Where does EVIL come from?
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Peace all,
This is how the God tells us what evil is
1694 And do not use your oaths as a means of deception between you, that a foot will falter after it had been firm, and you will taste the evil of turning away from the path of God, and you will have a great retribution.
Evil is TURNING AWAY FROM THE PATH OF THE GOD, which is directly related to exercise of our free will, and therefore, comes from us.
2256 There is no compulsion in the system; the proper way has been made clear from the wrong way. Whoever rejects evil, and believes in God, then he has grasped the most solid branch that will never break. God is Hearer, Knower.
Here evil is compared with the wrong way and belief in The God compared with the proper way.
Evil = the wrong way = turning away from the path of The God, which comes from our free will.
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Step at a time and lets not get carried away with questions upon questions. My previous post has not been answered at all (rules and judges as per your alleged admissions)??? Please stick to it before we can move any further. wink
bro you have not answered Al Salatu Al Wasta for months now, remember that one? when you said the words don't have the Al in them, well i told you mate that i expected a concession from you but you just turned a blind eye
why you think i will waste my time going through all these pages while i don't have trust in you that you are a man to accept the truth and admit it about the Al?
therefore if you are not that serious don't expect that i will be serious with you but i still respect you and like your style for sure,
let's look at what happened again
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you raised a quran conradiction with a christian, and this does not make any sense to me
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then you came and said that the Quran is not the words of Allah and you can refute the ones who say that it is, EASILY
now i asked you to do it with me and show me how easy it will be for you,
you failed to do this so far
you failed to prove that it is easy because you directed me to some used by date chat chat, that i'm not interested in really, i do have a life
that is my challenge to you, i don't really give a fluke if i prove to you that it is the words of Allah or not, but what i will give a fluke about is this
i will show everyone that what you said regarding ITS EASE is nothing but utter BS
this means a new start but under judges and rules we create together and agree on
i guess if it is easy as you say you should accept and not dodge, let's nominate the judges then we move on to the rules
I will select my two judges out of the following pool
- Agentxxx
- Kyle
- Savage_Carrot
- Joe
- KGB
how about the pool of your two judges?
cheers
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Salam,
Good question LT, need time to think about this. I think when every there is choice/freewill there is evil. But why God has made this possible? Also there is some similarity between chaos and evil, as evil can cause chaos, but chaos does not necessarly caused by evil. roll
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Peace all. very good post nadeem.
Is evil from us or from god?... There is a very easy way to resolve the contradiction in 478 and 479....
We are god... D
Peace all. -
Peace,
I say that Evil comes from in the way we exercise our God-given free will on this Earth...
What say you?
I agree. God did not create evil. God created beings with free will and, in our disobedience to God, we create evil.
Now just how do we know that? The Quran thrusts out both venues, a contradtiction. At one instance it mentions that both good and bad are from GOD and at another the good is from GOD and the bad is from you or what you sow.
Hi, Danish,
In case my avatar didn't give it away, I'm not Muslim, so others here will have to explain the Quran's stance on evil. Look's like Ahmed has already engaged you on that front smile
As discussed in another thread here recently, I think this depends entirely on your notion of what God is, which is a matter of faith. I believe God is all good, all powerful, and all knowing.
So, my view on the origin of evil is tied to those beliefs. One of the common arguments against God being all good and all powerful says, roughly, that God could not be all good if he allows evil and suffering or, if he is all good, he could not be all powerful because he does not eliminate evil and suffering.
So, the view that evil comes from our free willed disobedience to God is the general answer to that apparent contradiction. God created the possibility for evil by giving us choice, but we create the evil through the wrong choices.
Another reply in this thread said that evil is from Satan. I don't think this is exactly correct Like men, Satan chose to disobey God and even challenge God. That choice is the root of Satan's evil. That Satan exerts evil influences on men is no different from men exerting evil influences on one another Ultimately we choose which influence to follow - God's or some other. The choice is ours alone.
More generally, if God had created us without free will then there would be no concept of good and evil, right and wrong, nor even love, etc., because there would be no choices of any sort for us to make and there would be no possibility of influence of any kind from any source.
Finally, the original post in this thread includes a snippet from an article that draws a distinction between evil born of our free will and "natural evil", such as natural disasters. I don't buy into the concept of "natural evil". The universe operates by physical laws and sometimes those physical processes result in what we consider disasters and catastrophes, but these are not evil on their own. Evil can only result from them when mankind reacts to them wrongly or, perhaps, when we fail to recognize the power of those processes through arrogance or ignorance and, in so doing, invite destruction.
Beyond that, I think much of our spiritual growth, our ability to grow closer to God, hinges on our free will and our ability to draw lessons from the hurdles we face in life, whether they stem from man made evil or hardships related to handling our environment.
