The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go. - Galileo
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself. - Galileo
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The Philosophical and Moral Dilemma of Evil
The most crucial issue for philosophical, religious and moral consideration is the statement as to the nature of evil. The most obvious feature is the inherent nature of misery which defines the character of creation within, but at the same time gives origin to the most essential blessings that make life worth living. It is suffering that triggers positive thoughts; there would be endless observations, questions, and innovations in a condition of undisturbed joy. It is death that gives rise to the aspiration to be preserved beyond the grave. There wouldn't be any religion without death. And it is the sin that gives value to the virtue. There would be no quest for the right path if there were no wandering astray; there would be no interest in goodness. There would be no reason of fault or appreciation. There would be no values, no development, no advancement to higher goals in this absence of want, imperfection, and all manner of illnesses.
Mythological Personifications of Evil Across Cultures
Mythology is always a popular metaphysics, it is of course a matter of personifying the idea of evil among all nations. The planet has no religion besides its evil creatures or supernatural beings that symbolize agony, suffering, and devastation. The supernatural forces are hated and revered in Egypt with different names like Set and Seth, Bess, Typhon, etc. Although Brahmanism's ancient gods are not fully differentiated into evil and good deities, we still have Mahâmâya's victory, the great goddess, over Mahisha, the giant king.Buddhists call evil Mâra, the tempter, the father of desire and sin, and the bringer of destruction, the personification. In Tiamat, the dark demon, Chaldean sages personify the confusion that was in the middle. The Persians consider him Angra Mainyu and Ahriman, the demon of darkness and frivolity, the Jews call him Satan the glutton, the early Christians, the devil slanderer, for he accuses man, as in Job's story, and his accusations are false. Loki was named by the ancient Teutons and Norsemen.
Evolution of the Concept of Evil in Literature and Religion
The Medieval period was full of monsters, and the demonologies of Japan and China which could be greater than most others. One of the most interesting periods of literature is the development of the concept of evil as a personification, and the shifts that mark the subsequent stages are instructive. In both Hebrew and Christian demonologies, while the old Pagan beliefs endure, they are continually faced with accretions and new interpretations. Throughout his Encyclopedia of Christian Culture, Franz Xaver Kraus states that our current understanding of evil demons varies dramatically from that of early Christians.'.'The common ideas of early Christians of demons are fundamentally different from those of the present time. The snake and demon as a representation of the Devil do not occur only within the Old Testament (Genesis iii. 1). but also in Babylonian literature, in the Revelation of St. John (xii. 9), and in the Acts of the Martyrs. We read in the Vision of Perpetua: 'Under the scales themselves [i. e., for weighing the souls] the dragon lies, of wonderful magnitude.'' Mankind's intellectual life develops through gradual growth. As a rule, the old views are preserved but changed.
There is no complete new beginning. Either the main concept is retained and the particulars are modified, and vice versa, while the specifics stay the same, the main idea is opposed to. Gunkel proved 1 that the glorious characterization of Leviathan (in Job xli) as a deep-scale creature is a replication of Chaldean myths, and God's battle with the deep-scale monsters is a replay of Bel Merodach's invasion of Tiamat. In the spiritual perceptions of humanity, modifications of a revolutionary sort take place, yet the cultural relation remains maintained. The concept of evil in its successive personifications would be humorous if most of its pages were not at the same time very sad (especially those on witch prosecution). But that's why we must recognize the Devil's prestige. The Evil One history is stronger than the current nobility and royal families in Europe; it anticipates the Bible and is larger than the Pyramids.
The Empirical Existence and Nature of Evil
Having presented the history of the Devil in the previous chapters, we will now dedicate the remainder of this book to a metaphysical examination of the concept of evil; and here we are faced first of all with the problem of the empirical existence of evil.The question arises: 'Isn't the result of pure delusion evil? Isn't it a relative term that should be discarded as a one-sided interpretation of things? Isn't it just because we see it from our own subjective point of view and shouldn't it disappear as soon as we learn to understand the universe in its objective reality?' In ancient times, man used to objectivize his soul's various desires and urges.
The Greek mind fashioned Aphrodite's ideal in order to understand beauty, and the moral authority of righteousness appeared to the Jew as Yahweh the Lord, Mount Sinai's Legislator. Through ceremonials and ecclesiastical institutions, religious aspirations were realized in the Church. Things changed in the evolution of humanity that is commonly called modern history at the opening of that era. A new age was prepared by gunpowder, compass, and printing inventions and began with the discovery of America and the Reformation at the end of the fifteenth century.
Subjectivism and Objectivism in Understanding Evil
The more the known world's horizon grew, the more man began to understand the significance of his own subjectivity. Since Descartes and since Luther, the tendency of philosophy and religion has been to concentrate all in the individual consciousness of man. That alone ought to have meaning that became part of the nature of man. The consciousness of man became his world, and thus consciousness began to be regarded as the ultimate basis of behavior in religion. Men felt that faith was not to be an external factor, but an intrinsic one. Toleration became a fundamental necessity, and the pillar of public and private life was subjectivity.
