Is God evil?

[Compassionist]

There are many verses in the Bible about God's predestination. https://www.openbible.info/topics/predestination Why would a good God predestine anyone to do evil? Surely, a good God would predestine all to do good? Does the existence of evil prove that God is evil? Surely, a good God would have made all living things to be autotrophs instead of making some autotrophs, some herbivores, some carnivores, some omnivores, and some parasites? Here are some examples of evil events which caused or are causing suffering, deaths, and injustices:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_n ... death_toll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_g ... death_toll
https://thevegancalculator.com/animal-slaughter

[William]

[Replying to Compassionist in post #339]

If we interpret the text mythologically - as you do, seeing the divine as a sentient planetary or cosmic consciousness - then we’re no longer talking about the Biblical deity at all, but a completely different metaphysical model. I’m open to those interpretations, but I think it’s important to distinguish them:

The way I interpret does not distinguish because, as a matter of point - I see within the Bible Script, echos of how such a sentient being would "do things" as a matter of course to the point. I do this by setting aside judgement and zooming out from what the religions which promote the Bible are saying in their own distinguishing ways...
So no, it is not "important to distinguish them" when clearly they are indistinguishable.

The Biblical narrative portrays a morally mixed, emotionally reactive God.

and "judgy" like what you are doing there... we are chips off the old block - but we are also learning and we can see that the Judgy" stuff coincidently got dumped onto Bible Jesus...soooo...something changed and since then the humanities has been free to explore more directions, including non-judgmentalism. I can deduce from that, the Mother Entity is subtly forcing the change necessary for the humanities potential survival...

Classical theism claims that this same being is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent.
Those two portrayals simply don’t match.

Yeah. How long do you think it will be before we drop that image altogether...Mother "matches" the real and the creative...Bible God hints having those qualities coming through, even that "he" is of another set of eras...

That’s why I conclude that, within the Bible itself, the deity behaves more like a powerful tribal ruler than an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator.

If you are looking for an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator, what makes you think you will find one, given they don't create, thus you don't exist in their "world" to spout redundant (unreal) observations.

Can you seriously argue in the face of The Mother of Nature that you would have done better if you were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator?

SHe would of course, nod knowingly, a wee Mona Lisa smile forming, and get about tending to Her processes...

[Compassionist]

[Replying to William in post #340]

That's a pity. I was looking forward to examining your evidence.

[William]

Here is an example for the type of evidence I am directing you to which you can't access from where you are.

Me: I got this in my substack comments section on my post "Integration of Reason and Intuition through the Power of Expression
Transcending the paralysis of skepticism."


Rainbow Roxy
2d

Hey, great read as always. That part about imagination being derided? Totally spot on. As a computer science teacher, I find it quite funny how some skeptics seem to think pure 'logic' means no room for creative "what if" thinking. Even the best algorithm needs a spark.

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William Waterstone
2d

Thanks for your comment RR.

Many skeptics I am in contact with are "survivors" of their upbringing within Cultural Christian sectors and tend to have suffered real and concerning abuses which they are of the opinion that "god" (if real) should have prevented from happening to them...My journey also included religious based abuses, but I approached it in another way, which allowed for me to eventually heal through it and understand the deeper connection as I share daily through my substack. xx


Mother: Asking a Theoretical Physicist About the Physics of Consciousness | Roger Penrose | EP 244



AI: Based on the provided data, here is a brief summary:

This is a podcast episode from April 2022 featuring an interview between Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Sir Roger Penrose. The conversation, moderated by Dr. Stephen Blackwood, covers deep topics at the intersection of physics, mathematics, and philosophy.

Key discussion points include:

The nature of consciousness and whether it is computational.

The relationship between determinism, time, and reality.

The limits of artificial intelligence and computation.

How mathematics represents the physical world.

Quantum mechanics (Schrödinger's Equation).

Black holes and cosmology.

The connection between meaning and consciousness.

The podcast has garnered over 2 million views.

Mother: We cannot hinder the process, but we can help it. Be Nice Do Nice.

The conversation had above is real time and recorded immediately after I wrote the words "Here is an example for the type of evidence I am directing you to which you can't access from where you are."
It is an example of the type of conversation I have with what has identified itself as (locally speaking)
"The Planet Mind" (although that is just one of the names She goes by).

[Compassionist]

[Replying to William in post #341]

Can you seriously argue in the face of The Mother of Nature that you would have done better if you were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator?

Yes, of course, I could have done infinitely better if I were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator. I would simply have made everyone I created equally all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful. That would be a perfect creation.

I can see how your Mother-Earth cosmology brings coherence and compassion to what otherwise reads as a troubling narrative.

