The reason for evil

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Sentence two:

You are speaking for God and the hubris of that act is monstrous. Unfortunately it is also ubiquitous amongst many religious people. I am not suggesting He should be anything. I am merely examining what is and trying to determine some logic behind it.

Interesting perspective, I would say more, but I'm not feeling all that philosophical at the moment, so I can't add anything useful to the discussion.

What I don't understand is this: People have said that the inability to do or experience the effects of evil would negate free will or otherwise limit the human experience. However, why could an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent god not accomplish both? There are plenty of things that human beings imagine but cannot or do not do, and plenty of things that are probably possible that no one even thinks about. If the ability to commit and suffer the effects of evil was, say, only as possible as growing bird wings and flying off into the heavens, would that really be a limit on the human experience? Or, if we did not know that evil existed, if we could not even conceive of hurting someone else, how would this be truly limiting, more than we are limited by not thinking of all the things that don't even enter our consciousness? I can't see how a god with all three omni-qualities would not be able to think of this.

I also think the argument that "there can't be any good without evil" is flawed. How can we know that? It sounds more like a justification for how things are than an actual explanation of how things absolutely must be.

Unfortunately there seems to be a general feeling that evil only implies malicious intent. That was not the sense I espoused in my OP. I intended that evil be anything that is destructive or nasty or negative to the well being of individuals. My proposal was that these things occurred as conditioning influences to strengthen human knowledge and skills. An earthquake or a flood or a frightful disease is not, of itself malicious. It's merely the way things happen. It can be interpreted as malicious if the supposition is that God controls all events. On that basis malicious intent may be assumed. But, as I said, even here the "punishment" for succumbing is motivation for comprehension of causes and results, hopefully in remedies to prevent a re-occurrence. That is what I meant to imply as a reason for evil. It creates impulses to understanding and education.

Good and evil are merely subjective concepts given our limited understanding of the world/universe. Given this, however, without evil, we would not know what was good . . . and visa verse (sp?). Good is simply selfless acts (to the point of self sacrifice) and evil is selfish (to the point of sacrificing everything else) towards obtaining a goal in one's life. Sadly, its easier for some to use selfish acts, but they dont often pay heed to the consequences of their choices until the aftermath of their goal (for which they blame everything else but themselves for what happens). However, nothing is clear cut, black/white anymore . . . assuming things were back in earlier years. Hell, watching Survivor from time to time has proven some of the more murky aspects in our personas (especially now with their Heroes vs Villains theme this season). In the end, we're still subject to Darwinian laws (survival of the fittest) until we evolve beyond basic instincts and fears (which have more control over us than we'll admit). How we act on these instincts and fears is how we come up with the concepts of good and evil . . . ends justifying the means and all that crap.

The whole "evil serves a good purpose" thesis has always felt perverse to me. Such an unimaginative god would certainly not deserve my respect.

This reminds me of chaos theory. If god was omniscient and omnipotent, then all god would have to do is start with all the particles in the right place, going the right direction, and going the right speed. Because god knows all the variables, the future would be predetermined, and all will happen by god's will, with out god actually being here.

Also, about the Christian god: Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Their god didn't like them not being ignorant, and got rid of them. This is a good concept for a god Sand, in my opinion, better than the one portrayed in the bible.

Perhaps we would become so sick of our self-inflicted suffering and wallowing in our own evil that our hearts would cry out for the saving presence of God?

This is the cry of King David in "Psalm 51".

Perverse as in that's what "sin" is?

Seems beautiful to me that God would be able to purge and redeem it from a man's heart.