On the nature of evil, a response to Zomgitscriss

Note this is kinda a mess and I'm lazy, so didn't feel like fixing it. And I don't have enough readers anyway to justify cleaning it up. Note I have not perfectly quoted ZOMGitsCriss either, check her video out. I haven't attempted to misquote and a lot is word for word. This is in response to ZOMGitsCriss's video Evil, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt5J3EEjASs

"Why atheists Not obey the same morals that he or she believes in."
Because in truth they have conflicting beliefs that result from conflicting natures within us. Different parts of the brain compete to control our actions. Some beliefs are inherently a property of our biology, resulting from our genetic code. IN some sense all beliefs we have are the result of our genetics. Some are more forced upon us, others less so. Use of morals to guide our actions suffers from an inherent flaw and that flaw is morals are composed of statements, which cannot hope to cover all circumstances and cannot hope to be true in the end. They also suffer from the flaw in assuming that we have the power/strength in all circumstances to act on our morals in that moment going against other ingrained tendencies. They also assume we in fact remember an applicable moral for the circumstance we are faced with and that isn't always the case. It also assumes we have enough information and understanding to in fact make a moral choice, which is not always the case. Sometimes we are faced with situations that are morally ambiguous and are such because our lack of understand and are lack of information on the situations.

"Problem with a theistic God- Has to be all powerful and all good "
Really problems though with a particular definition of God. What about a nontheistic version of God, well anyways.
Both sides assume that God has to interfere directly with creation to exist. First to make the all powerful and all good argument, first assumes we even know what all powerful or all good means, which we do in fact do not. It also then makes the assumption that an all powerful or all good being being could actually exist. Well for one if it is in fact all powerful, it cannot be all good. It cannot be anything but all powerful. Once it is all of one thing, it cannot be anything else besides that. What would an all powerful being do with its power? We are biased towards our own physical reality and its countless limitations. Logically realities could exist with far more far freedom in expression. There is no logically reason that an all powerful being would directly concern itself with our level of reality. If it were it fact to concern itself with our level of reality how in fact would it make a decesion with which to act in our universe. Any action it would take would likely play favoritism with some one versus the other and would be a rather limited use of its power. Also to assume that a being could in fact be all powerful, is to ultimately assume we are completely powerless. To assume we are in fact powerless removes ourselves from the responsibility of the circumstances in our life. The Christian God is ultimately an illogical conception of God and thus could not in fact exist. As far as being all good, we also are making assumptions about such a being's understanding of good and what are its desires. In the end, we are placing the blame on the wrong thing. The whole Christian God, its ideas, is based on an argument being true by association. Basically you have someone like Moses or Jesus, who has a religious experience, and then you have these people who could after Moses or Jesus, who have had no religious experience whatsoever and they add on to the conception of God and supernatural realities and religious people take on faith that those who have had no religious experience at all could possible know anything at all about God, or heaven, or supernatural reality. Also the whole argument about God being all powerful and all good and such is a straw man argument, as these conception of God is not common to all people. Plus the idea of a thing being all powerful and all good is illogical and easily disproved.

"Evils that are not experienced by humans and not caused by humans, endured by other living things, animals eaten by flies, animals eatten alive by other animals"
We seperate humans from the rest of life. Hindus would say it is because of karma. Basically all these "evils" that animals experienced could or will be possible to be fixed by humans. The reality is you have a number of lifeforms that evolved its basic form varying at different times. And thus some animals end up adapting natures that are parasitic on other types due to an adaption. As far as one animal eating another animal, humans do the same. Such a nature allows a lifeform to spend less time on eating and thus requires a less developed digestive system, thus allowing a better developed nervous system and brain. Humans(mainly intelligence and such) in part came into existence because of eating meat. Our brains were further able to develop because of cooking. Simple fact is a lion for example only has a limited amount of ways to kill an animal and all involve some amount of pain for the victim. Lions are more intelligent than their pray. Humans also inflict a similar amount of pain of cattle that are often slaughtered alive. There isn't much adequate plant protein sources. I do believe via genetic engineering we could get lions and other carnivorous creatures to stop eatting other animals if we could provide them with an adequate plant based protein source. Also as humans encroach on wildlife habitats, less animals will exist to experience these natural sufferings. It may seem like excessive suffering is a kind of evil, but suffering triggers vastly increased controlled genetic mutations and without excessive suffering we wouldn't have the variety of species we have, nor higher intelligence. Simply put, no excessive suffering equals no humans. Also some organisms are needed to break down dead organisms, however sometimes they start feeding on living organisms. This cross over is in part due to lack of hygiene. Without access to a riverbed or some free flowing water source, animals aren't able to clean themselves. Without being clean they attract flies and other things that feed off of the animal even while it is still alive. Humans could clean animals, like cattle, sheep, etc. and if they did they would eliminate alot of the suffering these creatures would experience. As far as fly going into an open wound, it is hardly clean and it smells similar to rotting flesh. The fly is only doing what it knows.

