A friend of mine posed this question to me some time ago, so I thought I'd run it through the current framework of how I see the world and see what comes out.
The question of evil is traditionally a religious one, for religions have the reputation of being the bastions of moral truth. So we'll first look at the source of evil to set us up for understanding what evil is, then we'll relate it all back to the religious approach to evil.
The Source of Evil
Free to Choose
Even if the devil existed he would not be the source of evil. In all the major theologies the devil can't ultimately make you do it. He is seen as a tempter, he can only entice. Therefore in the religious understanding evil is a choice.
What about in the non-religious understanding? Here more questions seem to arise to fog the issue. There are, after all, psychopaths, brain abnormalities, tumors, sociopaths and politicians (but I repeat myself). However none of these disorders change the fact that evil is a choice.
Evil must be a choice to be evil. A car cannot be evil, even it if its breaks fail and it kills someone. The car didn't have intent or knowledge, it didn't make that choice, it was physics.
Morality and Evil
Ok, so evil is a choice; a specific kind of choice. Some decisions we make such as what kind of music to listen to are simply personal preference and cannot be evil. Other choices are either evil or not evil - these are moral decisions.
So to understand evil in its entirety, to define it correctly we must understand firstly that evil is one category of "moral" activity. Morality wouldn't exist without the concept of free will. So from the highest view, the source of evil is free will, but not all freely chosen options can be classified as evil or good. Sometimes our choices are neutral or they just fall outside of the moral dichotomy.
The Source of Morality
The most basic morality is the golden rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. We have the cognitive ability to realize that feelings, sensations and experience (pain and pleasure) can be felt by others as well. I don't want to feel pain, so others probably wouldn't like that either.
In other words morality is derived from our ability as cognizant beings to feel pain or pleasure and to recognize that others do too.
The Source of Evil
To sum up, only choices can be classified as evil which is a type of moral classification. Evil is not a thing in and of itself, it only 'exists' in relation to how we classify choices.
The internet isn't a thing, its just a set of interactions between computers on a network. Just as the internet doesn't exist without computers interacting, so does morality not exist without people interacting.
The internet isn't a thing, its just a set of interactions between computers on a network. Just as the internet doesn't exist without computers interacting, so does morality not exist without people interacting.
The Nature of Evil
The Nature of Morality
Since evil is a moral classification perhaps we ought to define morality for a minute.
With our understanding of how others must feel (empathy) we try to make moral rules to live by, a protocol. A good example of this is the Golden Rule. Any moral rule must be universal to be a valid moral rule.
Lets prove this by taking an example of a moral code that isn't universal: lets say I believe it is "good" for me to kill anyone I wish, But it is "evil" for every other person to kill me.
Lets prove this by taking an example of a moral code that isn't universal: lets say I believe it is "good" for me to kill anyone I wish, But it is "evil" for every other person to kill me.
This moral code "isn't fair," as the children say. I'm a human, everyone I wish to kill are humans, we're not so different that their desires are to die and mine are to live. We have a universal experience; pain for me is pain for most people. Such an asymmetric rule doesn't make any logical sense.
So for a moral rule to be valid it must be universal since we're mostly the same.
What is Evil?
As stated above moral laws are built upon our ability to 1. make conscious decisions (free will) 2. feel pain and pleasure (feelings and knowledge) 3. have the sense to desire pleasure and avoid pain (desires) 4. understand the implications of those decisions on others (empathy).
If morality is built atop all of that then a category of moral decisions (evil) must also be built on top of all that. Evil must be a choice, evil must understand what causes pain and pleasure and evil must desire pain for others. In other words; evil requires a knowledge of virtue.
Evil as Perverted Virtue
Lets take a quick example; Sadism.
sa·dismˈsāˌdizəm/noun
To have sadistic tendencies you must first understand that others can suffer like you and you must desire their suffering. To actually be a sadist you must act on your desires and actually inflict pain, suffering or humiliation on others.
