The Parasite Of Evil

Remember that God created evil.


I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Isaiah 45:7

So the Bible is wrong then. Thank you for confirming this.

The Hebrew word indeed translates as “evil” (ra‘) in the King James Version of Isaiah 45:7 although apologists prefer to translate as you say. But it has two applications in the Bible. It can, yes, refer to harmful natural events, calamity, misfortune, adversity, affliction, or disaster. But it can be used in the sense of moral evil, such as wickedness and sin (Matthew 12:35; Judges 3:12; Proverbs 8:13; 3 John 1:11). Just sayin'.

But let's go with the usual apologist's exegesis: amongst sorrows, calamities, disasters, afflictions, and adversities one might include childhood cancers, tidal waves and all forms of natural evil (which one notes, afflict the faithful and atheist alike). Are you suggesting we should say that all these misfortunes 'do not exist' and are merely, say the absence of health and calm seas? (No matter how apologists spin it the effect on those suffering is the same.) Or indeed that your deity did not supposedly create them when Isiah clearly says He did?

The normal special pleading at this point is that God does these things ultimately 'for our benefit' and that, by definition, something done by the alleged deity must be good, or, more desperately, that we do not know why He does these things as the Almighty works in mysterious ways. Some try and explain the inconvenient admission in Isiah by asserting it was 'just for then' but nowhere does God say this and the passage sounds like an absolute statement.

I can't think of any reason,  using the same logic, why one cannot say just as easily that good does not exist, and that it is the absence of evil. In fact it makes more sense since we are all apparently born guilty of sin and we live in an imperfect world.

Thank you. I hereby challenge Djorno to define how 'good' is a created, objectively real thing, without 'evil' being made of likewise nebulous stuff. And yes, he is barred from saying "Because God created it (good)" on pain of forever and hereafter forfeiting credibility as far anything else he writes on the subject.

Will you answer the question?

Cold does not exist. It is not a thing. Cold is merely the absence of heat. Her response made about as much sense as saying “heat doesn’t exist either then”

Evil is not a thing. Evil is when a conscience being corrupts something that exists in it’s natural, good state. It’s an intentional act of the will to misuse something not as it was intended to be used. 

A knife is not evil in and of itself. What is evil is when a person uses it to intentionally harm someone. Language is not evil. What is evil is when a person misuses language to lie for a selfish gain. 

I think that the words "good" and "evil" are better used as adjectives than as nouns.  Describing good and evil as things is erroneous.  Either way, they describe something intangible.  "Good" simply means "better than something else".  One needs something to measure it against.  In all cases, you measure it against something substandard.  If you dislike the substandard thing enough, you might call it "evil".