Good and Evil
GOOD AND EVIL This matter has been treated in depth in the Summa Theologica by Saint Thomas Aquinas. The Summa is an ancient yet timeless treatise, of which contemporary translations of the complete and shortened versions are readily available, concerning the purpose of human existence.
The words: good, true and beautiful are synonyms having respectively the antonyms: evil or bad, false and ugly. The following is a modern philosophical essay on this, arguably the most important of subjects: Why we are here. First, the nature of what constitutes a human being and the manner in which a solitary human being interacts with other human beings and ceases to be alone needs explication. There is a dualism consisting of man's individuality - how he relates to him or her self and his or her societal relationship to others. The relationship of a human being to him or her self has a reflexive quality. The relationship of an individual to society, of which one is a part, has a reciprocal quality.
A reasonable hypothesis is that a human being consists of a material body and an immaterial soul or spirit. Evolutionary biologists - if that is the correct term - have evidence from mitochrondrial DNA that man has two primitive ancestors, one identifiable with the female principle and the other, the male principle, each originating from Africa. It would be a conjectural extrapolation to call them respectively, Eve and Adam. Since then, the human population has increased to about seven thousand million with a nett increase of one or two new human beings per second, despite disease, accident, war and artificial fertility control.
There is an immediate indispensable primary purpose for man's existence on Earth. That is to produce subjects - more human beings. This generally requires man to expend much energy to produce objects as an intermediary prior to the production of subjects. In concrete terms, objects are everything that man produces or is producing - food, clothing, building materials et c. as well as every idea and invention that promotes the progress of civilization - everything required for every human being to work towards living a contented life of moderation.
The soul is the direct creation of the creator of the universe - God. The body comes from the parents going back through generations. God has created man, soul and ultimately man's body, in his own image. Thus if we could see God, which is the blessing that the justified souls in heaven are able to do, then we would see a likeness of ourselves in God. There is a conjugacy of images. The proper place to commence new human life is the family, that is the natural unit of society. Each child has the natural right to be conceived exclusively from his or her two parents and born from his or her mother. The soul comes into being at conception, from which instant a new human being is now in the process of reaching maturity, followed by a gradual decline and then death. The age of the human being is measured from birth. The Biblical span of human life is given as six hundred and thirteen thousand and six hundred and twenty hours average, so there is no time to squander since time belongs to God who will demand an account from each human being of how every hour had been used. At death, the body dies, but the soul continues and will live for ever. Time wasting dissipative activities that are neither restful nor recreational but leave the person tense and nervous have therefore got to be avoided. Time is life and is much more valuable than money.
The purpose of having as many human being on Earth, that can reasonably accommodated at any one time, is for each human being to attain to Eternal Life. If, for a multiplicity of reasons, fewer human beings come into existence than could have done, then the purpose which is to give glory to God will have been only partially fulfilled. The previous statement, that God could fail to accomplish his divine will, might not be true since only God knows how many human beings he wills should come into existence during the lifetime of this planet Earth and he can make this absolute population come about, for he as the author of time, could never be pressed for time. There is much disagreement about how large the Earth's population should be and on the maximum population that could live on the Earth at any one time. They who assert that the Earth is overpopulated are calling into question their own right to exist.
Every human being is unique. This means that there never will be two or more human beings that are indistinguishable from one another, where the comparison is being made over the total human population counted over the whole of time. Even identical twins have differences that diverge with time as they mature with age.
The essay is based on the most simple of premises, that each person has been created for perfect happiness.
Perfect happiness has to at least satisfy the following four attributes.
The happiness that has been attained must be deserved in due equivalent measure. That is happiness has to be consistent with justice.
Perfect happiness cannot last for any finite time however measured and however large - that is happiness needs to last forever or remain in eternity.
Perfect happiness cannot be limited to one or to even several different places or have any finite space dimension but extend infinitely to and throughout the universe or if such exists, a multiverse.
In the definition of perfection of happiness, in which there is no defect, happiness has to be perfect in every aspect or have an infinite perfection in every one of an infinitude of dimensions.