All of that depends on my belief in God and my belief about the nature of God. Now, if you're looking to debate the existence of God and/or the nature of God, that's a topic for another thread. smile
Regards,
oneway -
Hello 'oneway',
I believe that both good and bad, evil and virtuous, constructive and destructive, saint and satan, are all part of our natural ecosystem that exists at opposite ends. The fact of the matter that these entities exists (meaning created), is what leads us to our Will/Choice. Do good and achieve recompense and do bad, achieve penalty. I also believe that satan is a descriptive word and not a name of some being/thing.
Finally, the original post in this thread includes a snippet from an article that draws a distinction between evil born of our free will and "natural evil", such as natural disasters. I don't buy into the concept of "natural evil". The universe operates by physical laws and sometimes those physical processes result in what we consider disasters and catastrophes, but these are not evil on their own. Evil can only result from them when mankind reacts to them wrongly or, perhaps, when we fail to recognize the power of those processes through arrogance or ignorance and, in so doing, invite destruction.
Natural phenomenon, such as earthquake, volcanoes, tsunamis, thunderbolts, hurricanes, etc. are considered disastrous/cataclysmic (evil) and not blessed. Humans never invite them.
Now, if you're looking to debate the existence of God and/or the nature of God, that's a topic for another thread.
Actually I am discussing the existence and nature of Quran in which it speaks relevant to the alleged claims of being GOD?s exact words by the belligerents. Sure thing that this accounts in its appropriate thread named "Quran - the word of GOD or MAN".
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Peace Danish, All,
Just a quick note...
Natural phenomenon, such as earthquake, volcanoes, tsunamis, thunderbolts, hurricanes, etc. are considered disastrous/cataclysmic (evil) and not blessed. Humans never invite them.
These "disastrous" events are only called as such when humans happen to be living in their paths. Meteorological events such as you mentioned happen to be very necessary for the prosperity of nature itself. Imagine, the only way a pine tree can spread it's seed is if the pine cone catches fire.
In reality, as long as there are no people in the way, no one calls natural phenomena evil.
Peace,
Tay -
Defining evil as pain and suffering is adorably naive (yes Wikipedia I'm looking at you.). Calling natural disasters 'evil'? Come on now.
The definition of 'good' and 'bad' as seen from the perspective of an atemporal infinte being (read god) is certainly different from temporal beings (read us). If it can be stated that god is the progenitor of all then it follows that 'good' and 'evil' do not in fact exist as they are all manifestation of god's design - one cannot inherently be any more good or evil than the other. They basically occupy different ranges of the spectrum that is god's design. What this means is 'good' and 'evil' are purely human constructs and cannot be applied to god or used to discern god's nature in any viable way; they have no value outside of our societies. Therefore it follows that 'evil' comes from man. As does 'good'.
So why does it say in the Qur'an that good comes from Allah? I've always taken that to say that "all that is, comes from Allah"; 'all-that-is' is necessarily a part of Allah's design and whatever follows Allah's design is 'good' by default. In fact it's impossible to not follow Allah's design, so everything is 'good' - from Allah's perspective that is.
As for all this benevolence business why does a deity need to be 'all-loving'? The property of 'all-loving' negates the function of a system. A system exists to lay out a line of reasoning for and against a certain something; 'all-loving' implies the acceptance of both, thus negating the system's purpose to begin with. To be honest, it looks more like feel-good hippy non-sense than actual reasoning.
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Peace all,
Defining evil as pain and suffering is adorably naive (yes Wikipedia I'm looking at you.). Calling natural disasters 'evil'? Come on now.
The definition of 'good' and 'bad' as seen from the perspective of an atemporal infinte being (read god) is certainly different from temporal beings (read us). If it can be stated that god is the progenitor of all then it follows that 'good' and 'evil' do not in fact exist as they are all manifestation of god's design - one cannot inherently be any more good or evil than the other. They basically occupy different ranges of the spectrum that is god's design. What this means is 'good' and 'evil' are purely human constructs and cannot be applied to god or used to discern god's nature in any viable way; they have no value outside of our societies. Therefore it follows that 'evil' comes from man. As does 'good'.
So why does it say in the Qur'an that good comes from Allah? I've always taken that to say that "all that is, comes from Allah"; 'all-that-is' is necessarily a part of Allah's design and whatever follows Allah's design is 'good' by default. In fact it's impossible to not follow Allah's design, so everything is 'good' - from Allah's perspective that is.
