Supernatural Origin of Evil in Philosophy

“Good and evil are like two notes in a symphony. Many things change into their opposites: for example, hard ice melts into water which is soft. This led to believe that the combination of opposites resulted in a harmonious whole. In music, harmony results from the combination of low and high notes, while in the universe harmony flows from the combination of opposites: good and evil.” (HERACLITUS 535-475 BC) God is regarded as to be the perfect good who, therefore, could not be the creator of evil. The power gifted by God to man to distinguish truth from falsehood is not complete. Man goes astray due to the pressure of his desires and sentiments. Due to lack of accurate judgment, he fails to distinguish between good and evil and treads the wrong path by mistake. The error lies not in God's action but in ours, and this is due to our poor judgment which is based on insufficient knowledge, which could lead to believe that moral distinction can be regarded as to have a supernatural origin.

There can be many types of evil. Two of these types are moral evil and natural evil. Natural evil is mostly things like we cannot control such as physical pain and suffering, while moral evil depends on the exercise of the human will. Natural evil is independent of that. Many say that natural evil is a human necessity as, Without the pain, mankind would not be aware of illness and danger. In life, there are times when the bad guys are better off than the good guys. Some say it's a test for the soul, and rewards are waiting for us. The human family is like a person and its members help each other by their good deeds because they are also suffering for their faults. For example, take what happened to Jesus. He suffered for all the immorality of humanity and saved them all. But what about moral evil, consisting of things like murder, that people can control? Why does God allow it if the consequences are undesirable?

The protagonist in the novel is Billy Budd. The experiences that Billy undergoes throughout the novel parallel what Jesus Christ endured in his life. The similarities between Christ and Billy include their demises. Jesus Christ supposedly said that he was king of the Jews. Then he was tried and convicted of treason, although he was falsely accused in the first place. His punishment was crucifixion on a large wooden cross. Billy Budd suffers a similar demise. He was accused of being the leader of a rebellious group planning a mutiny. Outraged by the outlandish charge he kills his accuser with a single blow. Billy is then found guilty of mutiny, and he protected the true mutineers. Billy is sentenced by a drumhead court to hang on the yardarm, which is similar to the cross that Christ was put on. The captain reluctancy to act, in this story can be compared to God as in the story of Jesus Christ, God did not act, letting Jesus die.

“Ivan asks Alyosha if he would consent to the torture & killing of one tiny child if the act would give all humanity ultimate peace & happiness”(Dostoevsky 65) is objective and when the term 'objective' is used in ethics, we mean that if morality is objective, it is so that at a cosmic level; or that moral values are valid regardless of human opinion. For example, to say that the Holocaust is objectively immoral means that what the Nazis did is immoral, whether they think it's okay or not. And that would have always been evil even if they had succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everyone into believing that the Nazi doctrines were good. For those who believe that morality requires a supernatural foundation, God, or perhaps another metaphysical entity, is required as the absolute criterion by which all moral actions are measured and considered moral or immoral. Objective morality would mean that something moral is moral regardless of the existence of rational minds. Those who believe that morality is a supernatural foundation assert that if one denies the idea that the foundation of morality is supernatural, he is committed to saying that morality is subjective. I believe that it is false, and that objective morality does not require a supernatural foundation; objective morality is justifiable in naturalistic terms. The opinion is that moral values are objective and based on the nature of the human being; thus, the foundation of moral values is natural.

To understand why moral evil exists, we must understand the concept of free will. Freedom of choice or free will is the power and exercise of an unhampered choice. Therefore, humans can make their own decisions and do what they want. Freedom does not mean absence of influences, but rather that these influences do not oblige a person to decide in a certain way and that he can choose between these influences. For example, a man thinks that a walk to would be a good idea because it needs fresh air, but the man is tired and does not really want to, he must choose the way to go. People do not always know the influences that act them all the weather. some of them are subconscious. Some people would say that if they knew these subconscious motivations, our behaviour could be explained, and free will would be cancelled because our behaviour would always be predictable. 'Supporters of free will do not deny that these unconscious causes exist, but simply that it is a positive occasional influence added to the equation.' (The information philosopher) Say, for example, that one person wants to hurt another. This person may not know why but may still choose not to do so. Therefore, if a person's moral character is well known, his or her decisions are most likely predictable and not random. Thus, free will is not random, not completely determined, but necessary for the development of moral character. Therefore, the moral evil exists. It is a side effect of free will. 'Christian philosophy has always attributed the presence of evil in the world to the acts of free will of man.' (Aristole)

If God is a moral agent, objective moral values would not exist and would have no meaning until the advent of human consciousness. Mankind could just as well be intrinsically good. In any case, it is only after the advent of consciousness that humans acquire moral value. But to say that God is the paradigm of morality apart from rational minds makes no sense. If there is a God and is in some way responsible for morality, the objectivity of morality acquires objectivity, if any, because of the existence of rational minds, in which case morality seems to rest on human reason. That is to say, even if we grant the existence of God, it would not explain how God confers objectivity on humans. One of the answers is that it does, whether we like it or not, in which case human beings are accidentally the recipients of God's nature. This point of view is similar to that proposed in the discussion of the Euthyphro dilemma. It seems that morality is the nature of God imposed by God himself. Thus, the only way this represents objectivity is from God's point of view. If the nature of God is imposed on humans by God, morality returns to the order of God. On the other hand, if morality is to be of value to humans, objective moral values must be based on human nature, in which case, as in Euthyphro*, morality can be objective and independent of the nature of God.