If any or some or all of the above attributes are violated, then that is an evil.
To say that no trace of unhappiness can co-exist within in the state of perfect happiness is perfectly true but philosophically redundant. This is mentioned for the sake of clarity.
This perfect happiness will be found only in Heaven, a place but primarily a state where there is peace, joy and rest from travail. There can be no loneliness in Heaven, because love [charity] is brought to perfection. Each soul in Heaven will receive from God the appropriate measure of happiness according to their greater or lesser capacity, as the just reward for their good works in this life.
Boredom is a form of suffering and is therefore an evil. In the state of perfect happiness in Heaven, there can be no psychological distress, no bodily illness and no pain, for these are all evils.
This state of being can only to be reached primarily through suffering in this world - that is the willing acceptance of what unavoidably befalls each of us. The state of perfect happiness is also to be attained through what is termed by theologians: " Good Works " and prayer which is another name for communication with the divine deity, God who is to be discovered in the depths of the subconscious. It is a paradox that patient acceptance of everything that happens to us, the suffering that we cannot change, that God sends, is the most certain route to perfect happiness.
Patience, a moral virtue, is a form of another moral virtue, humility, the latter being an absolutely indispensable quality for the attainment of happiness. True happiness in this world may be described by the word " contentment " where often there is no pleasure involved what ever. Pleasures, provided that they are lawful, have the purpose of directing us to a desire for God.
A cause of suffering for human beings could be the imperfection of the material world and of course the material body. This may have been the intention of the creator, so that every suffering patiently endured would make that person deserving of a greater happiness after death, but certainly after the " Last Day " after which all things, including the now living human body, will be made [by the creator] perfect in Heaven. Much of the suffering - temporal evil - in this world results from the vissicitudes of life that come from life's rough stony path. True religion is a good insurance policy that a human being will not be destroyed spiritually by the difficulties and sufferings they will encounter in life, but rather that the hardships in their progress through life will be tempered. It is on the Last Day that Christ will come from Heaven in magnificent splendour to judge the nations. The most secret thoughts, words, actions and motivations or intentions of every individual who has ever lived will become known to everyone. This is the General Judgement. When a human being dies, their soul is then judged by Christ and will be assigned its appropriate place in Eternity. This is called the Particular Judgement.
The Earth and the rest of the Universe exist because God has created the Universe to reflect his own glory. God has amongst other attributes these: He is pure spirit and exists everywhere in the Universe and throughout the exterior of the Universe, if such exists. He exists uncreated of himself from eternity. He is infinitely good. He is infinitely intelligent. God has all knowledge. He is infinitely powerful. He is infinitely wise. He is infinitely courteous for he does not control us but leaves us free, respecting our decisions. God is the absolute truth for God cannot deceive and God cannot be deceived. God is absolutely just. God is infinitely merciful. The attributes of God above, are mutually dependent.
The words " good " and " evil " are not all together self-evident in their meaning but require an explicit explanation. There is much that is good and much that is evil in this world. Theologians call the good on this Earth " temporal good ". Eternal good and eternal evil are the two final states after death and they are mutually exclusive states. Eternal good is the absolute absence of eternal evil and eternal evil is the absolute absence of eternal good. God has created us for perfect happiness to be with him, ultimately in Heaven for ever, after we die. " Good " is that which promotes the attainment of this goal which is eternal union with the creator God. In contrast, " evil " delays, frustrates or can even destroy the possibility of the soul from ever reaching the purpose [Heaven] for which that soul has been created. Separation of a soul from God forever would be an infinite evil. The greatest suffering of lost souls is the pain of loss. The infinite good is to gaze on the face of God in eternity - called by theologians, the beatific vision. Evil may arise from the soul itself, or from others or from the environment. Moral evil is the only objective harm. Natural disasters - earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts et c. cause much suffering but only the evil of refusing the infinite good, which is God really deserves to be called " evil ". The former, seen from God's viewpoint must be regarded as temporary inconveniences. Moreover, God has given mankind the intelligence and imagination to prevent the worst effects of natural disasters from causing loss of life and destruction of property. War is very much a man-made disaster that is completely preventable using God's help. No one ever chooses that which appears to him or her as evil, but sometimes prefers evil where this is disguised as good. Evil seen in its true light is extremely unattractive. Human beings are drawn inexorably towards the good, real or apparent. Every other inferior loyalty should be subsumed into a sovereign supreme loyalty to God. Thus terrorism, either private or state sponsored, is always an evil. Moral evil always has pride, the antithesis of humility, as the antecedant. The pride or hubris mentioned here should not be confused with " pride " in one's appearance and grooming, which is the virtue of showing respect for one's self, for the occasion and for others.
