AND HERE IS HOW A FAMOUS PERSON DEALT WITH THEOLOGY:
Does Evil Exist?
This has a thought provoking message no matter how you believe.
Does evil exist? The university professor challenged his students with this
question. Did God create everything that exists?
A student bravely replied, "Yes, he did!" "God created everything?" The
professor asked. "Yes sir", the student replied.
The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil.
Since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who
we are, then God is evil".
The student became quiet before such an answer.
The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students
that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.
Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question
professor?" "Of course", replied the professor. The student stood up and
asked, "Professor, does cold exist?" "What kind of question is this? Of
course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The students snickered at the
young man's question.
The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the
laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat.
Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits
energy, and energy is what makes a body or matter have or transmit heat.
Absolute zero (- 460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter
becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature.
Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we
have no heat.
The student continued. "Professor, does darkness exist?" The professor
responded, "Of course it does". The student replied, "Once again you are
wrong sir, darkness does not exist. Darkness is in reality the absence of
light.
Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to
break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each
color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a
world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain
space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct?
Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no
light present."
Finally the young man asked the professor. "Sir, does evil exist?" Now
uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We
see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It
is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These
manifestations are nothing else but evil."
To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does
not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like
darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of
God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist
just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man
does not have God's love present in his heart.
It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that
comes when there is no light."
The professor sat down.
The young mans name --- Albert Einstein
I'm reading Sibley's book on JRR Tolkien...and learned this is the Bothian argument, i.e. that evil is merely the absense of Good, and that the real struggle is inside the individual soul . The result is that we only need to be passive to evil, for evil eventually will disappear when good takes over in time.
The other argument is that evil has an independent reality, and that we need to fight. The bad result of this is jihad and holy wars.
Sibley points out that although Tolkien seems to believe the first, that in a world where "people were being herded into concentration camps" he had to also acknowledge the truth of the second reality of evil.
Sibley says LOTR has both ideas of evil in it, and for that reason is not the simplistic book that many pc people made it out to be because it implies both the need to actively fight evil, but recognizes that good people can become corrupted despite themselves in this fight...