Mariam’s Blog Post

Those who are in touch with the theory of religion are no stranger to the idea that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. But have you ever wonder where partially good and partially bad people go? Humans are born imperfect with the gift of free will with choice, we are prune to making mistakes that are the least favorable. But do these choices determine the type of person we are wholesomely… as either good or evil? Or can we carry traits of both? After reading “The Hebrew Bible: The Book of Genesis” I became intrigued by the idea of what good and evil actually means. In ‘The Genesis’ Building the world into an orderly utopian world God created his first human creation named Adam, and he said to him:

“Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” The tree was a representation of the intolerable.

Adam and his female creation of a companion, Eve listened to the temptations of the serpent in the forbidden tree, choosing to eat from the tree God specially demanded them not to. Does the disobedience to their God make them wholesomely bad or was it simply just a bad decision that cost them their guaranteed shelter & wellbeing, forcing them to survive on their own and with pain casted upon their future. As time passed Adam and Eve created children names, Cain and Abel, and the Bible said:

In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.

Cain’s offering was quite acceptable in his own eyes, but in God’s eyes, it was quite unacceptable. This made Cain very angry, and this anger made him kill Abel his brother out there in the field. Cain jealousy caused him to kill his own family.. Does this make him wholesomely evil?

I came across an interesting article on the idea of good and evil from Phycology Today by Steve Taylor stating…

It’s a dangerous over-simplification to believe that some people are innately ‘good’ while others are innately ‘evil’ or ‘bad.’ This misleading concept underpins the justice system of many countries – ‘bad’ people commit crimes, and since they are intrinsically ‘bad’, they should be locked away so that they can’t harm us with their ‘evil’ behavior. This concept has also fueled many wars and conflicts in history, and even in the present day. It makes groups believe that they are fighting a just cause against an ‘evil’ enemy and that once the ‘evil’ people have been killed, peace and goodness will reign supreme. Human nature is infinitely more complex than this, of course. In human beings, ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ are fluid. People can be a combination of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ qualities. Some people who behave cruelly and brutally can be rehabilitated and eventually display ‘good’ qualities such as empathy and kindness. And rather than being intrinsic, most cruel or brutal behavior is due to environmental factors, such as an abusive childhood, or ‘social learning’ from a family or peers.

In Dante’s (Inferno) Time, evil was considered to be an outside force. All that we call sin, destruction, or evil, was thought to be the work of Satan. Satan is blamed for illness, corruption, and for tempting men to sin. Evil is a thing to which men are subjected, and the trial is whether or not they can withstand its corrupting touch. Satan is seen as a universal force striving to defile and claim part of God’s perfect creation, tempting men to sin for no reason other than to spite God. This is demonstrated symbolically in The Divine Comedy by the fact that man inhabits the Earth, which is at the point of equilibrium between Heaven and Hell. Man then must work to fight the gravitational forces pulling him toward Satan to avoid damnation, and must exert much effort to scale Mount Purgatory and reach the Heavens. In Dante’s world evil is inescapable, and it is necessary to face it. This is why it is only by climbing on Satan’s hair that Virgil is able to extricate Dante from the inferno and take him on the path of repentance.

The basic philosophical implications of the Inferno are that Satan, representing evil, is the center of gravity, and because of this all humans are naturally drawn to him. God, representing perfect salvation, resides beyond the highest sphere of heaven in the Empyrean, and is the most difficult thing in the universe to reach. The three beasts eternally block the right path: The leopard of treachery, the lion of violence, and the she-wolf of incontinence. These creatures represent their respective sins, and that they block the right path for all souls residing on the earth. The fact that the right path is vacant tells us that no man is capable of right living, and so the journey through the inferno is necessary.

In this two works god is a representation of the good and pure while the serpent and Satan is representation of evil.

So I ask you… are human beings only black and white without any grays, with our decisions ultimately deciding our faith in heaven as the ‘good’ or hell as the ‘evil’? What is good and evil really?