who also helps the elephant). Somewhere along our planets evolution, there had to be a kind of messiah -one who taught others that they did not have to live under the shadow of T-rex. In my next post, I’ll talk about this messiah.

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Sales pitch.

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I did a little more thinking about this, and, in particular, to the article I referenced in my last post.

I find this very interesting. So instead of having just two choices (Heaven or Hell) the soul can be seen as having infinite possibilities as to how it will spend its “afterlife”. So combining Lanza’s theory of the afterlife with our traditional religious views on rewards and punishments, we can speculate that what we do in this life will have some bearing on the next life we find ourselves in. I like to think that if one follows the golden rule, for example, then in that person’s next life, she will land someplace where people all respect one another.

If this is the case, then I think we are already in a kind of hell. Perhaps there is a god, but its hard to be aware of his existence when you’re in hell, just as it’s not so hard to believe in a devil. Once you’re in hell, it can be hard to get out, because things and other people want to keep dragging you down deeper. I don’t think we’re in so deep that we can’t get out, but it takes a lot of resolve. The devil, therefore, is anyone who is on his way down, and wants to drag others along with him. A messiah is anyone who can help you break free. It can be Jesus; it can be Captain Kirk; or it could be the guy next door. As my high school math teacher used to say: Whatever gets you through the night!

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So now - where does all of this thinking leave you, lead you?

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Two general conclusions:

  1. Evidence for an afterlife: This comes from the work of the SPR (Society for Psychical Research) and reports of reincarnations. The SPR, over the years, has produced some astonishing evidence for the continuation of a person’s essence after the death of the body, even if this essence seems to be more or less a kind of recording of what the deceased was in the physical realm. As well, I’ve heard a lot of amazing stories over the years about people who claim to remember previous lives, and some of these claims are well documented.

  2. No reliable sources concerning what this afterlife is like. Most of our knowledge about this afterlife and the beings who rule over it comes from men claiming divine inspiration, but offering little proof that they were in fact communing with a god, angels, or whatever. The best indicator of what this afterlife is like, I would say, comes from Carl Jung, and his theory on synchronicity.

Jung was rather vague on what exactly synchronicity is (meaningful coincidence), but he did seem to be suggesting that it was something just to let us know that there is something more to our existence than what we can detect with the senses. Jung gave us several true life examples of synchronicity; as well, I’ve seen many examples of it myself and heard and read about others’ stories. As to why I say that synchronicity is the best indicator of what this afterlife is like comes from my own experience. When I was researching synchronicity, I thought it could give me clues as to deeper truths and realities. I eventually learned, however, that with synchronicity, there is no objectivity, and things just “happen” the way one expects them to happen. And so, if things are just happening the way we expect them to happen, what is this telling us about this deeper reality? Seems to me that it just confirms the old proverb: You create your own heaven; or, you create your own hell. This is why the theory about consciousness creating the universe (rather than vice versa) appealed to me. So it seems to me that a lot of people are trying to get to heaven by making themselves and everyone around them miserable, but this would seem to be the exact opposite approach of what they should be doing. So admittedly, there is a lot of wisdom in the teachings of Jesus, but there isn’t anything to prove that Jesus was anything other than just a man.

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Yes, but hes a smooth talker and he brought me a bit of lolz. I especially like the bit about him pretending to be in a “faith crisis” to reel in empathy and relatability from the christians. Checkmate, theists.

So it seems this community of geniuses of his, are finally beginning to learn about recurrence, which is old news. Its fun to see the peasants dabble about and proclaim their amazing discoveries, about things which have been known all along. Cute.

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If you doubt the sincerity of this experience I’m relating, then I don’t know what to tell you. These are just my own reflections of what I went through, and my attempt to articulate the experience. Even before this crisis, I never believed I had an onus to “sell” religion to non-believers. I’m not telling anybody that they must or must not believe in a god -the conclusions I came to are, granted, nothing new, but really just guesses about things we cannot know for certain. And, if they are just guesses, then another guy’s guess is as good as mine.

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Okay, lets look at the timestamps.

June 10th, the man is a believer in Jesus, but his having a “faith crisis.”

3 days later, he discovers the wonder of science.

1 day later, he converts to the religion of a mystery T-Rex messiah, of which he knows so well, he will leave us with a cliffhanger, that he may teach us about his new religion, which he is suddenly an expert on, and a new preacher advocate for, all in one day.

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Yes, on June 10, I was having trouble believing that all religion wasn’t just a big sales gimmick that was making a few people very rich, and perhaps that is where you are at right now, and why you find it hard to take seriously anybody who talks about religion. But in all honesty, I’ve never made a dime off of selling people religion.