Here we see that sadism requires empathy. If you didn't actually believe others could feel pain or pleasure you would be indifferent to them. You would torture them as much as you torture any inanimate object.
In order to hate someone you must grant them the dignity of being conscious, indifference requires no such knowledge or concern.
In order to hate someone you must grant them the dignity of being conscious, indifference requires no such knowledge or concern.
Evil as Dysfunction
In healthy individuals empathy tends towards sympathy. Understanding how others feel makes the healthy person less likely to harm others. It engenders a sense of union, a shared humanity, even love; not sadism. Sadism is dysfunctional, a sign of mental or emotional illness.
It is accurate to say that evil people are unhealthy or have not developed emotionally or mentally in a healthy way. Sadism is an example of how the helpful knowledge of empathy is perverted to cause suffering instead of increase unity in a community. Its a disease, however we cannot put all the blame on a lack of health.
If we could assign ill-health the full causation then we would strip away an evil doer's humanity and turn him or her into an automaton, a robot who is programmed, an animal acting on instinct. The moment we assign cause wholly to their lack of emotional health we strip them of all freewill and therefore all capacity to act morally.
Freewill and Evil
Now, perhaps someone is literally insane, totally disconnected from reality, automatically acting out the whims of a broken mind. There is no freewill in this situation and his or her actions cannot be classified as evil. Perhaps they've killed someone in broad daylight and showed no remorse. Animals do that. He might be harmful and dangerous, but not evil.
As long as there is control there is free will and people are morally responsible for their actions.
For instance there are abusive parents in this world. These parents usually somehow find it within their souls to refrain from abusing their children when a cop is around or when child services stop by or probably even around friends.
In other words they can refrain from being immoral, unethical or abusive when it's convenient for them. In the same way that a hitman hides a body to avoid being caught. An animal or insane person doesn't have that control.
I've heard grown people say that their mother or father was abusive to some degree or another but that it was only because they were bipolar or had some other disorder and "couldn't control it." However, if the parent could avoid the abuse in public then we have evidence that they could indeed control it. They may very well have been bipolar but that is no excuse to strip their freewill, moral agency and human dignity away.
The act of avoiding being caught in evil is proof that someone has enough freewill to be responsible for evil choices.
Candidate Sources of Evil
With all that we've discussed so far we can turn our attention to what is commonly said about the source of evil.
Some people say "the love of money is the root of all evil."
Can the love of money entice someone to do immoral things? Absolutely. Can it do more than entice? Can someone's love of money actually be the whole cause of someone's evil actions? No, as we've just discussed if evil isn't a choice it isn't evil. If greed could overtake all of one's control of mind and body then that mind and body would no longer have free will. Any actions undertaken by such an individual consumed by greed (were that even possible) would not have been chosen and therefore cannot be evil. Harmful, perhaps, but not evil.
Additionally, love of money can cause people to do great things - create great businesses, produce awesome products or even just go to work and contribute to society.
One need only to find one person making an evil decision who is not motivated by his love of money to disprove this claim.
One need only to find one person making an evil decision who is not motivated by his love of money to disprove this claim.
Furthermore there are many other candidate sources of evil if that is our definition for the 'source of evil'; something that entices you to behave immorally.
One such candidate is religion itself; suicide bombers, crusades and witch hunts are all great examples of evils done in the name of religion. However religion certainly is not the source of all evil.
Its been said that religion is the cause of all wars in history. This is provably false and holds about as much water as the claim that money is the root of all evil.
Its been said that religion is the cause of all wars in history. This is provably false and holds about as much water as the claim that money is the root of all evil.
A few mental health professionals or neurologists probably believe that evil is nothing more than unhealthy dysfunction but as we've discussed previously that can't fully account for evil choices because evil choices are choices.
Certainly people choose to act abusively or even cruelly because of psychological problems but those psychological problems can't account for all evil. Though perhaps emotional issues is the best candidate for a source of evil; perhaps this is the biggest enticement to the largest number of people to commit evil acts.
