How can evil exist without God?

Yeah yeah, I know, there's no such thing as evil according to atheists. So when a child gets raped and murdered, it's just one of their friends having a good time. There's no such thing as rape or murder either, right?

 

It says more about God that evil can only exist if he does. So, God is evil?

All kidding aside, define evil. I believe the concepts of good, evil, and morality in general are innate within the human species. Being animals, we are subject to evolution, like all other life. It is likely that humans who had evolved in ways that allowed them to work better in groups would survive better than those that did not.

What is evil to a snake? I would wager that they wouldn't understand the concept. Is it evil when a snake eats a rat? Is it murder? Obviously not, these things only apply to social animals and in particular ones that have evolved ways to fully contemplate their place in the world and the decisions they make.

Marality and the concepts of good actions vs bad actions are innate in humans. Worldwide studies have concluded that children of all ages have very good constructs of justice and mortality, regardless of environment and up bringing. That isnt to say they don't play a part, they most certainly do. It all serves to show that humans have a defined "nature".


Oh, i forgot empathy! We not only work with other people, we compete with them as well. This is why we have evolved a strong sense of empathy. It is important that humans be able to descern the future actions of other people. Are they friend, foe?

I could go on forever, but im typing on my phone and this is already a little bit ranty. In closing, ill only say that evil exists and without God.

 

Concepts of good and evil are relative to the people you're looking at. The fact that murder and rape are almost universally condemned does not mean there is a cosmic or biblical structure of right and wrong that exist in a metaphysical sense. In fact, I would suggest that is exactly why Voltaire suggested that God would need to be invented if people didn't already believe he existed. It's the perfect way to instill a common universal baseline.

There's always a boss, that's the theme. When you're a kid, your parents are the boss. They basically define the boundaries right and wrong to you, at least within that home. When you go to school, your teachers and the principle are the ones who control right and wrong by means of the rules enforced within the school. When you go to work, your superiors are the arbiters of right and wrong. In your society, the laws of your local, state, and national government. But what's above all of humanity? Nothing. There needed to be something so that people everywhere, whether they have little else in common, could have a baseline to work with. The need of God as humanity's ultimate enforcer is undeniable, but his actual existence is completely up to each person to decide for themselves. And if God doesn't actually exist, the morality we all espouse on his behalf is not universal, not divine, but completely subjective and contextual to each culture. Which basically puts us all back to where we started before we had organized religion. The illusion of God is necessary for control, the reality of God is not, as long as people believe.

 

Evil is destructive, God is creative. God doesn't destroy and evil doesn't create. They are not interchangeable.

 

God created religion, but God isn't religious.

 

What gave you the impression that atheists believe evil does not exist? Evil can only exist from a subjective standpoint--evil is what the individual believes is evil. It's not an objective, demonstrable force in the universe.

 

Obviously you don't believe evil exists. A nuclear bomb explosion is a pretty evil demonstrable force, believe it or not.

 

No, a nuclear explosion has nothing inherently subjective attached to it. It is just the forces of physics at work. It has no emotion, personality or really any human characteristics. It just is what it is. You can't call a nuclear explosion any more evil than you can call an asteroid that slam into Earth evil.

You can call the people who set off that explosion evil though, but even there, no matter how universally accepted that belief may be(that the people who set off the bomb were evil), it's still subjective.

That's why humanity needed God, so that there was something higher, unchallengeable, to appeal to. Religion is man's attempt to give the world a universal meaning and purpose, because we are frightened of uncertainty and very emotional creatures.

So, evil does exist, but it's defined completely by the person or culture you're dealing with.

 

A nuclear explosion is a demonstrable force; but nuclear weapons do not release a wave of evil when they go off in an uninhabited portion of the desert. They release a shockwave instead, which is itself morally neutral.

The evil is in deciding to use that against inhabited cities and such. And that's subjectively evil, not objectively evil. It's quite possible to morally justify a nuclear attack with an objective moral system--it's impossible to morally justify it with a subjective morality.

