Yes, there is good and evil. We all make mistakes. Sometimes we do the right thing. Sometimes we do the wrong thing. Sometimes it is done intentionally. Sometimes it is done by chance. Evil, evil is always intentional. I believe once you perform an evil act it is much easier to repeat it. Often times the reward for evil is much more immediate and gratifying than it is for good. Unfortunately I believe that those in power in our government are corrupted and, if not evil themselves, are misled by those who are.
Yeah, but Mao didn’t intend to starve and murder 60 million people. He thought he was doing the “right” thing. People with good intentions do terribly evil things. I am just not sure we can include intent in the mix.
I am thinking that an evil act is any act, regardless of intent, that initiates coercive force against the consent and self ownership of another, or forcibly turns one person into the means to another’s ends.
What about that? Does that cover all the bases, do you think?
That question is out of place here. Everyone here knows good from evil. Many are to stupid or ignorant to articulate it. They are on the side of RIGHT and know but do not have the tools. There a some like Mario that refuses to look at the facts that contrdict his paradigm. You too.
Abortion is clearly evil but there are many who support it. If you have no problem with the killing of a human being, is there really anything you won’t do?
See my other comment. I know what you mean, but I do not think that everyone who takes the abortion side is otherwise evil. So many complicating factors with this particular issue.
NO! They do not think they are doing the right thing. They are doing what is best for them and their cronies. Morals and values have been thrown in the toilet and flushed into the sea. Do you believe for one minute that Joe and Hunter Biden didn’t know the evil they were doing. Of course they did and so do the rest of them. It may be too late on earth to course correct but God will course correct for all of us. It can’t be soon enough.
I hear you. I certainly think that is true for Joe and Hunter. They are pure venality.
But I also know individual people who are basically communists. Communism is EVIL. And these people are culpable for not realizing that. But they also do not wake up in the morning and say, "Hmm, how can I do wicked things today?" They truly believe they are doing the right thing. You know what I mean?
Unless Satan knows you are evil, he will not disclose himself. It is named discernment.
62.5% will not say the truth to the de facto. Yes sir; no sir ! 3 bags full Sir. On the left, 12 to 15% are too stupid to qualify to join the military. 16.25% on the right are smart enough to figure it out but will not take action; 3 to 5% on the left control the stupid et al. evil and those that acquiesce to evil; on the right 3 to 5% of us will return all of us to a Constitutional republican form of government this year 2024.
A solution that works is published at www.orsja.org.
God bless everyone who is involved! sometimes I think I’m screaming out into the abyss, but there are many who are awake and are finally becoming active
Chris, I sit down with my two year old son and have conversations with him. It's in these precious moments that we realize that THIS precious moment is what life is truly about. And when you look into why can't I have more of this, you begin to see the evil in this world.
I'd like to introduce more concepts you may or may not be familiar with. Democide: the systemic killing of a population by the governing power and Menticide: the systemic brainwashing of the population by the governing body. As you mentioned, when these things have a name, there's some weight behind it: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/democide-and-menticide
And on a deeper level, yes, as you shown, there is a small amount of humanity that is purely evil. That is a fact. The good news is that its a small number (under 3% give or take), but it does exist. My wife and I literally had this conversation yesterday so this article is timely -- when you break down that 3%, you realize that have of that 3% of pure evil is probably locked away in prison or so, but the other half of that pure evil are our politicians. This innate desire of power results in two paths, death or control, and this other half have learned to harness that drive and we can see that as the psychopaths in power -- thus resulting in the two terms mentioned earlier.
On an even deeper level, this the spiritual nature of world. And when we se can see this, we can begin to go on the attack. If power can drive individuals to such evil lengths, imagine what LOVE can do. And no, I'm not talking about "mushy love," I'm talking about stand your ground against evil love (https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/love-the-ultimate-weapon).
"I sit down with my two year old son and have conversations with him. It's in these precious moments that we realize that THIS precious moment is what life is truly about. And when you look into why can't I have more of this, you begin to see the evil in this world."
—Well said.
"I'd like to introduce more concepts you may or may not be familiar with. Democide: the systemic killing of a population by the governing power and Menticide: the systemic brainwashing of the population by the governing body."
—I write about democide in as many words. I did recently hear the term menticide for the first time. I have written about the concept (a little) but did not know until recently that it has a name. I am glad it does!
Wow, great response that adds to the article! You might be interested in the book Confessions of a Sociopath, Hiding in Plain Sight." There are many more sociopaths out of prison who don't break laws than those in prison and they gravitate and succeed over others in some areas such as corporate management, law, and politics. The book is eye-opening.
I agree completely with our need to focus on the only thing that can defeat evil. That is love. And love sits on the foundation of truth. It is, in my opinion, that speaking the truth from love in both our deeds and our words will utterly defeat all the evil that exists in this world. Deeds motivated by love are powerful. Words driven by love are sharper than a two edged sword both piercing and powerful.
Our battle is actually.a spiritual warfare. Evil versus good, and the good will win it.
Nice discussion, Chris! My feeling on Hanlon's Razor is that it does not invalidate the concept of malice, but simply proposes that stupidity is more LIKELY. As you note in your bell-curve diagram, the number of truly rotten people is relatively small, while, as George Carlin astutely pointed out, half of the people out there are below-average intelligence. Thus, while an evil outcome COULD be the result of evil intentions, (with apologies to Gershwin) it ain't necessarily so.
With all that said, you kindly mentioned my recent column, in which I suggested that incompetence can be EXPLOITED by malice. In other words, "useful idiots" are useful to someone, and that someone is probably trying to do something bad.
Sometimes the explanation is incompetence. Sometimes it is evil.
Sometimes it is, as you say, evil using incompetence as a tool. (Though wouldn't that just be a subset of evil?)
But my primary point is that Hanlon's razor gets used as a cudgel to beat from the public square anyone who posits evil as the cause of something…even though there is a ton of obvious evil in the world. That seems wrong (and seriously uncool) to me.
A sociopath would not have to do all of the evil themself. They can hire really stupid people and put them in positions of authority. The water control dude in Hawii comes to mind. The city over there is burning, you need to divert the water there. Ok, I will ask permission. I cant divert water, they didn't say yes. We have every building covered. Except for the one in the direct line of fire. Stupid people exist and are used, making them evil.
Yes, because they only care about doing whatever’s best for themselves. Who cares if a bunch of families burn to death as long as he obeys the commands
Righto, but is the system designed, or is it emergent? If the system is emergent and manifests evil, does that mean that component(s) comprising it are evil, which then propagates to the whole, or is the evil implicit in or germane to systematization? If the system is designed and it produces evil, then was that evil deliberately designed into it, or was it accidental? (aux disappears up his own rear end pondering the fork-bombing ramifications)
The globalists are definitely trying to deliberately kill us.
No doubt.
They want .5 million people by 2030. How many videos of them actually saying this do these people want to see before they believe it?!?
They are satanist who torture and kill children for Adrenochrome. The Chinese do this to dogs at Yulin dog festival. Torture the poor babies and eat the adreniline which makes you feel really good. Sick. Evil. Beyond words
I hope so! Because we don’t know exactly what they are doing. We think we figured it out, but they might have even worse things under their sleeves. The whole DEW thing scares me because of what they did in Hawaii and other places. They have technology to attack us that we can’t imagine.
I see the only valid use of Hanlon's razor is to remind us that someone advancing an illogical argument is not necessarily evil but just stupid, indoctrinated, or incapable of critical thinking. It is useful because of the polarization that identifies every member of another "tribe" as being evil just because they have a different point of view. The key is the word "adequate." There are plenty of times when stupidity is NOT an adequate explanation and we have to follow Occam's razor.
Harmful actions versus bad arguments is on a whole different level. When the power to cause great harm comes into play, stupidity is seldom an adequate explanation. For example, there was a lot of stupidity and incompetence on display on July 13, but were the powerful people who put those incompetent people in place just stupid themselves. I don't know, but it seems less likely to me.