Thus the Reformation period revealed itself as a revolutionary movement that overthrew the conventional power of an objective objectivity by declaring the freedom to individualism and subjectivity.The originators of this movement did not intend to reject all objective authority, but in their further progress the spirit of nominalism that dominated them prevailed over their movement. Descartes did not anticipate the last consequences of the principle of subjectivity, which begins with the famous assumption of cogito ergo sum, because on one of the most trivial arguments he naively assumes objective existence.Nor would Luther ever have supported early theories based on the purely subjective nature of awareness with his unusual training and rigid narrowness, which were by no way incompatible with his greatness. The fact remains that the last consequence of the recognition of the supremacy of the subjective principle is a denial of any objective authority in philosophy, politics, religion, and ethics, which leads in politics to anarchism individualism pushed to its extreme; in philosophy to agnosticism, the denial of any cognisable objectivity, worked out most systematically in Kant's critical idealism.
Throughout philosophy, it is the inability to accept any rational authority throughout morals; that contributes to either the philosophical egotism or hedonism of Bentham and intuitionism, and eventually to the immorality of Nietzsche.The present civilization is based on the Christian principle of individualism, and no one who works and travels in the period can be oblivious to the tremendous benefits we reap from it. Nonetheless, we must be aware because subjectivism is one-sided. In principle, objectivism is not so completely wrong as it appears from the point of view of modern subjectivism. The Roman Church's external methods are mistaken; the tyranny of its hierarchical system, which replaces the authority of the priest and an infallible papacy with the authority of God, is radically wrong; and the main task of Protestantism was to protest against this authority, which, despite its self-affirmed catholicity, is founded on the human authority of fallible mortals, an authority. Protestants may object that Protestantism is not just negative; it is positive as well. It's not just a gesture, it's also a message.But most of the Lutheran arguments is clearly relies on the old Romanism which linked man's consciences, and impaired his ability of thought. Protestant fanatics are by no means friends of freedom and free inquiry; and the positive power, the new factor in history destined to build a new civilization, was nothing but science. Protestantism, therefore, is not yet the last word spoken in mankind's religious development. They need to look for higher goals and more constructive problems, and a modern reformation of the Church will only achieve them if the value of objectivity is again understood. Humanity will not return to the dogmatic system of hierarchical institutions, which by man-made authority would only rebind men's consciences. But the fact must be acknowledged that truth is not merely a subjective concept; it must be seen that truth is a statement of facts, and therefore it contains an objective element, and that this objective element is the essential part of established truth.
In the ancient age of objectivism, the supreme authority was vested in great men, apostles, reformers, and priests whose faith was expressed in Church structures after being modified to the needs of the wealthy.The new objectivism dismisses all human authority; ultimately it is based on science, an appeal to facts. It is no longer what the Church teaches, or what some infallible person might deem prudent to proclaim; nor is it what seems to me to be true, or to you to be true; but it is what has been shown to be objectively true according to methodical analysis, so it has been established that anyone who examines it will find it to be true. Objective truth, proven by evidence and capable of revision, or, in a word, Science, is God's highest, most reliable and most precious revelation. God expresses himself in the facts of life, through our afflictions and personal experiences; God speaks in our conscience, which is, as it were, the spiritual impulse, the product of all our born and learned perceptions, and that is why the word of conscience allows itself known in our heart with the unconscious strength typical of all the deep-seated subconscious. Through our thoughts, our perfect goals, our devotions, our dreams and our expectations, Christ always exists. All these different manifestations are important and must not be lost of sight; but the objectivity of truth that speaks through science is above all.
The next step in the spiritual evolution of mankind is confidence in the rational authority of reality. We are now at the beginning of the third period that will be an age of empirical objectivism, to describe it in a phrase. The second-era trend has been pessimistic, revolutionizing, theorizing; the third-party tendency will be neutral, pragmatic, realistic. Negativism and subjectivism appear as the work of the destroyer, of the negative spirit, the Devil, from the point of view of positivism and objectivism of the first period. It's a response. This explains why the Satan of Milton became a hero in fact. Milton was a Protestant, a revolutionist, a subjectivist, and he sympathized unconsciously with Satan, who declared in the words of an age philosopher:This explains why the Satan of Milton became a hero in fact. Milton was a Protestant, a revolutionist, a subjectivist, and he sympathized unconsciously with Satan, who declared in the words of an age philosopher: The mind is its own place and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same And what I should be.' Yet criticism is inadequate for effective construction; they need to have real results, analytical research, and constructive issues; and the twentieth-century prophet finds it necessary to stress again the value of objectivity. A medieval fable characterizes the paradox between good and evil in a farmer's tale, who curses the morning glories that rise luxuriantly on his maize stalks as produced by the Devil, weaving his field with a farmer. His small daughter meanwhile, weaves a wreath of the same flowers and sings the elegance of the handiwork of Christ.
