(To be organized later 🙂 )
It seems that the concept of Evil has become an almost ubiquitous concept in the world of humans.
The original concept of Evil comes completely from human religious thinking.
In Christianity, the concept begins with the Genesis story of Adam and Eve.
Strangely enough, it did not present itself in the same way to the writers of Genesis and Judaism.
In the Christian tradition, it rose as a consequence of disobedience, and the eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
This is an integral part of Christianity for the following reason.
Without Adam and Eve’s sin, evil would not have entered the world. (this is a bit twitchy, because how was the serpent (seen as Satan) there before they sinned…… it actually is a bit twitchy of a concept actually.
“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:” Romans 5:12
I once asked a rabbi the question “Does Judaism teach that the essence of “God” the same essence as what the universe was built from? Didn’t get a clear response. Waiting for a second chance at an answer.
Science shows us that there was no “curse” that happened at the time of Adam. The base of life has been the same.. a smooth curve since the earth cooled down.
Let’s look at the universe, and see if we can see “Evil”. Is it evil for an asteroid to punch a hole in the planet?
Is it evil for a lion to eat an antelope?
Strange… but it seems evil only has to do with human beings.
Why is that?
It seems that perhaps the story in Genesis is speaking to a change in the mind of humans, where they can experience what IS, but can choose to do something else. It seems that humans can go to a dark place in their mind, and do horrible things to other humans. This, to me, is what “evil” means, and not some sort of boogeyman in the universe that can possess us. (Although through becoming fixated on something dark, our fixation can possess us. It is a dark place that becomes a justification to do something harmful to someone else…. that is not some sort of evil force, it is humans choosing to listen to the bad wolf……
Anyways, the logic goes like this:
1.) IF the whole physical universe rises from one source, and
2.) IF all of the universe is connected to that one source,
3.) THEN all “human individuals” are listening to the same Source, and interpreting what they see from their individual unique POV.
4.) this also suggests that there is not a separate material essence, but one source essence that is the source as well everything that rises from it
Especially in fundamentalism, they cannot admit the fact that “there is an awesome reality, and we use our religions to place a “face” on that reality, but all those faces fall short of the actual reality.”
In this concept of “One Source”, i would like to posit that there is no place that evil as an entity, could come from.
If all religious people could say this, then there COULD be peace between religions.
Reality is Dharma 