Keep in mind, though, if someone is so far gone that he's lost all control you can't even call his actions evil because he isn't making any choices. Calling a legitimate lunatic's killing act "murder" is like calling terminally ill cancer patient's death "suicide." It may cause suffering, but its not moral.
Certainly people choose to act abusively or even cruelly because of psychological problems but those psychological problems can't account for all evil. Though perhaps emotional issues is the best candidate for a source of evil; perhaps this is the biggest enticement to the largest number of people to commit evil acts.
Keep in mind, though, if someone is so far gone that he's lost all control you can't even call his actions evil because he isn't making any choices. Calling a legitimate lunatic's killing act "murder" is like calling terminally ill cancer patient's death "suicide." It may cause suffering, but its not moral.
Without choice there is not morality, and therefore no evil.
The Nature of Evil
Okay, so lets take a step back and define the nature of evil in greater detail. We've learned that one form of evil, sadism is a perversion of empathy towards suffering rather than empathy's most healthy conclusion: a sense of union and shared humanity.
Lets take another example of this: a mugger.
The mugger, like the sadist knows that you prefer to live to the alternative so he says, "your money or your life." He uses your healthy desires against you just as the villain will use the hero's desires against him by taking the hero's love interest hostage and force the far more powerful hero to do his bidding.
Not only does he use your desires against you, he uses your peaceful nature to his benefit. Muggers take money from people that seem peaceful not from people that seem violent.
By his actions and words he's communicating a moral code he lives by, "My desires should be satisfied and yours should not. My property rights should be respected but your property rights should not be respected. I get to use force against you but you do not get to use force against me."
In this example it is perfectly obvious that evil is hypocritical. The mugger asserts 2 opposing, asymmetrical moral rules for people who feel the same pains, pleasures and largely have the same desires for property and life. Evil is always hypocritical, requiring directly opposite moral laws for both similar individuals.
Evil is an acceptance of a general moral rule (property rights for example) followed by an direct violation of that moral rule.
Evil is an acceptance of the general virtue of people followed by an exploitation of that virtue.
The Religious take on Evil
God Creates Good?
Growing up extremely religious I was taught certain things about morality that I feel need to be addressed.
I haven't given this an extensive amount of dedicated thought so this is in no way an exhaustive analysis.
All that is Good comes from God
As a religious person I was taught to thank God for all good things and I still try to be grateful but not to a deity, just in general.
As a religious person I was taught to thank God for all good things and I still try to be grateful but not to a deity, just in general.
I learned a lot about my church before I learned about others. In college I took a philosophy of religions class and I noticed that the Catholics and Protestants believe some pretty strange stuff. For instance in The Book of Mormon it says that if God was false or behaved immorally he would cease to be God. To the classical theist view this is heresy because God defines what is good, he does not conform to what is good.
Having as I did, the natural inclination to the belief that God conforms to what is right, I also had the natural inclination to believe that I knew or could know through logic and deduction what was right or wrong.
So when I got older it started to confuse me when I thought about how God did things that seemed to violate that morality. It really confused me when God murdered whole nations in the old testament, when he commands certain leaders in the church to practice polygamy, and on a more personal note, why doesn't God answer my prayers when he seems to talk to others? These were just a few of the moral exemptions God seemed to allow himself that bothered me.
The classical theists (Catholics and Protestants) are insulated from this cognitive dissonance because whatsoever God does is right, end of story.
The Purpose and Virtue of Faith
The Mormons try to explain it away but when their explanations produce more and more questions they fall back on the default religious position of "you should have faith."
Perhaps we don't understand all the intergalactic, eternal purposes of God but shouldn't an apparent hypocritical action on God's part be met with some concern? Searching? Answers? If it is just a matter of us not understanding morality like God does, that's a pretty big problem considering that we're here to be tested and prove how moral we are.
What is the point of a church that can't fully teach its members about what is right and what is wrong and why?
