RELIGION DOES NOT AGREE WITH ITSELF ABOUT EVIL AND HOW TO REACT TO IT
Believers in God may say you cannot have good unless evil is possible.
Evil should be possible in theory but that does not mean it has to happen or must be
allowed to happen.
I have a painful tooth that is rotting. According to the believers, the tooth is
good. The rotting is just good that is in the wrong place for it is good at
making teeth rot. The pain is good for it is warning that something is in the
wrong place. So if I get better from it that is good and if I don't and it
rots that is still good. From this it does not matter either way.
Or you might say that the first is better and the second is good if
the first cannot happen.
Now to define evil as a good that is misplaced means our pain and how we feel about it has nothing to do with it. So we find the argument is saying it is good if you can get rid of the agony and as good if you cannot. Pain cannot really tell us what evil is and is making a mere lack seem terrible to us. So pain is called a liar. The implication is that we should be brave enough and concerned about truth enough to not let it tell us what is bad. If God makes the good that is being abused, we let the pain blind us to that.
Nobody says you HAVE to leave the rotting tooth in instead of getting it extracted. But either way it is good. If it is good to just toughen up and live with the pain and if it is good to extract, it is a matter of indifference. The philosophy produces a kind of quietism, a passivity. It is not going to empower the person who wants to make changes in society. It is not going to get the dentist develop enough compassion and empathy to help you.
The good sharp knife that cuts you by accident is just good in the wrong place. So is the knife that comes to life and cuts you on purpose.
Religion will say, "The first is an accident and the second is a moral violation. It is not the same thing. We do not condone deliberately doing harm". But if harm is bad it is just bad. It is insane to call harm bad only when a person does it. Why not say that harm is only harm if a person is consciously inflicting it? You are cut either way. Nobody can prove that one evil is really worse than the other. If there is a lack there, there is a lack there, and intention being involved makes no difference. The intention is a lack itself, a lack of the right intention. A lack is not special just because it is in a person. That is as insane as saying a calculation by a calculator is nothing and only persons can do calculations.
Try this hypothetical test. This scenario shows what is really in people who argue as religion does.
What if it is only when a human being acts that the question of moral accountability arises? What if a thing can have a purpose without moral accountability?
Then harm coming from purpose is as horrid and evil as harm coming from mere chance.
For one to care about intention when either way damage is done, a gash is made in your arm, is about control not about evil. If another person is cut not you then you are clearly not about empathy. You may be only about the intention or mostly about it or half about it. Whatever. Your concern for others is downed.
If it is good to save a baby's life, it is good whether you help with intention or not. To say that intention makes a difference is too much about making you good in your own eyes. A lack is a lack as we have said. The lack is the problem.
The condemnation of deliberate evil is about control not evil. It is weaponising evil in the name of power. It is affirming of evil in so far as evil can be used by those who wish to signal their superior virtue and their alleged right to tell us what to do.