Wow such a great piece. So many will make excuses for evil. It fascinates me....so much so that before I understood the "school system" for what it was I studied psychology and forensics....I asked myself how could people commit such horrible acts against others (animals or humans)? The New Age often denies objectivity and only gives credence to subjectivity, a declaration of the ultimate gaslight, that there is no evil outside of what you create, everything is your fault...which is just not true. I think people avoid it in one sense because they are not ready to look at their own power, for good or evil, thus the land of mediocrity and ignorance steps in, often willful. The blinders allow for accountability to fall on anyone's shoulders but the responsible party, self or other. The greatest thing I've learned on this subject is that the self awareness to realize that everyone is capable of evil under the right circumstances gives breathing room to see the other side, to seek joy but it's a hard mirror to look in because it means you must have compassion for the enemy to do it. I say this not to condone it at all, but we can only change what we're willing to see. The unwillingness to see evil in another, is to deny where that exists in the self, if even the tiniest morsel of negative potential, where anger is harbored, where the weak spot is...if only as a protective mechanism, it's there because we have to choose every day. Igornance does not excuse it. I always say, the spell is broken when truth is spoken, so to call it out is, in a sense, a form of alchemy. The magic is in moving through to the other side where joy lives, all the while, knowing for that joy to exist is to do the hardest work of all, to walk through the shadow and choose to expand into light...choose joy, choose life, choose those moments you wrote about here, in the middle of chaos, in the middle of evil....and that is the great work and that takes a whole lot of heart.
Do no harm, take no shit. I think it always comes back around to natural law. Like the quote about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Good intentions do not equate to good actions. It depends up on the action carried out, the deed, the production of good fruits or the rotting of such. Thus, does the behavior feed life or death, is it moral or immoral, is it by force, is there deceit or is there absolute autonomy.
If a doctor has good intent but gives a vaccine (negatively incentivized for profit and/or knowing - or not knowing - the side effects, then this cannot be good even if the intention is good for it induces harm (be it immediate or long term). The power of the mind may overcome the negative, or seem to, but does that negate the acttion already done without righting the wrong in some capacity, be it internal or external exchange of forgiveness?
To be good it seems we must go beyond intentions, there must be truth, morality and a desire for living in accordance with natural law....even when it's incredibly hard and goes against what is popular. When the sacredness of the natural is no longer recognized we step into the profane, the anti-nature, thus anti-life takes over like a garden that is never tended to, all consuming, and this egregore is created by society and its ability to always go with the flow, never against the grain...actions of consent, not calling out wrongs, lack of accountability, disconnection from Nature, from God. To be truly good is a daily practice in a million little thoughts, words and deeds, a fruitful life is not always easy but springs up inner peace, joy, love and beauty. Karma exists even if one is unaware of these principles. While all will meet death, to live a good life is to die to the version of yourself the world wants you to be and become the highest version you here to dance to the beat of your own drum. A good person by society standards is not usually good by the moral framework set forth by natural laws, but someone who is agreeable and doesn't ruffle feathers. Those who act in accordance with good are often not liked very much because it shines a spotlight on uncomfortable truths.
Beyond obvious evils there is a sea of micro-evils feeding the conglomerate. Even the term "necessary evil" is not evil if it is in self defense by one committing evil. The fingerpointing of "they evil - me good" never results in good because it is fruit-less. Better to make changes in ones own life to feed good instead, like the shed you built, or the example you gave of time with your toddler grand-niece. I guess there is a reason evil is lived backward....it must be flipped back around to escape its grasp.
Evil is any act, no matter what the motivation, that violates the self-ownership and consent of any human person or forcibly turns said person into the means to another's ends.
I like that definition....concise. I'll have to sit with a bit more. Living voluntarily, without permissions or restrictions feels encompassed inside of that. As Cory Endrulat says in his book, Slavery Gone for Good, "We must know ourselves, to become a master of self or exercise self-mastery, self-ownership, self-government and self-responsibility. We are to bring truth to action, the mental freedom to physical freedom, for ourselves and others, this is Abolitionism."
Don't forget the mundane-ness (mundanity?) of evil. Most of society is not willing or deliberately doing evil, and yet by going along to get along, it most definitely is.
Seem like a good list. Also, I'd add psychopaths, Sociopaths and Narcissts slightly different though could meet similar criteria enough to categorize together as 1. I saw a video the other day and the guy being interviewed claim 1 in 10 fit one of these three...that's wild. I'd say statists as they support the system that seeks to enslave. People who don't do good out of fear but know they should act in a situation (like when folks take video at the scene of an accident but don't offer to help). People who are brainwashed to think they are doing good such as religious persecution, fighting bankers wars. People who hide, look away from bad behaviors or condone them like pedophile, men beating up women....people who try to affect the well-being of another through wishes of harm via negative intentions, curses, harrassment......I'm thinking, I'm thinking!!!! People who like pineapple on pizza (kidding).
I strongly recommend the substack be investigated. It is based upon the seminal, if completely under-noticed work by Andrzej Łobaczewski. In similar fashion to the very different "Mountaineering in Scotland" by WH Murray, it was completely destroyed during its writing at least once owing to tyrannical regime (communist Poland in Andrzej Łobaczewski's case, the Gestapo in Murray's) and much of the original data didn't survive. Upon his fleeing to America, he rewrote it from memory and fragments and it is a comprehensive investigation into all levels of evil and its manifestation in human social and political life. It really is a tour de force.
Harrison Koehli recently (a few years ago) produced a new edition of the work, published by Red Pill Press. I cannot recommend it highly enough, and the substack continues the discussion into the current age. Very important work and I believe you would relish diving into it.
The Wiki entry is accurate enough: "He then spent three years in prisoner of war camps in Italy (Chieti), Germany (Moosberg, Brunswick) and Czechoslovakia (Marisch Trubeau Oflag VIII-F). While imprisoned, Murray wrote a book entitled Mountaineering in Scotland. The first draft of the work was written on the only paper available to him – rough toilet paper. The manuscript was found and destroyed by the Gestapo. To the incredulity of his fellow prisoners, Murray's response to the loss was to start again, despite the risk of its loss and his physical condition being so poor from the near starvation diet that he believed he would never climb again. The rewritten work was finally published in 1947 and was followed by the sequel, Undiscovered Scotland, in 1951. Both concentrate on Scottish winter climbing and were widely credited with helping to inspire the post-war renaissance in the sport."
In theory, I might agree with you. But in practice, I don't think it works that way. Malevolent and harmful actions are not merely the absence of righteous ones.
If I'm following you here, even if nobody good is around, the perp must have, eg., had an absent father, or abusive uncle, or didn't learn the truth about the world in history class...
An example? Sure. When Jeffrey Dahmer murdered and ate people, that was evil. His actions weren't just the absence of good, they were tangibly malevolent.
That certainly is a horrid example. But it pales into triviality when if/when one considers what the Israeli regime, and every NATO and condoning state government, is doing in Gaza right now, and how industriously and vigorously they are expanding the theater of hostilities and spoiling for all out regional war. Truly, evil at this scale, unconfined and without restraint has rarely if ever been released in the world. For shame, humanity!
Do not ignore or disregard the fact that the Israeli government, and many among all those others that support it, are operating with impunity because they are justified that it is all according to holy writ, prophecy, and Zionist eschatology. They believe they are justified because they are obeying Yahweh and prophecy is unfolding.
Magnificent perspective, and I concur, DoG. Because the "perp" was probably exposed to trauma, at the most impressionable period in a human or animals prepubescencent stages to a traumatic situation or prolonged traumatic environment, absent of a protector figure who would otherwise intervene by showing affection and provide logical explanation to the matter. Either during or immediately thereafter actually teaching by caring. Thereby passing down the lessons of nature and humanity at the purest forum.