Living " the moral life " would never be easy. The " E " word - that is Emotion often interferes either constructively or destructively in the quest to live " the good or moral life " . Many people have " good " genes giving them a flying start but poverty does not necessarily imply the adjunct of a poor mentality. Poverty, such that the basics of life are just too scarce, is an evil making " moral living " very difficult. At the other extreme, an excess of personal wealth might easily spiral towards [toward] corruption and consequent moral evil. As is said in the Bible: " Enough is enough. " - so generally, there is an optimum for personal wealth.
If none of the above is true then some other explanation is needed to account for human existence. The Universe could not have come into existence by itself. There appears to be no other reasonable explanation than the above in however many different ways this has been expressed. According to Occam's razor, a philosophical concept, the explanation requiring the least number of initial assumptions is the correct one. There has to be at least one assumption. In the above explanation for man's existence, there is the one starting or initial assumption - that each human being has in him or her the unquenchable desire for inexhaustible wellbeing or perfect happiness. Everyone knows that this is true.
In everyone's life there is from time to time a choice each individual has to make between good and evil. Such situations are innumerable, for example where a person in a position of trust as a treasurer in a corporation who handles large sums of money daily. By deciding on the good or right course of action, that soul is preparing well for what has been called " a happy death " - that is a good transition from this life to a life of perfect happiness in the next. The only true happiness or " good " on this Earth is " doing God's will ", that is following an upright conscience. Doing " the right thing " does not always give pleasure and on the contrary very often is quite disagreeable but certainly promotes happiness. In order to reach what has been called by theologians " the beatific vision " each soul needs God's help - this is the province of the theology of salvation in which Jesus Christ is absolutely central. In the theology of salvation, it is taught that Christ has divine nature and human nature all at once. This union of the nature of the infinite God and the nature of finite man is called by theologians " the hypostatic union " .
In regard to God's judgement of each soul, this occurs instantaneously at death. Then each soul will be rewarded or punished as appropriate. The actual state of the soul at death will determine the place the soul will occupy in eternity. Theologians say that a soul in " a state of grace " at death will go to Heaven. A soul that has in a very serious or grave matter offended the justice of God, with full knowledge and full consent, without repentance before or just prior to death will be consigned to Hell, where the body will also go on the Last Day. After death, no further change is possible in the state of the soul. This is now fixed for Eternity.
The perfect eschatalogical " good " is therefore the attainment of eternal happiness in Heaven, an irreversible state and an infinite good - the infinite good. By contrast, eschatalogical " evil " is the antithesis of this happiness and is described in one word - Hell, the other eternal and irreversible state and is definitively the infinite evil.
The Ten Commandments - Decalogue - in the Biblical Book of Exodus present a minimum code of moral conduct. The positive precepts are only implicit in the Decalogue and need to be made explicit in all their clarity. Good has been equated with beauty and truth. The temporal good in this context is the promotion of beautiful music, art, artifacts, architecture and environment for these all enhance the common good and give joy, another name for happiness. Temporal evil is characterized by a cult of ugliness, where by some unwritten " law " every building in the neighbourhood [neighborhood] has to be an eyesore and everyone is depressed by this.
