Atrocities are fed into the newspapers at an ever increasing rate. Some ask how can such evil exist if the world was created by a good God? In today's world the nature of evil is often confusing - as too is "professional misconduct". We have witnessed an American president nearly overthrown for having illicit sex rather than for bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and the wrong camp in Afghanistan. It was clear that for some in the US Congress illicit sex was by far the more serious a crime. So what then is evil?

Christianity for much of its history has explained evil as disobedience to laws laid in a Maker's Manual known through supernatural Revelation. These laws were found in the Holy Bible and seemingly regulated our sexual life much more than they did war. Perhaps this was why many conservative American Christians condemned President Clinton for his sexual behaviour rather than for bombing and killing the Sudanese?

Christians often saw themselves as beseiged by devils that wanted humans to disobey the divine Rule Book - and consequently would tempt mercilessly. This was not a full blown dualism. There was no Evil God opposed to a Good God. But it was in practice much the same. Evil angels were opposed to Good Angels. It's Good God was assisted by angels and was opposed by Lucifer, or Satan, with his host of demons. The Christian was thus living in the centre of a battle in which the City of the Damned fought the City of God.

These views were similar to those advocated by Philo, a philosopher that lived around the time of Christ ( - 25BCE to 50 CE). He said that God created the immortal part of man while Satan and his fallen angels created mortal part of man from whence came most evil. Such views were often linked to a belief in a coming Amegeddeon when the evil spirits would finally lose. This belief did not encourage environmental action - for what was the point in doing much to protect a world that was about to come to an end?

But this was clearly not the viewpoint of the mystics as I have shown. They believed that reliance on a Revealed Rule Book could never replace listening to the inner voice of God. Some also asked how could a Good God, the Creator of All, sustain evil demons?

Some medieval European mystics therefore sharply separated themselves from the common belief in devils. They saw the existence of such beings as incompatible with the existence of a Good God who loved every creature and would not create evil beings. Porete therefore defined evil as "nought" or non-being - the absence of life. Humans who did evil were not creating an evil world but simply "noughting" all their own potential for good and for love.

Maester Ekhard, 1260-1328, who replaced Aquinas in the Chair of Theology in Paris, said in sharp opposition to Aquinas, "Evil is opposed to being, therefore the devil does not exist and the sinner, the "son of the devil', is nothing." Blessed Julian of Norwich also denied the devil existed - and denied that nature was evil. For them there was no evil power. They saw God as Perfect Goodness, as the only Creator and as incapable of creating anything that was not perfect. Evil therefore was simply "nought".

An alternative view of God in the Old Testament was of a monotheistic God that was not part of a nearly dualistic system but who created all that is, including "disaster".

I am Yahweh, and there is no other

I form the light and I create the darkness,

I make well-being and I create disaster,

I, Yahweh, do all these things." Is 45/7

Many early Christians and Pagans thought it made much more sense to say there must be more than one creating spirit or deity. Some said lesser gods must emanate from the ineffable supreme Godhead as Plato had suggested. What lesser Gods created could be imperfect - just as what we create is usually imperfect. Likewise Australian Aborigines had not one but many Creating Ancestors.

They thus avoided the issue that perplexed Christians who had only one God and thus had to reconcile their teaching about the loving nature of God with the record in the Old Testament of a jealous God who incited massacres. The gnostic Christians said the latter God was clearly a much inferior God, a demiurge ("half-God"), not the good Father God of whom Christ spoke. The Gnostic book "The Testimony of Truth" said it was this lesser God that subjected Eve to Adam, who wanted humans to stay ignorant and thus punished them for eating from the tree of knowledge. Gnostic Christians did not suffer from guilt at being part of a humanity that was the sole cause of the Fall - for a lesser God shared responsibility for not getting it right. Despite his mistakes, they believed that humans retained a divine spark which could with knowledge illuminate and lift them.

The Gnostics viewed the Serpent as holy - as do Australian Aborigines. The Gnostics said it was "wiser than all the animals that were in Paradise." In their book, "The Hympostasis of the Archons" the Serpent instructs Adam and Eve that they are of high and holy origin and not mere slaves of the demiurge. But for the authors of Genesis, the snake symbolised the rival religions.

The gnostic creation myth had an inner meaning, as did most gnostic stories. The demiurge symbolised a powerful evil inclination in us that was lower and less important than the human potential for good. The psychiatrist Carl Jung interpreted the demiurge as symbolising the destructive creative urge within us, an urge that I often have experienced and suppressed as a dispairing escapist futility.

In my investigative work I saw evil as principally created by other humans. I was not concerned about devils for I thought humans are quite capable of evil without needing another being to tempt them. I was not worried about how to reconcile the presence of evil with a good loving God for I knew how humans could both be loved and be atrocious. People can be devils and can be angels. It is our almost divine power. The God I knew was both a creator and small enough to know me and to wish to work with me - not a dictator or a universal doctor. It as up to us to fight against human evil.