This course will cover a very old idea that has lost none of its relevance in modern times. The problem of evil is usually understood to be first and foremost a theological matter - how can a good God permit terrible things to happen? Doesn't the existence of evil demonstrate that God does not exist? - but the discussion of evil has in fact taken many forms. This course will examine evil, and its existence (or otherwise), from multiple angles - as a philosophical definition, as a problem for political systems, as a construction of man, and as an aesthetic and psychological concern. In a rational world, what place is there for evil? Why do we persist in using the word even when our metaphysical or religious frameworks for invoking it no longer exist? Philosophers included in the course: Arendt, Augustine, Bataille, Kant, Leibniz, Midgley, Nietzsche, Plantinga, Plotinus, de Sade
The problem of evil is usually understood to be first and foremost a theological matter - how can a good God permit terrible things to happen?
https://biblehub.com/isaiah/45-7.htm
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil.
It is impossible to know good without knowing evil and vice versa. Therefore, in the logical universe God created, evil and good are necessary for the purpose of testing our ability to know the difference during our lifetimes and our ability to make the distinction and choose correctly will be rewarded in the afterlife, depending on our ability to observe the Ten Commandments if we are Jews or the Noahide laws if we are gentiles.
Westerners still think their religion is Christianity.
Unfortunately, Christianity offends against the Ten Commandments and the Seven Noahide laws forbidding idolatry and blasphemy.
Idolatry is defined as the worship of anything that is not God.
Jesus was a man and it is generally agreed by those claiming to believe in God that Man is a creation of God. The worship of a man that according to the Christian narrative was convicted of blasphemy makes Christians guilty of idolatry and blasphemy.
Interestingly, no Jew has ever seen fit to point this out to Christians in nearly 1700 years of Christian history. Similarly, no Muslim has seen fit to point this out to Christians in 1400 years of Muslim history.
Jews in their unprincipled cowardice have the excuse of being a traditionally persecuted ancientn minority but what excuse do Muslims have for disobeying quran.com/18/4?
If Jews and Muslims really believed in God and understood that their religious obligation is to challenge the idolatry of Christianity, they would have called out the idolatry of Christianity the moment it became safe to do so. If Jews in America were mindful of their duty to challenge idolatry, they would have asked the Pope, Archbishop of Canterbury and/or the British monarch how Christianity is not idolatry and how Jesus is God as soon as the First Amendment was passed in 1791, but they did not.
European Jews mindful of their religious duty to challenge Christian idolatry would have done the same in 1953 when the European Convention of Human Rights came into force. Article 10 protects the freedom of expression of non-Christians in Europe to express the view that the Trinity is idolatry compounded by blasphemy. Were they to ask the questions without receiving a satisfactory or intelligible answer from the Pope, Archbishop of Canterbury and/or British monarch on how Christianity is not idolatry or how Jesus is God, they would be entitled to form their conclusions and publicise them.
Do Westerners have a religion to speak of?
The purpose of religion is to support marriage and the purpose of marriage is legitimate children. The purpose of legitimate children is of course eugenic.
If most Westerners are not confirmed Christians, can any Western country be said to be a Christian country?
The Trinity is such a bizarre concept which not even the Pope, Archbishop of Canterbury or British monarch can explain how and why an executed blasphemer is co-equal, co-substantial and co-eternal with the Abrahamic God even if advanced notice of the question were given. Pushed into a corner, they would only say that it was one of the Mysteries of God.
"The Judeo-Christian heritage of the West" is a form of words intended to express a Post-Christian identity. Before this Post-WW2 formulation, Christendom was used to express European identity - Christendom after all just meant a Europe of Christian kingdoms.
When did this term begin to slip into obsolescence and desuetude?
Was it after the American Revolution, which was a slap in the face of the British monarch of the time George III?
Was not the French Revolution infamous for its regicide of Louis XVI and his wife?
After WW1, Germany became a republic in 1918.
During the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Russian revolutionaries executed their entire royal family.
What absolute monarch would willingly become a constitutional monarch without having first understood that the price of not submitting to becoming a constitutional monarch was regicide?
Since 1918, Continental Europe ceased to be a continent of Christian kingdoms.
If Christianity had any purpose at all, it was to give divine support to monarchs who would otherwise be mere warlords.
If 21st century Westerners have a moral system at all, it is liberalism because that remains the official political orthodoxy of the West. Liberal values trump the extinct social conservatism of the West, also known as its "Judeo-Christian heritage".
When people talk of their heritage, they implicitly mean that it is a spent force. It usually means that the person who acquired it and used it is now deceased and left it to the next generation who do not quite know what to do with it.
What is this so-called heritage but social conservatism, and what is social conservatism but patriarchy?
Patriarchy is a society prioritising the preferences of married parents wanting to properly parent their legitimate offspring. Its corollary is matriarchy, a society prioritising the preferences of unmarried parents who casually conceived and parented their illegitimate offspring, by definition degenerate and morally corrupt.
What is moral corruption but hypocrisy and what is hypocrisy but cowardice and lies leading to evil and suffering?
I propose that the philosophical definition of evil be "the inflicting of unnecessary suffering".
Evil can be inflicted by humans intentionally, recklessly or negligently. Obviously, it is worse to inflict suffering on someone with the intention of doing so, but negligently causing someone unnecessary suffering causes the same amount of pain.
Were a motorist to run someone over with a car while speeding 10 miles over the speed limit, would it make any difference to the victim's actual injuries whether it was done intentionally, recklessly or negligently?
Evil "as a problem of political systems" can be measured by listing known political systems eg monarchy v republic, theocracy v secular political ideologies. Neither Judaism nor Islam support monarchy, but Christianity was adopted by Roman Empire to support the divine right of kings.
It was Gibbon's view that the decline and fall of the Roman Empire can be attributed to Christianity. Rome began as a republic who hated kings but degenerated into a monarchy emperor worship.
If one of the features of being the best religion is the one having the most powerful divinity, then the best religion must be an Abrahamic faith. After all, it is universally agreed that the Abrahamic God is the most powerful being conceivable being supreme, unique, omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly moral.
If there have only been two divine revelations to humanity by the Abrahamic God ie the Torah and Koran, then the one to choose is the one with the widest application to the largest group of humanity ie gentiles and also the one that has the less onerous restrictions and fewer punishments.
The Koran is the one without 36 capital offences and hardly mentions the the death penalty.
The choice is obvious unless one has had one's reason interfered with by Islamophobia, the Deadly Sin of Pride or any of the other Deadly Sins caused by a defect of character that makes one incapable of submitting to Truth, Logic and Morality.
Westerners still think their religion is Christianity. If they have a moral system at all, it is liberalism because that remains the official political orthodoxy of the West. Liberal values trump the extinct social conservatism of the West, its "Judeo-Christian heritage".
What does Nina Power mean when she says evil is a "construction of man"? Hamlet the atheist, existentialist and nihilist said, "Nothing is good or evil, only thinking makes it so". Is this also her view? If so, she must also be an atheist and nihilist.
"In a rational world, what place is there for evil?"
In asking this question, is she not saying evil people are irrational?
Or is she saying evil people do not exist?
If the latter, isn't she a nihilist for denying the existence of evil and/or evil people?
"Why do we persist in using the word even when our metaphysical or religious frameworks for invoking it no longer exist?" she asks.
Is she saying atheists have no right to accuse anyone of evil because their definition of evil is in theory no better than the supposedly evil people they condemn?
If so, then she must be saying that God - the Hypothetical Supreme Authority - is therefore necessary to moral reasoning whether God exists and whether or not we believe in His actual existence.
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