The aforementioned example comes to mind through researching American Alt-history regarding pre and post colonial imperialism. Ivan The Terrible and King Henry VIII documentary is a prime example for what does proliferate evidence to your proclamation: The absence of God case can be misconstrued with being evil. Moreover the absence of God belief tends to proliferate omnipotence and omnipotent behaviors primarily in ungodly fashions. Subject to the discretion as to what God(s) is/are. The Christian definition or otherwise. The case for Ivan The Terrible & King Henry VIII expounds upon the aforementioned scenario with the fact they proclaimed themselves as benevolent as soon as they reached puberty. Much like what all the pre-contemporary and 21st century Imperial's believe. America, the political, has been consistently persecuted to the world for what is no longer evident through Its behavior and signal weakness.
Enter: The Spector of Communism or as Christopher puts it down as "a definition of evil".
I have a theoretical and theological problem with God’s “absence”. I presume that God is in all things. The light shines in (as in INSIDE?) the darkness and the darkness doesn’t comprehend it. What’s the origin of darkness and evil? God, the LORD, YHWH/YHVH, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel. I would like to ask God “Why did you create evil (given that the tree of the knowledge of the good and of the evil in the Garden of Eden preexisted the creation of the first man)? What purposes do evil and darkness have?”
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7).
I remain unconvinced that it wasn’t God who created evil. I remain convinced that it was God who created evil. God has his purposes and intents and motivations which are completely unknown to man. The LORD says “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” I suspect that God created evil to (1) ultimately bring about God’s purposes and (2) manifest opposition in all things, thus proving that opposites are complementary.
There’s God’s creation of things from nothing. What are you referring to which is (so-called) “literally non-existent”?
As I attempted to make plain and clear and simple, I don’t accept the presupposition or axiom or fact of either God’s absence or the absence of God. One of the fundamental aspects of God is that God is omnipresent. (Another fundamental aspect of God is that God is eternal.)
This must be your own personal belief, in which case I say: have at it, knock yourself out!
It's your own mind and spirit, and you can fertilize them with whatever best promotes growth and flourishing. I sincerely wish you the best in your own spiritual and personal growth.
On the other hand, the Abrahamic religions do in fact state that God created Lucifer, who was also, later, referred to as Satan, the very personification of evil.
To wit:
1. God created everything, which includes angels and demons (Colossians 1: 15-16).
2. Satan is an angel who is subordinate to God (Job 1: 6-7).
3. Some angels sinned and are doomed for eternal destruction (1 John 3: 8; 2 Peter 2: 4; Jude 6). If some angels sinned, then they were created with a potential to sin i.e. they had the free will to sin.
4.a. "Behold I set forth in your sight this day a blessing and a curse: A blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you this day: A curse, if you obey not the commandments of the Lord your. God, but revolt from the way which now I shew you, and walk after strange gods which you know not." (Deuteronomy 11:26-28)
4.b. God gave his creations free will (presumably, he created the capacity first, then distributed it): In the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve the power to choose. He placed before them the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and gave them the choice to obey or disobey (Genesis 2:16-17).
These passages preach that God created Satan and his demons originally as good beings. But Satan and some of his fellow angels sinned against God and are in the business of enabling mankind’s rebellion and disobedience against God.
To be precise, God did not create an evil Satan. God created a good angel, who used his free will to reject God and become evil. But God created that free will, and God knows all things, therefore because he created Satan with the capacity for Satan to become evil, while knowing full well that by creating Satan and creating the capacity for evil the outcome was assured. It thus follows that since God created everything, everything includes evil. God created all with free will even those whom God knew would choose to do evil (it remains for us to speculate whether God did this just so he could make a point of demonstrating how insanely wicked he is?)
Things take an even wilder twist towards the perverted when we realise that Jesus and Satan are ... brothers?!
Viz ...
1. God created everything, which includes angels and demons (Colossians 1: 15-16).
2. Satan is an angel who is subordinate to God (Job 1: 6-7).
3. Jesus is the Son of God. In the book of Job 1:6; 2:1 it seems that the Sons of God are angels, both good and bad. God speaks to Satan who was among them. The context does not necessitate the position that the Sons of God were only the wicked angels. Later in the book, Job 38:7, it says the Sons of God shouted for joy. This seems to be a reference to the good angels.
The remaining occurrences of the formulation Sons of God are all in the New Testament and they are speaking of the good people, the godly, who have trusted in God.
So, the term Sons of God has two basic meanings. It refers to the angels, both good and bad, in the Old Testament. But in the New Testament, the phrase refers to believers.
Genesis 6:2
... that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
Genesis 6:4
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Job 38:7
When the morning stars sang together
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Job 1:6
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.
Job 2:1
Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord.
So, Jesus is the Son of God, the angels, both good and bad are the Sons of God, Satan was created a good angel and named Lucifer, but in being an angel, he is therefore the Son of God. Two sons of the same father are brothers, so Lucifer was Jesus' old man's other son, i.e. brother. Q.E.D.
This must be your own personal belief, in which case I say: have at it, knock yourself out!
It's your own mind and spirit, and you can fertilize them with whatever best promotes growth and flourishing. I sincerely wish you the best in your own spiritual and personal growth.
Thank you! I'm assuming your good wishes are sincere - of course they are. You've repeated my own, though, which perhaps means you consider my words and the spirit with which I expressed them as sufficiently charitable and hence you felt it unnecessary to craft your own. In that case, thank you again also for the compliment!
"This must be your own personal belief ..."
No, it is definitely not my personal belief - not in the slightest. As I stated at the beginning, these are central tenets of the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and at least as far as the passages I quoted from the Old Testament are concerned, they belong to all three religions.
I adhere to none of those faiths, and as a matter of fact, I find them all fundamentally loathsome. What is more, the God (Yahweh) they are constructed around and whom it is decreed adherents worship to be a comically repulsive character. I also confess that I derive a perverse delight in looking and finding contradictions and absurdities, but also the down-right moral degeneracy in those texts. It's a weakness of mine, I suppose.
“Evil is just the absence of God.” How can this be so when God acknowledges here — “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7) — that evil is created by God. The same Hebrew word for “evil” here used by Isaiah is also used when describing the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of the evil and the knowledge of the good. It seems perfectly plain and clear and simple and straightforward to me that evil preexisted the creation of man and man’s agency (colloquially known as “free will”).
It seems to boil down to the question “Why would an eternal and omniscient and omnipresent and omnipotent Supreme Being create evil?” Even if we decide that evil has its origin in the devil, a fallen angel who had authority in the Presence of God, this angel is a created being. And God, utilizing God’s foreknowledge, knew that this angel would choose evil. Therefore, evil must have existed even before this angel’s fall.
That makes sense. I simply hope that I can exercise the necessary faith/trust in Christ Jesus to utilize this free will to always do good, to fear God, to do my duty to God, to please God. This is what it means to be Christ-like to me “He who sent Me is with Me. He has not left Me alone, because I always do what pleases Him.”
"Evil doesn't exist, only the absence of God exists."
Is God present or absent in that rock at the bottom of the fish pond? If God is absent, does that mean that evil (by your definition, the absence of God) is present at the bottom of the pond and the rock is the source of it? If, on the other hand, God deems it important enough that he should be there in that rock at the bottom of the pond, then it would stand to reason that God would be present with and for all human activities, which are arguably of considerably more consequence than a rock at the bottom of a pond. If God is present everywhere and at all times, which seems the logical consequence of the foregoing argument, and evil is done, what is God doing to foment or prevent it? If God is not inciting evil, then why does he not prevent it? If God is unwilling to prevent it, is he not evil? If God is not able to prevent it, perhaps because he does not have such power, is he not ungodly, or is he not godlike? In which case, what good is there in worshiping God who is ungodly (as in evil) or not actually godlike (as in powerful enough to prevent evil) at all?
"It's not rocket science."
Indeed, it certainly isn't. Rocket science - ballistics - is at least intelligible, and makes clear, unambiguously logical sense.
Your opening statement denying the existence of evil, stating that only the "absence of God exists". This is a key Buddhist philosophy. As the Shingon Buddhist Master Kukai explained: An actual Buddha (one who has achieved Yoga or unity with God) does not teach. A Buddha sees no differentiation between opposites such as good and evil and thus will not state one course of action preferrable to another. See "On the Differences between the Exoteric and Esoteric Teaching" by Kukai.
