Epicurean Paradox

[genkaus]

Why do we use God's interpretation of Evil rather that the pop cultures understanding of the word? Because it is God's actions (or lack of) that are being questioned in relation to Evil. If God is being judged against a standard then we must establish Who God is, against the very same standard in which He is being Judged. If we are speaking of the God of the bible then it is to the biblical standard in which we are to also judge evil. That is unless you feel you need to stack the deck in your favor to judge God unfairly in order to win your conviction. A fair assessment would indeed single source (as there is only one source that defines the God of the bible) information of God and sin/evil, inorder to make a sound judgment.

otherwise it would be like asking who were the better soldiers? the 300 of Sparta or a current active duty seal team, simply by judging the effective usage of their weapons. If one wants an accurate assessment the one has to look at the soldiers as a whole, meaning times and conditions of service, and not the one aspect that favors your argument.

So to recap we look to the bible for the definition of evil because it is in the context (Judgment of the God of the bible) that we use it. We use modern dictionaries to further break down the definition to clarify the biblical definition so people like you can not rely on the loop holes you think you have found in the biblical account.

Apply the same principle to the real world, if you will. So, when judging whether a man is a criminal or not, instead of using well-established legal standards, we should use his standards on what constitutes a crime. When judging a person on whether he is suitable for a job or not, we should disregard the actual job requirements and judge him by what he says the criteria should be. While judging a beauty pageant, we should ask the contestants to pick the winner among them.

Definitions provide an objective and fair standard for passing judgment and the reason we are using the dictionary here is the same as to why we refer to law books when judging a criminal. What you want to do is subjectively redefine evil in such a way that your idea of god would be excluded tautologically.