Reply #44: Huh? Just because a god knows stuff we don't doesn't...

[TreasonousBastard]

make that god good or evil. Nor does the god's ability to do stuff we can't.

Good and evil are human constructs where we make value judgments in accordance with our own history, mores, and experiences. These can no more be ascribed to the gods than human feelings of hunger or sexual arousal. The Greeks and others fooled around with humanoid gods, and they are all forgotten-- only mystical superhuman gods survived the ages.

Dealing with the Judeo-Christian God, since that's the one most of us have more experience with, this whole good and evil business is a corruption of a far more ancient Eastern concept of duality. Yin and Yang cannot exist alone-- they must coexist, and from their interaction comes all change, and life itself.

We in the West ended up with God and Satan signifying the duality, but had to muck it up by assigning values-- God is good, Satan is evil. The truth is that neither of them can exist without the other. The disorder that Satan tries to bring down on us is meaningless without the order of God. Likewise, the order of God is meaningless without the disorder of Satan.

Good requires evil to define it, and vice versa.

Now, as to God being the root of all disasters-- if one believes God created the universe, than God is ultimately responsible for EVERYTHING, good or evil. But, then we get into the whole free will thing and have bad dreams from Paradise Lost.

One can argue that God created war and cancer, but then who gave us sunsets and bluebirds?