I’m only peripherally aware of Gnostic beliefs, but I’ve never heard the ‘evil God’ idea in the little I’ve read of their doctrine. Is this a modern aberration or something that’s been attached to Gnostic Christianity from the beginning?
But Christian doctrine seems to suggest that not all, perhaps not even very much, of the evil we produce is consciously done. “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.” I suspect psychology supports orthodoxy, we’re well known for creating subconscious excuses/reasons for the evil we commit. The fact that we create excuses suggests knowledge on subconscious levels of right-wrong differences that are largely blocked from full consciousness.
Most competition to survive and thrive–depending of course on how this would be defined–can be done without committing evil, again depending on how evil is defined. This proposition is questionable if not problematic.
A religion that posits an evil God but hopes that a better God exists–but calls itself “Christian”–sounds pretty screwed up, frankly. Doesn’t this just mean you’re an agnostic?
No. This doesn’t get past the logical stage to even make it to theology. I suggest that goods and evils are effects, not causes. Good derives from the true (truth is logically higher and prior to good according to at least Aquinas, maybe others) and evil from the false. Each possesses a dynamic that produces its effects. The power of truth is of organization, union, harmony, perfection [goods]. That of falsity is disorganization, opposition, discord, chaos [evils]. Left unchecked by truth, the false would run a course toward implosion, decimation and eternal death. If seems to follow that the idea of a primarily evil God and universe is incoherent. The Christian Universalist position–that existents are fragmentally falsified in a primarily true universe seems much more coherent. Well, it’s my position, anyway until the rest of Christian Universalists come to recognize it as a predominantly superior doctrine.