As for all this benevolence business why does a deity need to be 'all-loving'? The property of 'all-loving' negates the function of a system. A system exists to lay out a line of reasoning for and against a certain something; 'all-loving' implies the acceptance of both, thus negating the system's purpose to begin with. To be honest, it looks more like feel-good hippy non-sense than actual reasoning.
I totally agree )
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Peace Tay, Neo and all,
Calling natural disasters 'evil'? Come on now.
I'll stand myself corrected on this one, although my reference was directed to "destruction" which got misrepresented. Thanks for pointing and removing my error.
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Peace Neo,
So why does it say in the Qur'an that good comes from Allah? I've always taken that to say that "all that is, comes from Allah"; 'all-that-is' is necessarily a part of Allah's design and whatever follows Allah's design is 'good' by default. In fact it's impossible to not follow Allah's design, so everything is 'good' - from Allah's perspective that is.
As you say, good comes from The God and all comes from The God implies that all that comes from The God is good. On the other hand, bad comes from ourselves. This means that in the big picture of things everything that happens is good. Even rejecters have a good purpose in the big scheme of things because those that are guided can contrast their path to the straight path and be more guided (16-7).
As for all this benevolence business why does a deity need to be 'all-loving'? The property of 'all-loving' negates the function of a system. A system exists to lay out a line of reasoning for and against a certain something; 'all-loving' implies the acceptance of both, thus negating the system's purpose to begin with. To be honest, it looks more like feel-good hippy non-sense than actual reasoning.
But look in the signs around you that you can empirically verify. The God is the Almighty (al-Rahman) and the Merciful (al-Rahim). Those are two contrasting attributes and one can see the result of those attributes in His creation. Look at a beautiful sunset. It is indeed a beautiful sight and the sun provides warmth and energy and supports life on this planet. But the sun is a very violent and destructive place that will evaporate you in a millisecond long before you get to it. These are the signs of nature all around us. We are surrounded by this amazing and beautiful universe that is at the same time extremely violent and inhospitable. If it weren't for The God's mercy making conditions just right for life to exist on this planet, we would instantly perrish.
We can only hope that The God keeps us in His mercy after we die. Judging from the signs around us, not being in His mercy would be very bad.
Peace,
Ayman
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Peace All,
Neo, you stated
As for all this benevolence business why does a deity need to be 'all-loving'? The property of 'all-loving' negates the function of a system. A system exists to lay out a line of reasoning for and against a certain something; 'all-loving' implies the acceptance of both, thus negating the system's purpose to begin with. To be honest, it looks more like feel-good hippy non-sense than actual reasoning.
I understand your view but disagree to the degree that you make this sound awfully mechanical. Where does mercy fit into the equation?
Danish, you're a fine example for all of us.
Ayman, the example of the sun was excellent. I believe we can witness this duality in the many faces of nature, from a tiger, to the surging seas, to snowfall, each represents magnificence and awe while at the same time a stern reality.
We can only hope that The God keeps us in His mercy after we die. Judging from the signs around us, not being in His mercy would be very bad.
That is His promise.
May peace be upon you,
Tay -
The most simple understanding of evil is choice. Onw should ask where choice come from? Choice/freewill is something given/created by God. Hence evil is the result of choice that disrupt the harmony in the submission/system. Hence God ask us in the Quran to focus on masjid-al-haram, the restrictions in submission. Everything God created "submit" to God totally, because they are not created to disrupt the harmony of the system, i.e they do not have a "choice". Us human species have a choice not to submit or to carry out our function in this world, even those claimed to be submitters, have taken the message wrongly by praying towards the stone-structures and have turned Islam into a ritualistic-religion! Everyone does evil, as God say in the Quran that if he has to punish man of the evil he has done, he will not leave a single being on earth because its the nature of man to do evil. The solution is to contain/control this evil by focusing on the restriction/haram in the submission.
Peace
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Hello, my personal view is that evil comes from within and from our choices.
Peace -
Salaam,
Satan is not an entity, as this was a created myth coming from mythology of polytheism. In the ancient times, Jews and Christians didn't saw the sheitan mentioned as a creature, but as the evil side of man itself. Only with the Christian-faith being distorted by the Persians and Greeks, did it turn into a creature, and Islam adopted this.
Evil is the opposite of good, and will always be possible to commit, even in the later life, but because we are on the higher level, we will not even think of it. So i believe, evil is stagnation, evil is something that makes us not growing. And by thus resulting in harming others and ourselves. Instead of walking up the stairs, we're walking down it. Personifications of human qualities comes from the pagan times, as love was turned into a god, sexuality, wisdom and so on, this also happened with our evil side, as it became a real seperate creature over time that lured us in doing evil, while the idol first only started as a personification. In monotheism all the idol-personifications left, except the personification of evil. As that remained a seperate entity, that only lures us in doing wrong. By this we read the Quran with the wrong glasses, as we don't see that satan is something in us, our ego...Both the words Sjeitan(hebrew=STN) and Iblis(greek=Diabolos) mean the same thing, opponent, adversory.
