No requests? OK, then you must endure the topic of my choosing. Mwahahaha! And that topic is:
Evil
Oh no, not again! Yes. Again. Only this time, it won't just be a bunch of questions thrown out for your contemplation. No, this time, I will take a stab at answering the questions from last week. (Never saw that coming, did ya?
)
Where did evil come from? Whose fault is it?
It came from us. Man.
We are to blame. We invented it out of selfishness. But "selfishness" itself isn't strictly evil. Or, at least, looking out for our "self interests" is not evil. That's just a necessity for survival, and everyone has that instinct. But when it becomes our
only focus, or our
overriding focus and we care only about that and not about others, that's where evil begins. If we steal to get something for ourselves, or we lie to make ourselves look better (or someone else look worse), or we kill, or cheat, etc., well, we've turned a corner. A very dark corner. That's evil. And we don't even need a serpent to tempt us. We can tempt ourselves quite aptly.
Is it, somehow, necessary?
No.
Could good exist, if there was no evil or the possibility of evil?
Yes.
If we were not capable of committing evil, would we be robots?
No. There are many things to exercise "fee will" over, and they have nothing to do with good or evil. They just are. Hobbies, career, what to wear, what to eat, where to travel to, etc. Nothing robotic about those. And there's really no need for God to help us, in choosing things like that. Does God want me to wear blue today? Was God saddened (or angered) when I chose a career in computers, rather than carpentry? Did it disappoint Him when I became an agnostic?
Are robots bad?
Nah. Not the kind of robots people have in mind when they are talking about free will, as it pertains to good and evil. If people didn't even have the
ability to do evil, that would not be a bad thing, not at all.
Is every action we take either evil or good?
Nah. Some actions are just morally neutral. Personal taste. What to wear, choice of career, what to eat. (Eating breakfast this morning would have been
good, come to think of it. I literally forgot to eat! Man, was I hungry by the time church got out. I wonder what the sermon was about!
)
Are there degrees of evil?
Yes. Obviously.
Is evil merely the absence of good, in the same way that darkness is the absence of light?
No.
Could evil exist in Heaven? Will the inhabitants of Heaven have free will? Will they be robots? Will the inhabitants of Hell have free will? Will they be robots?
Dunno.
Is good more powerful than evil?
It doesn't seem like it is, usually. Most of the time, if someone sets his mind to doing something horrible, he does it. "Good" doesn't stop it. Nothing "good" usually comes out of it. Murder victims stay dead, and their loved ones are forever deprived of their company, and the world will never know what their contributions would have been, had they not been killed.
Oh, sometimes, there is "closure", and forgiveness, and people move on. And that's a good thing. But does it mean "good" defeated "evil"? Does it mean there was a net gain, in the big picture? No, not really. To say otherwise would be to claim that the murder
should have happened. That it was better than if it had been prevented. Such baloney is not usually stated explicitly, but such baloney is the only logical conclusion that such rhetoric leads to.
Will good triumph over evil, in the end?
Maybe. Guess we'll have to wait and see.
What would that mean to the inhabitants of Hell?
Well, if there is a hell, and if it will have inhabitants, and if they will be there forever and ever, that that would mean good did not triumph over evil. They should sue!
Is faith good? Is a lack of faith evil? Or does it depend on what we have faith in?
It depends
entirely on what we have faith in! Or does it? Well, we learned in my first post (about Thomas's bum rap) that we should always believe what we are told, without "seeing". We will be blessed. OK, I'm having some fun with ya, here. Of
course it matters what we believe. Of
course we should not believe everything we hear! That would be crazy. No, we must choose carefully what to believe, and what to reject. (I'll leave that choosing as an exercise for the reader!
)
Is it evil to be an agnostic?
No.
Am I evil?
Not usually.
Are you evil?
Ah, another exercise for the reader!