The devil

No god exists only goodness in human nature and devil is when human nature isn’t good. We get the choice it’s our free will to decide what to be. That’s my opinion but each to their own as the saying goes.

Yes I do MissA. I believe that that is why Jesus came, to set us free.

Evil exists but it’s not promoted by the devil because there is no such thing.

NanKate

The nearest I know to the Devil is Putin!

Me too.

I think the devil sometimes appears in human form. I have met him/her a few times.

pinkprincess.

Would you care to share an example, pinkprincess?
It's fine if not, of course.
I'm finding this intriguing.

I do like Crowley in Good Omens, but he’s a demon rather than a devil.

MissAdventure

Wasn't Lucifer cast out of heaven?

He was a fallen angel.

God = good
Devil = evil

A clever use of words.
There is good and evil in all of us, in different proportions.

Yes, we have choices.

Doodlebug, I read the book as well.
Any person who purposely puts a pet guinea pig in a waste disposal, blinds their little sister with corrosive drain cleaner and then kills her with a crossbow is plain evil in my books.
And that's before he locks teenagers in a hall before killing them.

All the mother was guilty of was having pnd. She tried all ways to try and get through to him and to show him love.
He was vile to everybody.
So I would say evil does exist.

So where will these people go, on judgement day?
Does it depend on whether they truly repent?

snowberryZ

Doodlebug, I read the book as well.
Any person who purposely puts a pet guinea pig in a waste disposal, blinds their little sister with corrosive drain cleaner and then kills her with a crossbow is plain evil in my books.
And that's before he locks teenagers in a hall before killing them.

All the mother was guilty of was having pnd. She tried all ways to try and get through to him and to show him love.
He was vile to everybody.
So I would say evil does exist.

Ah, we had a very different view of the book then . I thought that Kevin's mother blamed him for all those things (his father didn't), but that Shriver (the author) was very careful not to let us know whether or not he was guilty, so the question was whether he did what he did because of years of being cast as evil, or whether he actually had been all along.

I don't think that the book proves or disproves the existence of evil, though - it is just a novel - but it explores the question of what causes people to commit evil acts.

snowberryZ

I watched We Need to talk about Kevin on Netflix recently.
I know it's only fiction but that boy was truly evil in my opinion.
I know a mother's love is supposed to be unconditional but I could never forgive my child for doing that to a sibling.

I couldn’t finish that book. The mother who never wanted her baby and continued to dislike and reject him repelled me.

That's not how I read it.
My mother was never very maternal and the three of us didn't turn into cruel children and mass murderers.
In the film the mother was constantly rejected by Kevin.
He was unlovable
I think it was more nature than nurture.
He was a bad apple.
Other than the one time she snapped, (after being continually mentally tortured by him) she never showed cruelty to him.

It's strange how we all take different things from it.

It is the boogie man version for adults

MissAdventure
Sorry bit that would be telling!

Meant but

snowberryZ

That's not how I read it.
My mother was never very maternal and the three of us didn't turn into cruel children and mass murderers.
In the film the mother was constantly rejected by Kevin.
He was unlovable
I think it was more nature than nurture.
He was a bad apple.
Other than the one time she snapped, (after being continually mentally tortured by him) she never showed cruelty to him.

It's strange how we all take different things from it.

Indeed, and that's a sign of a good book, I think. The nature/nurture argument was left open for the reader to decide.

In the film we saw everything through the mother's eyes, and it was clear that even as a baby she thought Kevin was deliberately acting to spite her, which is impossible, whereas the book definitely suggested that there was another side to every incident. She thought that his delayed speech was deliberate, and that he was being uncooperative when he couldn't play the games she wanted him to.

I can't remember in detail now, but wasn't there a time when Kevin was blamed for throwing bricks off a road bridge, and it turned out not to be him at all? There was doubt about the guinea pig/hamster incident, too - in fact he wasn't definitely guilty of anything except disrupting her life - and she was entirely unable to warn to him, or relate in any way. I would say she was mentally cruel from the day he was born.

As you say, though, it's not certain - I think that Lionel Shriver said that she didn't know the answer either - she just wanted to write about what might happen if a mother didn't love her child.

I believe in Satan as a force for evil which can influence people if they allow it. I believe in God as the force for good. If only God existed then the world would be a heavenly place with nothing bad happening but we know that is not the case. Satan (the force of evil) is causing much suffering. As I've said on other threads our human brains are not capable of understanding all this properly because we live in an earthly dimension and can only see what our eyes show us. It's no good asking why this or that happens because it's all too much for us, just as we wouldn't expect a baby to read a book.

Practising Christians that I know believe in the devil as a real entity. They see evidence of him all around in every day life. Actively preached in their church, epic battle going on between good and evil.

The devil is alive and well on planet earth. The Bible has a lot to say about him and how to defeat him in your life.

Yes, his name is Putin.

My understanding is that Devilish impulses arise within all our consciousness which we can either Act upon Ignore or work through in order to gain greater insight, and make better choices. Sometimes I’m shocked by the depths of ‘negative’ thinking and feeling I’m capable of. But I own it as part of my human frailty. To assign responsibility for my own darkness on an external energy/persona would for me negate free will.

Doodledog
Completely tangental to the thread, but if you read the book you might doubt whether Kevin was responsible for a lot of what he was blamed for. I enjoyed the film, but thought it lost a lot of the ambiguity of the book, which was much more about nature/nurture than the film got across.

I couldn't agree more about the book being much more about nature/nurture than the film got across. But it just reinforced my view that nature wins out every time. The boy was born with a bad streak in him.

Of course, that was one of the reasons the book was so wonderful - it just made you think long and hard about it all and provoked so many different views on what it all meant.

I'd never say that any book has changed my life but I can say that book blew me away. Sorry, off topic.

I don't believe in any gods or any devils either.