The problem of Evil

ColoradoGuy said:

...St. Augustine's concept of evil as a lack of something. He used the metaphor as being distanced from God...a lack of inner awareness, of not listening to "that of God" within each of us.

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...may well be mistaken about this, but I think Plato proposed something similar: that wrongdoing was the result of failing to see the inherent logic of being good. So for Augustine it was about tuning into God, and for Plato, tuning into logic, in the form of absolutes.

Ruv Draba said:

All the primates have both custom and compassion; so do most other mammals. We've had the seeds of both ethics and morality since before we had speech or fire.

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...interesting. This may usher in a 3rd factor, though, which keeps behavior in check: biological/physiological predispositions, which is very much evidenced by the nurturing bond between mother and offspring ... though not always.

Mac H. said:

OK - a guy knocks on my door and says "I'd like to harm your kids, but you're protecting them."

Imagine I replied - "You want to hurt my kids ? OK - do what you want. I'll just sit back and drink beer while I watch you torture my children. Try not to get blood on the carpet, though."

Am I doing evil? Or would you argue that I'm not doing a thing .. I'm not actually assisting the mysterious stranger to kill and torture my children, I'm merely giving him permission and then sitting back to watch ?

Surely if any human being did that that we'd all agree that human being is evil. There can be no serious question about that.

Then we can agree that what the God character did in that story was evil.

Mac

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I did try to answer this question with the rest of my post, but lets look more closely at it. Sense someone else brought up a Star Trek episode I will to, is it evil to stand by and watch someone suffer and die for the good of many. In the episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" Kirk stands back and watches his true love Edith Keeler die to keep Hitler from winning World war two. Was Kirk being evil? Or would it have been evil to let Hitler rule the world. Kirk had a God like knowledge of the future and he acted as best he knew.

Sometimes we don't know all the facts but we still must do the best we can given what we know at the time.

And there is still a difference between allowing something to happen and causing it particularly where free will come in to play. If I warn someone that something is dangerous how far do I need to go in preventing him from doing it to not be considered in compliance with him.

So Kirk's motives and knowledge of the outcome was important.

The great thing about this story, however, is that we aren't guessing at the motivations of the God character .. we are told why the God character did this.

It wasn't to save someone from a terrible fate. It was not for the good of many. It was to win a bet.

I appreciate that the Book of Job is basically a parable (or closer to a modern stage-play .. look at all the characters who appear Stage Left, give their lines and then disappear to Stage Right) which is why I'm talking about about the 'God character' in this piece of literature. I accept that the God-reality is going to be much more complex than this one-dimensional portrayal.

Yet in this story, I can't see a rational argument that this particular character isn't acting in an evil way. Sure, you could argue that there is another motivation not explained, but you could justify Pol Pot that way too!

Look at the story as a single piece of literature. If the story was identical but the boss character was called 'King Huzauckuk' instead, would you honestly be saying that the story is about the noble and good King Huzauckuk?

Mac

I think the trouble with labelling things as "good" or "evil" is that it leaves room for preconceptions about actions that don't fit those constructs.

For example, you can say that "stealing is evil." And in most cases, you may be right, but what about the case of a man who steals from the rich and gives to the poor? Is Robin Hood "evil"?

Or a person who steals to feed their starving children.

By applying the label of "evil" to an action, you leave no room for interpretation in cases where the action itself may be labelled as evil, but the motive was purely "good."

In fact, Jesus himself was one of those people who performed good acts by doing things that the religious leaders considered "sin" (or evil). Forgiving a prostitute of her sins by breaking Jewish law? Dinner with sinners?

I think that's the whole point behind his saying "I came not to destroy the law, only to fulfil it." He was wanting us to know that our attempts at classifying things as one or the other is futile.

I don't understand the over all point of The Book of Job but there is a lot I can learn from it. One of the points that is clearly made is that Job (and us by association) does not know the mind of God or why he does things. When we look at Job it is easy to assign what happen to him as evil, the loss of lively hood and his family, his illness and distress seem evil. But we do not have all the facts, which is the point God makes at the end of Job. And God does not tell us any more in the book of Job, he leaves what happened unexplained.

We could view the fact that someone cut off a person's arm or leg as evil until we know that it was a medical procedure done to save the person's life.

