In the theosophical and philosophical space evil is a topic of discussion. Why there is evil, what is the purpose of evil and so on? Also for all those believers in God, evil is a dilemma as to why God makes us deal with evil. Why is there a concept of evil and goodness? If evil leads to suffering then what is the purpose of that suffering?
Evil is broadly of two types the personal evil and the natural evil. Personal evil is what we humans do in the form of as serious crimes as murder, genocide, rape etc to simple things as deliberately hurting someone’s feelings or even stomping on someone’s feet. Natural evil is something like the storm or the volcano or the earthquake which wrecks havoc on the affected people or creatures.
One of the most common explanations of evil is that if there was no evil then how we would know what is good and the importance of goodness. It is similar to the corollary that if we don’t taste something bitter then how will we understand the taste of sweetness or if we don’t understand the pain of touching a fire then how will we know that it is dangerous to touch a fire. But here a question also arises, how can anything that makes us understand the good can be evil? Are we supposed to only live with goodness?
Is it less evil to kill an ant than kill a man and is it 'more good' to feed a hungry man than feed a hungry cow? Can good and evil be categorized into good better best or worse and worst.
As per Christianity Adam and Eve committed an act of disobedience of God and committed the original sin. God is said to be all powerful, all knowing and all loving, if these three characteristic are no there then how can it be a God. If God was all powerful then it could have stopped them from eating fruit from the forbidden tree, if God was all knowing then he knew that these two will ultimately eat from the forbidden tree even if I tell them not to, if God was all loving then why did he punish them for eating from the forbidden tree by giving them a life of suffering. Something doesn’t seem to add up.
Is free will the missing link? If free will is the missing link then we have been given the permission to do anything we like that includes what is called evil. But why would God who loves us so much give us the free hand to do evil also. What will God achieve by giving us this free will to us when he knows that we will ‘misuse’ the free will? If God wanted that by granting free will I will give them the option to live there life in their own way. And thereafter I will dangle the carrot of heaven in front of them by saying that if you avoid the wrong path you will meet me in heaven, if you take the wrong path then you will be sent to hell. So basically he is giving the freedom of choice to us with a caveat about the outcome of our choices. Sounds like manipulation, do whatever you want but face the consequence.
Now for an atheist how this concept of what did is good and what is evil developed in the first place. We tend to always connect good and evil with God, but what about the concept of good and evil before the time we realized that god decides what is good and what is bad. Did those people feel bad when they killed another person or felt good when they saved another person? If our development of brain is a sequential event from animal life form to human life form then is there a concept of good and evil in animals also. If not then is it only creations of the mind which has reached a certain level of development or does it have anything to do with consciousness.
What about the natural evils I mentioned in the first paragraph, is it God doing those evils by using its freewill? What is God achieving by it? We tend to think those as gods warnings. So is it god’s strategy that I give you freewill and then I use my freewill by sending those natural calamities to warn you not to use your freewill or use that freewill carefully. So does god want to give us some sort of self regulated freedom?
Did all the ‘men of God’ claiming to having direct link with him use this loophole to regulate our freedom by creating some do’s and don’ts and hanging the carrot of heaven and hell. They have been immensely successful in it. Is there even a heaven or hell or was it just a ploy to manipulate the people to submission to 'Gods will'.
The concept of good and evil is so ingrained in our mind, may be through evolution and so deeply by our societal value system and influenced by religion that to question the basics in itself seems like a crime. But sometimes things which are so obvious to us should be questioned beyond our beliefs – who decides what is good and evil, what is good and evil, and what we are actually believing blindly is correct or not, what if there is no good and no evil and these are just terminologies we have invented for events we face in life, which are otherwise neutral and inert in nature.
There are too many questions in this article which might seem to be stupid when compared to our deep rooted beliefs, but it came to my mind so I shared my thoughts.
It is very important to ask questions as these. I don't believe in objective truth, so then every individual must find his or her own (subjective) answers. But the first step must be to question everything, especially what's taken for granted so strongly that few people even get the idea to question it.