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Yahweh of the pre-exilic Hebrews could be both merciful and cruel. He had what Carl Jung might refer to as a “shadow side.” When the Hebrew prophets shifted moral instruction to being a central part of their faith, discomfort grew around the concept that their God would permit people to suffer or commit sin. To alleviate this discomfort, the more destructive aspect of God was separated and anthropomorphized into what would one day become the “devil.” He is depicted as an angelic being who was created as good, but he fell from grace due to his own free will (Sullivan 19). He wasn’t evil in origin, he just became that way.
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Michael Shermer, author, founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, and Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, posits that our moral sentiments of what is good and evil come from evolution in his book The Science of Good and Evil. When tribes of humans first started living in small groups, being moral was simply the best way to make the most of the benefits of such an arrangement. Humans also tend to be victims of the passions of their bodies and minds, and evolution worked to create our moral principles to curb these tendencies. Organized religion would later codify those principles, but the principles did not originate from religion
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As a result, our moral principles are a result of the laws of nature, of the different forces that culture exert upon us, and of the forces of history. Shermer believes we are moral creatures by nature, and we have a built in tendency that leans toward moral behavior. We aren’t the only creatures that demonstrate this. Great apes, dolphins, whales and other mammals with large brains can be seen demonstrating cooperation, helping one another, bonding, and showing a concern for their community. It makes sense that early tribes who held adherence to moral principles would displace tribes who demonstrated more “evil” tendencies
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