Now I have heard this argument misused before as well. What happened to Job was specific, but I've heard people try to use the same, we just don't know the mind of God, argument to explain earthquakes and hurricanes and I don't believe it works that way. Earthquakes and hurricanes are part of the natural order of things and when we git in the way of the natural order of things we mostly lose. Earthquakes and hurricanes are big things and it might be easier to understand what I'm trying to say if we look at something on a smaller scale, like if out jogging in the African savanna and get eaten by a lion I would think that was evil, it would just be bad. It is bad when people die in hurricanes and earthquakes but it could be argued that it's not evil. Some have tried to say that these natural occurrences are God's judgments on mankind, but from my readings of the bible when God makes a judgment it is hard to mistake it for something else.

To be even more reductionalist--if we have empathy the understanding that hurting others is bad is built in (that is pretty much the defintion of empathy). What is evil other than the indifference to, or enjoying of, hurting others?

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"This is going to hurt me a lot more than it's going to hurt you..."

Sometimes people will understand that what they're doing is hurtful and truly regret that, but will be attempting to save someone further hurt down the road, or believe that they're actions are for the person's "own good", or that it's regrettably necessary tough love.

I recently read an article where a woman, concerned for her adult, capable, sane sister, and wanting her sister to come live with her (which the sister refused) went to her sister's house, bound and gagged her, and took her by force...all for "her own good". I think I know why the sister didn't want to live with her! (I read about this in a print article called "News of the Weird" that appears in "The Funny Times". My in-laws have a subscription. Sorry no link.)

So good motives doesn't convince me that an act is good, and actually caring about what harm you're doing to the person doesn't convince me either, if it doesn't stop you from an evil act.

On the other hand, maybe it would be more accurate (and maybe it's what you intended in the OP) to consider someone's suffering less important than another goal to be indifference. I still wonder, though, what if the goal is to prevent them from more suffering?

I guess that brings me back to my "situational" stance.

Sense someone else brought up a Star Trek episode I will to, is it evil to stand by and watch someone suffer and die for the good of many. In the episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" Kirk stands back and watches his true love Edith Keeler die to keep Hitler from winning World war two.

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This is just the sort of thing I was talking about. Surely, the Kirk character love Edith and wasn't indifferent to her suffering, but he was trying to prevent more suffering, so many people will consider his choice to let Edith die Good, maybe even heroic.

But it also brings up a completely different argument: "The ends justifies the means."

Does it, really?

This is just the sort of thing I was talking about. Surely, the Kirk character love Edith and wasn't indifferent to her suffering, but he was trying to prevent more suffering, so many people will consider his choice to let Edith die Good, maybe even heroic.

But it also brings up a completely different argument: "The ends justifies the means."

Does it, really?

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This argument "the end justifies the means" has been used to justify all kinds of terrible things throughout human history and it deserves a little debate.

My personal belief is that the end never justifies the means unless the evil of the means is born strictly by the protagonist. I'll use a movie analogy to explain. In the first X Men movie Magneto wanted to use a machine to turn all the world leaders into mutants but suppose for this argument it was going to be used to cure the world of some terrible disease, had Magneto been willing to sacrifice himself then the evil of his death would have been justified however by forcing someone else to make the sacrifice it is not justified. The difference being the willingness to sacrifice yourself.

Often in debates like this the choice is generally given as an "either, or" question without other alternatives. In the Star Trek episode Kirk lets Edith be killed to save the future world but that wasn't really his only option. There could have been other means to the same end. It is easy to imagine scenarios that put us in "either, or" situations that leave out other options.

Guffy said:

Often in debates like this the choice is generally given as an "either, or" question without other alternatives. In the Star Trek episode Kirk lets Edith be killed to save the future world but that wasn't really his only option. There could have been other means to the same end. It is easy to imagine scenarios that put us in "either, or" situations that leave out other options.

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I agree. In real life, there's almost always another option or two.

Guffy said:

In the episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" Kirk stands back and watches his true love Edith Keeler die to keep Hitler from winning World war two. Was Kirk being evil? Or would it have been evil to let Hitler rule the world. Kirk had a God like knowledge of the future and he acted as best he knew.

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You can watch "The City on the Edge of Forever" in a strikingly clean digital copy here, for free--legally