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Old 11-21-2007, 10:26 PM
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Jim_Johnston Jim_Johnston is offline.
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Patrick,

Hell is a just punishment. Hell is evil. An evil place for evil people.

I don't think I am using a broad or popular definition of evil. There are such things as natural evils, for instance. They are not immoral, though they are evil. In the Bible calamities, storms, invading armies, etc., are called "evils," yet it is God who sends them. God sending a drought is called an evil, and indeed he is said to "create" evil. The drought qua drought isn't "immoral," but it is evil. There are "devoted things" that were "purged as evil" yet we wouldn't call blocks of wood "immoral." People may have been "immoral" in how they used them (as idols, for instance), but carved wood isn't "immoral." Indeed, the crippled man suffered from an evil (though it was not his sin or his parents sin that made him that way), but being crippled isn't "immoral." Pain in childbirth is an evil, it's not "immoral." Etc., etc., etc.,

It's not a good that a man got his chest punctured. Saving his life was good, but getting a hole in his chest wasn't. An evil was done for the greater good. But an evil was still done.

I'd begin by defining evil as rebellion against a personal God. When humans due this it is called "moral evil." When nature does this it is called, naturally, "natural evil." Having to put holes in peoples chest is a natural evil. It's not an intended action in God's world. Thus it is, in a sense, a rebellion of God's desired order (or modus operandi).

Hopefully I've helped more than confused....
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J.J.
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