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Post by FilmFlaneur on Feb 8, 2018 14:30:40 GMT
Oh yes I agree my comment was from the point of view of the Bible where at one point God admits point blank to creating evil, which apologists normally weaken down to just natural evil - i.e. calamaties and disasters, whether affecting just the personal or not. Evil is a natural point of human life. The only perfect being is God, mankind isn't going to be perfect, mankind was created to have free will, and that includes the free will to choose to commit evil acts, including a lot of ones we tell ourselves aren't evil because we like to think we're better than we are. As much as we like to set people apart, these are good people, these are bastards, the truth is everybody has the ability to do horrible things, a lot of them just choose not to. You can't look at half the $@(% people commit and say evil doesn't exist, and you can't compare their behavior to animals' instincts and say that it's a natural evolutionary trait. Animals kill but not for the reasons nor with the depraved methods that people do. There is no way any animal tearing another's throat out or mauling another animal to death can be compared to a man breaking into someone's home and in the middle of attacking them, injects them with bleach to increase their suffering, or a man who puts weed killer in his wife's food and pretends he loves her so much while her whole insides are burning to the point of blistering, or a Japanese Imperialist soldier raping a Chinese girl to death with a bayonet and then photographing her corpse with the weapon sticking out of her genitals, or a Croatian death camp guard sawing a prisoner's head off or slamming a child's head into the wall so hard pieces of his skull break apart. Like it or not, those are all choices people made for their own sick satisfaction, they could just as easily never done those things, nothing compelled them to. I hear what you say (and enjoyed the lurid descriptions), but natural evil has nothing to do with free will.
But if you wish to dwell on free will and interpret it in the way you do, it is fair to say though that for others, notably the Calvinsts, things are not so clear cut. And we also read these lines from scripture, often conveniently forgotten:
“For it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” – Phi. 2:13
.. where your purported deity is clearly seen as the ultimate impetus behind our wills. So while He might respect our will, He still works in us to will according to His good pleasure (i.e. do whatever he wants). That is, man’s free choice or free will might be best seen in the compatibilistic sense of the term, not in the absolute sense of having a free impetus behind the will. I hope that helps.
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