When you see evil is it because you want it to be there?

PREAMBLE

Religion says each person knows:

-they harbour evil within

- they keep it there

- that evil is there without exactly being invited

- that much of it is invited

- there is the danger of potential evil

- there is the threat from how deceptive evil is for it can make you think you are doing one well-planned wrong and find out it was like it was up to something worse [Religion blames the human heart and/or demons for this “deception.” It supports our argument that when you identify something as evil you on some level want an evil to be there]

- evil is personalised by us and we fear it like it is as good as some kind of intelligence

One thing these all lead to, is people being prone because they are bad to see bad in others. They want to see the bad in them for it is scary if you think the evil is in you only. I would mention that the startling doctrine that we inherited evil from Adam and Eve who wrecked the universe with the first rebellion against God only enhances the problems.

People say you need to believe in God in order to recognise evil and thus to avoid doing it wittingly or unwittingly. That is stupid for they are pressuring evil people to use faith as a cloak for pretending to believe in evil. They are assuming that just happening to not believe or deliberately rejecting belief is the top way to fuel evil. It is hate speech against atheists and agnostics and those who have slight faith.

WHEN YOU REPORT EVIL DOES IT SAY MORE ABOUT YOU THAN THE EVIL? 

It is very common for people to hold that we often say something someone has done is evil for we want it to be evil.  It is more about the evil in us. 

It happens too much.  Therefore it is not good enough to say, "We should maintain belief in evil for not all who say it is there want it to be there, want it on some level."  That is no better than saying it is acceptable if one baby dies in a bomb as long as it wasn't two.  It is in fact an evil thing to say.

Already we have found that even if evil is real, it has managed to turn belief in it into a catalyst for evil, a conduit.

We like the thought that evil harms and degrades its host.  No wonder we want it to be lurking in the person we have ill-will towards.  We want to look like we are so good that we distance ourselves from the alleged evil in the other.  We want our version of God to do that do with us.  It then makes us feel wiser and more powerful than this person.  We have God on our side or so we think.

The person supposedly degraded by evil may be enjoying life.  They do not see their alleged degradation and it does not bother them.  So the degrading is only in theory.  We want it to be there. 

If there is evil in us, we want strength in numbers.  We want to see evil in others.  It makes us feel safe.  We think our evil is safer.  While we identify ourselves with the evil we do, we are quick to say, "Love the person and hate the evil they do" when we think somebody is going to judge or punish us. How cynically manipulative!  If we identify ourselves with evil we cannot complain if somebody else is like that with us.

Christianity says it is free agents who make evil not God.  They say that as God is so good and builds only good that evil is a lack of love and goodness and so it is not real in that sense.  To disagree is to say it is a power and God must be creating it.  It calls God evil.  His goodness then would mean nothing for it could be a trap.  It calls faith in God evil too.  Faith in a good God in theory can still be evil if you cannot do anything to make sure that his help is really help.

Anyway back to the topic.  To redefine evil as a lack when it might not be just to get it to fit a God you cannot prove is itself evil.  This is a matter of immense seriousness.  Naturally you need proof.  It is true that religion says faith is not knowledge but taking a risk for the sake of good.  No supposedly good thing about faith can justify saying something as major as that God and evil fit without providing a good case.  If evil is the enemy you need to know your enemy. You need a proper diagnostic tool and that demands ruthless sifting of evidence and finding the best proofs you can find.

If you say that evil is a lack then you see a hole. You call it evil for good should be there and is not. Even if evil is a lack, do you psychologically make the void you see? Is evil in the eye of the beholder? Can you prove that you are not engaging in an evil of the gaps exercise? Is it, “I see a hole therefore I think I see evil there so it is there”?

What if you are right? If John is in the house, it is possible that you imagine you see him. Upon learning he was there you then think what you imagined was truly a sighting of him.  Imagining you see a red box a foot by a foot square is imagining even if there is a box there by happenstance. If you need luck to be right to be right about the John or the box, you need the same luck to be right about the void. In either case you don’t really have any reliability. Being right by chance really means the chance was right rather than you. If you see a space even if there is a space there you could be seeing what is in your own head.

If all you see is a space, that is not the same as seeing evil. Evil to be evil needs to reveal itself clearly to you and you need to be open to seeing it only so that you might be able to do or say something to counteract it. Otherwise the evil you see is a projection of something that is inside you. In other words, it takes an evil person to see an evil where it might not be at all.  It takes an evil person to see an evil where it might not be present EVEN IF IT IS PRESENT.

If evil is a lack or a good that is in the wrong place and time it is going to be able to hide its true face.  It can look like dishonesty and be malign.  Perhaps you only want the old lady's money because you want her deprived of it and not because you want it for the finer things.  It has to wear a mask to protect itself.

