'There is no such thing as evil' Discuss this statement.

Fundamentalist Christians would believe that evil exists because of Adam and Eve and the Fall. Because Eve was tempted by the snake to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, all humans who are descended from Adam and Eve are sinful which brings in the notion of Original Sin, which suggests that we are all sinful from birth, and so Christians are baptised to cleanse the babies to get rid of their sin. Fundamentalists believe that this is literally true and so they believe in Original Sin but more Liberal Christians who believe that it is just a story, would not believe in Original Sin. I agree more with the Liberal point of view as I believe that the story of Genesis is just a metaphor and so I don’t think that we are all born sinful

Others might argue that, because we have free will, we are sinful because we have the ability to choose our own actions and therefore evil is not created by God, but in fact it is created by humans who abuse their free will. This gets rid of the problems raised by God allowing evil because God has given us free will and thus any moral evil is humans fault. However, this doesn’t answer the problem of natural evil, not caused by humans, although some Christians would argue that this natural evil is cause by fallen angels, although in my opinion, that idea is very unlikely.

Others might argue that although suffering and evil exist, we get closer to God by acting morally through suffering. This follows the idea of soul-making, which is backed up by the story of Job in the Bible, who suffers great hardship because of a wager God has with Satan. This also suggests that evil is a mystery and we should just accept it and not question God.

For these reasons, I think that evil does exist and that although moral evil can occur as a result of human action, natural evil can’t be brought on by humans and therefore it must come from God.