Andrew McCombs #fundie quora.com

Of course if God were truly good and WE were evil, an attempt by God to show us that we were not, in fact, good, would be met the majority of the time with hostility and rebellion.

Yet, since God in orthodox theory IS Good, there are two characteristics which He must embody: that of Justice and that of Mercy. If God were purely to act according to Justice, he has every right to destroy all evil. If, in fact, we are all evil, He has every right to destroy us without mercy.

Yet, God being Good, must also show Mercy. Therefore, it could be argued that if it were shown that in fact we ARE all evil, the more humble of us might see that they very fact that we have continued to exist and flourish DESPITE our evil, is proof that God is merciful, even if at times He has shown His wrath.

Jesus seemed to treat evil not as a wholly deliberate state, but more as a sickness. So— we must ask ourselves this: Is it possible that we ARE evil? If evil is a sickness, isn’t it a good thing that we know our true condition, so that we can seek a physician to heal us of our sickness?

If the Devil IS truly the adversary and destroyer of good, would he want us to know that we were evil? Or would he instead convince us that we were good, and that God was evil for judging us? Evil people rarely ever believe that they are evil. Hitler thought he was the savior of humanity. We all know that evil is highly unpleasant, and how pleasant is it for one who believes he is good to find out that he is, in fact, evil? I would assume it’s just about as pleasant as a seemingly healthy person finding out that they have terminal cancer. If it weren’t for the temporal authority of a medical doctor, we might well think that someone coming up to us and telling us we are going to die was evil for doing so, and we might react towards that person with hostility— not unlike they who believed they were righteous reacted towards Jesus.

Another thing to consider is this: If God created everything, everything is His to do with as he Wills. If, as it says in Genesis, He created everything good, and suddenly evil and death break out in the midst of his good creation, is it not within His perfectly Good authority to eradicate it? Some consider God’s wrath to be proof that God is evil— yet if Evil was destroying His good creation, it would not be God that was evil for destroying evil, but it would be those which were evil who were rebelling against Him, and in doing so, perpetuating the further degradation of His good Creation. Thus, God would still be Good if, by eradicating degrading elements from Creation, He was able to save His Creation.

Many people do not like the idea that they belong to God, and that they are both subject to His justice and at His mercy, but if this adversely affects them, why does that make God evil? If God is Good, and in fact they are evil, they have no basis for criticizing what God does with either them or the rest of His creation, because they seek to do evil and to destroy (whether or not they choose to see it that way).

Furthermore, it is logically inconsistent that God could possibly be evil, since if God were evil, everything that exists as a result of God’s will would also be evil, since there would be no other definition by which to counter an absolute evil source of all things.

Therefore, the claim that God is evil is self-refuting, since claiming evil presumes an absolute measure of good, yet an absolute measure of good implies God, thus proving that God is Good, not Evil.

Thus, to claim any moral superiority to God is also self-refuting, since claiming a moral superiority (especially an absolute one) depends on an absolute definition of Good, which implies the existence of God, the very being one is claiming moral superiority to. It is absolutely absurd to indirectly invoke God’s absolute goodness to directly condemn God’s supposed evil. Yet that is exactly what the argument presented in the post above does.

Whether or not one believes in God, one can use the logic of a hypothetical existence of God to come to the logical conclusion that, if God exists, He must be Good. Any conclusion other than that is either an appeal to emotion, an appeal to ignorance, or an appeal to absurdity.

As to whether humanity is inclined towards good or whether we are inclined towards evil, one only needs to study human history, especially the past 100 years, to come to the conclusion that it is extremely probable that humans are naturally bent towards evil, which is actually much more consistent with the Biblical view than it is with modern humanist views or even most other religious or philosophical views.

That being most likely the case, and since proving moral superiority inevitably rests upon an appeal to absolute transcendent goodness AKA God, could one really say they are in a position to declare that God is evil even in His wrath, when humans have shown themselves to be so utterly incapable of the goodness they hypocritically and hypercritically accuse God of lacking?

I thinketh not.

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