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Gallery 8
God, The Soul & The Concept of Evil
by Daniel J. Shepard
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Leibniz accepted the concept that evil could not exist in a perfect being and proceeded from there.. But if we are to accept the main premises of religions, including the concept of omnipresence, than there is nowhere else for evil to exist. Evil as well as goodness must exist within God. As such, humanly judgmental forms of omnis are not forms we can assign as basic characteristics of God.
The major religions of the world believe the universe was made from nothing. Interestingly enough, science itself, through quantum mechanics, is leaning in this direction. As such the physical, having been created from nothing, is nothing. Therefore, what we perceive to be, what we perceive as being the physical, is in actually a form of nothing just as Eastern religions have always stipulated.
Does such a concept imply you are nothing? Absolutely not, unless one perceives ones essence to be the physical, as opposed to the spiritual, the soul, an abstract form of existence. It is abstraction, which now takes on the form of true reality, rather than what we call the concreteness of our perceived universe being the totality of Reality.
If one accepts the concept of the soul being abstract and thus ones true essence being abstract, as all major religions profess, than it can readily be seen that the very dissolving of the universe, the dissolving of matter, energy, space, and time, back into its original form of nothingness leaves ones essence, the abstract, as an entity existing within the omnipresent whole, within God. Again we come back to the concept of your being an abstraction and God being an abstraction. Again we come back to the concept of your being a part of the whole, of total abstraction. Again we come back to the concept of your being a part of God, for how can total abstraction be total without including your abstraction? How can the whole be whole without you? How can God be all knowing, omniscient, without your knowledgeyoure your experiences? Knowledge is power, so how can God be all powerful, omnipotent, without your knowledge? In other words God cannot be God without you. You are definitely important to God for you, by definition, are what make God, God.
But what does this have to do with good and evil and the paradox of a perfect being containing evil or allowing evil to take place within It?
If the universe originated from nothing and can regress back to nothing than it is, in essence, nothing. You are in the universe. As such, the physical form you take, takes on the form of the universe, the characteristics of the universe, is in essence nothing. On the other hand, the abstractual form you take, takes on the characteristics of God, your abstraction, your awareness of your every experience gleaned from the universe, your awareness of the universe itself, is a part of God. As such, you and I, others, may be pieces of God, made in the image of God. Granted you are temporarily isolated from the whole, but you remain a part of the whole nevertheless. When it is understood that you and others are cut off from and then separated from the whole, from God, through a process of inclusion (Separation through exclusion versus separation through inclusion will be fully addressed in Tractate 8: Russell) by the void of space and time (The concept regarding the void of space and time will be fully addressed in Tractate 6: Kant), by emptiness, is it any wonder so many of us feel isolated from God.
Definition leads to understanding of evil and our creating it. We affect God for we carry awareness of action generated from within a physical existence obtained within an existence of space, time, matter, and energy, into the real world of God. We, as individual units of knowing, as individual units of action directed by free will are responsible for all the evil, which exists in God.
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