It may be proportional to evil and good, but causation does not mean non-existence. Relationships are also evidence. When chaos is created by out - of-place good events, the bad will not become chimerical but will be as optimistic as any other truth. Similarly, the rationality of knowledge does not mean the absurdity of information (as some agnostic philosophers claim). Concrete objects, including stones and other physical structures, are not the only realities; relationships are also true, and the same can be either good or evil under different conditions. A proper understanding of the nature between morality and evil, far from invalidating the objectivity of the moral ideal, will become a wonderful encouragement that will function toward the recognition of justice, for nothing should be so terrible that it can be transformed into good account by judicious leadership. However, badness is sometimes referred to as a mere negation, and the claim is made that it is not a positive factor. We consider a comment written by the well-known author of the novel Ground Arms in pursuit of the most characteristic representation of this opinion among the ablest writers of our period! Bertha von Suttner, one of the world's leading proponents for global harmony. He understands as well as Schopenhauer that life's ills are good, because in their dramatic truth, he explains all the horrors of war.
However, Bertha von Suttner devotes a whole chapter to the proposition 'The Principle of Evil a Phantom' in her ingenious book The Inventory of a Soul. She says: 'I do not believe in the phantoms of badness, misery, and death. They are mere shadows, zeros, nothingnesses. They are negations of real things, but not real things themselves.... There is light, but there is no darkness: darkness is only the non-existence of light. There is life, death is only a local ceasing of life-phenomena. . . . We grant that Ormuzd and Ahriman, God and Devil, are at least thinkable, but there are other opposites in which it is apparent that one is the non-existence of the other. For instance: noise and silence. Think of a silence so powerful as to suppress a noise. . . . Darkness has no degree, while light has. There is more light or less light, but various shades of darkness can mean only little or less light. Thus, life is a magnitude, but death is a zero. Something and nothing cannot be in struggle with each other. Nothing is without arms, nothing as an independent idea is only an abortion of human weaknesses . . . two are necessary to produce struggle. If I am in the room, I am here; if I leave it, I am no longer here. There can be no quarrel between my ego-present and ego-absent.' This is the most creative and absolute rejection that we learn of the existence of evil, and it is delivered with great force. It is the expression of Descartes to Spencer's philosophy's negativism. It seems to be monism compatible. And yet we are unable to accept it. Sure enough, a private Devil's notion is as fictional as a ghost, or an angel, or a hobgoblin; sure only that there is no bad in itself, and no goodness in itself; the Manichees ' dualism is unrealistic.
Can not think of the evil concept as an individual element, essence, or person. But we can't close our eyes to its real and positive existence for that reason. Admittedly, the lack of sound is quiet; but noise is not a virtue, nor is silence bad. Noise is bad to me while I dream or read, while quiet is heaven for me. Where a word of encouragement is anticipated and required, silence can be a very good wrong, and a lie is not just an absence of reality. The lack of food is a pure negation, but viewed as an empty stomach, it is starvation in comparison to its surroundings; so hunger is a positive factor in our planet. Illness can be viewed as a pure lack of wellbeing, but illness is either caused by a process deficiency or by the existence of injurious causes, both of which are certainly beneficial. Borrowing is negative in the debtor's classics, but the debtor is confident about what is negative. If, as Bertha von Suttner says, bad thoughts are 'pure abortions of human weakness,' how could mathematicians use the minus sign? And if the concept of evil was a false superstition, how could it have been so enduring its impact on mankind? It is real, on the one side, that all life is beneficial, but on the other hand we must realize that nature in the aggregate is neither good nor bad; goodness and badness depend on the interactions between the various things that exist.
And these relationships can be both good and evil. Certain existences are destroying other existences. Many bacilli destroy human life, many antidotes eliminate bacilli. There are viruses operating on other lives everywhere, and what is good and life-sustaining to one is harmful or detrimental to the other, and any such negation is a fact that neutralizes the existence of another reality. The idea of goodness is by no means equivalent with existence, and badness with non-existence. Existence is the reality; it is the indivisible whole, the one and all. Good and evil, however, are views taken from a certain given standpoint, and from this standpoint good and evil are features forming a contrast, but as such they are always actualities; neither the one nor the other is a mere nothing. The question is only whether we have a right to regard our own standpoint as the positive one, representing that which is good, and all the powers that hinder human life as negative or evil. The answer to this question seems to be that any and every being will naturally regard its own standpoint as the positively given fact, and every factor that destroys it as negative; his pleasure appears to him the standard of goodness.
Good and Evil: Relative or Absolute Concepts?
Considering that good is literally that which brings joy and strengthens my happiness, and poor that which causes pain and threatens to destroy it, the definition between goodness and evil would be purely subjective. The famous savage chief quoted by Tylor, and from Tylor by Spencer, would have grasped the problem of good and evil when he declared that 'bad is if anyone took his wife away, but if someone else's wife were taken away, that would be good.' 1 Good would be what pleases me; and good as objective reality would not exist. To me, you and many others, there would be something better, but what could be great for me could be terrible for you. Good and evil, without any objective value, would be purely subjective attributes. The philosophy which focuses morality on a perception of pleasure and pain and describes happiness as being called hedonism, which provides the greatest amount of pleasurable emotions. The coarsest form of hedonism (as represented by Bentham) makes the individual's pleasure supreme; it bases its ethics on egoism, and sees only refined egotism in altruism. It is said that the altruist values other than himself in others.
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