Two thousand years, Paul wrote to the Ephesians, "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." I believe that. The half of the population that lean toward wickedness behave very much as if they are directed by the rulers of the darkness of this world. Too much so to be coincidental.
In order to appreciate life in this way you have to be able to tear yourself away from your phone for two minutes. Everyone has left the real world for the artificial reality of social media and the Internet. There's hardly anyone with their consciousness in reality. I don't own a phone. It's lonely in reality.
Drats! Then they are different realities we're concurrently occupying, it seems.
Besides the power to choose between the carrot or the tin of sardines for my lunch, I really don't have any significant power in this one. The government has LRADs and F-18 Rhino airframe multi-role fighter aircraft. I don't pay them income taxes any longer, by which collectively the population could have crippled the government and gotten it to obey us, but everyone else around here diligently pays their taxes, so that kind of negates me and all my efforts.
That may still happen, and I'm certainly not confident I'll stay out of jail for the rest of my days. But the reason I don't pay (income) taxes, property taxes, etc., is that I walked away from paid work four years ago, and haven't earned any income as a result, when it finally, fully dawned on me with COVID-19 what our reality truly is. This was in response to the way we were cruelly, brutally abused by government, with worse to come. I already detested government whom I believed to be not only unnecessary, but criminal. Since 2020 and forward, I will no longer submit to them, and certainly not by passively going along just so that I can keep a certain lifestyle. I don't own any property (spoiler alert: neither does anyone else while government has power to confiscate, and the laws empower them to do so) I wasn't wealthy then, and I'm a heck of a lot poorer now, but I am surviving.
Deb, I haven't had a phone for over four years! You are not alone! I'm there in reality with you! (but I can't guarantee you'd like me better than solitude ...)
Even when I did have one, it was always a simple feature phone - only for making and receiving calls and SMS, and for clumsily taking simple notes.
Just saw a story about a small farm in Michigan getting raided and $90k worth of raw butter taken away...dumb ass goverment "inspectors" who wouldn't know what was healthy if it hit them in the face standing there "just doing their job." That's evil! Vapes are legal but oh no that raw butter filled with nutrients is so dangerous.
Great thoughts here. Hanlon's Razor (like Occam's) is a great corrective but it's not a universal law. Nor are parsimonious explanations the most likely to be true. In viewing history, people love to attribute malevolence to (say) the British Empire and point to the Bengal Famine or the casualties at the Somme, but much must be laid at the door of poor communications and planning. The 'Cock Up' Theory of History is more plausible (and more morally hygeinic than the 'Evil Bastards Theory of History. But you're right to draw attention to the fact that bastards exist and they are particularly motivated to seek power and cling to it.
I've just finished Anne Applebaum's 'Autocracy Inc.' and she points this out with chilling examples. The stolen elections in Venezuela and the political violence against women in Iran drive this home.
Agreed on all counts. Sometimes it is the simple explanation; sometimes it is the complex one. Sometimes it is evil; sometimes it is stupidity or incompetence.
So this raises another question—one which I ought to have foreseen while writing, and which is not being posed by multiple commenters: what is the definition of evil?
For the second time today, I'll proffer the following two examples of the most thorough wickedness to have ever been visited upon earth, but that are arguably being put in the shade by the Israeli government, and it's supporters across the world, in Gaza as I write: 1. the Harrying of the North of 1069-1070 by the Catholic King William the Conqueror of England against the Roman and Celtic Christian Anglo-Saxon populations in the counties of Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, and Cumberland, and 2. the Albigensian Crusade of 1209-1229 by the Catholic Church and the French monarchy against the Cathar Christian sect. Both these examples of evil from the past, and of Israel in the present, were committed by God-fearing people of Abrahamic religions.
So-called “Christians” committing murder in order to please God ranks right up there as the most evil and blasphemous actions. Are these murderers really “God fearing”?! I’m dubious. To fear God is to hate evil. How can a person both hate evil and DO evil?! It makes no sense. It’s worse than hypocrisy. It’s rank self deception. I think that some people absolutely love lying to themselves about themselves and their intentions & motivations. Absolutely despicable. Excellent examples by the way.
The problem with using Hanlon’s razor is that it is supposed to be used as rule of thumb, not a law. But, the very first word, “never” has made it a law. Using absolutes like always and never can take you down the wrong path. Make up your own razor to counter Hanlon’s; “Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice.” We should all know what we get when we combine stupidity AND malice. Government.
Yes there is Evil. There was Evil in the Garden of Eden. There was Evil trying to tempt Jesus in the desert, Satan wanting to sift Peter like wheat. There was Evil on Epstein’s island. There was Evil attacking Israel on October 7. There is Evil trying to persuade children that their gender is mutable, and that they should undergo permanently altering treatments. If we would name Evil for what it is, and quit pretending it’s a matter of good intentions, we would avoid a lot of problems.
We don’t GO anywhere. This time He comes to us. Just hold on; Hes already shown you what its going to be like. Thank God you can still have visions of truth. Keep them and hold on!! Until youre experiencing them. This is not, NOT, metaphorical!
Yes, there is good and evil. We all make mistakes. Sometimes we do the right thing. Sometimes we do the wrong thing. Sometimes it is done intentionally. Sometimes it is done by chance. Evil, evil is always intentional. I believe once you perform an evil act it is much easier to repeat it. Often times the reward for evil is much more immediate and gratifying than it is for good. Unfortunately I believe that those in power in our government are corrupted and, if not evil themselves, are misled by those who are.
Agreed.
Yet all of them *think* that they are doing the right thing. They all justify and rationalize their actions…
Ah, but doing the “right” thing for whom?
Yes, selfishness is clearly a component here.
So what then makes an act evil?
Intent to do harm with no moral justification. And I mean moral as in the Ten Commandments.
Yeah, but Mao didn’t intend to starve and murder 60 million people. He thought he was doing the “right” thing. People with good intentions do terribly evil things. I am just not sure we can include intent in the mix.
I am thinking that an evil act is any act, regardless of intent, that initiates coercive force against the consent and self ownership of another, or forcibly turns one person into the means to another’s ends.
What about that? Does that cover all the bases, do you think?
How do you know what Mao intended? Or even if he did not intend that outcome, if he cared that it happened?
So what then makes an act evil?
That question is out of place here. Everyone here knows good from evil. Many are to stupid or ignorant to articulate it. They are on the side of RIGHT and know but do not have the tools. There a some like Mario that refuses to look at the facts that contrdict his paradigm. You too.
Not human beings, to be certain.
Abortion is clearly evil but there are many who support it. If you have no problem with the killing of a human being, is there really anything you won’t do?
See my other comment. I know what you mean, but I do not think that everyone who takes the abortion side is otherwise evil. So many complicating factors with this particular issue.
NO! They do not think they are doing the right thing. They are doing what is best for them and their cronies. Morals and values have been thrown in the toilet and flushed into the sea. Do you believe for one minute that Joe and Hunter Biden didn’t know the evil they were doing. Of course they did and so do the rest of them. It may be too late on earth to course correct but God will course correct for all of us. It can’t be soon enough.
I hear you. I certainly think that is true for Joe and Hunter. They are pure venality.
But I also know individual people who are basically communists. Communism is EVIL. And these people are culpable for not realizing that. But they also do not wake up in the morning and say, "Hmm, how can I do wicked things today?" They truly believe they are doing the right thing. You know what I mean?
Unless Satan knows you are evil, he will not disclose himself. It is named discernment.
62.5% will not say the truth to the de facto. Yes sir; no sir ! 3 bags full Sir. On the left, 12 to 15% are too stupid to qualify to join the military. 16.25% on the right are smart enough to figure it out but will not take action; 3 to 5% on the left control the stupid et al. evil and those that acquiesce to evil; on the right 3 to 5% of us will return all of us to a Constitutional republican form of government this year 2024.