"Free will and moral choices and there has to be evil. The amount of evil in the world and the unequal distribution of it. God should limit the amount of evil we can inflict on others, and therefore God does not exist because "evil" is not limited."
First of all, why is there is evil? Why assume it has to exist? As far as the amount of evil in the world why assume that God has to interfere in creation, why must he? Why do you assume that the amount of evil hasn't already been limited by us being here in the first place. In heaven or whatever we could have had much greater abilities to inflict "evil" on others.

"Angels having free will. Have free will manifest as a struggle vs causing damage to others. pay the price for someone else's free will."
You can't have free will without responsibility. We aren't paying the price for someone's free will. We are paying the price for someone having a weak will and being overalk being controlled by things that are not there will. Without intelligence, the will isn't able to manifest itself in a natural and responsibility manner.

"Addressing Natural evil: Earthquakes, parasites, volcano eruptions, viruses, all that good stuff."
Earthquakes are just the earth adjusting to tensed energy. They are in part caused by gravity from other planets and the sun pulling on earth to varying and non constant degrees. Volcano eruptions are also in part due to that. The gravitational force from other planets and the sun also serve to heat up the earth to a degree. Without volcanic eruptions you wouldn't have a lot of islands and landforms. Plus a lot of plant life is dependent on some kind of regular volcanic erruption. You have some of the most beautiful flowers that grow in volcanic ash. I don't believe we understand enough yet to make a decision on whether a virus is good or evil. However part of our genetic code is in fact made up of an endogenous retrovirus. Some parts are also the remains of former retroviruses.

"No evil = no good. Evil must exist in this world otherwise we would not know what is good or bad. Without knowing sorrow, we could not know what happiness is either. Fails to work on a practical basis experiences a world with only good in it. Saying we can only be happy with misery in our lives is only speculation. On the otherhand, there are some who only experience misery. An infant who is born with severe arlincon's disease, who only gets to live for a couple of weeks and is in constant agonizing pain until he dies. ... even though he never experience non-suffering"
First assuming that one is the opposite of the other. We also fail to experience a world with only evil in it as well. First most of this is just rare stuff. Well if you are saying that some only experience misery in their lives. Then I counter that with some people experience a near perfect life. Some people are born into a rich family. They have good genetics. Their parents are kind and devote time to their children. Those children grow up, go to a good college. They get a good job. They rarely ever get sick. They find a successful, attractive partner. They get married and have one or two kids. Their parents and grandparents die at a rather old age. Really some people just experience a near perfect blissful life. It is just easy from birth till death. For an infant who dies young. They have experienced via little of life and know very little of misery. Also young people are better able to cope with pain than older people. The older you get the more suffering you are capable of experiencing and the different depth are we able to experience misery.

"Someone takes you and performs brain surgery on you and wipes out all your memories. You get total amnesia and remember nothing, prior to this moment. Then he tortures you until you die. Do you think not having recollection of ever being happy will prevent you from feeling the pain the fear the terror of being tortured a I don't think so either. The point is if you can experience misery without knowing what happiness is, it's only logical that you can be able to feel happiness and joy without ever experiencing misery. If you are still not convinced, think Adam and Eve, they were happy in the garden of Eden without knowing what unhappiness is."
To put it simple, you are confusing physical existence with how it is viewed and mentalized. You consider physical pain to be suffering and it is to an extent. However as far as any need to experience both good and evil, it is more about experiencing a diversity of life and using that experience to better understand existence. Some things can only be understood through both pain and joy, like any good song it has both its sad moments and its happy ones. Some individual experience a tiny amount of pain and realize a great lesson, like learning not to insults others because they may insult you back. It may take a less astute individual a greater amount of pain to realize that same truth. Pain triggers a response in a living organism - that response is either a reaction or an action. Reactions tend to result in further pain, while actions can counteract pain. Also the brain has the ability to reduce our physical pain sensitivity. Anyone who has ever experienced some kind of pain like say a wound for instance that seems to be constant knows that the pain can temporarily vanish only to reappear later. This is due in part at least to the brain nulling the pain sensitivity, plus a pain neuron is not as easily excited if it has been recently excited.