A month earlier, I was a Catholic, born and raised, who, like most Catholics, didn’t accept everything in the Catholic catechism as the the gospel truth, but accepted it more or less as kind of the way it was. At the time, I was working on deciphering a prophecy, allegedly given to some shepherd children at Fatima, in 1917. I had started work on a website:

thirdsecretoffatima.info/

I don’t know what to do with the website, because I’m not sure what to make of these things anymore. In this website, I talk about the movie “Lifeforce” and Space Girl -one of the characters in that movie. Despite this reevaluation of my beliefs, Space Girl is still a source of spirituality for me. In the movie, she has one objective, and she keeps moving towards that objective. She starts her journey as a prisoner in the SCR, or more specifically, as the property of the ESA. She awakens from her sleep, and immediately goes about fulfilling her destiny, and she doesn’t let the fact that there are certain things standing in her way stop her, or slow her down. She just keeps moving forward, in her zombie-like fashion, without as much as a glance backwards. I mention Space Girl, because you find it hard to believe that on June 10 I’m having this faith crisis, and three days later I’ve got this new religion, as you call it. I understand why many people would have trouble believing this, because most people, when they hit a roadblock in their spiritual, emotional, or psychological development, they can spend months, years or even the rest of their life banging their heads against that wall. I try to be like Space Girl, and when I hit a roadblock, I move past it. So when I had this spiritual crisis, I went for a nice long walk, asking myself what I needed to do to get past this roadblock.

Supposing I am looking for converts to this new religion, who would I be looking to convert? As I said, I’m now inclined to think that consciousness creates our reality, rather than vice versa. Our world has changed many times in the past, there having been several instances of mass extinction having occurred. Perhaps the end of the reign of T-Rex came about as a result of a change in consciousness. The world is changing rapidly now, and some say we are experiencing another period of mass extinction. Few would argue that these changes are not a result of the influence of humans. Have you ever seen the movie “Koyaanisqatsi”? Koyaanisqatsi means life out of balance. Why is life out of balance? It is out of balance, because of the emergence of humans as the dominant species, and humans are out of balance. Now if there is a heaven, I think it would be dominated by some species other than humans. The kind of heaven I’m thinking of would have lots of sheep, cows, horses, right whales, dolphins, deer and bison. Humans, in general, would bring disorder to this paradise, so my converts would be among the wildlife. It would be very difficult for most humans, I think, to be content in such a world.

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I'm sure you're sincere. You also seem like you are here  to proselytize and type a monologue rather than have a discussion. That's why I called it a sales pitch. We get that every so often- somebody takes pages and pages of prepared stuff, ignores or nearly ignores all response, then continues typing pages and pages of stuff.  Usually, no discussion ever happens, and by the end, the person is linking back to their blog or favorite spiritualism/conspiracy/fringe websites, where, lo and behold, everything they 'wrote' to us appears, verbatim.  It looks like a familiar pattern here, as though you're using comments people made as jumping off points to just type the next phase of your monologue that you were intending to type anyway.

So yes, just get to the pitch already.

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OK Uccisore, I’ll change my approach for you, and I’ll respond to all the points you raised, line by line:

I don’t play games. If I were here to proselytize, I would say so. I suppose some who want to proselytize would go about it more dishonestly, and I’m sure they would only attract a lot of dishonest people to themselves. And who wants a bunch of disciples following him around saying, “Teacher, tell us the meaning of life.” I’ll tell you who wants that kind of thing -an egomaniac. Nevertheless, to humor you, I’ll do a little proselytizing, just to show you how silly it all is, just as soon as I finish this post.

There are different styles of conversation and interacting. In one style, people sit around in a circle, and they take turns speaking, not speaking directly to each other, but to the group. There is in fact interaction going on, although not the same as in our normal conversation. As a philosopher, I prefer the style of people sitting in a circle. Normal conversation tends to become focused on the mundane, and usually ends in people bickering back and forth about something they disagree on -as is happening here -and, of course, it has more drama.

Exactly how do you tell the difference between someone who is trying to sell you something, and someone who is simply expressing an opinion? So far, your test is inconclusive.

Believe it or not, Ucciscore, I’m not quoting from any prepared material. Everything I’ve said so far, for the most part, has come straight out of my head.

I have no blog or website to refer you to. But it’s pretty obvious, is it not, that the market is already flooded with people selling conspiracies, spiritualism and what not. A lot of these spirituality movements find their origin with Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 self help book, The Power of Positive Thinking. When I say that consciousness creates our reality, and we can use our consciousness to shape reality, then I’m not really offering anything new. The only difference is that Peale didn’t have any science to back up his claims about the power of positive thinking. But I’d have to go to a hundred websites like this, and I’d be lucky to get any appreciable following, as there are already plenty of people out there, who know more about it than I do. That, and the other reasons I already mentioned, is why I am not interested in proselytizing.

