The Creation of Evil

A Cup Of Tea said:
I think this makes sense to a point, but then we get to where people actually break and there seems to be no way to put them back together again. A person can experience horror which turn them into monsters or emotionally crippled for the rest of their lives. In this matrix, only some of us are able to change and transform. Is this matrix, are only some meant to succeed?
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But again, who knows why the soul may require the experience? 'Life' will put the body under a bus, if that's what the soul needs?

What do I know?
 
RJM Corbet said:
But again, who knows why the soul may require the experience? 'Life' will put the body under a bus, if that's what the soul needs?

What do I know?
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there are many metaphysical things I will never understand, and I'm fine with that. I simply can see the correlation between a broken human and a successful...let's call it simulation to keep it within the matrix metaphor. It it likely a matter of faith.
 
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George bush claims to have asked God.... And he recommended lying to the American people and the UN and smiting hundreds of thousands of Iraqis...just because...
 
Devils' Advocate said:
All too often it is what your subconscious wants more than it is any deity responding.
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To me, that's a contradiction. From an Australian Aboriginal standpoint, your subconscious is your spirit mind. That which allows us to transcend the physical realm and connect on a spiritual level with each other and our creator. It's the physical world that clouds our judgment, preventing us from hearing the voice of God or to misinterpret it when we do.
 
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Devils' Advocate said:
I like the concept about the subconscious being your spirit mind.

You have mentioned many times that your version of Christianity is not the typical Baptist kind of thing. Where Bush was using more that Western definition.
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Which Bush? Dad or Dubya? :)
 
A Cup Of Tea said:
I think this makes sense to a point, but then we get to where people actually break and there seems to be no way to put them back together again. A person can experience horror which turn them into monsters or emotionally crippled for the rest of their lives. In this matrix, only some of us are able to change and transform. Is this matrix, are only some meant to succeed?
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Remember Boo Radley from Mockingbird? He was a scarred and stunted recluse who calmly stuck a fork in his father. But he is the hero of the book. I think the kind of maturity of the human soul Solzhenitsyn talks about is not necessarily synonymous with the psychologist's ideal of the balanced and socially integrated person. There's also the fact that the kind of damage that can turn one individual into a monster leaves another individual a decent human being. And also the fact that a lot of damage is self-inflicted. Free will is a terrible thing. Hitler's words to Speer in bomb-blasted Berlin: "Who will free me from this painful existence?" The one really frightening fact about this life is that actions always have consequences and that people change only slowly and with difficulty, if at all. When the consequences come home to roost one is often incapable of bearing them but they must still be borne.

What I find really difficult to grasp is that if you have a firm faith in God nothing can really shake you, but if you don't believe in anything then you are at the mercy of your ambitions and illusions and if time doesn't break them then they will corrupt you - and either outcome is problematic. Perhaps subconsciously God works in someone who has no overt faith in him but has the good will to want to be a decent person and respect his conscience. It's a mystery.

For me though the bottom line is that nobody is crushed, obligatorily driven to despair, purely by physical circumstances.
 
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I think that when a person comes to power, he becomes of interest to the powers of evil which, unlike the powers of light, do not observe the spiritual 'free will non-interference without invitation' law. So the more powerful a person becomes, the stronger he needs to be, to resist the powers of evil and be a Mandela rather than a Mugabe, perhaps?
 
I am thinking of the perception of evil... If we think genocide is evil...then we must think G!d is evil...or no...sometimes genocide is good....sometimes slavery is good too, and sometimes offering your daughters up for rape is good too... Interesting lines between good and evil in the Bible...

If we find a bigger evil our other evil somehow becomes good....hmmm just like elections.
 
wil said:
I am thinking of the perception of evil... If we think genocide is evil...then we must think G!d is evil...or no...sometimes genocide is good....sometimes slavery is good too, and sometimes offering your daughters up for rape is good too... Interesting lines between good and evil in the Bible...

If we find a bigger evil our other evil somehow becomes good....hmmm just like elections.
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Yes. Perhaps we perceive as evil what takes away our life, at the lowest rung, and any steps down In that direction. I suppose life of the soul should be included? Pain, disease, unhappiness, are all relative.

The zebra and the lion.

But is there a spiritual force of evil -- ultimately relative or not -- that feeds on and rejoices in human misery?

Afterthought: if it feeds on human misery if it requires such human suffering in order to sustain its own existence, then it's like a parasite or predator, therefore not evil.

But if this force simply rejoices in human suffering, for its own sake? Almost, but not quite, like a cat with a mouse? Because it gets pleasure from causing pain? More like a school bully?

Something like that?

Then what?
 
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Darkness is not the opposite of light but the lack of it.

