Day # 173 Opposites

I don't really mean to be picking on the Christians, but no discussion of the nature of Good and Evil can  be carried on in the West without at least a bit of a Judeo-Christian backdrop.  Until we move completely into meta-ethics there will remain a smackerel of religion lying about.

Yesterday I was on about where did the serpent come from and why a tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  If God created all things, surely he created the serpent.  This path is well trodden.

Call me a literalist but something just doesn't add up for me:

James 1:13   Let no one say when he is tempted "I am tempted by God" for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He himself tempt anyone.    This passage in the Bible is often cited to show that God cannot be a part of evil.  Further in James 1:14 & 15 we are told that it is our desires that draw us away and in which lie the seed of our sin.  Desire as the cause of suffering.  That sounds familiar.

Isaiah 45:7  I form the light and create the darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things.   There are arguments that this passage is referring to and refuting the teachings of Zarathustra which would have been known at the time of Isaiah.  Other biblical scholars comment that this passage can only be interpreted in the context of God's comments to Cyrus and that Cyrus' success or failure in battle is a direct result of God and no other.  Regardless of the opposites contrasted, Isaiah pretty much has God saying that everything, even calamity, is his bailiwick 

Job 1:12  So the Lord said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your power: only do not lay a hand on his person"  Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.   God clearly gives Satan free rein to test Job's faith as long as he does not kill him or lay his had on Job's person.

Christianity certainly did not concoct the idea of Good and Evil.  The existence of Christian dogma, however has certainly coloured the debate.  I list the passages above to at least illustrate some of the contradictions in the biblical teachings of Christianity, the teachings I was raised with.

God does not tempt anyone.  Thus it is written.  God created everything.  Everything.  Thus it is written.  The serpent, the tempter of Adam and Eve, was created by God.  God created everything.  Job was tempted by Satan with God's permission.  God created Satan.  God created everything.

If the origins of the debate began with Christianity, this would be even harder to explain, but the first known organized teachings that attempt to explain good and evil come some 600 years before the birth of Christ.

I have picked on the Christians enough.  We have to go a little further back in time to find out what pre-existing belief systems the writers of even the Old Testament were trying to synthesize when they wrote the works we now call the bible.