Thursday, November 13, 2008
From 11/12: Reconciling with Evil
Now that we've broached Augustine's understanding of evil as the privation of good, it is worth considering whether or not this definition proves satisfactory. Do all our actions aim at the good? Is evil simply a matter of mistaken priorities and inordinate desires? Does are own free will let God "off the hook" as the ultimate cause of evil and suffering in the universe? Let's hear what you're thinking.
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Although Augustine's idea of evil makes sense to an extent, I cannot completely reconcile that it is solely misappropriated desires. I, personally, would like to think I am a better person than Hitler. I understand, to an extent, I have the same potential to do evil, but what about being evil? I think some people have evil instilled in them at a young age and are not the causers of their disordered desire. Although some people do consciously make choices to act in an evil manner, I do not believe all do. Evil is something that can be learned, not just an incorrect desire. Maybe my reasoning follows Rousseau a little too much, but I believe we are all born good. We begin education at a young age, and do not stop. Evil does not just spring out of nowhere; I believe it is a learned notion. Where evil first came from is debatable and I will not try to wrap my head around that. I guess, I would like to be able to believe there more good people than evil in the world, but with Augustine's definition, I feel it just wouldn't be so. If it is in man's nature to want to better his own life, he is clearly going to put his own needs in front of everything and everyone else. This would lead me to believe there are more evil people than good in the world; call me an optimist, but I would like to believe this just isn't so.
I believe I am supposed to write on this blog (even though Cheryl, who is not in my group, did). I agree with Augustine. I have never heard a better explanation of why there is evil. I believe evil goes back to pleasure and pain most simply. People and animals alike want pleasure, but try to avoid pain. I was discussing this with my roommate after our class and we came to the conclusion that both people and animals have the free will to either obtain pleasure, or forego it and receive pain. We used the example of a loyal dog. They would willingly die for their master. A more natural example would be that wolves would willingly die to protect their kin. We came to the conclusion that like humans, animals have free will so they must have a soul. Back to the prompt. Pleasure is good and pain is bad always. Evil is desiring pleasure and willingly and knowingly foregoing moral boundaries to achieve it. Responding to Cheryl’s example of Hitler as an evil person, I would have to disagree. I’m not a scientist, but mentally he wasn’t all there. He literally believed that what he was doing was good. I’m sure he got a sick pleasure out of it. So Hitler’s understanding of good was wrong. Also, he would forego the moral boundary of murder to achieve what he thought was good. He also received pleasure out of killing innocent people. So Hitler drastically forewent the moral boundaries to obtain personal pleasure. This is evil. Hitler wasn’t innately evil, he just lacked moral restraint. I like to believe that our free will lets God off the hook as the ultimate cause of evil and suffering. We have the free will to examine the moral boundaries of the situation and then choose pleasure or pain.
I think Augustine's concept of evil is logical to a point, but the decision to leave the blame on humans rather than on God is sort of a cop-out to answering the question of what the root of evil is. I certainly agree that evil, more often that not, is a conscious choice made on the part of humans- but I also think that there are those among us who suffer from various conditions that have a distorted view of reality. This distorted view can also lead to evil. Using the idea of everything having a first cause, evil can be attributed to humans and free will- but what comes before that? If humans are so ready to attribute all of the natural world to God, it seems contradictory and weak to say that He gave us a chance but we screwed it up.
Augustine provides a good argument for the question of evil. But I can't fully agree with the idea that misappropriated desires causes all evil. It is a firm belief of mine that you are either born with evil or it is taught to you. either way when you are doing evil deeds you know exactly why you are doing it, and in my opinion people perform these evil actions purely to be evil. It's almost like a desire that you can't control, something that festers inside of you until that time comes when your dark passenger, so to speak, comes out and does the deed.But I don't think the problem is about where evil comes from but why it exists at all. What about God? Why doesn't he put an end to this? Well I was thinking about this also and I came to a different conclusion than most. What if, being the perfect being that God is, created good and evil at the very same time? To remain perfect God had to create evil or good would mean nothing in this world. It is a necessity because if you think about the idea that if everything exists right now then everything won't exist at sometime. Now you can take this idea and apply it to good, if something is good right now at some point in the future it will turn evil. It is just a natural course followed by all things in the universe, change is a big part of this world and not even "good" can escape it.
Like I said before in class, I have to believe that if one believes in God, then you have to believe that is our free we that’s creates evil, and not God himself. If God is good and perfect, then how could he ever make evil? It is just not possible. Whenever this subject comes up, I love to ask anyone what they think, and one of the most memorable answers I got was that God does not create evil, but he must let it happen. He could not “intrude” on our everyday lives to stop evil, because this would mean that he has no created a perfect thing, because there would be no need to intervene in our lives if we are perfect. I am not saying we are perfect, but I am looking at it from another angle. Evil is a part of our lives, which doesn’t make It perfect or good, but it just is itself. I don’t know if that is confusing or not to some, but it is part of the order that God created (for some reason) and it must occur, and God must let it happen, otherwise, God would have to interfere with his creation, which he doesn’t have to. Just because evil is perceived as us by terrible and bad (maybe it is), it is part of the order that God created and that means we must accept it and understand it as a part of life and that order.
Of the “God Proofs” we discussed, Aquinas’ discussion of the Nature of God seems to make the most sense because it allows for both an all powerful God and for man’s limited understanding of him. Aquinas said that God’s very nature is something absolutely non-human. God is in no way material, is fully actual, and without matter is infinite, eternal, etc. Man, bound by flesh and the material can only grasp God thorough his limited sensory abilities and therefore cannot fully grasp the nature of God. This would explain those aspects of God which we do not understand and have no hope of understanding.
For these reasons, I think that faith is necessary to believe in God. Through reason alone, man can grasp the existence of God, but for a true understanding, this is not enough. To grasp as much of God’s nature as is humanly possible, there must be an element of belief, otherwise one would spend al their time rationalizing all of the realizations they came to and would never be able to advance in any further understanding of God.
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