The double principle of good and evil is a mistake!

Paulo Degering R Jr
Cover: The double principle of good and evil is a mistake
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The belief in existence of evil, as something created by God (or by the “devil”, who, having been created by God, entails the same consequence) and that comes from outside, is something very widespread, throughout the world and in all beliefs. Spiritism, however, is the only philosophical doctrine, until today, to to demonstrate, rationally and factually, that this is not true.

We begin by quoting Kardec, in A Genesis, in the text “Fonte do Bem e do Mal”:

being God the the beginning of all things, and this beginning being all wisdom, all goodness, and all righteousness., whatever proceeds from him must share these attributes, for what is infinitely wise, just, and good cannot produce anything unreasonable, evil, and unjust. The evil we observe cannot have originated from him.

If evil were the responsibility of a special being, whether he was called Ahriman or Satan((Zoroastrianism, the ancestral religion of Persia, proposed the existence of twin gods: Ahura Mazda, of goodness and light, and Angra Mainyu, the Ahriman , god of darkness and evil. The world would be in a battle between good and evil. Satan, a character from the Bible, is identified as a fallen angel in the new testament. (N. do E.))), of two, one: Either he would be equal to God and, consequently, also powerful and eternal, or he would be inferior.

In the first case, there would be two rival powers, fighting incessantly, each trying to undo what the other is doing, opposing each other. This hypothesis is irreconcilable with the harmony that is revealed in the order of the Universe.

In the second case, being inferior to God, that being would be subordinate to him. Not being able to be eternal like him without being his equal; could only have been created by God. If it was created, it could only have been by God. In this case, God would have created the Spirit of evil, which would be a denial of his infinite goodness..

KARDEC, Allan. The Genesis. FEAL Publisher. 2nd edition, 2018.

Thus, Kardec demonstrates that it would not be possible for a being to exist that gave a principle to evil, because, since this principle is God himself, it would not be in accordance with his attributes (being He the good); being another being, that being would have been created by God, which would mean that evil would still be God's creation.

In Heaven and Hell, Kardec talks about the origin of the principle of good and evil:

For long centuries and under different names, the double principle of good and evil was the basis of all religious beliefs, being personified in the figures of Ahura-Masda and Ahriman among the Persians, and of Jehovah and Satan among the Hebrews. However, as any sovereign must be aided by ministers, all religions have admitted secondary agents, good or bad geniuses. The pagans represented them through an innumerable multitude of individuals, each with special attributions for good and evil, for vices and virtues, and to which they gave the generic name of gods. Christians and Muslims received angels and demons from the Hebrews.

KARDEC, Allan. Heaven and hell. FEAL Publisher. 1st edition, 2021.

These doctrines, which, in truth, answer to the heteronomous moral, lead to the belief that evil is something external, defined. In the case of Christian religions, this principle was reproduced in the belief of angels and demons, and this mainly after the Roman Church appropriated Christianity:

The doctrine of devils has its origin, therefore, in the ancient belief in the principles of good and evil.. Let us examine it here only from the Christian point of view, verifying that it accords with the most exact knowledge we have at present of the attributes of the Deity.

These attributes are the starting point, the basis of all religious doctrines ((The confusion between the material principle of pleasure and pain (good and bad) with the moral principle (good and evil) is the basis of the heteronomy present in beliefs of ancestral religions. The animal submits to instincts, thus acting blindly to the needs of the species. But the human being has a dual nature, participating in animal life through the body and spiritual life through the soul. Treated slavishly, the human being becomes a machine It is up to the human spirit to abandon the heteronomous condition of subjection to the will of others (blind faith and passive obedience) in order to achieve free will and moral sense, as proposed by Spiritism. (N. do E.))). Dogmas, worship, ceremonies, customs, morals, everything is in harmony with the more or less fair, more or less elevated idea of God, from fetishism to Christianity. If the intimate essence of God is still a mystery to our intelligence, we understand Him today, however, better than ever before, thanks to the teachings of Christ. Christianity teaches us, in line with reason, that God is one, eternal, immutable, immaterial, all-powerful, sovereignly just and good, and infinite in all his perfections..