A solution that works is published at www.orsja.org.
God bless everyone who is involved! sometimes I think I’m screaming out into the abyss, but there are many who are awake and are finally becoming active
I agree. Satan comes in all forms;smiling faces!
Chris, I sit down with my two year old son and have conversations with him. It's in these precious moments that we realize that THIS precious moment is what life is truly about. And when you look into why can't I have more of this, you begin to see the evil in this world.
I'd like to introduce more concepts you may or may not be familiar with. Democide: the systemic killing of a population by the governing power and Menticide: the systemic brainwashing of the population by the governing body. As you mentioned, when these things have a name, there's some weight behind it: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/democide-and-menticide
And on a deeper level, yes, as you shown, there is a small amount of humanity that is purely evil. That is a fact. The good news is that its a small number (under 3% give or take), but it does exist. My wife and I literally had this conversation yesterday so this article is timely -- when you break down that 3%, you realize that have of that 3% of pure evil is probably locked away in prison or so, but the other half of that pure evil are our politicians. This innate desire of power results in two paths, death or control, and this other half have learned to harness that drive and we can see that as the psychopaths in power -- thus resulting in the two terms mentioned earlier.
On an even deeper level, this the spiritual nature of world. And when we se can see this, we can begin to go on the attack. If power can drive individuals to such evil lengths, imagine what LOVE can do. And no, I'm not talking about "mushy love," I'm talking about stand your ground against evil love (https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/love-the-ultimate-weapon).
When we begin to see this "Satanic/Archonic attack" display itself in our reality, we are going to realize we need love and truth more than ever: (https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/are-we-under-satanic-attack#details)
Thanks for the article. Very timely and inspiring.
"I sit down with my two year old son and have conversations with him. It's in these precious moments that we realize that THIS precious moment is what life is truly about. And when you look into why can't I have more of this, you begin to see the evil in this world."
—Well said.
"I'd like to introduce more concepts you may or may not be familiar with. Democide: the systemic killing of a population by the governing power and Menticide: the systemic brainwashing of the population by the governing body."
—I write about democide in as many words. I did recently hear the term menticide for the first time. I have written about the concept (a little) but did not know until recently that it has a name. I am glad it does!
Wow, great response that adds to the article! You might be interested in the book Confessions of a Sociopath, Hiding in Plain Sight." There are many more sociopaths out of prison who don't break laws than those in prison and they gravitate and succeed over others in some areas such as corporate management, law, and politics. The book is eye-opening.
I agree completely with our need to focus on the only thing that can defeat evil. That is love. And love sits on the foundation of truth. It is, in my opinion, that speaking the truth from love in both our deeds and our words will utterly defeat all the evil that exists in this world. Deeds motivated by love are powerful. Words driven by love are sharper than a two edged sword both piercing and powerful.
Our battle is actually.a spiritual warfare. Evil versus good, and the good will win it.
Still reading the book, Franklin. So far so good. I'll elaborate with you about it ASAP. Thanks, again!
Thanks man!! Looking forward to the insights! SN: I just subscribed to Tim Denning from your page so thanks for sharing his work 💪🏾
Nice discussion, Chris! My feeling on Hanlon's Razor is that it does not invalidate the concept of malice, but simply proposes that stupidity is more LIKELY. As you note in your bell-curve diagram, the number of truly rotten people is relatively small, while, as George Carlin astutely pointed out, half of the people out there are below-average intelligence. Thus, while an evil outcome COULD be the result of evil intentions, (with apologies to Gershwin) it ain't necessarily so.
With all that said, you kindly mentioned my recent column, in which I suggested that incompetence can be EXPLOITED by malice. In other words, "useful idiots" are useful to someone, and that someone is probably trying to do something bad.
Sometimes the explanation is incompetence. Sometimes it is evil.
Sometimes it is, as you say, evil using incompetence as a tool. (Though wouldn't that just be a subset of evil?)
But my primary point is that Hanlon's razor gets used as a cudgel to beat from the public square anyone who posits evil as the cause of something…even though there is a ton of obvious evil in the world. That seems wrong (and seriously uncool) to me.
Totally agree.
🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
A sociopath would not have to do all of the evil themself. They can hire really stupid people and put them in positions of authority. The water control dude in Hawii comes to mind. The city over there is burning, you need to divert the water there. Ok, I will ask permission. I cant divert water, they didn't say yes. We have every building covered. Except for the one in the direct line of fire. Stupid people exist and are used, making them evil.
Yes, because they only care about doing whatever’s best for themselves. Who cares if a bunch of families burn to death as long as he obeys the commands
Face Value’s Razor: A System is what it does.
Not my original idea. Heard this in an interview on TCN some time ago.
It functions along the lines of “If they tell you they’re after you, you should believe them.”
Right. IOW, you CAN believe your eyes.
"Right. IOW, you CAN believe your eyes."
Ah, that's a much less formidable logical conundrum to wrestle with!
"Face Value’s Razor: A System is what it does."
Righto, but is the system designed, or is it emergent? If the system is emergent and manifests evil, does that mean that component(s) comprising it are evil, which then propagates to the whole, or is the evil implicit in or germane to systematization? If the system is designed and it produces evil, then was that evil deliberately designed into it, or was it accidental? (aux disappears up his own rear end pondering the fork-bombing ramifications)
The globalists are definitely trying to deliberately kill us.
No doubt.
They want .5 million people by 2030. How many videos of them actually saying this do these people want to see before they believe it?!?
They are satanist who torture and kill children for Adrenochrome. The Chinese do this to dogs at Yulin dog festival. Torture the poor babies and eat the adreniline which makes you feel really good. Sick. Evil. Beyond words
They may find this plan harder to accomplish than they wish.
I hope so! Because we don’t know exactly what they are doing. We think we figured it out, but they might have even worse things under their sleeves. The whole DEW thing scares me because of what they did in Hawaii and other places. They have technology to attack us that we can’t imagine.
It is scary. But they cannot get all of us!
Substack needs to add a "laugh" emoji.
I think the Georga Guide Stones said 500 million. Still a terrible goal to have. Of course, they want more Americans gone than any other people.
Look it up please!! 🙏🏻
I see the only valid use of Hanlon's razor is to remind us that someone advancing an illogical argument is not necessarily evil but just stupid, indoctrinated, or incapable of critical thinking. It is useful because of the polarization that identifies every member of another "tribe" as being evil just because they have a different point of view. The key is the word "adequate." There are plenty of times when stupidity is NOT an adequate explanation and we have to follow Occam's razor.
Harmful actions versus bad arguments is on a whole different level. When the power to cause great harm comes into play, stupidity is seldom an adequate explanation. For example, there was a lot of stupidity and incompetence on display on July 13, but were the powerful people who put those incompetent people in place just stupid themselves. I don't know, but it seems less likely to me.
Great discussion!
Well said. Thank you!
Wow such a great piece. So many will make excuses for evil. It fascinates me....so much so that before I understood the "school system" for what it was I studied psychology and forensics....I asked myself how could people commit such horrible acts against others (animals or humans)? The New Age often denies objectivity and only gives credence to subjectivity, a declaration of the ultimate gaslight, that there is no evil outside of what you create, everything is your fault...which is just not true. I think people avoid it in one sense because they are not ready to look at their own power, for good or evil, thus the land of mediocrity and ignorance steps in, often willful. The blinders allow for accountability to fall on anyone's shoulders but the responsible party, self or other. The greatest thing I've learned on this subject is that the self awareness to realize that everyone is capable of evil under the right circumstances gives breathing room to see the other side, to seek joy but it's a hard mirror to look in because it means you must have compassion for the enemy to do it. I say this not to condone it at all, but we can only change what we're willing to see. The unwillingness to see evil in another, is to deny where that exists in the self, if even the tiniest morsel of negative potential, where anger is harbored, where the weak spot is...if only as a protective mechanism, it's there because we have to choose every day. Igornance does not excuse it. I always say, the spell is broken when truth is spoken, so to call it out is, in a sense, a form of alchemy. The magic is in moving through to the other side where joy lives, all the while, knowing for that joy to exist is to do the hardest work of all, to walk through the shadow and choose to expand into light...choose joy, choose life, choose those moments you wrote about here, in the middle of chaos, in the middle of evil....and that is the great work and that takes a whole lot of heart.
