WHAT DOES EVIL ACTUALLY MEAN?

Analyse, “What exactly does evil mean?  Is evil real as in an element?   Is evil non-real as in malfunction?  There must be at least one necessary requisite of calling something evil. Is it that we just hate it? Is it that it is a threat and thus destructive? Is it about it being destruction and dangerous yes but hatefully destructive and dangerous? What is the difference? A person who hates theft when a human person does it but not when an alien from Mars does it does not really hate theft – she or he just feels hate and it is stirred up by who is doing the stealing. The issue is not the stealing as such but certain kinds of stealing.”

In theology and philosophy, they talk about four kinds of evil. 

1 Physical - like a meteorite coming down on earth and killing loads of creatures.

2 Moral - when creatures are unloving and unfair by choice.  In Christian thought, angels and humans can commit moral evil.

3 Satanic - the evil that happens when paranormal beings like Satan use supernatural or superhuman powers to harm and lead astray

4 Metaphysical - this refers to how everything in the universe has a limitation.  This evil is seen as unavoidable.  A cat can't be a cat unless it suffers the evil of having to live without wings to fly.  It assumes that all things were created by God out of nothing.  So God alone has it all.  Everything else has something up to a point.  Even God cannot give everything to a finite limited being.

If we just hate evil then does it just happen that we hate it and then damn it as evil? If so then we don’t really hate it because it is evil.  The fact that nobody gives a sensible account of what evil is and end up going on about what it does says the answer to our question, to a large extent, to the main extent if not totally, is yes.

Evil must be really destructive and damaging otherwise hating it is pointless.  It is something repulsive, something that warrants fear, something that warrants action to stop it and something that you sense some kind of supernatural darkness about.  It is personified in every mind though it is not a person. 

But not all killing and destruction is seen as evil. The thought does not come into your mind in such cases. Are you seeing the killing and destruction are not evil or bad except maybe in the sense of being necessary evil or badness? You should hate necessary evil for being necessary does not make it good. It’s something that had to have been done and it is a pity it had to be done.

So you hate evil and necessary evil but not in the same way.  You hate evil for being evil and you hate necessary evil for being needed.

People may call good what many see as evil.  Many call evil what some see as good.  To make it more complicated, everybody condones necessary evil but nobody knows what evils really are necessary.  For example, they have you giving drugs to end the life of somebody in unspeakable terminal agony but they won't let you use a gun which is sure to finish them off instantly.  And dying people have rebounded.  The whole subject is saturated with people pretending to know more about what must be absolutely avoided than they actually do.  They want to see the evil so that they can diagnose it.  This is too much about wanting to be right and solve than to be right and to really solve.  It shows there is evil in you.  Hating evil is based on hypocrisy.

Ontological evil or pure evil means that evil is being called a real existing force or thing. It may be a person or persons. As we tend to make evil all about what is in people that would mean you are saying some people are evil and should be destroyed. You hate them. That makes you evil if you are wrong. If you want to hate evil and do it without hypocrisy then you have to see evil as ontological. That means you think God if he exists created it or it always existed. God belief is bad then for God is evil. And God is hardly that important if evil is a real rival. And what if God hates sinners too?

As we have no explanation for why people define evil as hateful and hate it, the only thing we can assume is that even if they say otherwise, they believe evil is ontological. They certainly act as if it is. And they act that way deliberately.

Some argue that the evil uses good as in not being self-destructive enough to destroy itself. It lives long enough to harm. If evil defeats itself in the end then it is being self-destructive. The argument assumes existence means good but that means that the seventh wife of Henry VIII was more evil than Hitler just because she never existed! That is nothing more than slander and hate for hate is in your heart so hating a fiction person is still hate. It still shows what you are.

Arguments don’t work and it does not follow that anybody really believes the argument we have looked at though they use it. If you are hardwired to see evil as real then the argument is just an interesting experiment. Making an argument, be it true or false, does not necessarily change what you are or mean you really care if it is true or not. It may just be parroted.

Philosophies that say good is what is real and is existence are saying evil is just a lack or malfunction. So evil is the wrong kind of good. They are reluctantly praising evil. Calling evil good if evil is a thing or really exists and is not just a good that falls short is evil.

Analyse, “People say they believe evil is a malfunction of good. Good is the thing that matters and evil does not. Rust is bad for the iron matters. The rust does not matter and for the iron’s sake you deal with the rust. Surely if you define evil as a malfunction and say this is your opinion or belief that means you are open to letting others believe evil is ontological evil or pure evil? Surely it shows the idea of it being right is not out of the question for you? It could be pure evil to define evil as malfunction. It is said that because saying pure evil exists shows you are evil. The evil we care about most is that in people and to say pure evil is harboured by a person or a person is pure evil is to call for the person to be hated, to commit suicide to stop the evil or to call on God and others to hatefully destroy the person. If evil is only a malfunction of good then evil is essentially ignorance.”

