RELIGION CANNOT MAKE IT CLEAR
WHAT IT MEANS BY EVIL OR BY HOW TO RESOLVE EVIL
Accounts of what evil is talk about what it does, harm,
invite revulsion, invite hate, as if symptoms of evil and evil are the same
thing! The flu is not the stuffy nose and the misery. It handwaves.
It pretends it knows what it is talking about and offers answers that only
satisfy temporarily and lead to evil rebounding. If you prefer to talk of harm
than evil then it is harmful. Talk of evil harms for it is being definite you
know what you are saying when you don't.
Perception
Philosophers may say that evil is the result of disorder in a being meaning that disorder is the absence
of order or lack of order. So there is a flaw in a person who is able to choose
evil. She might not go along with the flaw but it is there. The flaw then means
there is a problem with the person perceiving something as good when it is evil.
If your eyesight is flawed you can mistake a leaf blowing on the ground for a
mouse running away. It is hard to see how you can say anybody is really to blame
for evil when their perception is dodgy. No it is not hard - it is impossible.
If your perception of evil is flawed, you cannot fully trust anything you think
at a moral crossroads. If it is flawed, even the stuff you have got right is
called into question.
Let us put this another way. If we do evil, then it is evil because we have made
an error. It is said that this would be a partial error for all the evil we do
contains some or a lot of truth. Is it really a partial error? No. When you err,
you cast doubt on what you know or believe to be right. You are no longer very
sure of any of it.
When Jesus Christ said you must not judge
another for having a mote in the eye when there is a plank in your
own, he was clear that you need to get the plank out and then you
can deal with the mote. He affirmed judging but not
self-righteous judging. He said you can deal with the mote by
judging the other. He told us to agree with him when he said
his generation was one of evil people. But as evil is hard to
see and diagnose his advice is impossible to follow.
We need moral knowledge not moral belief
Is it only the results of an act that tell you if an act was really good or just
evil looking good?
If yes then the problem is that everything has some bad consequences or seeming
ones so you can never tell if an act is good or looking good in which case it
may not be good at all!
If evil is a form of good, then the good can easily masquerade as the best. The
good is evil in the craftiest way. Even evil at times can be expert at appearing
good. The rest of the time it is still good at it. Sometimes you cannot know
the difference between good, bad and best and they say that you will only tell
the difference when you experience the terrible consequences for evil leads to
bad results. See what happens now? If you see something that may
pass as evil you have to act now and not wait until it unfolds!
You are being told to hinder and attack seemingly evil people for
waiting to see the fruits of what they do will leave it too late.
Make no mistake. The teaching about evil may warn you that you
can get it wrong but if the believer could be sure you would be in a
lot of trouble indeed. And it is a fact that we do attack some
evil people rather than wait.
The "evil is misplaced good" notion turns morality into trial and error.
You can say that if cheating on the spouse leads to trouble your case could be
different. So you cheat and hope for the best!
And if people start turning a heinous act into an opportunity for doing great
good, it is easy to end up happy that the act took place. It does not look as
heinous then. It may not look very evil any more.
If evil is good that is in the wrong place and time then it will be very hard to
tell good apart from evil. A lot of the time, we with our limited perspective
and flaws will find them indistinguishable. It would follow that we need the
resources to tell them apart. Suppose evil is that which is to be avoided at any
cost. Religion says it is better to cease to exist by accident than to sin
deliberately for sin the greatest evil and a degradation offered to the infinite
perfect love of God. Then we need to KNOW not guess or believe that anything is harmful
or evil or sinful. If evil and good are too hard to distinguish then we risk
approving evil as good and creating more evil. If evil and good are too hard to
distinguish we fail to give good its proper honour and due and fail to learn
from it. You don't want to play into the hands of those who take advantage. They
will disguise evil as good.
We must consider the act itself. You cannot do something and then decide it was
bad because it had all or mostly bad consequences. That gives you too much
freedom to do what you want to do. You need knowledge, not faith and not trial
and error.
The margin
All on earth believe that you can do great evil and believe it is right. If
morality is real, that does not mean that what we put forward as morality is
accurate or real. Sincerity can blind.
Good people and evil people are really on a spectrum. Nobody is wholly good and nobody is wholly evil. It is all about how the scales tip. Religion may agree but says acts are different. They are virtue or they are vice. They are good or they are bad. But we know that even our actions are grey and mix good and evil.
There is a margin between good and evil. What about it? You are about to do something.
A Is it worse to make it .00001% evil and the rest good?
B Or to make it 90% evil?
If you are patient and want the evil to be hardly noticed so that a thousand years later the damage it has done is unnoticed then A is a more effective way to serve evil than to make it too obvious. So the smaller you make the ingredient of evil the better you are at evil. So the answer is that the greatest and most powerful evil comes in the form of good which has a subtle hint of poison and toxin in it. It progresses like a slow cancer.
The greater the good, then the greater the evil that it can be turned into. The greater the good the greater the corruption. Especially if it is well-disguised and hard to notice.
We can all be accused of mixing a small amount of evil in. These ideas may explain why misanthropists are so common.
The hazy notion of goodness that believers possess
When we speak of evil we tend to do so only in relation to the good. People say,
"We know of
evil, precisely because we know what is good. In looking at what a thing is and
what it is not – in seeing the defectiveness, we begin to see how we can
describe an action as being evil."
Is a work of art that you deliberately make ugly because it is art, is intended
to fall short of goodness? No. It is not for it is meant to fit a particular
standard of goodness. It is good for the art to be ugly. If it is bad then it is
bad that we have the freedom do make ugly things or to say ugly things. It would
be bad to make crucifixes – everything almost would be bad. Nobody really knows
what they mean by good and it is too subjective. They pretend they know it
for real but they do not. Good again like evil, is never really talked
about properly. People look at the signs of good and identify them with
the good. A person with pneumonia may feel good but how good is that if it
has them leave their bed and fall down the stairs? The good feeling lies
to you that you are not too weak.