"Evil=Justice. Another argument is that all the evil in the world is in fact justice. We are all sinners, therefore we deserve everything that happens to us. And with this I would also like to address the argument that God is testing us because they really aren't all that different. I always here what theists say that we cannot hold God accountable according to our moral standards. But I think we can. In fact God being the supreme morality, he should surpass our human moral standards. Let's take a parent - a father in order to punish his disobedient child or to test him will stop feeding him - will allow a neighbor to rape him - will allow another neighbor to kill his pets he loves in front of his eyes - will do all those terrible things to him. How would we deal with such a parent? We would obviously lock him up for being a sadistic nutcase and if he were to say he did that all out of love for his child we would be even more sickened by the creep. But then you have our father in heaven that allows such things to happen on a daily basis. You have children in third world countries, who get to eat once every 4 days and only water available for them to drink is filty mud water. You see them dying, starving, infected with parasites, losing their parents to aids and you think this is God's will and somehow in your mind you think they deserve it. Hmm. This is beyond disturbing. Any religion who makes people think like that is a sick religion."

I guess because God is posited to have created the universe in all its varying details that it somehow must be responsible for everything. Maybe that is the Christian God. I really don't know. I don't remember that being my conception of God when I was a Christian, not that I had much of a conception of God. A lot of this stuff is just religious philosophy, like St Aquinas, St Augustine, etc. Basically they tried to create a coherent philosophy from Christian doctrine, but I wasn't exposed to them initially. Evil is not really justice for something we have done. Evil is the result of ignorance and sometimes the consequences of that ignorance do not manifest immediately or rather they aren't noticed. Like for instance, a child never learns how to read and thus is not able to get a good job and dies of malnutrition at a young age. All so-called evil is the result of some kind of ignorance. The parent you have mentioned was a sicko. And the things attributed to God in the old testament were just desperate, very ignorant, people trying to understand the world. Basically everything they didn't understand was God or the result of God and thus they anthropomorphized their conception of God giving it emotions and suffering or such was the result of such emotion of God. Yawn. The reasons for why things happen are becoming a lot clearer and they don't have anything to do without supernatural things.

"God's plan-argument that this is God's plan, everything happens for a reason and that the endgame will be worth it to justify all this. Thy will be done is another way of saying the ends justify the means, which might be true if there are no other means to reach that end. Maybe that is just me that God cannot accomplish his plan without starvation and cancer and child rape, if this is the best he came up with, that is a pretty stupid God you are worshiping there. You know I don't believe in his existence. But if I am wrong does in fact exist, he is one fucked up unfit parent, and in no way worthy of praise. Peace."
I believe if there is in fact a plan for this whole mess that we live in it is to master all aspects of physical existence. If diseases or natural disasters are a problem it is our job to fix them. If animals are suffering it is our job to ease that suffering. We are here to take personal responsibility for the world we create. If the world is not in fact what we desire it to be, it is our job to in fact change it until it is. I believe we have the power to make the world into anything we desire it to be.
The argument for hell is weak. I have never heard a good one for hell and I have a hard time seeing how the bible argues for its existence. In fact a lot of Christians don't even believe in it. Mostly the stupid fundamentalist ones are the ones who adhere to such an idea because they need it to forcible convert the masses.
The bible is a collection of scattered writings by differing authors that was organized and to a degree written by the Catholic Church, which itself was a product of the Roman Empire, which partially fell due to the rise of esoteric Christianity, that and unsustainable corruption. Basically the Christianity at the time was turned from esoteric Christianity to exoteric Christianity. To put it more simple, the Catholic Church took the focus off of the individual and put it on an institution, which what Jesus was trying to get rid of, i.e. the use of religion for profit.
I don't believe the ends justify the means, but sometimes we are resistant to any kind of education, and sometimes we end up having to do things the hard way, like a child sticking its finger in a fire after being told not to and that they would be burned. If the child had realized the fire was hot, then it wouldn't have needed to test its hotness via personal experience. Unfortunately most people's education comes from the trials of life rather than a desire to know and thus learn more passively and thus experience more pain.