 

You are just doing the Texas two step. A nuclear bomb won't go off without the evil action of the button being pushed. The destructive effect of the bomb going off is evil. Humans didn't create God, because humans didn't create the universe. God created the nuclear bomb, but evil sets it off. God creates all that exists, evil destroys what it is given permission to destroy. That's the only reason all those nukes haven't already gone off.

 

All the nuclear fallout from all those tests done in the 40s and 50s are still circling the earth today. That's why cancer is the number one cause of death. Objective and subjective is the Texas two step. Truth, like evil, are facts of reality.

 

OMG - huh ? "God is creative. God doesn't destroy " Does'nt destroy ? where did you hear that ?

Who the hell is IN CHARGE ? why earthquakes-volcanos-tsunamis - Tornados/Hurricanes , etc,.etc

" For God so loved the world that he drowned every S O B who would'nt listen to him,- including those who've never heard of him.

God hated the world so much that he sent his only son so that whoever does not believe in him will perish and be denied eternal life.--God's Ex-wife


....

 

Good as a concept exists, sure. Evil is it's natural opposite so if one exists, then both do. But the concepts themselves, what is actually good and what is actually evil, are completely subjective and up to the people defining them. There is no universal good. You can believe there is, but having a belief in something doesn't make it exist in reality, or I'd have an orchard of money trees in my backyard.

 

And I'm pretty sure God wrought some destruction of his own too if the Old Testament is to be believed. Or did evil cause the world to flood, and fire and brimstone to rain down on Sodom and Gomorrah? Evil may have been the motivating factor, but it was God who did the destroying, if Gop's logic is to be believed.

Or consider the death of the firstborn in Egpyt that God wrought during the Moses episodes. Those firstborn were innocent as only a child can be. Yet God killed them just the same.

 

Some of it might be, but insignificant amounts. Unless you want to try to claim that material once released into the atmosphere remains there forever. In which case I would like you to explain how sandstorms die down.

No, it is not. Evil is entirely in the mind of the person perceiving an act. It is a subjective impression of it.

 

That’s not true people can make up evil rape is nonconsensual sex murder is the illegal killing of a person

You speak ignorance

 

thats what good and evil is to you then

 

prove it please

 

why can’t you justify it subjectively?

 

Just because you don't believe in something doesn't make it not exist. You can believe that rape and murder are not evil, but it doesn't change the fact.

Again, God didn't destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, evil did. God didn't write the old testament, men did. Creation and destruction, positive and negative, truth and evil must be kept in proper perspective. They are not interchangeable. Oh, and GOP logic is an oxy-moron.

 

You speak as though truth is real, but only from your perspective.

 

Saying an atheist doesn’t consider anything evil because there an atheist is a lie from any perspective its not the case

 

What is the connection between the first sentence and the other two .
Are you being deliberately stupid ?

 

First of all there are only two sentences, the third is a question.

 

The burden of proof is usually on the person saying something exists and not on the person saying it doesn't. If I came to you and said "I have an invisible cat that follows me around", you'd probably say prove it. "Pics or it didn't happen" is the current internet slang on that topic. If you do have evidence of a real objective force of good and evil, do share it.

Truth is not the opposite of evil. And by Gop's logic, I was talking about you. The message I had quoted was from a different poster and I didn't want my message to confuse that person with you.

To answer the question of the thread though, evil can exist without God because good can exist without God, because both good and evil are created entirely by man. If all humans were the same, and behaved exactly the same way, then there would be no good or evil, there would just be humans. Since we don't, since we tend to fall to both extremes and everywhere in between, there's going to be differences of opinion on what good and evil actually are. 99% of people agreeing on something being evil just means that 99% of the people agree on it. It doesn't make it some kind of cosmic or divine law, and if it does, provide some basis and evidence for it being more real than just your belief.