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d_r_siva asked in Arts & HumanitiesPhilosophy · 1 decade ago

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.

17 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    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!)

  • 1 decade ago

    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...

    Source(s): My source is my mind.
  • 7 years ago

    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.

  • heidel
    Lv 4
    5 years ago

    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.

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  • 1 decade ago

    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.

  • 1 decade ago

    First of all there is no evidence that any deity or a god ever existed. It is all created by man to control other men plain and simple. If there was a god who created the whole Universe and its creatures my question would be why? and who created that god and so on and so on...So the the next time you look to the skies for answers remember what Shakespeare once wrote "The fault lies not within the stars dear Bruits but within thyself".

  • 1 decade ago

    Evil is the bad karma from the senses of each and every human kind.When they have ego,jealousy,hatred,bad intentions,cruelty,and other bad sources this leads to the feeling which combines to evil sources. So God is seeing to the extend where a normal human being can go through.When all of the said bad karma's been washed out for sure there wouldn't be evil only God rules.

  • 1 decade ago

    Both of the ‘opposites’ don’t exist. Only one exists and the other doesn’t. How? Take the example of ‘matter’ and ‘space’. Matter exists. The opposite of matter is ‘that doesn’t exist’. So space, as absence of matter, doesn’t exist.

    Why do we then often say that ‘space’ exists? Well, ‘space’ in such a statement doesn’t mean ‘physical space’ (which doesn’t exist), it means ‘notion of space’ which does exist as the ‘notion of absence of matter’, the ‘notion of non-existent space’ etc. Thus, semantics is the great confounder.

    Another analogy for a pair of the opposites is ‘light and darkness’. Same argument makes light existent and darkness non-existent.

    It isn’t very difficult to grasp the fact that the magnitude of the largest existent can’t be ‘infinite’. The finite existence, be it matter or light, gives rise to a perceptional fallacy that it is surrounded by an infinite non-existence, be it space or darkness. There is an inherent perceptional tendency to include the purportedly infinite non-existence within the bounds of existence and call the latter (the existence) infinite.

    There is a reason behind such a perceptional fallacy and such a perceptional tendency. What is that?

    We may need to bring in the notion of ‘existential potential’ that is the ‘expansion potential’ or the ‘evolutionary potential’ of the current existence. The magnetic field that surrounds a magnet may be deemed to be its ‘magnetic existence potential’.

    Another analogy for existence potential would be the ‘lit zone’ around ‘flame’ that may be likened to the existent. What confounds us is this twilight zone, the existence potential around existence proper.

    The ‘integral existence’ may be deemed to include its existence potential and exclude the purportedly existing non-existence.

    God is the greatest/ largest existence and may safely be deemed to be the universe. This ‘real God’ (universe) is supplemented by the ‘potential God’ (potential universe) which further mystifies the notion of God.

    ‘Absence of God’ is Satan/ Evil that as the ‘opposite of God’ is indeed non-existent. However, semantics is a great confounder. We often say Satan/ Evil exists to mean the ‘notion of absence of God the Good’, the ‘notion of non-existent Satan/ Evil’, the ‘notion of decreasing degree in the body of God/ universe’ – not to mean the actual Satan/ Evil - by the word ‘Satan/ Evil’.

    In short, Satan/ Evil lies outside the finite bounds of God.

    Source(s): omnilogical analysis (club 'Ultra-Plato' / second religion)
  • 1 decade ago

    The present ice age began 40 million years ago with the growth of an ice sheet in Antarctica. It intensified during the late Pliocene, around 3 million years ago, with the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere, and has continued in the Pleistocene. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales. The most recent glacial period ended about ten thousand years ago.

    Ice ages can be further divided by location and time; for example, the names Riss (180,000–130,000 years bp) and Würm (70,000–10,000 years bp) refer specifically to glaciation in the Alpine region.

    http://www.search.com/reference/Ice_age

    The 100,000-Year Ice-Age Cycle Identified and Found to Lag Temperature, Carbon Dioxide, and Orbital Eccentricity

    http://www.sciencemag.org/content/289/5486/1897.ab...

    Science speaks of cycles of very long duration. It is possible that human mind is also connected with dark and bright periods.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    Basically to prove a point. Shortest answer. To elaborate... If you believe in a god, you believe in a devil. That being said, it would be common knowledge that the devil questioned gods authority. God could have destroyed devil, but what would have that proven? That God is right because he says so? Instead he allows this to continue to prove that man cannot rule itself. Which is what the devil said to god. Basically... If you believe in god. :)

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