You've Been A Very Bad Boy.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

That quote was written by Epicurus, who lived from 341 to 270 bc and this guy seems to have hit the nail on the head when it comes to the problem of evil.

There always has been and always will be evil things or people on earth, and in my opinion, that's the one thing that can fully disprove the existence of God, thanks to that philosophy of Epicurus'.

The above philosophy helps us question the existence of God in relation to the extent of his power and the extent of his love. For example, if God is all-powerful, why doesn't he stop bad things happening to humans, his ultimate creation? Has he just decided not to protect us and use his power, or is he not powerful enough? Not being powerful enough is basically saying that evil is more powerful than God, so God cannot be called all-powerful and hence is not God.

We can apply the same thing to God being all-knowing and all-loving. Does he not know that evil things happen? Does he not love us enough to care about evil things happening? If the answer is no, then why doesn't he stop evil things happening?

Which brings us about to the ultimate question - should God interfere in human life? It's the same principle as a mother interfering in her child. Should she protect her child from everything and cause the child to suffer as soon as she's not around? Or should she allow the child to suffer in moderation so the child can learn and grow?

But then, maybe God should only prevent certain types of evil. We can divide evil into two camps. Natural evil and Moral evil.

Natural evil is exactly that; natural. It's caused by the structure of the Earth and the universe - think of tectonic plates causing earthquakes and volcanoes. These things cause hardship and suffering for humans, so should God get rid of them? But if God removed all of these hazards, earth and the universe wouldn't be able to support life, and therefore we wouldn't exist so God wouldn't have anything to protect.

Moral evil is more complex. It comes from humans and their sin, apparently. Moral evil can range from jealousy to murder. Can God protect us from all these things? The simple answer is no - things used to commit moral evil can also be used for good, such as a surgeons scalpel. But another question can be asked - what is the root cause of moral evil? Guns don't fire themselves and bombs don't appear from thin air, all of these things come from humans. So why do we create and use them in the ways we do?

Which brings us nicely along to the origins of all evil. We can look at the story of Adam and Eve. They were told not to eat from the tree, and the serpent encouraged them and they did. God gave Adam and Eve freewill to choose whether or not to eat from the forbidden tree, and they did so despite his warnings. Because of this, God punished Adam and Eve - he made humans and serpents enemies, gave women the pain of childbirth, made men dominant over women, and he made it hard to harvest the land. Then God cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, but he couldn't take away their knowledge of good and evil, which they'd gained from the forbidden tree.

Another origin of evil might be the story of Ibilis. In short Ibilis was an angel who refused to bow down to God's greatest creation - mankind. So God banished Ibilis from paradise, so Ibilis vowed to persude humanity not to follow God. So God said that he'd fill hell with Ibilis and all his followers. It's then apparently Ibilis who leads Adam and Eve astray.

Overall, religious stories of the origin of evil very rarely put the blame on God, and evil is considered to have come from the misuse of freewill and goes against God's will. The main idea is that God allows evil to go ahead, but doesn't will it.

The next question I'm going to look at is whether or not we need evil and suffering.

A central answer to this question would be that was need evil and suffering as a contrast to help us appreciate good things. If all things were good, we wouldn't be able to appreciate them, so by having evil too, we can appreciate the good and bad things in life in relation to each other.

Another argument would be that God only created good, and evil came from the misuse of freewill and denial of God. God couldn't have created evil as it's apparently not in his nature, so evil must have come from elsewhere and spoilt God's image.

We can also look at evil and suffering as important learning experiences in this life, as this life can be regarded as a preparation for our next life. This is called soul-making, and evil can be looked upon as a learning tool for this life. It can also be a learning tool for this life, as we can learn from mistakes made by ourselves and others to improve this life.

And that's all I'm going to write on tonight, and my next post will hopefully be on the Free Will Defence, Karma, believer's responses to evil, and whether or not people need evil and suffering.

Boom, job done.