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The Truth About Evil

#1
C C Offline
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/oct...-john-gray

EXCERPT: [...] A radically dualistic view of the world, in which good and evil are separate forces that have coexisted since the beginning of time, was held by the ancient Zoroastrians and Manicheans. These religions did not face the problem with which Christian apologists have struggled so painfully and for so long – how to reconcile the existence of an all-powerful and wholly good God with the fact of evil in the world. The worldview of George W Bush and Tony Blair is commonly described as Manichean, but this is unfair to the ancient religion. Mani, the third-century prophet who founded the faith, appears to have believed the outcome of the struggle was uncertain, whereas for Bush and Blair there could never be any doubt as to the ultimate triumph of good. In refusing to accept the permanency of evil they are no different from most western leaders.

[...] In its official forms, secular liberalism rejects the idea of evil. Many liberals would like to see the idea of evil replaced by a discourse of harm: we should talk instead about how people do damage to each other and themselves. But this view poses a problem of evil remarkably similar to that which has troubled Christian believers. If every human being is born a liberal – as these latter-day disciples of Pelagius appear to believe – why have so many, seemingly of their own free will, given their lives to regimes and movements that are essentially repressive, cruel and violent? Why do human beings knowingly harm others and themselves? Unable to account for these facts, liberals have resorted to a language of dark and evil forces much like that of dualistic religions....
#2
Yazata Offline
Quote:A radically dualistic view of the world, in which good and evil are separate forces that have coexisted since the beginning of time, was held by the ancient Zoroastrians and Manicheans.

Zoroastrians seem to have been ambivalent about that. There was certainly a tendency among them to say that Good is superior to Evil and will ultimately win at the end of time. But whether or not they thought that outcome was preordained, they thought that it was humanity's job to side with Good against Evil so as to help bring that about.

Quote:These religions did not face the problem with which Christian apologists have struggled so painfully and for so long – how to reconcile the existence of an all-powerful and wholly good God with the fact of evil in the world.

That's true if we assume that Evil is an equal cosmic principle alongside Good. But if that's so, then it's hard to imagine how Evil could ever be defeated by Good, whether that victory was thought of as inevitable or not.

Imagining that Good is superior to Evil, but not omnipotent and omniscient, might be a way around that dilemma. Good tends to win, but not all at once, through a single act of will. Good can only triumph after endless struggle, at the end of time.

Quote:The worldview of George W Bush and Tony Blair is commonly described as Manichean, but this is unfair to the ancient religion.

Now we have Gray, the British lefty, scoring idiot-points with the lefty readers of the Guardian.

Quote:Mani, the third-century prophet who founded the faith, appears to have believed the outcome of the struggle was uncertain, whereas for Bush and Blair there could never be any doubt as to the ultimate triumph of good. In refusing to accept the permanency of evil they are no different from most western leaders.

Is that really true?  

Quote:In its official forms, secular liberalism rejects the idea of evil.

We need to remember that Gray is almost certainly using 'liberal' in the British sense, referring to those who place individual liberty among the highest values. (Alternatives are statism or 'communitarianism', that raise the group above the individual, and various kinds of old-style European conservatism that favor traditional hierarchical elites.)

Quote:Many liberals would like to see the idea of evil replaced by a discourse of harm: we should talk instead about how people do damage to each other and themselves.

That's less a function of their being liberals (whether in the British libertarian sense, or in the American statist sense) as their being secular. The idea of evil as an actual ontological being or force is typically a religious sort of idea that's less consistent with naturalistic worldviews.

Quote:But this view poses a problem of evil remarkably similar to that which has troubled Christian believers. If every human being is born a liberal – as these latter-day disciples of Pelagius appear to believe – why have so many, seemingly of their own free will, given their lives to regimes and movements that are essentially repressive, cruel and violent? Why do human beings knowingly harm others and themselves? Unable to account for these facts, liberals have resorted to a language of dark and evil forces much like that of dualistic religions....

I'm not really familiar with Gray, but I gather that he's something of a believer in the depravity of man. That's an idea that one can find in religion too, in Pelagius' opponent Augustine in fact.

But Gray asks a good question and my answer would be that people typically grasp onto repressive, cruel and violent causes, or they resort to things like drugs and alcohol, because they think that these things are in their interest or in the interest of whatever they identify with, that they pay off somehow. That judgement may be short-sighted or even totally mistaken, but it's undeniable that heroin makes people feel very good for a short time, and joining the Nazis/Communists/Jihadists gives alienated people the feeling of belonging to something important (making them feel important) and of being on the right side of history, on the side of the inevitable winners.

Put another way, accepting that people make choices doesn't commit one to the view that those choices will always be good ones.
#3
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:If every human being is born a liberal – as these latter-day disciples of Pelagius appear to believe – why have so many, seemingly of their own free will, given their lives to regimes and movements that are essentially repressive, cruel and violent?

Group identity gives one a sense of anonymity and freedom from personal responsibilities. If you join Isis, your anger at Western materialists can be righteously vented in the name of Allah as jihad. Your million year old biological morality of respecting other lives out of empathy can be conveniently overridden by an ethics of being on a holy mission for God to rid the world of heretics. Having this higher purpose also gives your otherwise humdrum life a meaning it didn't have before. You're important now and you are crystal clear about what you must do. Fight and destroy and kill. People crave this sort of structure for themselves immensely, even it means sacrificing their sense of compassion and altruism in the process. People crave meaning more than they do morality.


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