The problem of evil.

What I dislike most about the word evil is that it implies, or assumes an external force, namely satan. Even though people don't often outwardly blame henious acts on satan it is generally implicit in the word evil. Once one accepts that evil acts are the result of an evil power or source then it stands to reason that there need be a god as a source of 'goodness', and vice versa.

In reality, all that evil is, is simply a complete lack of good(ness). Be it intent or illness, the more 'evil' an act is perceived the more active satan is presumed. Mao, Pol Pot et al were no more directed by satan than Mother Theresa was directed by god, all were self-motivated. In this particular instance perhaps only Mother Theresa actually thought the motivation came from elsewhere.

That evil acts are simply acts without goodness doesn't make them any less henious. We all recognize acts of evil, the point to remember is that they are the result of one or many, people doing something that is contrary to the overall good, to one degree or another.

So 'evil', as a force, does not exist. It really is nothing more than an absolute absence of good, in essence, 'evil' is the natural state of all living creatures. It just seems more evil when people act in an animalistic way. Not to mention that, being thinking, feeling, creative creatures, humans have, as they have done with so many other things, elevated
'evil' to a high art form.

But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Im sure Dr. Weinberg was being facetious. It doesnt take religion for good people to do evil things as history shows. It just takes a good enough 'reason.' Im sure Mao, Pol Pot, et al. and their men believed they were killing all those people for the good of the State.

Tonight is the anniversary of the beginning of the events that caused the word genocide to be coined. Some people believe that the Holocaust was caused by a lack of divinity in the world, others by a man so inherently evil that even the Devil won't have him. A more logical basis is feat and loathing of people who are intelligent, skilled, and upper middle class. Whatever the reason, people have been trying for almost 70 years to explain it, when sometimes there is no explanation.

Some of the people involved were clearly evil in and of themselves. Others were good. Others were grey - people who claimed they were just following orders, or people like Oskar Schindler. I don't see that an argument can be made that there was any divine action taking place either "for" or "against" in those days. Some people just can't wrap their minds about the fact that there really are truly evil people in the world, and have to see some supernatural explanation to cover the fact that their minds cannot handle it otherwise. It gives substance to something when "just because" isn't enough of an answer.

The discussion of where to find a moral compass if you don't believe in a diety can find it in the simple phrase "do unto others." That seems to be what most of the proper, non-mystical parts of the Bible are about: "Everything you want done unto yourself, do unto others" and variations thereof. One scholar added "All the rest is commentary. Go and learn it."

And I agree with Weinberg, as so often it seems that the people doing bad things have forgotten this edict and are, in the name of their religion (be it Christianity, Islam, or anything else - except perhaps Buddism) committing heinous acts against persons and property. That is the part that really scares me. And as someone living in the South, I see it more than I'd like, even in the morning drive of kids to school.

I've got a whole category on atheistic morality at my blog. Just to summarize two or three of my main points, morality is based on consequences--if we don't like the consequences, we conclude that the behavior is wrong, etc. Secondly, the argument that atheists have no basis for morality is quite an indictment of Christianity, because it implies that, from a Christian perspective, no act is good or evil in and of itself. Genocide is only wrong because God says it's wrong, and not because there's anything the Christian sees as inherently wrong with wiping out an entire ethnic group (like the Amalekites, 1 Samuel 15:3). Morality based on the subjectively perceived will of an absentee God--that's the ultimate in moral relativism.

It is "god" that we don't believe in.

I always say "gods," plural. I want to make it clear to people that this is not some simple reactive opposition to their particular god.

Unlike them, who think they're right about every aspect of their belief in their god, I have a generalized respect for humans that recognizes that other people believe in a god too, and they aren't always the same god.

I also have equal regard for those gods themselves. Whatever little mystical whoozit the Tierra del Fuegans believed in during the 1800s, that god is perfectly equal to Pat Robertson's Almighty -- equally unbelievable.

I think the plural "gods" is a distinction worth making. I want to remind Christians, now that they're all in attack mode against the wicked atheists, that I'm not singling them out.

My view is that every human community, however constituted, defines evil and good through some sort of consensus. We also have an amazing capacity to redefine those concepts at almost every step of our history. The Hebrew scriptures give us a commandment to not kill, which is then followed by endless chapters of bloodshed between different claimants to that god's attention.

In later generations and centuries, it seems perfectly justifiable for adherents of one religion, who claim belief in that same commandment, or even of sects of the same religion, to launch wholesale slaughter against adherents of other religions and other sects. To those of us outside either band of believers, that slaughter, no matter who's conducting it, seems evil, and we can define it as such by criteria that we choose and justify in ways that the community accepts and understands.

There is also the matter of inquisitions, in which adherents of a religion torture and murder fellow adherents deemed unworthy of a belief in a god who told them not to kill. And let's not forget that genocide, in one form or another, has often been justified and promulgated by those religious bodies who then want to cloak themselves in the self-righteousness of divine guidance.

Without the option of drawing on a god, whom adherents can apparently ignore or reinterpret at will and without penalty, an atheist community will rely on traditions, consensus, or laws to define proper and improper behavior and establish penalties for deviation from those norms and rewards for adherence to them. People will no doubt violate those norms just as much as believers violate the norms established in the various scriptures, often by reinterpreting the very god they said established the rules they are violating. There is at least a glimmer of hope that the atheist community will respond by saying these are our laws and norms, and we take responsibility for enforcing them without delegating that responsibility to a sky boss.

Frank Moorman, skeptic