Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
The Demiurge World-Builder
Post 106.February 16, 2020
The Lucifer Principle
Who’s to Blame for All Evil ?
The Problem of Evil has plagued philosophers & theologians for centuries. In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions, God is often described as “good”, “merciful”, “loving”, “compassion-ate”, etc. And the creation story in Genesis describes a perfect paradise that the creator himself described as “good”. But, in the imperfect real world, we humans, along with plants & animals, experience the opposite of goodness in many ways. So we wonder, why would a good god create a world of pain & suffering for his beloved creatures? Why do bad things happen to good people?
In Genesis, the god of the Hebrews is initially represented as a member of a large family, Elohim1 , similar to the Greek Pantheon. So, like the Greeks, ancient Hebrews viewed their tribal deity Yahweh as a super-powerful Father figure, along with Asherah as an unconditionally-loving mother-figure. Their gods were fearsome warriors, who could be beneficent to those on the same team, but malicious to their enemies, and stern-or-forbidding even to their own disobedient children. In fact, Yahweh was originally a weather-god, like Zeus, wielding his lightning-bolt spear during fits of wrath. However, as they became more sophisticated in their philosophical reasoning, the priests & scribes began to picture El as more like a universal eternal creative principle, perfect in every way. So, if Evil is an imperfection, at least from the human perspective, there must be some good reason for its existence in the created world.
Consequently, the rough-tough barbarian warrior-god aspect was civilized and softened somewhat with attributes of human kings & pharaohs, who claimed to be the “fathers” of their people. He could be benevolent to his loyal subjects, but male-volent to those who got on his bad side. And like mundane kings, the imperial Lord of heaven had advisers in his court. So Jehovah had a legal prosecutor (adversary) to deal with his unruly subjects. Yet again, over time, images of the heavenly court evolved to look more like the super-powers of the day, such as the Babylonian & Persian Empires, which had equally-powerful enemies working at cross-purposes to the will of the emperors. Hence, after the Babylonian captivity, the Jews returned to Israel with a new secondary deity, similar to the Zoroastrian Angra Mainyu – a destructive spirit opposed to the creator god, Ahura Mazda. Thus, Satan — a former trusted courtier turned antagonist — evolved from a loyal agent of Jehovah to an implacable opponent. As such, the Devil served as a convenient scapegoat for all the evil in God’s perfect-but-corrupted creation.
Still, the theological Problem Of Evil wouldn’t go away. So, religious apologists continued to propose Theodicies — a rationale for why God would allow Evil in his Creation. Some, as in the biblical book of Job, simply bowed to divine authority & power, saying “who are we to question God’s motives?” Others, concluded that, logically, if God allowed FreeWill2, he also had to include decision points where moral agents had opportunities to choose Evil instead of Good. Others, took a more practical tack, and said that in a matter-energy space-time world, each evolutionary event must follow either the path of Energy (constructive, good), or of Entropy (destructive, evil). Hence, the necessity of Evil was built-into the dualistic warp & woof fabric of reality.
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What is Evil? Evil, in a general sense, is the opposite or absence of good. It can be an extremely broad concept, although in everyday usage is often used more narrowly to denote profound wickedness. It is generally seen as taking multiple possible forms, such as the form of personal moral evil commonly associated with the word, or impersonal natural evil (as in the case of natural disasters or illnesses), and in religious thought, the form of the demonic or super-natural/eternal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil
1. Elohim : The biblical term generally referred to the Canaanite pantheon, or god-family. Specifically, as “El”, it indicated the Father of gods. “Each "son of god" was held to be the originating deity for a particular people.” One of those sons was Yahweh, the tribal god of the Canaanite Hebrews. “El” was sometimes used generically in reference to the singular concept of eternal deity. Eventually, El & Yahweh evolved into the monotheistic God of Christianity, with a long list of special attributes, including : holiness, eternity, and goodness.
2. FreeWill : .Of course, those agents, not being omniscient, could not foresee the future con-sequences of their choices. Hence, their freedom was actually a gamble.
The Lucifer Principle
A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History Howard Bloom
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