The Problem of Evil--Is There One?

Ever since men and women started observing religiously-inspired celibacy, there has been a ongoing debate about the relationship between God and evil.  The essence of the problem is easy to state:  If God is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful, why is there evil in the world?  Why does God not intervene to prevent good people from suffering?

 

The Puritan minister, Jonathan Edwards, had his answer:

 

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire."

 

Which is to say, there are no good people, and you're lucky God doesn't make you suffer even more than you do.  Needless to say, Edwards was a big hit at all the Yale University keg parties of the mid-1700's.  In fact, the oldest "residential college" (living and eating grouping) at Yale is Jonathan Edwards College.  (A rare True Fact.)

 

 

Of course, the message that God hates you and wants to burn you like an insect does tend to make for an empty collection plate.  So even Jonathan Edwards had to come up with a "Get-Out-Of-Hell Free" card--commonly called, Salvation.  Which happens because God is also--did I forget to tell you before?--All-Merciful.  Which, unfortunately, leads us right back to the question of why an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful and all-merciful God doesn't just give Evil one swift kick in the rump.

 

Which leads to one of my questions for you.  If you are not all-knowing, or even more importantly, if you're concerned that the all-knowing God might mistakenly think there's a little Evil in you, how should one go about deciding what and who are Evil? 

 

Personally, the tricky part has been NOT to share the world view of Calvin and Hobbs:

 

 

I'm going to propose that it won't work to say that Evil is restricted to people who eat other people's livers with fava beans and a nice Chianti, although I would agree that it is not behavior that we'd like to see adopted on a widespread basis. 

 

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assert that Adolph Eichmann never ate any person's body parts or, for that matter, any fava beans.  Nonetheless, the State of Israel found it appropriate to execute him as a war criminal.  While this would seem akin to the Hannibal Lecter situation, in truth it is not.  Eating other people in the US is illegal--rightly or wrongly, depending on your beliefs in the sanctity of hunting game for meat versus for sport--but it is clearly against the law.  What Eichmann did in Nazi Germany--arranging the transportation of millions of people to concentration camps where the great majority of them died--was not against the law.  Quite to the contrary--it was enforcing the law.

 

Which is why the prosecutors had to argue, in effect, for a recognition by the court of Lawful Evil. 

 

 

All that could be proven about Eichmann was that he did as he was told.  There was no indication that he played any part in the development of the Final Solution, or that he had a passionate desire to see Jews and gypsies killed, or that he had any motivation other than to take the easy path and the one that would be best for him and his family.  But doing as he was told was held to be sufficient to justify hanging him.  Because, in the opinion of the court, we all can be held accountable for the choices that we make.  And those choices can be characterized as wrong or bad or evil simply on the basis that a clearly better choice was available.  It is not necessary that you actively want something bad to happen to someone, nor is it sufficient that your choice will result in some good happening to someone (especially since that "someone" so often turns out to be the person making the choice).

"Wait a minute!" you are saying.  "Everybody I know--except for myself of course [you use this phrase because you are a functional illiterate who thinks that 'myself' is an emphatic way of saying 'me']--makes the sort of sub-optimal choices you are describing.  Surely not all of them are evil?"

To which I say, please see the Calvin and Hobbs cartoon above.

Of course, the argument can be made that it is inherent in being a human being that one will make poor choices.  Actually, an irrefutable argument can be made to that effect if one submits in support of his or her position, say, a list of top terms and/or people searched on Google last year.  (Assuming that "What is twerking?" is not a misspelling of "What are the latest developments in unified field theory?"  Which, given the pervasiveness of 'autocorrect', is actually a possibility.)  And if making bad decisions is part of our fundamental nature, then it should not be called "evil", should it?  So there really isn't any evil.  The Problem of Evil?  Solved.  Hence the title of this post.

Well, almost solved.  Because if nothing anyone does is "evil", why do we have a criminal justice system that punishes people for the choices that they make?  Is this just an irrational, pointless activity that randomly doles out punishments, with no greater purpose?  Well, in the US that seems to be true.  With less than 5% of the world's population, we have 25% of the world's prisoners.  And even I am not willing to argue that we are five times more awful than the rest of the world. 

              WE'RE NUMBER 1!  WE'RE NUMBER 1!  U - S - A!  U - S - A!

However, if we are willing to agree that the Idea of having a criminal justice system that does not operate in an arbitrary and random fashion is a good one and that certain behaviors should merit unpleasant consequences, then we should also agree that it is permissible, or even necessary, to distinguish between behavior that is "good enough" and behavior that is "not good enough"--which is a nice way of saying that the behavior is "bad" or "evil."

And if we feel that we want to show approbation to primarily good people and disapprobation to primarily evil people--which is to say, that we'd prefer not to feel that we are friends with total dicks--then there needs to be some sort of dividing line.  Of course, some people are so predominantly evil either in their nature or in having committed such a heinous act (I am thinking now of whoever did John Travolta's makeup for "Battlefield Earth") that the decision is easy.  But for most people, it probably comes down to their "body of work."  Back to Adolph Eichmann--I don't think he would have been treated the same if he had only overseen the shipment of 10 people to a concentration camp.  Not that this is any more moral than what he actually did, but there is a difference between a case of bad judgment and a life-style choice, so to speak.

Of course, now we are trying to draw a bright line in a thick cloud of grey.  Where between 10 people and 3,000,000 people does someone become a criminal against humanity?  Are we stuck with U. S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's comment about pornography, that he was not going to attempt to define it, "But I know it when I see it"?  (After which he added, "And I need to see that film a few more times, so that I can really know it when I see it.")  That works for me.

So now let me go off and ponder what sorts of behaviors would qualify one to be regarded as a classmate of Dr. Evil (Austin Powers' arch-nemesis).  Obviously, being a doctor would be a good start on being properly considered evil, but we should have a more generalized yardstick than that.

 

 

Questions I will ponder include:

 

1. Does it make you evil if you say you ran a marathon under 3 hours when actually it took you over 4 hours?  (Paul Ryan -- Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States)
2. Does it make you evil if you say you ran a marathon when it took you over 6 and one-half hours?  (Mike Pence -- Republican governor of Indiana)
3. Does it make you really, really evil if you "ran" a marathon in more than 6 and one-half hours and you say that you did it because God told you to?  (Again, Mike Pence -- Republican governor of Indiana)
4. Does it make you evil if you own 5 pairs of Uggs?  (Come to think of it, that one's pretty easy.)
5. Does it make you evil if you say that something is "gay" to mean that it is stupid or awful?  (Wow, these keep getting easier and easier.)
6. Does it make you evil if you hire somebody to clean your house?  Only if it's a working class woman?  How about an immigrant woman?  How about if you pay her at the same hourly rate that you get paid?  (Sorry--that was an insane idea, wasn't it?)
7. Does it make you evil if you "Share" something on the Internet?  (Well, if it's a link to this blog it most certainly does.)

See you next time!