If god exists, why there is so much evil in the world?
Some religious people say that God wants us to know that this world is only a test to determine the righteous from the sinner, the believer from the disbeliever, the thankful from the ungrateful, the generous from the miser, the patient from the hasty, and the steadfast from the weak. Yet, there is more than that.
Ancient Europeans wrote about Ages of Man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man
There are also many other references to various types of world ages or Ages of Man in Hopi (worlds), Mayan (suns) and other cultures of antiquity. Giorgio de Santillana, the former professor of the history of science, mentions approximately thirty ancient cultures that believed in the concept of a series of ages and the rise and fall of history, with alternating Dark and Golden Ages.
More details of these Ages are available in the Yuga concept of the Hindus. The present age is known as Kali Yuga (age of darkness).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuga
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Yuga
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/iml/iml11.htm
http://www.maicar.com/GML/AgesOfWorld.html
http://www.maicar.com/GML/AgesOfMan.html
Evil is the characteristic feature of the present Age.
Anonymous2011-02-25T19:07:07Z
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I'm willing to play a game of "butting-heads" with ya, Alan (I also plan on answering your question in my argument). Shall I start first?
M'kay. I believe in a God (component A of statement 1 is "true"!). I am philosophizing (component B of statement 1 is "false"! Your conjecture is dis-proven!). There we go... What? You want a little more substance to my argument? Fine....
To start, the asker's question brings ethics into question. Why is there evil in a God created world? To be honest, the simple answer would be "Why wouldn't there be?". You're assuming a "kind", "just", "loving", "perfect", etc. God. But that's all an assumption. What has told you that, should God exist, that "He" would even care what happens? Christianity? Judaism? Islam? All of those are religions and THEORIES of God, not for fact characteristics of "Him".
When examining Theology through a solely logic based stand point, we may NOT create full conjectures of what "His" feelings, characteristics, or attributes are (should "He" have any). We do not have close to enough knowledge to begin to question these. Likewise, through logic we may NOT take text, word of mouth, or beliefs to be evidence (actually, evidence still doesn't prove (in strict Logic sense), but that's a little too deep for now). These are all human constructs and if you are choosing to point at them as incapable of proving God, why would you see it fit to say that they therefore disprove God? (If A negates B and B may negate C, does A negate C? (not necessarily)).
So I guess to answer your question, there is evil in the world, because there is evil in the world. Whether God is aware of it or not.
Now to Alan's conjecture.
Pray (no pun intended) tell me why there is no God? And, please don't point out the fallacies of religion and "man in the sky" and all those ever so wonderful arguments that Atheist turn to (I should know, I HAD been one for the last couple years of my life). While you're dribbling about Jesus (again, Christianity does NOT equal God) and evolution (disproves Intelligent Design (haha, not even Creationism)) I'll be discussing metaphysics/physics.
First off, Something (existence (space, time, energy, etc.)) may not exist within Nothing (lack of Something). Therefore, existence must have "always been", but how can it have always been? Let's look at energy. Energy (we know from String Theory and Einstein (as well as basic Mechanics, but that's another story) is directly related to matter. Therefore, matter and energy would have needed to always exist (each being reliant on the other). But, energy may NOT be described as sheer potentiality (described SOLELY by dimensions). In other words, there must have been a Something to have this Something to always be (does that make sense?). What da heck placed dem somethings? Haha, without God, yall gets an infinite chain of Somethings (and illogic).
While you stew that over, I'll throw a BETTER Atheism argument (if you're stubborn enough to still call yourself an Atheist, at least have some sort of an argument so your head isn't fully in the ground).
Did God provide morals for his sheer choice and ambiguity or was there a higher truth that made these morals truly bad or good? (let's see if you can find the error in this!)
That´s such a pertinent question. God is not physical, since physics, astronomy, biology, and many other subjects prove. I think we all believe, even the most fanatic religious people, that God doesn't express trough matter nor energy, but yes, by a different mean. Our mind, the global mind, the truth behind the truth, if you understand. I think God lives in our conscience, an interior voice that tries to guide us through this life, this physical life, that for some may appear short. Have you ever been in a dilema? We all have, and sometimes you feel that you ought do something instead of other things. That's your conscience talking! We're all different, he hear ourselves in different ways, and because there is so much diversity, sometimes conflicts between minds appear, causing wars. Wars, in the middle of everything else is life, God is underneath the stream of life in the Universe... There are questions that many contest: How can have God created the Universe, and what's after death? I can answer that, as we don't know what happened in the beggining, we can only know that we're here, breathing and living. When a life ends, it goes to the lives of the loved ones, building them. I truly believe that if we listen to ourselves, we can live the life God pretends us to live, a life of wisdom and happiness. And there isn't much else we can do here, is there?
I really hope this can answer some questions many have asked...
The world isn't perfect though God wants it to be that way. There are sinners and believers and those who choose to help the sinners come back home. These sinners are what we call the lost sheep of God. Some may listen in time and some may not. After all, Adam and Eve are the wrong fruit. We would've been a better world it that never happened. This is what I believe.
Where do you suppose Satan is living? What's concealed task? It's to not create evil, however as a substitute to drip feed the suggestion of into society... like a carrot being dangled on a stick, unluckily, humanity is hungry, and consume it proper up at any time when. This is truthfully an convenient query to reply. What is the reverse of evil? Love... In Hebrew vowels interchange with the equal supposed that means, so if we opposite love you might have evol, quite simply difference the o to an i and feature evil. But that handiest indicates it is context being the reverse of affection. What is it fairly? Evil is worry. That's it. So so much worry is drip fed into society, it is tough to think that the majority fail to appreciate it taking place. It'd be exciting to know the way many atheists handiest get their information from mainstream media. Of direction for the duration of Thomas Jefferson's existence, the newspaper used to be the predominant automobile for mainstream media, however he mentioned this, "Those who've not ever learn whatever have extra talents than folks who handiest learn the newspaper." He additionally mentioned, "Because of the expanded oppression (that's demonic), we have to be conscious of the alterations in power round us, regardless of how moderate." So, even founding fathers, as he used to be, identified the impact of evil being dripped into society. Another instance. At the commencing of Columbia snap shots, we now have all noticeable the woman at the pyramid.... It's mentioned even a couple of hundred years in the past, if a peasant noticed that picture, they could have grew to become round and run to their grasp in worry of its that means. So, it does exist, and declaring it does no longer is established on lack of information and no longer reality.
In the beginning God endowed man, and the angles, with free will because God did not wish to be a monarchical figure.He also created us in "his image" with the ability to create and that not only means ideas and art but also our destinies, except for the inescapable realities of birth and death (of course that can be argued existentially but that is off topic). So he allowed us to choose because free will is a great good despite if we use it for evil. God doesn't wish to destroy the greater of the two goods and he can't destroy evil without destroying the idea that allows evil. Of course he warns against it and denies those who choose the evil path. So that is why we are allowed to do it. The reason we do it is because we forget God and humans are always forgetting that sudden material gain is not better than long-suffering for a lasting reward. Eve took God for granted and was convinced by Satan for both purposes, Adam went along with her because he forgot that God is more valuable than her. After that centuries have passed where God's presence was felt less and less by people. Then our morality was held up by contingency and fallacy within our nature.