BLACK AND WHITE MORALISING IS NEEDED TO BE ABLE TO CALL SOMEBODY EVIL AND IS EVIL ITSELF

Evil is seen as against justice and love and compassion and so it is a form of destruction.  Our response to it is to hate it and get rid of it.  The response has nothing to do with making it wrong.  The response is down to it being wrong.

People who are very strict morally are accused of black and white thinking.

It is easy to see why.

But a person who thinks two or three actions are black is as guilty of black and white thinking as one who sees nearly everything as a black sin.

They only differ in their boundaries.  The liberal sees the strict one as black for condemning as black for what is not black.

They remain as potentially bad as each other.

Everybody thinks in a black and white way when they are young.  It is part of growing up and we see that things are more complicated then we would like to think.  Yet everybody will be black and white in something.  When religion preaches absolute morality it should not be blaming you if you do harm over your black and white thinking.  It knows what can happen and still preaches such intolerant nonsense.

Black and white moralising often masks hatred for the person you view as being on the wrong side.  Moral evil is talked about as if it is something people do but the actions only show what they are as people - evil.  They are the problem.  Hatred for the "evil" person is there.  Denying it does not make it go away.

Demonising someone and seeing them as evil and perhaps irredeemably evil is linked to black and white thinking.

Now black and white thinking happens when you see the person as evil AT THIS TIME and needing extreme opposition even if you hope they will change tomorrow. So it does not have to be about thinking the person will never change for the better.

Don’t let anybody who is demonising use the distraction, “But if they change I will embrace them”. The problem is the person being evil now. We cannot deal with tomorrow yet. They are irredeemably evil now and will remain so until they change and that could be tonight or never.

Imagine the impossible was possible and you could cause a lightning bolt to randomly hit somebody. We are talking about intention here not making sense. You can intend the lightning to kill x if it is going to be either x or y anyway. If x is evil what then? If they are evil as you say then you will have them cremated alive. Admit it. Say it out loud.

So what is the alternative?  Just treat people nice and make them happy as if even the evil they do is good?

Some say that Satan unlike God accepts you as you are. But this ignores how evil people may cooperate but fall out over disagreeing about what evil to do. An evil person will fight some evil with evil.  Evil in some way forces other evils to attack it.

Ignoring the bad person and praising the evil they are and the evil they do is another form of evil.

It is a no-win situation.

Evil just leads to evil and the good are not really good, just clever actors. 

There is rather common view in society that

1 Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told to do

2 Religion is doing what you are told to do regardless of whether it is right.

This is saying that if you are truly fair and loving and respectful, the components of morality, you will just be these things and not because anybody advises it.

And also, DEFINITELY not because anybody commands it.

If you should be say compassionate to a sick baby not because you are advised but because it is spontaneous then that is one thing.  It is so damn wise and it is the best.  Advising should have nothing to do with it.  Commanding has even less right to have anything to do with it.  Anything trying to command you is only trying to make you go through the motions.  And it is unnecessary and disgusting and a baby's suffering cannot be used by a God or his cronies for a power trip.  Advising without need is a power thing.  Commanding is even worse. 

If you accept that then God who is claimed to be the king and sovereign and the moral authority that rules the universe is a bad doctrine. It can be called irrelevant. Calling it irrelevant is understandable.  Be warned that choosing to ignore something does not make it irrelevant. You can ignore what is in fact relevant.  It is more than just irrelevant.  Its nastiness is very relevant.

If evil were a person or could turn into one you would want to hurt it because of what it is. It is not in self-defence or anything like that. It is not about protecting. If evil is repulsive and bad in itself then it is not that it threatens you that matters.  You will act if it threatens you but it is only able to threaten you because it is bad in the first place.  It is a potential threat before it even starts threatening.  It is prepared.

If bad is there you need rid of it.  Evil will see you as you see it, as a threat. 

The bottom line is the problem is not that evil is a threat but what it is. It is because of what it is that it is a threat. Evil is not reduced to a threat. A threat is what evil results in but is not what it is.

You personalise evil. You may talk as if you do not but you do. You cannot truly hate a mere thing or an abstraction. You treat evil as if it were a person. It is just a value judgment, an idea, there is nothing there to hate.

What if evil really were a person? Your response to evil treats it as one whether it is a person or not.

It is said to be evil to demonise a person as evil.  If the person has become an instrument of evil they are doing the work for it so you will want them hurt and destroyed.