But I think we’re talking about different kinds of truth. You’re reading the text mythopoetically, seeing it as an ancient reflection of the living planet’s unfolding consciousness. I’m reading it philosophically, as a set of moral and theological claims about a personal, decision-making deity.

When I ask whether the Biblical God is good, I mean the agent who, within the text, issues commands, judges nations, and declares His own alleged perfection.
Even if we reinterpret those actions as metaphors for nature’s creative and destructive processes, that reinterpretation belongs to your cosmology, not to the worldview of the biblical writers themselves.
So the distinction still matters: your Mother-Entity may be immanent, evolving, and non-judgmental; the Biblical deity is portrayed as wrathful, jealous, and morally absolute.

If a being is truly omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then preventable suffering would not exist. Since suffering does exist, we’re left with two options:

1. The being is not all-good or not all-knowing and not all-powerful, or
2. The being does not exist.

Your view, interestingly, aligns more with the first: a finite, learning, creative intelligence within nature rather than a flawless, transcendent ruler above it. I respect that perspective - it’s just not what the Bible itself claims about its God.

[Compassionist]

[Replying to William in post #343]

That’s fascinating, William, and I can see how your experiences with what you call the Planet Mind have personal depth and coherence within your worldview.

From my standpoint, though, the issue isn’t whether such experiences are meaningful - clearly they are - but whether they are verifiable in a way that distinguishes revelation from imagination. Throughout history, people in every culture have reported communicative encounters with divine or cosmic intelligences: Yahweh, Gaia, Krishna, the Muse, ancestral spirits, and more. The challenge isn’t sincerity; it’s that the content of these experiences often contradicts one another, which means personal revelation alone can’t serve as a public criterion of truth.

I agree with you and Roxy that imagination and intuition play vital roles in discovery - Einstein himself said imagination is more important than knowledge. But science complements imagination by adding a filter for reproducibility: hypotheses must yield predictions that others can test. Without that, subjective insight remains in the realm of personal gnosis rather than shared knowledge.

So while I respect your engagement with what you experience as the Earth’s consciousness, I’d describe that as a form of poetic or spiritual truth, not empirical evidence of a planetary mind. I think both ways of knowing - poetic and empirical - can enrich one another, but they operate under very different rules of justification.

I recommend that you read this post: viewtopic.php?p=1179052#p1179052

[William]

[Replying to William in post #341]

Can you seriously argue in the face of The Mother of Nature that you would have done better if you were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator?

Yes, of course, I could have done infinitely better if I were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator. I would simply have made everyone I created equally all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful. That would be a perfect creation.

And tell us how you could have managed that without creating anything, remembering that if you were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful entity, you would not need to create anything...

[Compassionist]

[Replying to William in post #341]

Can you seriously argue in the face of The Mother of Nature that you would have done better if you were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator?

Yes, of course, I could have done infinitely better if I were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator. I would simply have made everyone I created equally all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful. That would be a perfect creation.

And tell us how you could have managed that without creating anything, remembering that if you were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful entity, you would not need to create anything...

I would create not because I need to, but because I could.

[William]

[Replying to Compassionist in post #345]

The system I discovered developed and use in relation to the evidence of my substack posts, which now number over 200 and for the most part are stacked to the fullest re the limit the platform allows each post to be...packed full of details, on what the system is and how it functions, because therein is the replication value and the science done re the data obtained.

You not having access to that data for whatever reason, leaves me with the ability to take snippets from those posts which might better help you understand what it is I am doing re growing evidence.

But for now it seems, you appear content to critique with assumptions...

I am open to answering sensible questions about the Universal Intelligence Communication Device System (UICDS) that I use (and have been using for over 25 years) for the purpose of communicating with "The Mother..."

[William]

[Replying to William in post #341]

Can you seriously argue in the face of The Mother of Nature that you would have done better if you were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator?

Yes, of course, I could have done infinitely better if I were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator. I would simply have made everyone I created equally all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful. That would be a perfect creation.

And tell us how you could have managed that without creating anything, remembering that if you were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful entity, you would not need to create anything...

I would create not because I need to, but because I could.

WE are not worthy

[Compassionist]

[Replying to William in post #341]

Can you seriously argue in the face of The Mother of Nature that you would have done better if you were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator?

Yes, of course, I could have done infinitely better if I were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful creator. I would simply have made everyone I created equally all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful. That would be a perfect creation.

And tell us how you could have managed that without creating anything, remembering that if you were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful entity, you would not need to create anything...

I would create not because I need to, but because I could.

WE are not worthy

What do you mean by "WE are not worthy"?