When one is describing one’s own spiritual journey, some people want to hijack the discussion and make it a discussion about their spiritual journey. The same thing happens in every thread on every subject. I do read what other people post, and I respond to those comments that are most relevant to the story I was trying to tell.
[/quote]

As I said, just to show you how silly it is, I’ll start proselytizing here shortly. Just give me a little while to make up my new religion, and a sales pitch to go with it.

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You see the date under my name? That’s how. Anyway, now that you’re interacting, we’ll see what kinds of discussions result!

As though you never would have otherwise.

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You say I’m here to proselytize, Uccisore. I can see there is no sense insisting that wasn’t my intention, so I’ll humor you all :smiley: , and become the “The Profit” -pun intended. I’ve come up with this fictitious religion, based on the stuff we discussed in this thread. This new religion will be known as “The Cloud”, because when people die, their souls will be like water vapor rising up to become part of the life giving clouds.

In the beginning, there was darkness. The earth was ruled by fear, ignorance and the law of the land -eat, or be eaten. 8-[ In this dark, fearsome world, there emerged a creature like no other, or since. The earth shuddered under his feet; terror seized all those in his path, and those who even caught a glimpse of him from afar. This was Tyrannosaurus Rex -the monster who created the nightmares of every other species alive then, and to this day.

But in this dark world, a light appeared :bulb: One member of the species who was more ferocious, more cunning, more savage than any of them. :evilfun: And just as man has noted that it is lonely at the top, so it was with this T-Rex (whom I shall henceforth refer to as Rex). And then one day, Rex, being in a deep philosophical mood, said to himself: “I will no longer kill simply because I can kill, but I will only kill as much as I need to eat.” And because Rex was highly regarded by all the other T-Rexes, other dinosaurs soon took the same vow.

Eventually, Rex and his friends died, but their consciousness continued, and became part of The Cloud. O:) And the movement Rex started continued, and as more and more became part of The Cloud, their combined consciousness began to reshape the world. Eventually, they were enough in number that they could destroy this nightmarish world they had once been part of, and they all said, “Let’s do it!” :open_mouth: We’ll destroy everything, and start afresh. The law will no longer be ‘Eat, or be eaten’, but ‘live, and let live’" And so this prehistoric world met its demise, and the process of renewal began.

But some from the old regime were not happy. When they died, they became part of The Dark Cloud. Their purpose was to bring back the old order. And so The Cloud and The Dark Cloud struggled with one another, until they had produced a human. And The Cloud and The Dark Cloud agreed that these humans, a semi-intelligent creature, would be the arbiter of the fate of this new world hey had created. :question:

But as humans rose in their ability, they began to enjoy killing. They took pleasure in creating terror in every creature that gazed upon them. And so The Cloud determined that humans had been a mistake, and they decided to destroy everything, and start all over again. So they chose the destroyer of worlds to execute judgement on the human race. This was Space Girl. But The Cloud said, “Let us give humans one more chance to prove themselves worthy.” They would choose one human to represent all humanity, and this human would have to make the ultimate sacrifice, in order to save his entire race from annihilation. And the chosen one’s name was Tom Carlsen. And Space Girl came to earth, and she began her destruction. And Carlsen came to Space Girl, and he was able to make the sacrifice for humanity. :smiley: And so the human race was saved -at least for now.

But unless humans change their ways, Space Girl will return, and judgement will be executed. :frowning: They must learn to use their minds to create positive energy, rather than negative energy. :mrgreen:

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So, other than the emoticons and the lack of first-person phrasing, what’s the big difference between that post and your previous ones? I see long monologues telling strangers how it is and what they ought to believe in either case. What makes the one proselytization and the other not?

Also, remember ‘proselytize’ was your word. I called it a sales pitch. Sooner or later you’ll ask why. :slight_smile:

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That’s alright, Uccisore, I won’t argue with you. If you want to call me a salesman … fine … whatever … I’ve been called worse things. But I must say, that was the first time I was ever called a peasant … that was Trixie, I think. But I don’t have a problem with peasant; in fact, I kind of like peasant. I’s always admired Socrates -a guy who dun’ go givin’ himself airs. Yeah, call me “the peasant”.

Oh, and by the way, the latest word from The Cloud is they’ve decided to annihilate the human race and start over.

Happy Dooms Day everyone!

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[size=150]Good to know, rain of destruction will be brought to you by Microsoft Cloud.[/size]