The logic in this needs no analysing. It is clear and correct. When believers call evil a mistake and then say it is really ignorance then are they lying if they say they believe in evil? They are just calling something evil that is not really evil or they see the evil as real pure evil and watering that down. You cannot say people should be going to jail or Hell over ignorance. That is evil bigotry. And if you see evil as evil not ignorance as if the destructive aspect is only a side-effect then you must hate the perpetrators of evil.

Religion sometimes says that God gave us the best possible world so the evils we have are nothing compared to what we would have in some other set up. There is no best possible world if pure evil exists. There is no way to intend there to be one. If evil is a power independent of God, God’s good intentions are irrelevant to everything but him.

Ontological evil or pure evil means that evil is being called a real existing force or thing. It may be a person or persons. Does each pure evil come from being created by another pure evil? Is the ultimate pure evil just a brute fact? If it is just there then it needs no explanation. We find such things incomprehensible but we know brute facts just have to happen. Evil may have the power to reproduce. We would see an evil person, one who is simply evil, as having the power to create new ones. That amounts to a form of magic. It's limited for evil people can be as psychic as a dead goldfish and unable to magic good luck into their lives but there is a limited form of magic happening. Evil fights with evil so it is no wonder if the magic is just about creating new evils but not the evils that suit you. If they suit you that is just coincidence and they are not about suiting you.

When we cannot comprehend anything being a brute fact and when it is thinking about things surrounding x that shows us x must be a brute fact for x never shows us itself or is not obviously a brute fact we cannot then dismiss pure evil as something that may indeed be out there.

Analyse, “God if he is to be important to us must be a God who opposes evil. There is something unclear about God. He is too different from myself or anybody I know. We have only what we call a working knowledge of him and therefore what he is about. Thus the same problem is going to exist with evil. If God is good and evil is what is against God then if God is unclear evil has to be unclear too. It has to be worse because evil is full of deception and hides itself among good intentions.”

Correct. People tend to use good and evil in such general terms that you never know exactly what they are trying to convey. The evil you see in others has to be even worse than vague for you don't really know what you see.  You don't really know why the evil is there or exactly what it is or what it is doing.  You generalise.   If there is no clear good, there is no clear God. There is no clear God anyway. So you cannot really say evil is a lack of good for you don’t know and cannot clarify exactly what you mean. Nothing tells you what the lack is in any particular evil event. Or how it is a lack exactly. You just go by what you think is a working knowledge not an accurate knowledge. No two events are really that alike even if they look alike so comparing things only confounds things more. If there is no clear God then there is no clear evil. There is no clear boundary.

When we have that problem what right have we to tell anybody that God is with them when they suffer? Real empathy means knowing what they are suffering – suffering for a person is an individual thing and is not to be compared to anybody else’s suffering. There is no suffering. It is plural. There are as many “sufferings” under the suffering umbrella as there are individuals.

Though human nature calls you evil if you suggest evil is a power or element or it may be certain persons and says we should think of evil as a lack of good or something going wrong with good it is hardwired to affirm both of these interpretations of evil.  Human nature is hardwired to treat evil as concretely real and then deny that it does that.  It keeps flip flopping.  Arguments for evil being a mere good that is not good enough may make sense but they do not mean that the person making them cares.  The person's nature may see evil as real.  That means that evil may as well be real!  Terrible results come if evil is pure and real and those results will happen if people think it is even if it is not.

The debate about evil should not really be about what evil is. It should be about that evil is to be hated.  Hate is painful and incites fear.  To get away from that topic people get absorbed in the metaphysics and definitions of evil.  That surely is evil for it ignores hate.  If you talk about hate instead of evil, something becomes clear.  Hate really is an energy a thing.

FINALLY

Evil wrecks love and fairness and to do that it always wears a cloak and a good deal of distraction so that you cannot really manage to be too precise about what exactly what form it has taken.

People fear evil so they need to identify it and diagnose it.  Fear leads to bias.  People want to identify evil and they want to do this so much that they project evil that is not there or a type of evil that is not there. They may see evil as worse than what it is.  And this is especially true of moral evil, the evil that they say they see in people.

To want to see evil means you have evil inside of you.  It also means you are making sure people will hate and fear under your influence. A cycle is kept going and going and going.

People when they condemn evil cannot tell you what it is.  They keep the focus too much on how you respond to it with fear and hate and pain.

A bad diagnosis means you may put snow over the dump and give out a "cure" that is going to be ineffective at worst or superficial and weak at best.

Belief in God as the "solution" to evil and the true power, the power of love over evil, reinforces the lies that people tell themselves about evil.