The mist evil hides in seeps into religion.     Let us look at one worrying religious ideology, Christianity.

Christianity tends to avoid being too clear about evil and offers "examples" such as adultery, euthanasia and abortion. 

Now the Church says that such acts are not just grave evils but intrinsic ones. Meaning?

An intrinsic evil is something that you must never do. It is not necessarily that important. An example is if you break the command of the Bible not to tell white lies ever.

A crime such as murdering a baby for fun is both intrinsically evil and gravely evil.

That theorising is useless in the real world.  You can invest the white lie with a radical hatred of God.  You can do it to say, "F--k you and I wish you would just die if you could."  So it might look slight but hide a very serious ill-will.  And if God is really in control of life and death he could be saving the baby in a way you cannot see so even if it is an attempt at a grave evil it might not be.

Why people want religion to regulate people's behaviour is odd for all they will get is a morality that is too much about intentions, intentions that will probably never be detected.

We are talking elective abortion. Christians say that aborting a healthy baby at 12 weeks is as wrong as aborting a healthy one a couple of week prior to the birth. But they say a person still has an excuse for failing to see that the early abortion is as bad as the later one. They hold that only a deeply corrupt conscience would agree with late-term abortion. This in fact makes no sense.  It shows they are waffling and like pro-choice people do not really think early abortion is murder.

The argument that “when we sin or rebel against God, we assume what good results will come from it and aim for those” is very rife. One example is that if a woman feels she should murder her newborn, it is not about seeing killing as good but about thinking of the freedom she will have with the child gone. Perhaps the planet is better off without the child’s carbon print. In this scheme, she virtually thinks that she is doing the child a needed but unpleasant favour too. She does not see herself as good enough to be her or his mother. Perhaps the pregnancy will bring her harm. She thinks of all this to resist her feeling that she should not kill.

Is the teaching saying she actually means well? Or if not then as good as?

Whatever. In either case distinguishing between good and bad intentions is arbitrary at worst and not very useful at best. Even if it is not arbitrary it is a waste of time. Are those who frown on abortion going to sort of reward her for at least she had noble intentions?  If they say they are non-judgmental that means they praise her good intentions while they say they do not ignore the evil she has done.  They claim it is like constructive criticism.  They know fine well that going down that road is merely admitting they don't really care about the unborn babies.  If we only look at the good side of what a person does, they will do bad freely and without fear.

One more thing.  Is the teaching that she knows she is evil and plotting evil and needs a distraction to carry it out?

She may think on some level that her taking responsibility for the child by ending its life to spare it something is good. She thinks the evil is less horrible, a lot less. So the punishment or disapproval if any that awaits will need to be milder too. Her next crime will be committed a lot more easily. She has become a person who is good at lying to herself to the degree where she can kill her baby. So it will be a near-miracle if she does not do something else as bad.

Shockingly this is saying that she knows it is evil but has to distract herself from that and look at the benefits to have the abortion.

It is hard to see how you can call her action that bad if all she is doing is looking away.

Also, we all have distractions and we all lose focus.  So why say she looked away on purpose?  Surely non-judgemental persons would say that abortion is wrong but anybody having one or providing one is simply misguided?  That would be effectively saying nobody involved in abortion should be suspected of evil.  Maybe they just care about the harm done by the “sin” not the “sin” itself?

It is hard to see how a Devil or an evil force or whatever could be satisfied with her when she has to use a gimmick to do harm. 

If God exists then he sees the whole picture.  No matter what we look at we never see it all.  He alone is the expert on what an evil is doing and on what exactly it is.

The prayer, “May God forgive you”, is probably one of the most popular prayers in the world. Jesus puts it this way, “Forgive us – you and me – our sins”. He stuck it in the Lord’s Prayer. Think of how flippant it is. It would be different if you could see the evil as God sees it. But you see an approximation of it not it. You see something in a mist.  Flippant forgiveness is just a way of condoning evil while denying you do so.  It is a way of failing to care enough.  Christianity by teaching that you can slaughter all the babies in the world cruelly and a sorry fixes your salvation and now you are for Paradise forever is a disgrace.  Real forgiving needs a long process.  The person would need centuries.  The person would need to have a sufficient idea of the suffering caused to each INDIVIDUAL child and work through that.

We conclude that religion uses words like evil, immorality and sin, and there is no coherence there.  It is all smoke and mirrors.  Assuming evil is possible at all, to see evil is to be evil.  Religion offers cheap, superficial, lazy, divine mercy to the "wicked".  It is an insult to the victims.

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