Thus, as has been said before (chap. VII, “Eternal punishments”), “If the smallest fraction of one of his attributes were subtracted, there would be no more God, since there could be a more perfect being.”. Such attributes, in their absolute fullness, are therefore the criterion of all religions, the measure of the truth of each of the principles they teach. And in order for any of these principles to be true, it is necessary that it does not attack any of the perfections of God.. Let us see whether this is so in the common doctrine of demons.

ibid.

Kardec continues to weave a line of reasoning from which it is not possible to escape: either God is sovereign, in everything, or he is not.

According to the Church, Satan, the chief or king of demons, is not an allegorical personification of evil, but actually a real being doing only evil, while God does only good. Let us therefore take it as it is presented to us.

Does Satan exist from all eternity, like God, or is he later? If he exists from all eternity, he is uncreated, and therefore equal with God, in which case God would no longer be unique, as there would be a god of good and a god of evil.

Is Satan later than God? So he is a creature of God. Since he only does evil, being incapable of doing good and of repenting, God will have created a being eternally consecrated to evil. If evil is not the work of God, but the work of one of his creatures predestined to do so, God will always be the first author of evil, not being, therefore, infinitely good. The same happens with all evil beings, called demons ((We know that the word “demon” comes from the Greek, and means “genius” or “Spirit”.)).

ibid.

If, to say that God did not create evil, it is said that the devil also exists from all eternity. If so, then God would no longer be God, because he would not be unique, since there would be a god of good and a god of evil.

Kardec advances:

According to Spiritism, neither angels nor demons are separate beings, since the creation of intelligent beings is one and the same.. United with material bodies, they constitute the humanity that populates the Earth and other inhabited spheres. Freed from these bodies, they constitute the spiritual world or the spirits that populate the Spaces. God created them to be perfectible, giving them perfection and the happiness that comes from it, but he did not give them perfection. God wanted them to reach it through personal effort, in order to have the merit of their conquest.. Beings progress from the moment of their creation, whether incarnated or in the spiritual state ((The heteronomous beliefs of ancestral religions affirm the false idea that souls were created by God perfect in wisdom and virtue. Evil would occur through sin and would cause the fall in the world, where the vicissitudes would be divine punishments. Thus, all of humanity would be in this condition. Everything changes with the autonomous moral theory of Spiritism, where all souls are created simple, ignorant and perfectible, happiness is the goal, and evil, when it exists, is temporary, being overcome by effort. (N. do E.))) Once they reach their apogee, they become pure spirits, or angels, according to the common expression, so that, from the embryo of the intelligent being to the angel, there is an uninterrupted chain in that each link marks a step on the scale of progress

ibid.

We are therefore not created perfect. We are created simple and ignorant and, by our will, we progress or stop, we develop virtues or imperfections. Now it is already established that the existence of the devil is, in fact, an impossibility. Where was the evil then? Evil is in each one, when one moves away from the good by living in imperfections.

As a result, there are spirits in all degrees of moral and intellectual advancement, depending on the position they occupy on the scale.((SEE “Spiritist Scale“)). There are, therefore, spirits in all degrees of wisdom and ignorance, of goodness and evil. In the lower classes there are those who are still deeply inclined to evil, delighting in it. If we like, we can call them demons because they are capable of all the transgressions attributed to the latter. If Spiritism does not call them that way, it is because such a name is linked to the idea of beings distinct from humanity., of an essentially perverse nature, consecrated to evil for all eternity, incapable of progressing in the direction of good.

ibid.

We said, then, that evil is the departure of the individual from the morality of the divine, natural law, to live in imperfections. We therefore want to understand: how does evil develop? We will deal with this in a next article, under that title!

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