If you close yourself in some sort of safe, or at the bottom of a mine, and tape over every chink so no light can enter, that's total darkness.

But a single candle brings light. And if you keep adding candles, then halogen lights, then light of suns, and thousands, millions of suns, it just goes on getting brighter, forever.

There's no total light?
 
Our ethical perceptions are rooted in biology and generally in a religious conception of "moral duty". However, biological truths are not necessarily commensurate with a designer God, or even a good one. Therefore, one of the perverse wonders of evolution is this: the very mechanisms that create the incredible beauty, wonder and diversity of our amazing world all guarantee evil. I suppose evil is simply Mother Nature caught in the act of throwing her clay...ED
 
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wil said:
If we think genocide is evil...then we must think G!d is evil...
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Why? Because Scripture seems to endorse genocide? That's why reading the text in the light of informed commentary is so important.

Having said that, I googled this question, and frankly, some of the answers I saw in the top responses were so awful I just sat back from the keyboard ... the "it sounds bad, but if it had't happened, the result would be worse, and God knew that" answer is a crock of •••• as far as an answer goes ... so if anyone finds my answer wanting, I fully understand.

wil said:
or no...sometimes genocide is good....sometimes slavery is good too, and sometimes offering your daughters up for rape is good too...
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Never in my book.

wil said:
If we find a bigger evil our other evil somehow becomes good....hmmm just like elections.
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I'm a follower of big evils tend to flow from little evils ... sort out the small, unnoticed evils, and the big evils cannot flourish. There it seems the Christian and the Buddhist are in complete accord ...
 
EdgyDolmen said:
Our ethical perceptions are rooted in biology and generally in a religious conception of "moral duty". However, biological truths are not necessarily commensurate with a designer God, or even a good one. Therefore, one of the perverse wonders of evolution is this: the very mechanisms that create the incredible beauty, wonder and diversity of our amazing world all guarantee evil. I suppose evil is simply Mother Nature caught in the act of throwing her clay...ED
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Yes, but we are able to understand that something exists above and beyond nature -- that surrounds and contains nature, that permeates nature? That sustains nature. That is in the room with you right now.

Call it what you like. A higher dimension. The spirit world? God. They're just names?

Now you will probably ask me from what I can derive this 'conjecture'? I will say it's far less absurd than the present 'anthropic principle' in reply. So we'll go on circling, probably, until the end of time? :)
 
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RJM Corbet said:
I think that when a person comes to power, he becomes of interest to the powers of evil which, unlike the powers of light, do not observe the spiritual 'free will non-interference without invitation' law. So the more powerful a person becomes, the stronger he needs to be, to resist the powers of evil and be a Mandela rather than a Mugabe, perhaps?
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Absolutely. Same goes for anyone on the 'mystic' path — it's really, really, psycho-spiritually dangerous, and not something to be undertaken lightly. Thankfully, most self-declared mystics are minnows in the pool.

Or put another way, you make your mark and the demons will come looking...

As an analogy, when I did my Reiki training, I was informed, absolutely, that 'Reiki energy' was the equivalent of the Holy Spirit (so you can imagine that, for me, the Reiki bus hit a brick wall right there) and we were all informed that it was impossible for a Reiki practitioner to injure anyone using Reiki, because Reiki can do no harm ...

Which is a staggering piece of ill-informed nonsense when one considers that the founder was a master of the martial arts, was a Tendai Buddhist, was a practitioner of Buddhist esoterism and occultism, studied 'Shugendo' which has a long and rich history, performed various training exercises on Mount Kurama, a place which is deeply steeped in the psychological training of the warrior mind ... and that in most 'old' martial arts there is a technique called 'reiki-no-ho' which utilises the exponent's ki/chi energy to completely overwhelm, suppress and/or bend the opponent's will to one's own design... all done before the single 'kiri' killing stroke/strike.

So I would rephrase the statement to read, 'the contemporary reiki practitioner, having achieved 'mastery', cannot hurt anyone because he/she couldn't summon up the energy necessary to do any real damage to a wet paper bag. However, the dedicated practitioner, undertaking the necessary and severe austerities, both physically arduous and psychologically dangerous, learning exercises and techniques of collecting and focussing energies, can actually do a significant amount of damage if they set their mind to it ... and has glimpsed into worlds that the average western practitioner does not even dream of ...
 
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RJM -
First let me say I have been enjoying your posts - whether I agree with you or not, I understand from where you come.

Re: post #58:
Yep we could go back and forth but 'naw' man - I had my "flyover". No need for us to beat a dead horse. Folks do with my post as they please. I must make this comment though. Generally speaking and with few exceptions, every post here is speculation or opinion! I admit, as well educated and as well read as I may or as I may not be... "I know nothing"...

Thanks for your comments to my post...ED
 
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