Perhaps I'm expecting too much. When I was younger I fully expected all my questions to be answered eventually. I expected no less of an infinite and omnipotent Deity; a Deity that claims to love me personally.
This might sound a hostile, but it is not, its logical. When I was religious death did not bother me because I truly believed there was an afterlife. I was logical. So now too it follows that a perfectly moral God would always behave perfectly morally and if he does not then one of two things is true: we do not understand what moral behavior is which should cause deep anxiety within us as a church or God is immoral. I'm still just logical.
A Word On Sin
The government uses the term 'crime' to indicate any activity it will punish. We can know what the government thinks is immoral by what it labels a crime.
The church uses the term 'sin' to indicate any activity it deems immoral. There is however very little physical force that a church can subject a sinner to. It can only take steps to expel a member from its community which is entirely their prerogative and involves no force whatsoever.
This does not mean, however, that the church doesn't have an extremely strong mental and emotional affect on its devotees. Its truly harmful punishments come in the form of self-attack on the part of the member. This effect is magnified in children. In order for the term 'sin' to have any effect on the individual guilt or fear must be generated by the individual himself.
Children from devout families take their church very seriously. If you tell them they'll go to hell for sinning they will believe you. I, myself, confessed in the 6th grade to a friend that my biggest fear was not going to heaven.
For the teenage believers guilt is often the undertone of their development. The church demonizes the flesh and in doing so turns one's own body against them.
But as we have seen above morals have everything to do with how we treat one another and have nothing to do with anything done in isolation. Even in the simplest form of morals, (treat others as you would like to be treated) morals says nothing about things you do alone that have no effect on other people. Morals only apply to our interaction in the world.
Because moral terms or categories only apply to interactions with others and "crimes" and "sins" encompass some actions done in isolation we can deduce something about the nature of these concepts. We can see that the concept of "sin" has very little to do with morals, whats right and wrong, or good and evil. Either the concept of "sin" has more to do with what is deemed to be healthy or beneficial behavior or some other thing but the religious term "sinning" does not necessarily mean "doing evil."
Lets take a minute to look at this concept in a little more detail.
Adultery in your Heart
Growing up I was taught some very important truth about the power of my mind - that my thoughts can lead to action. I was also taught something else that began to bother me at one point - that thoughts can be sins.
I read 1984 in high school and learned about totalitarian societies. I especially remember learning about thought crimes.
In 1984 its perfectly obvious that thought crimes are the epitome of control. All the major religions of the earth however assert that "bad thoughts" are a sin. Jesus made the distinction between actually committing adultery and lust then equated the two to some degree:
If my thoughts startle me, or disturb me, if they seem abnormal, violent or perverse perhaps that's the time to get help, not suppress them.
Victimless Crimes
The church, especially the LDS church, teaches it's members that they have total free will. They do not joke around about free will, according to Mormon theology mortal man has such an abundance of free will that if he uses it correctly he can become like God.
At the same time they regulate the inner thoughts and personal activities (in areas such as what they ingest, the words they speak and their sexual activities to name a few) of its members.
In this way the church absolutely asserts freedom of will but denies self ownership. That is a contradiction. Where does freedom of will come from other than self ownership? In the LDS theology mans' freewill is innate to his nature, specifically because he is co-eternal with God. This is outlined in the 93rd section of the D&C.
If one does not have enough self ownership to do whatever he or she likes as long as it doesn't hurt others then what does it even mean to have self ownership?
Every crime needs a victim. A thought crime is also known simply as a thought.
Abuse to Children
There is nothing wrong with an organization that broadcasts messages on how to live morally and or well. Its odd but not evil if this organization believes in a hell or a super reality such as an entire theology.
However the trouble arises when children are involved. Children do not have the mental capacity to evaluate the claims made by their church, children do not have the emotional maturity nor the economic wherewithal to defy their parents. They are not independent.
