Ernie: Fair question; I will give it a try.
But it must be said that your 3 -part 'definition' of evil mystifies me. It is an abstraction that, as I see it, misses the character of actual evil. I start with the treatment of evil in the Bible. It is concrete, it is vivid, it cites specifics, it usually makes consequences clear, and it manifestly is not abstract. In other words..... Evil is destructive to human well being, it has sick motivation, that is, you can think of evil as a terrible sickness. Evil destroys lives even if this may not happen all at once. Evil can also be thought of as a poison, as intention to unfairly harm others, as self centered, as unself-critical, as indifferent to the well being of others. Personification of evil in the form of the Devil is very useful. Evil is NOT a matter of some sort of set of generalizations, it is specific to character, the kind of character manifest in the 'person' of Satan. In contemporary or post modern terms, evil was embodied in Hitler, Tojo, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Al Capone, Richard Speck the mass murderer, more recently in Charles Manson, in a number of mass murderers, and including spiritually ugly homosexuals like Andrea Dworkin and Harry Hay. Evil is anti-nature, anti love, anti self-actualization. Hence, next to murder itself, homosexuality is the worst evil imaginable. There is no excuse for evil. Evil must be expunged from society, never accommodated as it now is, in Hollywood films (where evil often is glorified), in libertarian politics (even though not everything about libertarianism is evil and some parts of libertarian philosophy are obviously "good"), in various practices of Wall Street, with the movie of that title exemplifying a number of forms of evil quite graphically, as was also true of Fifty Shades of Gray. Evil can best be thought of in terms of disease, filth, psychological contortion, dysfunctional actions, unjustifiable injury, callousness, greed, gluttony, sloth, etc, the seven deadly sins. Evil also denies the value of freedom although about "freedom" we need to be careful inasmuch as freedom is a wonderful proximate ideal but may be a terrible absolute ideal. Above all we need to be very clear about what evil actually is and not hide it beneath a welter of clinical language that may make evil seem to be some sort of side issue not really deserving serious attention. How should we talk about evil? I think that the way the Apostle Paul talked about the evil of sodomy in Romans 1: 24-32 is the very best model to follow. It is very clear that evil is something we must hate with our entire being, hate it unqualifiedly, despise it, and seek its destruction. But, of course, Jesus also hated evil. He HATED evil, he had no use at all for any kind of temporalizing about evil. His purpose was to destroy evil. Matthew 11: 20-24 should make this abundantly clear. In the end, anything like Sodom and Gomorrah must be utterly annihilated. I mean, Ernie, the text could not possibly be more clear. Billy ________________________________ From: radicalcentrism@googlegroups.com <radicalcentrism@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Dr. Ernie <ernest.prabha...@gmail.com> Sent: Saturday, February 3, 2018 7:55 PM To: Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community Subject: [RC] Defining Evil Re: Reflections on Reality Hi Billy, So the question for everyone is simple: Where, in your calculus, does evil fit in? In some cases I don't see any allowance at all for the reality of evil and how to deal with it. That's somewhat of a large question. Do you mean evil actions, the causes of evil, the meaning of evil? I can start with my Radical Centrist manifesto, where I define 2 1/2 sins: * The Simple, who refuse to face the consequences of action * The Wicked, who "shrink" community, by refusing to honor those they benefit from * The Fools, who denies Reality in order to maintain their isolation and self-image That is far from a comprehensive analysis of evil, but I still find it a useful starting point. Do you want to share your definition, so we have something concrete to discuss? -- Erne P. >From Billy Reflections on Reality It must be nice to live in a world where evil never needs to be confronted and defeated. Alas, that is not the world I live in. To be sure, like Chris, I moved to a location where, in fact, confronting evil is not an obvious everyday need. Eugene is, in many ways, an idyllic university town. Crime here is minimal; murders are rare and those that get reported usually are committed by outcasts -lower class whites who happen to be alcoholics or druggies, blacks who somehow gravitated to this neck of the woods and who have never left behind their inner city values, etc. The last thing I need is worry about are street hoodlums or ethnic gangs or loan sharks who prey on unfortunates and cause trouble generally. That is, the kind of stuff which large cities are often identified with hardly exist hereabouts. Whole categories of evil simply do not need to be confronted in Eugene. For all practical purposes such evil does not exist in this middle class 'utopia.' This seems to be true in parts of California also, like most of Silicon Valley. This probably is the case, as well, in the nicer parts of Cleveland. But allow me to play "devil's advocate." A world with no evil in it is pure illusion; it simply cannot exist. Why? Because Satan exists, because we are unable to escape the reach of sin, because we are imperfect, because we are a suit of clothes removed from the law of the jungle and human immorality. This is too cynical, of course, but to set the stage, to paint a mood, to make a point. To me we are always like Syria in 2010, the year before the "Arab Spring" and the start of the civil war that has torn that country apart and resulted in countless dispossessed people, hundred of thousands killed, widespread lawlessness, rival armies fighting it out. Substitute the Balkans in the 1990s, parts of India today, East Africa a decade ago, or turf wars in contemporary LA or Chicago. Which is a long way to say that I greatly admire something of the work everyone in the group is doing. For example, in a parallel world I'd drive to Montana and look up Chris; it is obvious that he is on to something and, for one, I'd love to learn what he is learning from a Navy Seal. Yet I have known a couple of Army "Pathfinders" and they aren't too different than Seals and this tells me that what Chris has already found is an intersection of his world with the world of someone who knows evil up close and personal. So the question for everyone is simple: Where, in your calculus, does evil fit in? In some cases I don't see any allowance at all for the reality of evil and how to deal with it. And what IS evil? For sure it is far more than street gangs or violent political dictators or even ideologies like Nazism or various forms of Communism. For the life of me I am at a loss about how anyone here defines evil. One thing, a good definition really would require a serious essay at least 10 pages long. At a minimum if would need to be 100 items long. To use just one example, sadism is an evil. Yet libertarians insist that it is not as long as the participants agree to to torture and humiliate each other willingly. To me that kind of outlook, finding justifications for evil, is another evil. But so is not doing anything that matters when confronted with evil an evil itself. You can see how knotted up the problem of evil actually is. It is also pervasive, it is everywhere, even in Eugene or Montana. Yet who has any kind of thorough-going philosophy of identifying and dealing with evil? During bad days, all too many days lately given my medical woes, I think that no-one here has any concept of evil at all. As if RC was a philosophy conceived by Frank Baum while he was creating the story of Dorothy and the land of Oz. The point about Syria is that one day a family was concerned about their kids doing well in school, the next day the school was blown to bits in an artillery barrage. All of a sudden the family's priorities were 'revolutionized.' This applies just as well to someone living on a ranch in cowboy country or a senior citizen who loves to grumble about philosophical issues or a younger man doing his best to climb the ladder of success. ....a parable. from Rev. Billy -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <RadicalCentrism@googlegroups.com> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Google Groups<http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism> groups.google.com Google Groups allows you to create and participate in online forums and email-based groups with a rich experience for community conversations. 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