Could God Be Evil?

[Adrift]

The two are complementary concepts. You don't get one without the other. Asking "what does this mean in that world" makes no sense. The hypothetical purely good or purely evil is rooted in our world, a world where both good and evil exist. One can conceive of a world where only things we call 'good' exist just as easily as one can conceive of a world where only 'evil' things exist.

We may be talking past one another. I think I can only conceive of a world that is either purely good, or a world where both good and evil exist, but I don't think I can conceive of a world where pure evil exists. I think where we disconnect is that I understand "good", not as something that is merely the opposite of evil, but as something (simply stated) that is grounded in perfection. In our world, I believe that God is that ground. He is the paradigm of perfection. I can imagine a world that is purely good, because I can imagine a world that is in perfect harmony with a perfect, essential creator who is the greatest conceivable being. I can imagine a world with both good and evil, because I can imagine a world that is not in perfect harmony with that same essential creator. That lack of harmony...the point where things start to move away from the foundation that is perfection, or where the imperfect attempts to strive for it's own subjective good...that, to my understanding, is evil.

In my worldview, a purely evil world is almost a nonsense concept, because evil is not merely the opposite of good, but is the negation of a positive good. Even in a world where God does not exist, it would seem to me that in order to have a "good" one would require some objective, perfect, essential foundation to align that good with.

My biggest problem in conceiving of a purely evil world is that, the very concept of a "world" seems to me to require some sort of holistic structure, and that seems impossible if evil implies chaos.



Are you following at all what I'm saying, or have I lost you? A lot of my thinking on this subject stems from my reading of Aquinas and Anselm, but also Maimonides. If you haven't already, check out his Guide for the Perplexed, where he discusses the concept of evil in part 3 chapter 10. I'll actually post the entirety of that chapter in the next post, because it's not very long. I don't necessarily agree with everything he states, but I think he's on the right track.

[Adrift]

http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/gfp/gfp146.htm

Source: Guide for the Perplexed, by Moses Maimonides, Part III, Chapter X

THE Mutakallemim, as I have already told you, apply the term non-existence only to absolute non-existence, and not to the absence of properties. A property and the absence of that property are considered by them as two opposites, they treat, e.g., blindness and sight, death and life, in the same way as heat and cold. Therefore they say, without any qualification, nonexistence does not require any agent, an agent is required when something is produced. From a certain point of view this is correct. Although they hold that non-existence does not require an agent, they say in accordance with their principle that God causes blindness and deafness, and gives rest to anything that moves, for they consider these negative conditions as positive properties. We must now state our opinion in accordance with the results of philosophical research. You know that he who removes the obstacle of motion is to some extent the cause of the motion, e.g., if one removes the pillar which supports the beam he causes the beam to move, as has been stated by Aristotle in his Physics (VIII., chap. iv.); in this sense we say of him who removed a certain property that he produced the absence of that property, although absence of a property is nothing positive. Just as we say of him who puts out the light at night that he has produced darkness, so we say of him who destroyed the sight of any being that he produced blindness, although darkness and blindness are negative properties, and require no agent.

[paragraph continues] In accordance with this view we explain the following passage of Isaiah: "I form the light and create (bore) darkness: I make peace, and create (bore) evil" (Isa. xlv. 7), for darkness and evil are non-existing things. Consider that the prophet does not say, I make (‘oseh) darkness, I make (‘oseh) evil, because darkness and evil are not things in positive existence to which the verb "to make" would apply; the verb bara "he created" is used, because in Hebrew this verb is applied to non-existing things e.g., "In the beginning God created" (bara), etc.; here the creation took place from nothing. Only in this sense can non-existence be said to be produced by a certain action of an agent. In the same way we must explain the following passage: "Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or the deaf, or the seeing," etc. (Exod. iv. 11). The passage can also be explained as follows: Who has made man able to speak? or can create him without the capacity of speaking, i.e., create a substance that is incapable of acquiring this property? for he who produces a substance that cannot acquire a certain property may be called the producer of that privation. Thus we say, if any one abstains from delivering a fellow-man from death, although he is able to do so, that he killed him. It is now clear that according to an these different views the action of an agent cannot be directly connected with a thing that does not exist: only indirectly is non-existence described as the result of the action of an agent, whilst in a direct manner an action can only influence a thing really in existence; accordingly, whoever the agent may be, he can only act upon an existing thing.

After this explanation you must recall to memory that, as has been proved, the [so-called] evils are evils only in relation to a certain thing, and that which is evil in reference to a certain existing thing, either includes the nonexistence of that thing or the non-existence of some of its good conditions. The proposition has therefore been laid down in the most general terms, "All evils are negations." Thus for man death is evil: death is his non-existence. Illness, poverty, and ignorance are evils for man: all these are privations of properties. If you examine all single cases to which this general proposition applies, you will find that there is not one case in which the proposition is wrong except in the opinion of those who do not make any distinction between negative and positive properties, or between two opposites, or do not know the nature of things,--who, e.g., do not know that health in general denotes a certain equilibrium, and is a relative term. The absence of that relation is illness in general, and death is the absence of life in the case of any animal. The destruction of other things; is likewise nothing but the absence of their form.

