Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?

[Greatest I am]

I wrote this primarily for a religious audience but it crosses between the politics of war as well as religion.

 

Please focus on the political aspects and war as what I am looking for is how to prevent the evils of war as resources become short in various areas.

 

Thanks.

 

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Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?

And if you cannot, why would God punish you?

 

Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by putting forward their free will argument and placing all the blame on mankind.

That usually sounds like ----God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy. Such statements simply avoid God's culpability as the author and creator of human nature.

 

Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.

 

If all do evil/sin by nature then, the evil/sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not do evil/sin. Can we then help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?

 

Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil and sin is all human generated and in this sense, I agree with Christians, but for completely different reasons. Evil is mankind’s responsibility and not some imaginary God’s. Free will is something that can only be taken. Free will cannot be given not even by a God unless it has been forcibly withheld.

 

Much has been written to explain evil and sin but I see as a natural part of evolution.

 

Consider.

First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created. Without intent to do evil, no act should be called evil.

In secular courts, this is called mens rea. Latin for an evil mind or intent and without it, the court will not find someone guilty even if they know that they are the perpetrator of the act.

 

Evil then is only human to human when they know they are doing evil and intend harm.

As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.

Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil, at all times.

 

Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.

 

This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.

 

Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, you should see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us. Wherever it came from, God or nature, without evolution we would go extinct. We must do good and evil.

 

There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.

 

These links speak to theistic evolution.

 

www.americamagazine.org...

 

www.youtube.com.../c/6F8036F680C1DBEB

 

If theistic evolution is true, then the myth of Eden should be read as a myth and there is not really any original sin.

 

If the above is not convincing enough for you then show me where in this baby evil lives or is a part of it’s nature and instincts.

 

 

Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?

And if you cannot, why would God punish you?

 

Regards

DL <br clear="all">

[swansont]

I wrote this primarily for a religious audience but it crosses between the politics of war as well as religion.

!

Moderator Note

Which might make one wonder why it's posted in Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology. Moving to religion.

[chilehed]

...An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place.

False premise. I don't know where you heard those two phrases, but it certainly wasn't in a good translation of Genesis. There's really no legitimate reason to twist "able to be swayed" into "vulnerable to being easily swayed", and even less for twisting "seeing that it was desirable for gaining wisdom" into "desiring to eat it". The differences in connotation are subtle, but significant.

 

Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall,....

Non sequitur. The ability to fall does not imply the inclination to fall.

 

If all do evil/sin by nature then, the evil/sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not do evil/sin. Can we then help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?.....

Certainly I do, given that very few people commit only evil acts and wish to do nothing else. This is an error related to the one you made above: the inclination to sin doesn't imply the inability to do anything else.

 

It's not human nature to do evil. To sin is to be less than human.

 

If theistic evolution is true, then the myth of Eden should be read as a myth and there is not really any original sin.

Non sequitur, and an error in definition: myths are not necessarily untrue. Edited August 18, 2012 by chilehed