What use is an
argument for God's goodness that does not know what it means by goodness? Is it
not a conjuring trick and a waste of breath?
God makes fake morality even more fake!
Some say, "Evil is to good what lameness is to walking." The problem is that you
should walk but cannot. This talks about purpose. It assumes you should want to
walk. But should you? It is up to you. A person who dictates to you that you
should be walking is worse than the person who does not walk though he can. The
person is controlling. It is better to walk because you want to and not because
any God or anything says you should walk. Real goodness is spontaneous and
totally generous as regards motivation. To say that God and morality go
together and it is about his law and not spontaneity is immoral by
any standard.
God makes immorality even more immoral if it is true that if he exists then bad
offends him. If he does not exist, then bad is bad for the harm it does but at
least there is no God to insult by it as well. If he does not exist, faith in
him is bad for it makes you mean to be worse than you would be when you do evil.
Examples
The notion that evil is not real but is merely good that is not good enough
leads to some interesting things. What if a person is a cynical malicious
gossip? His friends may say, "You tell it as you see it!" That is saying, "You
are to be praised for being a gossip." It does not make their condemnations of
cynicism and gossip sincere. If you love the person you will be forced to praise
what good they do even if it is the good of evil. That you condemn proves that
you do not. To view a person as dangerous and harmful makes you hate and that is
what hate is all about.
People believe that sincerity is to be praised and they even say you are good
person even if you do something terrible thinking it was the right thing to do.
But do we really think that say Lenin who thought that murdering people to pave
the way for Communist rule was morally right in doing so? His sincerity has
nothing to do with its moral rightness or wrongness. But it does show how easy
it is to be wrong and do evil while being prepared to swear that you are right.
The person who forgives will reason, "That person hurts me for he sees me as a
danger. He hates his perception of me and not me and so I forgive. I understand
and understanding is necessary for forgiving." That is caring about how the
person views you and not about what they would do to you. You need to fear evil
people so that you can be safe from them. If you don't fear fire you will die in
it. To argue that a person's bad perception of you will do no harm for it
is not the real you is bizarre and stupid. Who are you trying
to fool and why? It will harm you. The risk is there.
Threatening harm is harm no matter how you feel about it.
A person who has warped perception is worse than the person who sees you
as you are and hates you for it. That person is more dangerous. It is more
rational to forgive the person who hates you because he knows you. At least if
the person can see you properly there is hope.
If you stab somebody insane and therefore innocent to death in self-defence this is called morally
praiseworthy though the same action would be wrong if you did it for fun. Things
like that cause great confusion.
How demand to renounce evil complicates things
If you have to turn evil to renounce evil that only adds to the confusion!
To renounce and fight evil you have to lie to yourself about what it
means. You feign how clear it is in your mind. So it is
fighting evil fire with evil fire.
It seems you should renounce evil for good is the best thing
and is the real thing not evil. But to renounce evil is to become a slave to it
indirectly. If you are sex mad you are seen as a slave to sexuality. If you
torment yourself to avoid sexual impulses you are still being made a slave by
them.
To renounce evil is to enter under its power for then you have to commit the
evil of taking on the suffering necessary to avoid doing evil and of stopping
yourself doing what you want. What you should do is mix good and evil so that
you become a nice exciting person. Who likes people who are all sweetness and
light? Who would want to be perfect as God is perfect though Jesus said we
should want to be?
If there is a thin line between being bad and good then faith in God should not be declared important. It
is not going to help. It in fact makes it worse. If a morality is paper-thin,
attributing it to God is only making it sacred when in fact it is not sacred or
holy but a pity. You may as well jump for joy when a baby dies for somehow it is
best for the baby.
"What if?" can happen in principle
Everything you do has hypothetical implications. What you would do even if you cannot do it speaks volumes about the kind of person you are.
God if he is God of all is God of the "What If?..." If you had to affirm that God deserves only hate and to be called evil to save the lives of the whole universe and there was no choice, then do it. This shows that God is a cosmetic for justifying good and morality. It does not work.
Religion and "evil is not a power"
Religion says that pure evil does not exist and evil is just a distortion of
good and parasitic on it. If evil is the lack of good and you do evil it follows
that it may as well be real for you want it to be real. You want it to create
itself ex nihilo. You are as evil as an evil power for you mean to be. Thus even
if evil is a lack it does not excuse God giving us the free will to be that
evil. God not making evil as a power means nothing. It is an insult to suffering
people to say it does. Suffering is a power. The experience is not
an absence of well-being. The well-being is absent yes but something
is in the absence. Something like a malign power.
One big lie is that we do not intend evil for we only use it to aim
for the good. For example, you murder granny so you can sell
her jewellery to get expensive medicine for your child. Now
all evil is intended to strike at something which means it is
intended to rage but in a cage. This is because something too
destructive will backfire. This gives the impression that evil
can be turned to good for it is surrounded by good. Good is
outside the cage. Religion plays on that to create the "God
lets it happen for a loving reason" narrative. It is cynical and
exploitive.
Conclusion
If it is not clear why believers in a loving God are so violent or bigoted, then
the reason could be that the belief does something subtle to them to damage
them. The lies about what evil is. And the intention to water down evil,
whatever it is supposed to be, for the sake of conserving faith in God would definitely be
top of the list for doing that to people. It is intrinsically bigoted despite
its sweet and consoling masquerade.