The Tower of Babel: A Symbol of Hubris I. Introduction What hubris to defy the omnipotent authority of God – the Creator of all things from time immemorial. Humanity’s existence has long been mindful of the strengths and weaknesses of its pride. However, this did not come to past until God punished man for their excessive arrogance and pride. Mankind became fearful of God and challenged His almighty authority by creating a tower believed by many to reach Heaven.
God eventually talks to Job making it clear that his actions need no explanation. The book of Job brings up the ever-present question of why bad things happen to good people and answers that question by saying God is above justice. When Job’s friends — Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar — hear of his calamity, they come to visit him and begin to argue their “theology” to him. Their theology is that a man’s suffering is always the result of his personal sin. Further, the more one has sinned, the greater one will suffer.
God is the knower of all things past and present and has the divine power to do anything. The problem of evil is that it calls into question these key features of the theistic God. If he possesses these qualities then how could he allow such a great degree of human suffering in the world? Present evil suggests that God either lacks
“A mark was put upon him to warn others that killing Cain would provoke the vengeance of God, that if someone did something to harm Cain, the damage would come back sevenfold” (Wikipedia). Grendel represents darkness, were as darkness represents evil and opposite being light which represents good. Within the Christian faith Jesus Christ represents light, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (Bible). In the Bible, there is the constant battle between good and evil, the battle between Beowulf and Grendel was also the battle between good and
This being would be omnipotent or all-powerful, he would be omniscient or all knowing, he would be omnibenevolent or all good, and finally he would be omnipresent or everywhere you could imagine. By definition then if all of these factors make up God then evil will not and cannot exist. Alas there is evil in this world we live in from minor evils like cheating on a test to major evils such as murder and terrorism. A God who is omnipotent has the power to stop all evil from even being conceived. A God who is omniscient would know everyway evil could come into existence and would know how to stop every form of these evils.
Every day we see the reaches of religion, whether it be the terrorist Muslim leaders in the middle east or closer to home with churches picketing funerals and pro-life activists showing grotesque pictures of fetuses on the side of the road when you are driving to work. Even looking back through history we see religious wars that condemned countless people to death. My argument is not from the point of view of an atheist but a baptized catholic that does not agree with the way the church still puts its sometimes dirty hands in all areas of life. The church as we know it is not good for religion or faith. A few of the bad sides of religion include the way that different religions get stereotyped into the most terrible side of extremists.
“God must be Evil” The question “is God evil?” is asked very often with both sides of the question offering different answers to this question with no definitive answer coming about but in both cases people coming out with very convincing arguments for both sides of the story. Some people argue that God is indeed evil because he is omniscient and because of his omniscience he knows that from the moment he decided to create us maybe even before then he knew which of us would reject him thus securing a place in hell for them or would sin again securing them a place in hell and yet does nothing about this. This is a major contradiction to his supposedly being omnibenevolent and some people even go so far as to use examples of murder and rape which are horrific events which they then use to say “how can a loving God allow such a thing to happen?” They then go further into it saying how as God is omnipresent and can see everything that has happened, will happen and is happening he must take some sort of sick pleasure in watching these events occur and so is evil. Or at the very least by allowing such a horrific event to happen without some form of justice or stopping them then he has to be evil as only an evil person would let evil acts go unpunished. Sam Harris uses this idea in one of his quotes saying that “Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes or he doesn’t care to or he doesn’t exist.
(1.3.71)” Banquo also doubts the intension of the witches, he believes that evil always tells one part of the truth in order to earn one’s trust and lead him to destruction. Banquo warns Macbeth, ”But ‘tis strange./And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,/ the instruments of darkness tell us truths,/win us with honest trifles, to betray’s/In deepest consequence. (1.3.124-128)” On the other hand, Macbeth ignored his friends warning and believes in what the witches say. He is over whelmed by his ambition to be king, he said to himself,”Glamis, and the thane of Cawfor!/The greatest is behind. (1.3.118-119).””Two truths are told/,as happy prologues to the swelling act/of the imperial theme.
Anyone can have it. God is the forgiver of all sins. John chapter three says “For God so loved the world, he gave his only son; that whoever believe in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” This scripture is basically saying that God loves us so much, He sent his son, Jesus Christ, into the world to die for our sins. Another example of this in scripture is Romans chapter five. It says “For God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This verse basically says the same thing as John chapter three.
The Shepherd insists that the revelation of the truth will result in destruction, “I will be destroyed even more if I do talk” (line 1184). The Shepherd’s fear in this line embodies his rationality and foreshadows the inevitability of tragedy in this scene. The Shepherd continually stalls during his dialogue with Oedipus, but Oedipus’s overbearingness overpowers his resistance, and thus the Shepherd resorts to pleading to the King, “By the gods, master, do not inquire further!” (line 1190). The Shepherd’s futile resistance displays his determination to protect the kingdom and himself, and only when threatened with death did the Shepherd succumb to cowardly behavior and reveal the reality of Oedipus’s fate. Oedipus’s desire to continuously inquire despite the