Why do we blame God?

Question

Why do we always blame God for the evil in the world...

It's like our own stupidity and fault as a race is his fault; well get this, if you go back to Adam and Eve, yeah, free will. We kinda screwed up a little bit there.

And he could've stopped Lucifer? Well here's my stance on it. Why? If God is a perfect entity, and so are the angels, then he must of made Lucifer destined to fall, so that there could be some evil in the universe. If there wasn't an evil presence in the universe, then how could there be choice? Because choice takes a good, and a bad option (and a few more options are always nice).

Put simply, God created Satan so we could have choice (good and evil presences), because he didn't want us to be mindless zombies who couldn't do anything on out own. Once we had choice, we instantly set about screwing up, and just look at us now in all of our shiny God-blameing glory. It's like a child breaking a pot, and then blaming the potter for not makeing the pot stronger.

I like your comment on the pot Nihilist, but the idea is to have choice. The pot may be pretty, but it's also fun to break stuff. Remember sandcastles as a kid?

@ Feetie.

You must of missed the entire point of this argument I've made...

If he didn't allow you to make them, then it would be like haveing this little hand control you. You chose to make the bad choice, he just knew you would. End result - You screwed yourself.

Answer 1

I'd like to make an important distinction on behalf of philosophers everywhere: there is a very big difference between questioning how the concepts of an all-good God and the existence of evil in His created universe can be logically consistent, and blaming Him for the evil in an accusatory way. When philosophers question how this all-good God could have generated a world containing evil (or why it had to be a world containing so much of it, rather than less of it), they are not pointing a finger at God, they are assessing the logical coherence of the concept of God. If you really believe in God, you will applaud this practice, because only by questioning one's beliefs does one truly take ownership of them.

Answer 2

Because it works.

That is the usual answer to many questions beginning with the word "why"... and is often an answer people don't want to hear....

But putting the blame for one's actions on another often means one can reap the benefits without suffering the consequences.... so little wonder we humans are inherantly programmed to do it.
God is very convenient target for those that believe in such a thing because he cannot / will not fight back... nor deny it... It gives the believers something to target their anger at other than themselves.


And let me just clarify something else while I'm at it: Christians ARE mindless zombies. Clearly, the ironic and consistant conclusion would be that god wanted us to choose to be mindless zombies rather than just ... being them. It doesn't achieve anything extra, and sure enough christianity is proof that people can be quite content being mindless zombies....

... AND to be totally fair.... if the potter had been omnipotent, he could have made the pot unbreakable.... so there is nothing inherantly more wrong with blaming the potter for not making the pot stronger than there is in blaming the child for dropping it. The entire act of passing the blame is irrelevant anyway, since all events in this world are merely a step in the progression of the chemical reaction that is the Universe.... just a midway product of the causality of all that happened before them.

Answer 3

You don't need a satan in order to have a choice between yahweh and not god. Or yahweh and one of the other 2,500 gods that man has invented.

And you are inherently limiting the omnipotency of your god. You say that with no evil, we have no choice. Can't god still make choices available for us that have nothgin to do with evil? Or is that too hard for him? I'm sure you have a hard time thinking of such an option, but we're talking about god here.

I look at it this way, Gandhi was a pretty decent guy. He didn't choose yahweh, but he made every effort in his adult life to compassion and non-violence. What if all humans were as compassionate as gandhi? We could all scrupulously avoid hurting each other while trying to figure out if we dug jehovah or not. Some might say yes, some no. Why does "evil" have to be part of the equation? What is wrong with that kind of world? Are you saying that this is "the best of all possible worlds"?

Answer 4

He didn't create Satan, He just created desire! Do you know why Lucifer( The brightest of all angels-the meaning of his name) became evil? Answer: he wanted to be God! That is the reason, evil and generally the concept of sin is, not doing good! Doing nothing about nothing is doing evil! why should God have stopped Lucifer when He was the one that gave him the capacity of becoming better, his mistake was that he wanted to become more than he could handle! Evil comes in many shapes and has many ways, sometimes you do wrong when you think you do good (ex: Hitler thought he was saving Germany, and to tell you the thruth the concepts that he started with, like maintaining tradition were not only good but excellent, evil was what this uncounsciouslly lead him to..., many said that he was a satanist but his concepts were very religious)! There are many things that can be said here but I will stop now, as I still can! :)

Answer 5

Because they haven't accepted Objective Reality, God springs forth from the primitive limbic system of your brain, the last remnants of your reptillion past. The area where our raw emotions reside, including the irrational belief systems.

The 'religious' experience is triggered by deep depression, starvation, near death, or other highly charged situations. The 'born-again' christian phenomena has a scientific basis....yes, your limbic system. Why has man evolved this mechanism you might ask? Simple...it was a survival mechanism of our cave man ancestors to cope with a hostile and unknown universe.

The cerebral cortex is a more recent development. Here is where our rational and logical thought processes take place. It is here that the atheists have found their basis in reality.

In reality, there is no sentient, omnipresent, omnipotent supernatural being, supernatural entity or force....therefore all the inequities and misery of the world will always persist, some will have good things happen to them and some not, some will blame the invisible entity but objective reality wins all the time....no matter how hard some try to get that limbic brain of theirs to work...sorry

Answer 6

In ancient Jewish tradition Satan is simply an angel doing the work that God assigned to Satan to do.

The word Satan means challenger. With the idea of Satan challenging us, or tempting if you will. This description sees Satan as the angel who is the embodiment of man's challenges. This idea of Satan works closely with God as an integral part of Gods plan for us. His job is to make choosing good over evil enough of a challenge so that it becomes clear to us that there can be only one meaningful or logical choice.

Contrast this to Christianity, which sees Satan as God's opponent. In Jewish thought, the idea that there exists anything capable of setting itself up as God's opponent would be considered polytheistic or setting up the devil to be an equally powerful polarity to god or a demigod.

Oddly, proof for The Christian satan/devil mythology is supposedly found in the ancient Jewish texts that were borrowed to create the bible. One can’t help but wonder how Christians came up with such a fantastically different interpretation of Gods assistant Satan in their theology.

Other hints about Satan’s role in human relations can be seen if you look at the name Lucifer. It’s meaning in the original tongue translates as Light bearer or light bringer. Essentially the bringer of enlightenment. The temptations of the Satan idea bring all of us eventually into Gods light. Hardly the Evil entity of Christian mythology.

Love and blessings
don

Answer 7

Immature people never take responsibility for anything. My oldest sister is religious, so she doesn't blame her god for things. She insults my kid sister and me, and when we retaliate, she whines that we are starting quarrels with her. It is better to blame some imaginary gods than real people for everything, but the best way is to take full responsibility for all of your own actions. I do. I am an atheist, so I have no gods to blame anyhow.

Answer 8

But doesn't god know everything? So he knows ahead of time what choices we will make yet stills allows us to make them. That makes him a cruel and evil god. I say good riddance to bad rubbish. The is no "e" in making.

Answer 9

Its like they following their own will whether its evil or good. They call it freedom, but it only leads to destruction .. Being apart from the source of life can only lead to a bad end.

Answer 10

Not that there's anybody else, but God is the only one who has the patience to deal with us!0!

If somebody blames you for something, you'll get defensive, angry, etc. If you blame yourself, you'll get depressed, angry, etc.

So, we blame God because we know He'll put up with us. It's a very sophisticated defense mechanism!0!