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (Matt. 5:27-28)Lusting to commit adultery probably isn't a sign of a health in a monogamous relationship, however is the symptom of a possible problem a sin? Apparently it is, does that mean its immoral? Can having any thought whatsoever actually be immoral? My thoughts do not put guns in people's ribs, they can't rape someone, or murder, assault them or even defraud them. These are behaviors, these require action.
If my thoughts startle me, or disturb me, if they seem abnormal, violent or perverse perhaps that's the time to get help, not suppress them.
Victimless Crimes
The church, especially the LDS church, teaches it's members that they have total free will. They do not joke around about free will, according to Mormon theology mortal man has such an abundance of free will that if he uses it correctly he can become like God.
At the same time they regulate the inner thoughts and personal activities (in areas such as what they ingest, the words they speak and their sexual activities to name a few) of its members.
In this way the church absolutely asserts freedom of will but denies self ownership. That is a contradiction. Where does freedom of will come from other than self ownership? In the LDS theology mans' freewill is innate to his nature, specifically because he is co-eternal with God. This is outlined in the 93rd section of the D&C.
Every crime needs a victim. A thought crime is also known simply as a thought.
Abuse to Children
There is nothing wrong with an organization that broadcasts messages on how to live morally and or well. Its odd but not evil if this organization believes in a hell or a super reality such as an entire theology.
However the trouble arises when children are involved. Children do not have the mental capacity to evaluate the claims made by their church, children do not have the emotional maturity nor the economic wherewithal to defy their parents. They are not independent.
If this effect does not seem that harmful to you take a real world example to compare it to. If I ran a hospital for mentally handicap adults and I told them if they did something wrong that didn't even hurt anyone else, such as get out of bed in the middle of the night that they were bad that when they died they'd be sent to hell with other bad people bad people (a claim an cannot prove, by the way, which is intellectually dishonest) I'd be guilty of emotional abuse. Yet this is the norm for children and no one thinks anything of it.
God and Morality
As I have mentioned on this blog before I was not pulled away from my religion by transgression or anti-mormon material. I learned what was right and what was wrong and why - logically.
I realized then that my church, the institution that asserts its perfect authority on the topic of what is right and what is wrong is a fraud.
This was a terrible pill to swallow. I didn't want to believe it, I wanted to stay on my current trajectory and keep the God of my youth. It took several months of fear and unanswered prayer to actually accept what I had learned and it took several more months of confusion to reorient myself to a life without God. I would wish such a journey for everyone who desires to take it but I would not wish to inflict it upon any happy and content or otherwise unwilling soul.
The nature and source of evil isn't a mystical or elusive thing. It isn't a deity or supernatural being. It's not enough to explain it away with greed or lust, bad habits or superstition. Evil is one part choice and one part some enticement to behave immorally. Such enticements might come from a dysfunctional childhood or the opportunity to acquire power or the belief of getting forty virgins in heaven or anything else.
Conclusion
The important thing is not to know where evil comes from for its enticements are legion and we ultimately have the choice to behave that way or not. What's far more valuable to understand is the nature of evil; its nothing more than immoral actions. Morality is nothing more than a protocol we use when interacting with each other to avoid unnecessary harm. Therefore for anything to be classified as evil there must be at least two parties involve.
This question, "What is the Nature and Source of Evil?" cannot be answered without defining a consistent moral theory. I personally feel the definition of morality I've given here meets that requirement. Furthermore I've compared this moral theory to the other moral theories I've been taught in my life and found it to be the only logically consistent moral theory there is. I compared the theory of morality I accept to the one religion has given (obey and have faith) and found mine more logically consistent. I also compared it to the morality of the state (violence is power) and found mine to be more logically consistent.
If I'm Wrong
But what if I'm wrong about all my concerns here? If I am wrong about everything, God will doubtless be gentle with me in the hereafter if he is a fair, empathetic and moral heavenly parent. But If I'm wrong about that too (his moral nature) then I'll be cast out of his presence which would be my preference in that case; I don't keep company with immoral people.