These are very interesting points.
So how, then, ought we to define evil?
Do no harm, take no shit. I think it always comes back around to natural law. Like the quote about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Good intentions do not equate to good actions. It depends up on the action carried out, the deed, the production of good fruits or the rotting of such. Thus, does the behavior feed life or death, is it moral or immoral, is it by force, is there deceit or is there absolute autonomy.
If a doctor has good intent but gives a vaccine (negatively incentivized for profit and/or knowing - or not knowing - the side effects, then this cannot be good even if the intention is good for it induces harm (be it immediate or long term). The power of the mind may overcome the negative, or seem to, but does that negate the acttion already done without righting the wrong in some capacity, be it internal or external exchange of forgiveness?
To be good it seems we must go beyond intentions, there must be truth, morality and a desire for living in accordance with natural law....even when it's incredibly hard and goes against what is popular. When the sacredness of the natural is no longer recognized we step into the profane, the anti-nature, thus anti-life takes over like a garden that is never tended to, all consuming, and this egregore is created by society and its ability to always go with the flow, never against the grain...actions of consent, not calling out wrongs, lack of accountability, disconnection from Nature, from God. To be truly good is a daily practice in a million little thoughts, words and deeds, a fruitful life is not always easy but springs up inner peace, joy, love and beauty. Karma exists even if one is unaware of these principles. While all will meet death, to live a good life is to die to the version of yourself the world wants you to be and become the highest version you here to dance to the beat of your own drum. A good person by society standards is not usually good by the moral framework set forth by natural laws, but someone who is agreeable and doesn't ruffle feathers. Those who act in accordance with good are often not liked very much because it shines a spotlight on uncomfortable truths.
Beyond obvious evils there is a sea of micro-evils feeding the conglomerate. Even the term "necessary evil" is not evil if it is in self defense by one committing evil. The fingerpointing of "they evil - me good" never results in good because it is fruit-less. Better to make changes in ones own life to feed good instead, like the shed you built, or the example you gave of time with your toddler grand-niece. I guess there is a reason evil is lived backward....it must be flipped back around to escape its grasp.
What do you think of this definition?
Evil is any act, no matter what the motivation, that violates the self-ownership and consent of any human person or forcibly turns said person into the means to another's ends.
Does that cover all the bases?
I like that definition....concise. I'll have to sit with a bit more. Living voluntarily, without permissions or restrictions feels encompassed inside of that. As Cory Endrulat says in his book, Slavery Gone for Good, "We must know ourselves, to become a master of self or exercise self-mastery, self-ownership, self-government and self-responsibility. We are to bring truth to action, the mental freedom to physical freedom, for ourselves and others, this is Abolitionism."
I know Jac Rendell would love that quote. 'Tis very good.
Let's ask this, then: Who does evil?
1. Psychopaths with broken brains who cannot feel the emotions (shame, guilt, empathy, forbearance) that prevent evil actions
2. People in the thrall of, or acting is service to, one of the seven deadly sins
3. People with "good intentions"
4. Who/what else?
Don't forget the mundane-ness (mundanity?) of evil. Most of society is not willing or deliberately doing evil, and yet by going along to get along, it most definitely is.
Seem like a good list. Also, I'd add psychopaths, Sociopaths and Narcissts slightly different though could meet similar criteria enough to categorize together as 1. I saw a video the other day and the guy being interviewed claim 1 in 10 fit one of these three...that's wild. I'd say statists as they support the system that seeks to enslave. People who don't do good out of fear but know they should act in a situation (like when folks take video at the scene of an accident but don't offer to help). People who are brainwashed to think they are doing good such as religious persecution, fighting bankers wars. People who hide, look away from bad behaviors or condone them like pedophile, men beating up women....people who try to affect the well-being of another through wishes of harm via negative intentions, curses, harrassment......I'm thinking, I'm thinking!!!! People who like pineapple on pizza (kidding).
The doctor has a duty to be informed like any other professional
I assume you're up-to-date with Harrison Koehli and his Political Ponerology?
I am not…
I strongly recommend the substack be investigated. It is based upon the seminal, if completely under-noticed work by Andrzej Łobaczewski. In similar fashion to the very different "Mountaineering in Scotland" by WH Murray, it was completely destroyed during its writing at least once owing to tyrannical regime (communist Poland in Andrzej Łobaczewski's case, the Gestapo in Murray's) and much of the original data didn't survive. Upon his fleeing to America, he rewrote it from memory and fragments and it is a comprehensive investigation into all levels of evil and its manifestation in human social and political life. It really is a tour de force.
Harrison Koehli recently (a few years ago) produced a new edition of the work, published by Red Pill Press. I cannot recommend it highly enough, and the substack continues the discussion into the current age. Very important work and I believe you would relish diving into it.
Thank you for the tip!!
What happened to "Mountaineering in Scotland"?
The Wiki entry is accurate enough: "He then spent three years in prisoner of war camps in Italy (Chieti), Germany (Moosberg, Brunswick) and Czechoslovakia (Marisch Trubeau Oflag VIII-F). While imprisoned, Murray wrote a book entitled Mountaineering in Scotland. The first draft of the work was written on the only paper available to him – rough toilet paper. The manuscript was found and destroyed by the Gestapo. To the incredulity of his fellow prisoners, Murray's response to the loss was to start again, despite the risk of its loss and his physical condition being so poor from the near starvation diet that he believed he would never climb again. The rewritten work was finally published in 1947 and was followed by the sequel, Undiscovered Scotland, in 1951. Both concentrate on Scottish winter climbing and were widely credited with helping to inspire the post-war renaissance in the sport."
Great article.
Evil doesn't exist, only the absence of God exists.
Like darkness doesn't exist, only the absence of light.
Darkness is literally measured by the amount of light present or absent. Darkness isn't measurable because it literally doesn't exist.
Bottom line - the more of us that let our lights shine brightly, the better our world will be.
It's not rocket science.
In theory, I might agree with you. But in practice, I don't think it works that way. Malevolent and harmful actions are not merely the absence of righteous ones.
Can you give an example?
If I'm following you here, even if nobody good is around, the perp must have, eg., had an absent father, or abusive uncle, or didn't learn the truth about the world in history class...
Or I'm completely missing your point.
To say "it's not rocket science" is to say you've got a handle on perhaps the single most metaphysical conundrum ever pondered.
Yes, evil is an absence of the good. But it also takes on a telos of its own. It's not a passive, opposite of the good.
The perp is you and me. We give ourselves all kinds of excuses, don't' we?
Agree with everything you said, except :
"it's not rocket science" is to say you've got a handle on perhaps the single most metaphysical conundrum ever pondered".
I don't claim to have a handle on the utopian ideal existence. That may be the meaning of life itself.
But it IS that simple. We all just do as God commanded. But yeah, that's a hard row to hoe. I'm a sinner along with the rest of you.
If we ALL did our BEST to live that way, we could certainly be living in a much better place, no?
BTW, nice name there, I too, am a 'Ken'. :)
Agreed. Simple, but not simplistic, like God himself.
What a sterling comment!
An example? Sure. When Jeffrey Dahmer murdered and ate people, that was evil. His actions weren't just the absence of good, they were tangibly malevolent.
Yikes. Can't get much more worse than that. And a quick check shows, yep, absent father, suicidal mother, et. al. All the usual things.
Show me a monster and I'll show you their traumatic upbringing.
And it's not like his parents are to blame either. They too, likely suffered in some manner.
Reminds me of that old movie, "The Shack", 2017. Great show about how trauma keeps getting passed along, and how to stop it.