Iblis came from the Greek diabolos. In French the word is diable which is close to the Greek original.
The guess is that the Greek first syllable ?di? was taken as a prefix and dropped somewhere along the way when the word was in transition. It is further surmised that the word came to Arabic through Syriac and it is there that ?di? got dropped.
In Greek, the word diabolos means slanderer. One can understand it as such because the 'Satan' actually slandered God by sowing doubts about Him and His Reality of creation. English has twisted the word around and derived devil from it, and created a false conception to the word as it being a creature seperate from us through greek-egyptian mythology.
Greek diabolos actually means throwing across, a kind of verbal picture of what a slanderer does with words and truth. ?Dia? means across and the Greek infinitive ballein means to throw. As in throwing across reality, truth, reason and logic. Slandering them and make them things you don't want to follow.
It was the Jews who first got to Persia during the diaspora and got acquainted with the Persian religion of opposites. Hebrew meaning of the word is enemy or he who opposes.
Dictionaries give another meaning to satan. They say it came from a Hebrew verb ?shtn? which means to make wrongful accusation. In Arabic there is a verb which is very close to it ? ?shtm? ? which means the same but is not usually connected with satan.
Our Lughat says shaitan has come from the root ?shtn? which means a long rope. Because a long rope means distance it is opined that shaitan is something that is drifted far away from God. Some Arabic scholars have linked shaitan to shaat which means to burn up. This should connect with nature of satan which is fire according to the Quran. Burning away thruth and logic. Some scholars trace the concept of satan to Egypt where snake was most often used to denote authority, in which case it could be a power turned rebel within the creation.
And by thus gives good allegories for our ego, that slanders against the truth and reality, making illusions(hell) that are barrieres(jahim) for progress, and burn away our growth. In this life and especialy in the next.
Wa-salaam
Arnold
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Peace arnoldyasin. Very good analysis. The satan is a 'state of mind' which we should avoid...I have found dr shabbirs translations (2nd edition,qxp.) of the quran one of the better/ more rational ones...He also clarifies and explains a lot of the symbolisms and terms of the quran...A lot could be learned from his translations.
I just dislike some of my perceived 'implications' of his 'enemies of islam' writings... -
As you say, good comes from The God and all comes from The God implies that all that comes from The God is good. On the other hand, bad comes from ourselves. This means that in the big picture of things everything that happens is good. Even rejecters have a good purpose in the big scheme of things because those that are guided can contrast their path to the straight path and be more guided (16-7).
Agreed.
But look in the signs around you that you can empirically verify. The God is the Almighty (al-Rahman) and the Merciful (al-Rahim). Those are two contrasting attributes and one can see the result of those attributes in His creation. Look at a beautiful sunset. It is indeed a beautiful sight and the sun provides warmth and energy and supports life on this planet. But the sun is a very violent and destructive place that will evaporate you in a millisecond long before you get to it. These are the signs of nature all around us. We are surrounded by this amazing and beautiful universe that is at the same time extremely violent and inhospitable. If it weren't for The God's mercy making conditions just right for life to exist on this planet, we would instantly perrish.
We can only hope that The God keeps us in His mercy after we die. Judging from the signs around us, not being in His mercy would be very bad.
Peace,
Ayman
I don't believe not being "all loving" implies that one can't be merciful. ) Tay, I think this addresses what you said as well. It's possible to be both mercifula and not-all-loving (but just 'loving' at the same time.
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What this means is 'good' and 'evil' are purely human constructs and cannot be applied to god or used to discern god's nature in any viable way; they have no value outside of our societies. Therefore it follows that 'evil' comes from man. As does 'good'.
If Good and Evil is human constructs so is God?
Regards,
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What this means is 'good' and 'evil' are purely human constructs and cannot be applied to god or used to discern god's nature in any viable way; they have no value outside of our societies. Therefore it follows that 'evil' comes from man. As does 'good'.
If Good and Evil is human constructs so is God?
Regards,
If you believe "god" is a construct of the mind, why are you here?
Also, if "god" is a construct of the mind explain the origin of everything.
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If you believe "god" is a construct of the mind, why are you here?
I am little surprised with the last bit of your statement above D
I think you would have answered it like this "What that's got to do with it?"
The question was legitimate was it not?
If you say Good and Evil is human construct then the question follows Is God is also a human construct?Also, if "god" is a construct of the mind explain the origin of everything.
Perhaps this is for another thread...
Regards,