Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 26, 2023 11:21 pmIt's not my word. It's the general-use one, of course. But there isn't general agreement on what it means -- not that general agreement would keep that agreement from being a delusion. When we use the term, we could, of course, all be just imagining properties that simply are not real. So even if we all believed that, say abortion is evil, that would not tell us whether or not abortion IS evil.
Is there an "objective" definition of evil that we can refer to? The answer seems to be no, there is not. It will simplify things for us if we accept that the word evil is uniquely bound up with Christian concepts. So, properly speaking, it is a Christian notion. To use it one must be, or should be, located within a believing Christian's perspective. We need look no further than to you for an example of a believing Christian who is certain that he understands what *evil* is and what it refers to. For example you state that "God is absolutely good" and can have nothing doubtful or dark ascribed to him. But since you are an extreme dualist -- Christianity is really a dualistic metaphysical system it has always seemed to me -- your designation of God as "absolutely good" determines that you must locate what is contrary to God in the entity Satan.
Is this a rational position? I mean, is it logically tenable? Frankly, I do not think that it is but not so much because I'd not like for it to be true but rather because I am a modern and, try as I might (to use a common expression) I simply cannot believe what I cannot believe.
So if I assert that the core Christian dualism, indeed the one that is central to the belief-system, is itself arbitrary and in a sense forced, I then must examine the internal logic of the Christian believer and by that I refer to his psychology, his perceptual decisions, his interpretive decisions: his impositions. Sort of as an aside, though it might be quite central to this discussion, I think that it is wise to turn to the Psalms in order to locate the sense of what is, for a believer, evil. One among dozens:
Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man: preserve me from the violent man;
Which imagine mischiefs in their heart; continually are they gathered together for war.
They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders' poison is under their lips. Selah.
Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from the violent man; who have purposed to overthrow my goings.
Is evil defined here? No, I don't think so. But it is
felt. I am not sure if one could arrive at an objective definition of evil by resorting to Hebrew notions. And Christians, who rely strongly on the Psalms, seem free to *imagine* evil workers understood both as tangible persons or as a non-corporeal entity, surrounding them, trying to infiltrate the Christian's space (physical or spiritual). Factually, and because the sense of evil is sentimental (paranoid) it allows the Christian to wield the notions of 'good' and of 'evil' with a certain lack of rational discrimination.
Similarly to the ancient Hebrews then, what is 'evil' is what opposes the Christian community. I do not think it a very *thought through* definition of what is 'evil' even when the term 'evil' is taken as rational.
So it seems quite right to say that we do not have access to a functional definition of what evil is, and certainly we cannot locate it in some specific place or even in some specific activity. We resort then to a general and rather vague sense of what it is, and allow ourselves to paranoiacally imagine it (with special emphasis on
imagination)
and to project it here or there as we feel it fitting.
Therefore, delusion, projection and imagination are certainly part-and-parcel of the sense of what *evil* is.
We can, I think, refer here to a concrete example and try to work through it. I fully understand that you, qua Christian, see all abortion as truly an evil act. In a sense it is a quintessential evil act. If it is pictured in a certain way -- a woman turning against the God-given growth of an incarnated soul within her body, a turn against the very notion of maternity, of the protecting mother, but seen also as a 'demonic' act against a completely defenseless life (
a baby) -- it functions very nicely as an 'emblem' of an anti-Christian act. It is an act that requires a voluntary decision and, like first degree murder, one has to have pre-contemplated it. Indeed the societal machinery of abortion (clinics, insurance, etc.) takes prior contemplation to an *evil* extreme.
But the problem, as I see it, is not that this definition is in error -- I do not think that it is because I can, say, place myself within the ethical system that sees it that way, but rather that the sense of its evilness and acute wrongness is confined to that example, which is genuinely abhorrent.
But as a way to create a contrast which I assert reveals a certain hypocrisy within a value-system, there are endless examples of violent and destructive actions that are accepted as 'normal' which the genuinely abhorred Christian overlooks. (I am not going to name them). It has always seemed to me that the epitome of a *genuine Christian* ethic can only be
total renunciation -- quite literally from *the world* in all senses. I have a strong feeling that you will pay no heed to the argument I allude to here (it would be inconvenient to your evangelical project to do so) but for those who actually think these things through my allusion is relevant.
Now, with that said I must admit that I am not closed to creating definitions of what I think is 'very bad' or 'harmful' or 'working against my own interests' or 'working against what I define as Higher Interests of man', but I am chary of employing the word 'evil'. Yet I always have to carefully qualify what I say...
Recently, and quite suddenly, the entire world has been introduced to a sort of potential monster that is directly impinging on our lives: this strange entity called Artificial Intelligence. The
meaning of it? Well, here I will wax paranoiac but not without some justification. The man-made creation of a synthesis of everything we have ever imagined, or perceived, as evil has been rolled-out. (On LinkedIn it is asserted that if you do not use it, someone else will, and they will get ahead of you. You will be left behind).
Literally AI is man's construction of a machined
demonic entity. It will and must escape our control (as Jonathan Pageau points out) because Power will not be able to resist using it to full advantage. It will be the synthesis of the Christian idea of *temptation*. It will become (so the paranoid thought goes) a literal enchaining Satan and, as all should see, will necessarily embody what has been prophesied in Christian mythology. You will be chained to Satan
and you will be happy... (...to amend Ida Auken who said "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy").
So it might seem that I vacate from a definition of evil an objective realness while at the same time reinvesting it with genuine objectivity. Please don't blame me for this
manoeuvre. It is a necessary one.
More importantly than that, nobody seems to know exactly what the word "evil" refers to as a property, or what justifies our feeling that we *ought*, or are owed, to have less of it around.
Here, you are operating within your evangelists project. Yes, those who are anti-Christian atheists insist that the definition of God you work with is, in their way of seeing, absurd and therefore false, and therefore they dismiss it entirely. They say "If the God that you define is real how can all these terrible things go on?" It is a good argument, at least when examined from a generous perspective.
Christian belief requires an imagined Fall from a true state of grace down into this world of woe. What does this mean essentially? It means that each Christian is responsible for what is bad in this world.
The world is bad because you are bad. The Avatar of God came into this corrupted, fallen world in order to restore it! You either get with that project, or you oppose it.
Once one locates and understand
the core metaphysical tenet, it really does simplify things. Do I reject this metaphysics? On
one level, yes. But on another I am acutely aware of, say, its utility and in a sense its necessity. (But here my 'murky predicates' will irk, for example, our own Brother Harry who wishes things to be cut-n-dried: logically consistent).
My larger purpose is to get everything out on the table so that it can be seen and understood.
Selah.
And that's what we're trying to make rational -- the very concept of "evil" itself, not merely to prove somebody uses it.
Then to what objective property of an entity do we refer when we use the term "evil"?
Next up: Immanuel Can launches into a detailed definition of what *evil* is!