That certainly is a horrid example. But it pales into triviality when if/when one considers what the Israeli regime, and every NATO and condoning state government, is doing in Gaza right now, and how industriously and vigorously they are expanding the theater of hostilities and spoiling for all out regional war. Truly, evil at this scale, unconfined and without restraint has rarely if ever been released in the world. For shame, humanity!
Do not ignore or disregard the fact that the Israeli government, and many among all those others that support it, are operating with impunity because they are justified that it is all according to holy writ, prophecy, and Zionist eschatology. They believe they are justified because they are obeying Yahweh and prophecy is unfolding.
Magnificent perspective, and I concur, DoG. Because the "perp" was probably exposed to trauma, at the most impressionable period in a human or animals prepubescencent stages to a traumatic situation or prolonged traumatic environment, absent of a protector figure who would otherwise intervene by showing affection and provide logical explanation to the matter. Either during or immediately thereafter actually teaching by caring. Thereby passing down the lessons of nature and humanity at the purest forum.
The aforementioned example comes to mind through researching American Alt-history regarding pre and post colonial imperialism. Ivan The Terrible and King Henry VIII documentary is a prime example for what does proliferate evidence to your proclamation: The absence of God case can be misconstrued with being evil. Moreover the absence of God belief tends to proliferate omnipotence and omnipotent behaviors primarily in ungodly fashions. Subject to the discretion as to what God(s) is/are. The Christian definition or otherwise. The case for Ivan The Terrible & King Henry VIII expounds upon the aforementioned scenario with the fact they proclaimed themselves as benevolent as soon as they reached puberty. Much like what all the pre-contemporary and 21st century Imperial's believe. America, the political, has been consistently persecuted to the world for what is no longer evident through Its behavior and signal weakness.
Enter: The Spector of Communism or as Christopher puts it down as "a definition of evil".
I have a theoretical and theological problem with God’s “absence”. I presume that God is in all things. The light shines in (as in INSIDE?) the darkness and the darkness doesn’t comprehend it. What’s the origin of darkness and evil? God, the LORD, YHWH/YHVH, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel. I would like to ask God “Why did you create evil (given that the tree of the knowledge of the good and of the evil in the Garden of Eden preexisted the creation of the first man)? What purposes do evil and darkness have?”
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7).
No, not God's absence. The absence of God.
God doesn't create evil. Evil is just the absence of God.
Minute difference there I think.
And without both, there can be no free will to choose one over the other.
I remain unconvinced that it wasn’t God who created evil. I remain convinced that it was God who created evil. God has his purposes and intents and motivations which are completely unknown to man. The LORD says “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” I suspect that God created evil to (1) ultimately bring about God’s purposes and (2) manifest opposition in all things, thus proving that opposites are complementary.
How can you create something that literally doesn’t exist?
There’s God’s creation of things from nothing. What are you referring to which is (so-called) “literally non-existent”?
As I attempted to make plain and clear and simple, I don’t accept the presupposition or axiom or fact of either God’s absence or the absence of God. One of the fundamental aspects of God is that God is omnipresent. (Another fundamental aspect of God is that God is eternal.)
This must be your own personal belief, in which case I say: have at it, knock yourself out!
It's your own mind and spirit, and you can fertilize them with whatever best promotes growth and flourishing. I sincerely wish you the best in your own spiritual and personal growth.
On the other hand, the Abrahamic religions do in fact state that God created Lucifer, who was also, later, referred to as Satan, the very personification of evil.
To wit:
1. God created everything, which includes angels and demons (Colossians 1: 15-16).
2. Satan is an angel who is subordinate to God (Job 1: 6-7).
3. Some angels sinned and are doomed for eternal destruction (1 John 3: 8; 2 Peter 2: 4; Jude 6). If some angels sinned, then they were created with a potential to sin i.e. they had the free will to sin.
4.a. "Behold I set forth in your sight this day a blessing and a curse: A blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you this day: A curse, if you obey not the commandments of the Lord your. God, but revolt from the way which now I shew you, and walk after strange gods which you know not." (Deuteronomy 11:26-28)
4.b. God gave his creations free will (presumably, he created the capacity first, then distributed it): In the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve the power to choose. He placed before them the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and gave them the choice to obey or disobey (Genesis 2:16-17).
These passages preach that God created Satan and his demons originally as good beings. But Satan and some of his fellow angels sinned against God and are in the business of enabling mankind’s rebellion and disobedience against God.
To be precise, God did not create an evil Satan. God created a good angel, who used his free will to reject God and become evil. But God created that free will, and God knows all things, therefore because he created Satan with the capacity for Satan to become evil, while knowing full well that by creating Satan and creating the capacity for evil the outcome was assured. It thus follows that since God created everything, everything includes evil. God created all with free will even those whom God knew would choose to do evil (it remains for us to speculate whether God did this just so he could make a point of demonstrating how insanely wicked he is?)
Things take an even wilder twist towards the perverted when we realise that Jesus and Satan are ... brothers?!
Viz ...
1. God created everything, which includes angels and demons (Colossians 1: 15-16).
2. Satan is an angel who is subordinate to God (Job 1: 6-7).
3. Jesus is the Son of God. In the book of Job 1:6; 2:1 it seems that the Sons of God are angels, both good and bad. God speaks to Satan who was among them. The context does not necessitate the position that the Sons of God were only the wicked angels. Later in the book, Job 38:7, it says the Sons of God shouted for joy. This seems to be a reference to the good angels.
The remaining occurrences of the formulation Sons of God are all in the New Testament and they are speaking of the good people, the godly, who have trusted in God.
So, the term Sons of God has two basic meanings. It refers to the angels, both good and bad, in the Old Testament. But in the New Testament, the phrase refers to believers.
Genesis 6:2
... that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
Genesis 6:4
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Job 38:7
When the morning stars sang together
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Job 1:6
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.
Job 2:1
Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord.
So, Jesus is the Son of God, the angels, both good and bad are the Sons of God, Satan was created a good angel and named Lucifer, but in being an angel, he is therefore the Son of God. Two sons of the same father are brothers, so Lucifer was Jesus' old man's other son, i.e. brother. Q.E.D.
Like you said.
This must be your own personal belief, in which case I say: have at it, knock yourself out!
It's your own mind and spirit, and you can fertilize them with whatever best promotes growth and flourishing. I sincerely wish you the best in your own spiritual and personal growth.
Thank you! I'm assuming your good wishes are sincere - of course they are. You've repeated my own, though, which perhaps means you consider my words and the spirit with which I expressed them as sufficiently charitable and hence you felt it unnecessary to craft your own. In that case, thank you again also for the compliment!
"This must be your own personal belief ..."
No, it is definitely not my personal belief - not in the slightest. As I stated at the beginning, these are central tenets of the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and at least as far as the passages I quoted from the Old Testament are concerned, they belong to all three religions.
I adhere to none of those faiths, and as a matter of fact, I find them all fundamentally loathsome. What is more, the God (Yahweh) they are constructed around and whom it is decreed adherents worship to be a comically repulsive character. I also confess that I derive a perverse delight in looking and finding contradictions and absurdities, but also the down-right moral degeneracy in those texts. It's a weakness of mine, I suppose.
Just chiming in with a vouch: DoG is a good and sincere man.
“Evil is just the absence of God.” How can this be so when God acknowledges here — “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7) — that evil is created by God. The same Hebrew word for “evil” here used by Isaiah is also used when describing the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of the evil and the knowledge of the good. It seems perfectly plain and clear and simple and straightforward to me that evil preexisted the creation of man and man’s agency (colloquially known as “free will”).
It seems to boil down to the question “Why would an eternal and omniscient and omnipresent and omnipotent Supreme Being create evil?” Even if we decide that evil has its origin in the devil, a fallen angel who had authority in the Presence of God, this angel is a created being. And God, utilizing God’s foreknowledge, knew that this angel would choose evil. Therefore, evil must have existed even before this angel’s fall.
Assuming God did create evil, it was to give us free will.
❤️ Yes. Which says something about just how important free will is!!