After these propositions, it must be admitted as a fact that it cannot be said of God that He directly creates evil, or He has the direct intention to produce evil: this is impossible. His works are all perfectly good. He only produces existence, and all existence is good: whilst evils are of a negative character, and cannot be acted upon. Evil can only he attributed to Him in the way we have mentioned. He creates evil only in so far as He produces the corporeal element such as it actually is: it is always connected with negatives, and is on that account the source of all destruction and all evil. Those beings that do not possess this corporeal element are not subject to destruction or evil: consequently the true work of God is all good, since it

is existence. The book which enlightened the darkness of the world says therefore, "And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Gen. i. 31). Even the existence of this corporeal element, low as it in reality is, because it is the source of death and all evils, is likewise good for the permanence of the Universe and the continuation of the order of things, so that one thing departs and the other succeeds. Rabbi Meir therefore explains the words "and behold it was very good" (tob me’od); that even death was good in accordance with what we have observed in this chapter. Remember what I said in this chapter, consider it, and you will understand all that the prophets and our Sages remarked about the perfect goodness of all the direct works of God. In Bereshit Rabba (chap. i.) the same idea is expressed thus: "No evil comes down from above."

© Copyright Original Source

[Adrift]

God could just as soon be the fount of all evil and all evil flows from him. Goodness then, would just be a lack of evil. Your idea of the good is dependent upon your definition of god, in other words the conclusion is in the premise-"God is good, therefore evil is a lack of the good." But, there is no reason that you couldn't just as soon define "God as evil, and therefore good would be a lack of evil."

Most people I think agree that disorder, chaos, and confusion are products of evil. A God that was purely evil would be entirely chaotic, and thus, as Christianbookworm points out, likely unable and unwilling to create, since creation requires structure. So, your idea of an absolutely evil Creator who is the fount of all evil, upon which good may come as a negative, doesn't sound tenable. At least, not to me.

[Catholicity]

Gnosticism is such a complex heresy. They did not believe in God, but believed in false gods and demi gods and goddesses. The god of gnosticism was both the creator of good and evil and he took a wife (named sophia a demi-god) to produce mankind which made us all something of a demi god. Jesus himself was only considered to be a demi-god. Gnosticism is a complex form of universalism and born of pagan religions. I recently brought home a book I owned from my parents house that I own called the teachings of the Church Fathers and I think I accidently left The church Fathers on the heresies which includes a lengthy discussion on Gnosticism, Arianism and Monotanism(spelling?) as well as a few others.

[JimL]

Most people I think agree that disorder, chaos, and confusion are products of evil. A God that was purely evil would be entirely chaotic, and thus, as Christianbookworm points out, likely unable and unwilling to create, since creation requires structure. So, your idea of an absolutely evil Creator who is the fount of all evil, upon which good may come as a negative, doesn't sound tenable. At least, not to me.

Yes, so a god can't be defined as either purely good or purely evil because the one term as the definition of a thing would make no sense without the other. I'm assuming that we are talking good and evil in terms of morality here, and the one term as a definition, would makes no sense without the other.

[Catholicity]

Creating a good thing is in itself a good. How could a pure evil deity actually create anything?

That's the perfect question considering that God called his creation "good" In Catholicism the saying is Humans are born in God's image though with the stain of original sin. He created all of us and called us all "Good" despite a stain in our hearts that He washes clean. (I'm not a Calvinist obviously)

[Darth Executor]

I've thought about it. Evil, by its very definition is a negation of good.

No it's not.

A negation (in the sense we're using it) is typically defined as the "The absence or opposite of something actual or positive." In no sense can it be said that "evil" is a positive. Not that I know of at any rate.

Stabbing someone in the head is a positive act. It's not an absence of something.

Especially as moral goodness is defined in philosophical theology,

I wouldn't call chainmail with a manufactured Einstein story in it "philosophical theology".

while we can imagine a world where only pure moral goodness prevails, one in which only pure moral evil prevails, is, I think, harder to conceive of.

You can't imagine the stereotypical view of hell?

[Adrift]

Yes, so a god can't be defined as either purely good or purely evil because the one term as the definition of a thing would make no sense without the other. I'm assuming that we are talking good and evil in terms of morality here, and the one term as a definition, would makes no sense without the other.

No, I obviously wouldn't agree with that. I believe that God is purely good, in that he is the good by his very nature, and it would be impossible for evil to be in him, as that would be contrary to his nature. I think evil can exist only as potential without it existing in reality. So, before creation rebelled, there was the potential for evil, but there was no evil, only the good.

[Adrift]

No it's not.

Yes it is. Or at least, that's how Augustine defined it.

