Does God exist in the presence of evil and corruption?

Does god exist? How can there be so much evil and corruption in the world if god exists?

God is a mythical word, a mumbo-jumbo word that is the invention of the priesthood. Actually, to ask whether God exists is absurd. For those who know, God is existence, or existence is God. Things exist, not God. A chair exists because a chair can go into nonexistence. To say that the chair exists is meaningful because its nonexistence is possible. God is existence, the very isness. When we say God exists we create something out of the word God, then God becomes a thing. But God is not a thing, nor is God a person. That is why you cannot make him responsible for anything. Responsibility only comes when there is a personality, when there is someone who can be responsible. God is not a person, he is pure existence. The word is misleading because the word personifies. It is better to use the word existence. The totality of…

Question: OSHO, DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THAT GOD DOES NOT EXIST? The presence of beings is enough proof that God does not exist, cannot exist. Either you can exist or God can exist; you both cannot exist. The person who starts believing in God, unknowingly is losing his beinghood; he is becoming a thing. So there are Christian things, Hindu things, Mohammedan things, but not beings. They have dropped their being of their own accord; they have given their being to God. The fiction has become alive, and the alive has become a fiction. I am simply putting things right side up. When I say God does not exist, I have no grudge against God. I don't care a bit about God, whether He exists or not -- it is none of my business.

It is a valid question: if God is doing everything, why is there evil in the world? A Muslim friend once came to see me. He said, my biggest question is: why is there evil in the world? Evil should not exist at all, if God is. He is right—because on the face of it the two don’t seem to fit. How to relate so much evil to God? I said to him, for a moment, imagine the other picture. When would you accept that God is? He said, when there is no evil in the world. I said, suppose all evil is removed from the world—what kind of world would that be? Think it over and tell me. Because the moment evil is removed, goodness will also disappear. Good cannot live alone; it lives only because evil exists.

Osho, what is god?

GOD is not a person. That is one of the greatest misunderstandings, and it has prevailed so long that it has become almost a fact. Even if a lie is repeated continuously for centuries it is bound to appear as if it is a truth. God is a presence, not a person. Hence all worshipping is sheer stupidity. Prayerfulness is needed, not prayer. There is nobody to pray to; there is no possibility of any dialogue between you and God. Dialogue is possible only between two persons, and God is not a person but a presence -- like beauty, like joy. God simply means godliness. It is because of this fact that Buddha denied the existence of God. He wanted to emphasize that God is a quality, an experience -- like love. You cannot talk to love, you can live it. You need not create temples of love, you need…

We know from many sources, such as the bible, that god created man in his own image. If he has created everything, everything must be good. Then where does the idea of wickedness come from.

So many things will have to be taken into account. Firstly, to think of God as the creator is to divide reality into two: the creator and the created. There is no division, no duality like this. The creator is the creation! The world and God are not two things: the creation is the creator. It is not like a painter. A painter creates a painting. The moment the painting is created, there are two things: the painter and the painting. The creation is more like a dancer: the dance and the dancer are one. When you think about God in terms of duality, God becomes a false God. There is no God who is separate, apart; sitting somewhere: presiding, engineering, administrating -- beyond the world. The very world, the very being, is God. The term 'God' is anthropocentric; it is our creation. We have personified what is really a…