It is the strangest thing about humanity that we have these words in our vocabulary, that obviously really means something, and yet we can argue forever about what they mean. We hold the existence of good and evil to be a matter of the highest importance, and act as if we are sure we know what they mean, but ask us to explain it, and we fumble around incoherently.
One of the problems of talking about the meaning of words, is that you have to use more words to explain meanings, and this can kind of lead to an infinite regress.
No-one would consider arguing about the meaning of the word "chair" or of "red" or of "wet".
We learn how to use these words as children, and everyone uses them in the same way, so their meaning is uncontroversial, but with evil, well everyone can identify it as meaning something that is bad for humanity, that ought to be rejected, but cannot agree what things are actually referred to by the word. And agreeing that evil means something bad for humanity, and ought to be rejected and got rid of, doesn't get us much further. We all think we know what we mean by "ought" but do we? Explanation stops at this point.
ought = what we are obliged to do? no, because we aren't obliged to do what we ought, we're only morally obliged: Morally obliged? well what does morally mean etc. etc.
So in a sense, there is some merit in the kind of answer that just says,
"Evil is the opposite of Good" or "Evil is against God. Period." OK it doesn't get you very far - you could even go so far as to say it's totally uninformative, but you could equally well say, "ask a silly question, get a silly answer."
But on the other hand, how can the question "what is evil?" so important in these evil times, be a silly question? And how on earth should one try to answer it?
My contention is that in the case of a word whose meaning is unclear or disputed, the only way to answer the question is to speculate about the origin of the word. Once upon a time, there was a man or a woman, who used the words good and evil in a moral sense, for the first time. The person who first gave these words moral force, is in a sense their owner. The only alternative really is to side with the relativists and conclude that moral words have no real meaning, they're just expressions of approval, and rhetorical devices. I find the relativist alternative unpalatable and just plain wrong, and even philosophical relativists find it unlivable.
Of course, maybe you should answer the question straightforwardly by listing all the things that are evil, but that's not very elegant. More elegant is to find a plausible account of the origin of the word, leading to a fuller understanding, and from that deduce what is correctly referred to by the word evil.
In my next post, (just following) I will try to tell a story about moral language. For my account to make sense, you have to understand that I take for granted that it is true that there is a kind of energy common to all living things,(but) known to Bergson as elan vital, to Reich as orgone, and to Rupert Sheldrake as the morphogenetic field. If this sounds like a big assumption to make in such a serious discussion then I will add, I don't see it myself, but I have from time to time, Some people see it all the time, and I believe most women feel it naturally, hence expressions, like, "he makes my skin crawl" Coming back to life is really all about learning to recognise, feel and respond to life. This assumption is not in any way unchristian.
Christianity distinguishes between life and non-life, and so of course do ordinary people. Interestingly, though, materialist atheistic science does not and cannot distinguish between life and non-life. It also militantly denies the existence of the life force, and suppresses all scientific dissenters with an efficiency of which the inquisition would be proud.
Is evil an absence of good?
Sorry if this topic has been discussed at length recently, I'm new around here.