"For evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name 'evil'."

Stabbing someone in the head is a positive act. It's not an absence of something.

It's not? I don't follow though, what does stabbing someone in the head have to do with the definition of evil?

I wouldn't call chainmail with a manufactured Einstein story in it "philosophical theology".

I don't know what "chainmail with a manufactured Einstein story" means.

You can't imagine the stereotypical view of hell?

Yeah, I can imagine hell, but I don't believe that even in hell, pure moral evil prevails. Sure, it prevails in the sense that those who have turned from God get exactly what they want, a place devoid of his relational presence (2 Thess. 1:9), but as Dr. William Lane Craig explained in one of his Defenders classes when discussing the omnipresent nature of God,

Source: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/defenders-3-podcast/transcript/doctrine-of-god-part-8

The doctrine of omnipresence would say that God is present in hell. If he were not causally active there and cognizant of what is happening there, hell would just be annihilated. It wouldn’t exist apart from God’s sustaining presence. So God is certainly present in hell. But I think what the Scripture means when it says that these persons are separated from the face of the Lord or God’s presence is speaking of a relational presence. He may be there but they are not related to him so they have no consciousness of him, no experience of him. It would be as though God were utterly absent to them. But he would be ontologically or metaphysically present, but not relationally present.

© Copyright Original Source

That sounds about right to me.

[37818]

I've thought about it. Evil, by its very definition is a negation of good.

Evil is not possible without there being [finite] good. Evil needs good to be evil. Good does not need evil to be good.

Infinite good cannot be negated by evil. God is infinite good.

[Adrift]

Evil is not possible without there being [finite] good. Evil needs good to be evil. Good does not need evil to be good.

Infinite good cannot be negated by evil. God is infinite good.

Yeah, I suppose I'd go along with that, as it doesn't seem to contradict the view I've put forward here. Although, I'm not sure I quite understand what you mean by "finite" and "infinite" good. All good, in my opinion, is ultimately derived from God.

[Sparko]

I think stabbing someone in the head would be a lack of love, empathy and compassion for that person.

[Darth Executor]

Yes it is. Or at least, that's how Augustine defined it.

"For evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name 'evil'."

This quote is just a restatement of the issue, it does nothing to demonstrate or even argue for this definition. Last I checked his definition didn't even make the dictionary.

It's not? I don't follow though, what does stabbing someone in the head have to do with the definition of evil?

It's an evil act that does not fit your definition. In fact I have a harder time imagining the opposite. Nearly every good act involves amending an evil of some sort, either natural or inflicted by others.

I don't know what "chainmail with a manufactured Einstein story" means.

It's a reference to a chain email that popularized this theory, with einstein as a protagonist.

Yeah, I can imagine hell, but I don't believe that even in hell, pure moral evil prevails. Sure, it prevails in the sense that those who have turned from God get exactly what they want, a place devoid of his relational presence (2 Thess. 1:9), but as Dr. William Lane Craig explained in one of his Defenders classes when discussing the omnipresent nature of God,

Source: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/defenders-3-podcast/transcript/doctrine-of-god-part-8

The doctrine of omnipresence would say that God is present in hell. If he were not causally active there and cognizant of what is happening there, hell would just be annihilated. It wouldn’t exist apart from God’s sustaining presence. So God is certainly present in hell. But I think what the Scripture means when it says that these persons are separated from the face of the Lord or God’s presence is speaking of a relational presence. He may be there but they are not related to him so they have no consciousness of him, no experience of him. It would be as though God were utterly absent to them. But he would be ontologically or metaphysically present, but not relationally present.

© Copyright Original Source

That sounds about right to me.

Unless you are a pantheist God would not be a part of hell and God's presence there would in no way make hell good.

[Darth Executor]

I think stabbing someone in the head would be a lack of love, empathy and compassion for that person.

You could say that about a lot of acts. The evil in the act is the harm inflicted on the victim though, not the killer's state of mind.

[Adrift]

This quote is just a restatement of the issue, it does nothing to demonstrate or even argue for this definition. Last I checked his definition didn't even make the dictionary.

Right, I wasn't attempting to demonstrate anything about the definition, I was simply showing where it came from. Aquinas goes into it a bit more if you're interested.

It's an evil act that does not fit your definition. In fact I have a harder time imagining the opposite. Nearly every good act involves amending an evil of some sort, either natural or inflicted by others.

It's an act. Whether it's evil or not probably largely depends on context.

It's a reference to a chain email that popularized this theory, with einstein as a protagonist.

I still have no idea what you're talking about, but whatever.

Unless you are a pantheist God would not be a part of hell and God's presence there would in no way make hell good.

God does not have to be a part of hell in order to be omnipresent, or do you reject omnipresence as a characteristic of God because you believe it is a form of pantheism? God's presence in hell does not make hell good, but neither does it make hell a world absolutely devoid of good, which was what I said I thought was hard to conceive of.