The agency of man — colloquially known as man’s “free will” — is among the greatest of God’s gracious and good gifts.
That makes sense. I simply hope that I can exercise the necessary faith/trust in Christ Jesus to utilize this free will to always do good, to fear God, to do my duty to God, to please God. This is what it means to be Christ-like to me “He who sent Me is with Me. He has not left Me alone, because I always do what pleases Him.”
Amen brother. AMEN.
"Evil doesn't exist, only the absence of God exists."
Is God present or absent in that rock at the bottom of the fish pond? If God is absent, does that mean that evil (by your definition, the absence of God) is present at the bottom of the pond and the rock is the source of it? If, on the other hand, God deems it important enough that he should be there in that rock at the bottom of the pond, then it would stand to reason that God would be present with and for all human activities, which are arguably of considerably more consequence than a rock at the bottom of a pond. If God is present everywhere and at all times, which seems the logical consequence of the foregoing argument, and evil is done, what is God doing to foment or prevent it? If God is not inciting evil, then why does he not prevent it? If God is unwilling to prevent it, is he not evil? If God is not able to prevent it, perhaps because he does not have such power, is he not ungodly, or is he not godlike? In which case, what good is there in worshiping God who is ungodly (as in evil) or not actually godlike (as in powerful enough to prevent evil) at all?
"It's not rocket science."
Indeed, it certainly isn't. Rocket science - ballistics - is at least intelligible, and makes clear, unambiguously logical sense.
You must be a Buddhist. Evil exists in incarnate form on earth. I wrote an article touching on this issue. https://open.substack.com/pub/edsharrow/p/human-but-not-a-child-of-god?r=xmzgz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
What led you to say I'm a buddhist?
Your opening statement denying the existence of evil, stating that only the "absence of God exists". This is a key Buddhist philosophy. As the Shingon Buddhist Master Kukai explained: An actual Buddha (one who has achieved Yoga or unity with God) does not teach. A Buddha sees no differentiation between opposites such as good and evil and thus will not state one course of action preferrable to another. See "On the Differences between the Exoteric and Esoteric Teaching" by Kukai.
Interesting. I obviously have little knowledge of buddhist philosophy, probably from my lack of interest.
Thanks, my goal of learning something new every day is now achieved.
All that to say, there's plenty of similarities between faiths around the world, looks like we found another one.
Two thousand years, Paul wrote to the Ephesians, "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." I believe that. The half of the population that lean toward wickedness behave very much as if they are directed by the rulers of the darkness of this world. Too much so to be coincidental.
It would make sense for any Devil to make use even of so-called "good intentions." (See the communists for an excellent example!)
In order to appreciate life in this way you have to be able to tear yourself away from your phone for two minutes. Everyone has left the real world for the artificial reality of social media and the Internet. There's hardly anyone with their consciousness in reality. I don't own a phone. It's lonely in reality.
I am moving away from phone Reality™ more and more every day.
Reality is the only place you actually have power and can effect change. Good for you! 💪
Drats! Then they are different realities we're concurrently occupying, it seems.
Besides the power to choose between the carrot or the tin of sardines for my lunch, I really don't have any significant power in this one. The government has LRADs and F-18 Rhino airframe multi-role fighter aircraft. I don't pay them income taxes any longer, by which collectively the population could have crippled the government and gotten it to obey us, but everyone else around here diligently pays their taxes, so that kind of negates me and all my efforts.
I'm surprised that you weren't thrown in jail. I know of a couple of other people who tried that and ended up behind bars.
That may still happen, and I'm certainly not confident I'll stay out of jail for the rest of my days. But the reason I don't pay (income) taxes, property taxes, etc., is that I walked away from paid work four years ago, and haven't earned any income as a result, when it finally, fully dawned on me with COVID-19 what our reality truly is. This was in response to the way we were cruelly, brutally abused by government, with worse to come. I already detested government whom I believed to be not only unnecessary, but criminal. Since 2020 and forward, I will no longer submit to them, and certainly not by passively going along just so that I can keep a certain lifestyle. I don't own any property (spoiler alert: neither does anyone else while government has power to confiscate, and the laws empower them to do so) I wasn't wealthy then, and I'm a heck of a lot poorer now, but I am surviving.
I wish you all the best!
Deb, I haven't had a phone for over four years! You are not alone! I'm there in reality with you! (but I can't guarantee you'd like me better than solitude ...)
Even when I did have one, it was always a simple feature phone - only for making and receiving calls and SMS, and for clumsily taking simple notes.
Just saw a story about a small farm in Michigan getting raided and $90k worth of raw butter taken away...dumb ass goverment "inspectors" who wouldn't know what was healthy if it hit them in the face standing there "just doing their job." That's evil! Vapes are legal but oh no that raw butter filled with nutrients is so dangerous.
Insane and evil. It has to end.
Great thoughts here. Hanlon's Razor (like Occam's) is a great corrective but it's not a universal law. Nor are parsimonious explanations the most likely to be true. In viewing history, people love to attribute malevolence to (say) the British Empire and point to the Bengal Famine or the casualties at the Somme, but much must be laid at the door of poor communications and planning. The 'Cock Up' Theory of History is more plausible (and more morally hygeinic than the 'Evil Bastards Theory of History. But you're right to draw attention to the fact that bastards exist and they are particularly motivated to seek power and cling to it.
I've just finished Anne Applebaum's 'Autocracy Inc.' and she points this out with chilling examples. The stolen elections in Venezuela and the political violence against women in Iran drive this home.
Agreed on all counts. Sometimes it is the simple explanation; sometimes it is the complex one. Sometimes it is evil; sometimes it is stupidity or incompetence.
So this raises another question—one which I ought to have foreseen while writing, and which is not being posed by multiple commenters: what is the definition of evil?
For the second time today, I'll proffer the following two examples of the most thorough wickedness to have ever been visited upon earth, but that are arguably being put in the shade by the Israeli government, and it's supporters across the world, in Gaza as I write: 1. the Harrying of the North of 1069-1070 by the Catholic King William the Conqueror of England against the Roman and Celtic Christian Anglo-Saxon populations in the counties of Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, and Cumberland, and 2. the Albigensian Crusade of 1209-1229 by the Catholic Church and the French monarchy against the Cathar Christian sect. Both these examples of evil from the past, and of Israel in the present, were committed by God-fearing people of Abrahamic religions.
So-called “Christians” committing murder in order to please God ranks right up there as the most evil and blasphemous actions. Are these murderers really “God fearing”?! I’m dubious. To fear God is to hate evil. How can a person both hate evil and DO evil?! It makes no sense. It’s worse than hypocrisy. It’s rank self deception. I think that some people absolutely love lying to themselves about themselves and their intentions & motivations. Absolutely despicable. Excellent examples by the way.
The problem with using Hanlon’s razor is that it is supposed to be used as rule of thumb, not a law. But, the very first word, “never” has made it a law. Using absolutes like always and never can take you down the wrong path. Make up your own razor to counter Hanlon’s; “Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice.” We should all know what we get when we combine stupidity AND malice. Government.
well said.
And yeah, that's all I really wanted, was a counter to Hanlon's…
Yes there is Evil. There was Evil in the Garden of Eden. There was Evil trying to tempt Jesus in the desert, Satan wanting to sift Peter like wheat. There was Evil on Epstein’s island. There was Evil attacking Israel on October 7. There is Evil trying to persuade children that their gender is mutable, and that they should undergo permanently altering treatments. If we would name Evil for what it is, and quit pretending it’s a matter of good intentions, we would avoid a lot of problems.
Yeah, ultimately evil has to be about outcomes. If we make it about intentions, then very little would be classifiable as truly "evil."
Wow. That is just about precisely what I believe and literally put a couple of hours in today on this exact concept
Starfire Codes refers to that as rhizomatic consciousness.
We don’t GO anywhere. This time He comes to us. Just hold on; Hes already shown you what its going to be like. Thank God you can still have visions of truth. Keep them and hold on!! Until youre experiencing them. This is not, NOT, metaphorical!