You cannot see evil without seeing a person.  A person needs to show it to you.  Hating theft as if there were no thief is impossible.  Telling yourself you love that person is self-deception.  The hate in you is most powerful when you hide it even from yourself.

You cannot condemn evil without being evil yourself. You cannot condemn the evil in a person without there being evil in yourself.

Religion is a cover for what your belief and treatment of and response to evil says about you.  It tells you it has the cure for evil and tells you to be a soldier against it.  It makes you feel you are not evil and that its prayers and rites and Jesus' blood have immunised you.  It is true religion says we are all sinners.  But we are talking about how it says that when you carefully diagnose evil and work to bring it down you are not sinning then but doing God's work.

So we have learned that opposing and totally denying evil has a right to exist means if you could could hurt evil like it was a person and degrade it you would.  It just happens not to be a person but that has nothing to do with it. Evil is hated for being unnecessary and pointless and harmful and if evil is a person or thing or an abstraction or anything it does not matter. It is hated for what it is – pointless and bad. and the harm it causes is a side-effect. Evil is hated for being evil and what it is otherwise is only a detail and an irrelevancy.

A God who by definition cannot tolerate evil is IMPOSSIBLE because of what we are all like. All God believers lie to themselves that they have a good God. They do not nor do they want one. They want one that benefits them even if the so-called evil suffer.  A God letting things be that bad and that fake is impossible.  Religion and prayer make a crutch for hiding how our talk against evil is us outsourcing the evil in ourselves.

Religion says that we are to blame for wrecking God's good creation not God.  Without conclusive proof it is clear that this is another outcome of projecting the evil in us to others.  You cannot accuse all humankind just because you want to believe in a moral God.

Free will means your choice is one that is aligned with your essence, your true nature. It is about how choosing an action shows the kind of person you are, the kind of being you are. Calvinist Christianity says that this definition shows that if we do nothing but sin as the Bible says we still have free will for we are only doing what sinners do. We are sinners by nature so our actions only show what we are. Sins do not make us sinners any more than barking makes a dog a dog.

Now at this point problems show up.

It is saying that if we do good we are faking.  We have seen that evil attracts war with other evils.  So here we have good that is really an outworking of selfishness or something dark that is used against scary evils such as violence.  Such a picture will make sure that if we are not evil we soon will be.  We absorb poison.  We are told we are just bad.

What if you dismiss that and say your true nature is basically good? Then the evil then you do must be down to some kind of error or disorder. It's not really you. Sinners should go to Heaven the more they sin not the less they sin. And sin would not really make much sense at all.

Either way you show that evil cannot be seen clearly no matter what Jesus said about getting the speck out of your brother's eye.  What you assess then is more about you than the evil.  Both stances put you off diagnosing evil and fighting them.  It is no wonder people prefer preaching against evil than doing anything about it.

Pope Francis said in 2022 that God does not in the slightest have any fear when sin is rife or when people sin.  If God will cause sin to burn out that takes time.  God having all power and letting sin have its way for a while out of respect for free will then is compatible with him fearing it.  It is natural to fear an hour of agony in the dentists even though you know it will be okay and good after!  It is rational.  In Matthew 10:25, 26 Jesus speaks of the threat of Satan but warns his followers not to fear him at all.  These characters should know that evil by definition demands a response of fear just because of what it is.  Either they think evil is evil or they don't know what the word means.  What does the notion that God does not fear evil AT ALL tell us about sin?  That we should not fear the evil we see in others.  But what will happen when the gang breaks into your house to beat you up?  If you don't feel fear you are not normal.  And what if you have children?

Some say that God choose the right number to people to die in say the plague to maximise the chance for us to help them and grow as better people.  If God has a plan that is what they have to agree with.  So if we wasted the suffering of the plague victims by not helping that is our problem not God's.  The accusation will totally wreck our sense of self-worth.  To accuse people without proof is more than just unfair - it demoralises them so they don't do good as well as they might.

That assumes that our moral compassion and love and sense of justice is that great. It in fact is very wobbly.  Even without that it is hubris to say that people should suffer terribly so that you can do things to make you approved by God.  You may say that God does the things you dom not you.  But you take credit for letting him so your false humility fools nobody.  A person who won't let God use them and let God do the work is worse than one who can do the good works and does not.  Why?   For its naturally easier if the works are hard but God is doing them not you.

Black and white thinking is dangerous.  To affirm evil is to affirm black.  To define evil as what is wrong for me or my opinion as a moral relativist would is to create it.  To define evil as what I perceive as wrong which is how a non-relativist might put it is also to create it.



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