Waste is an economic evil often brought about by allowing political expedients to take precedence over solidly established scientific principles or basing decisions on dubious science. The sequestration of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide in to the lower geological strata, thus treating carbon dioxide as a form of atmospheric pollution, could well be a case in point. That is an incurring of a totally uncalled for and unnecessary use of resources to support belief in an unproven scientific theory. Dubious science because many presumably reputable scientists assert that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause catastrophic heating of the Earth, causing the planet to become a little cooler than the planet Venus but many other equally reputable scientists believe the exact opposite, that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will all mostly be removed by the natural but mysterious process of photosynthesis. This means that carbon capture and storage is wrong in principle because of the above disagreement amongst scientists, since it has not been established with any certainty that this action is an efficient way of preventing the occurrence of a climatic change - planetary temperature increase, that might not be happening in any case. It is therefore a wasteful use of resources that unnecessarily increases the cost of electricity generation, this falling on the poorer members of society the most making them yet poorer. This is true irrespective of how carbon dioxide is increasing in the Earth's atmosphere. Geo-engineering designed to lower the average temperature of the Earth might just be another example of spiritual pride, that is hubris, again wasting the resources of the Earth.
Every form of mutilation of the body is an evil because it is defacing the image of God which is beautiful, especially in the countenance or human face. The voluntary subcutaneous injection of indelible inks and piercings is either a presumption of improving that which is already perfect - God's image - or it is a defacement of this image. Mutilation in the name of justice, such as marking prisoners, as above with identification numbers or punishment by amputation or emasculation are evils, for this denies human beings - even criminals or political prisoners - their human dignity. Female circumcision, correctly called genital mutilation is a prevailant evil perpetrated in the name of culture that urgently needs erradication. This particular form of mutilation diminishes or destroys the due happiness of the married state and so consequently is a great evil. Amputation for an exclusively therapeutic purpose and procedures for the correction of gross abnormalities is an entirely different matter.
The Bible mentions four sins, evils that are so heinous that direct divine retribution is called for. These are wilful murder, the sin of Sodom, oppression of the poor and defrauding labourers [laborers] of their wages. These are all more or less self explanatory. Abortion, with the exception of " Difficult Cases " can be recognised as a form of human sacrifice and is a great evil. Even in the difficult " save the mother or save the child cases " abortion cannot be described as being good. Every child, once conceived has the absolute right to see the light of day. This even applies to a child who is destined as an adult to carry out abortions. A mother who wants rid of her unborn child is only able to do this because the grandmother of the unborn child, in her day, did not want to get rid of her child. Family immolation, comparatively rare but still far too common a forensic event in this age, occurs where a husband or wife takes revenge, the presumed motive, by destroying the greatest blessing of marriage, their children. Apart from the consummate cruelty, this is an action of unbelievable stupidity. The commandment of the Decalogue fobidding murder implies that no life should be destroyed wantonly but all life is to be treated with due respect and in particular human life from conception until the natural end of life, after the allotted span.
In view of the above, explanations of the meaning of good and evil that deny the existence of an all powerful uncreated creator, that is atheism, have to be regarded as devoid of validity. Given that the above explanation is correct, then every form of practical atheism is to be regarded plainly as rediculous. The very fact of the cosmological constant is so precise in the " fined tuned Universe " is very remarkable, pointing to a statistical improbability that the universe came about by " chance " whatever that is. In any scientific explanation of the Universe's origin, it is proper to leave God out of it until well beyond the point where science has reached the stage of unknowability. Then perhaps, if the end of the road has been reached for science and further progress has become genuinely impossible, the existence of a creator God might by default, be the only explanation. There should be a partition between theology and science or in the words of the astrophysicist Georges Lemaitre, father of cosmology, a wall of separation should always exist between sacred theology and natural science.
If an all powerful creator did not exist, then not only is it very probable that we would not exist but the premise cited above could only be hypothetically fulfilled. An uncreated being having infinite power and infinite intellect is needed to create a human being and thence to create perfect happiness for that individual human being. The declaration so often made that God does not exist - period, constitutes a non-explanation for man's beginning and his or her final end.
The existence of an infinite number of universes only serves to support the view that everything has been created by an infinitely powerful being and does not in the least affect the above explanation for man's presence in this particular universe. In the Biblical book of Genesis there is written down that God rested on the seventh day. This implies that God is still creating out of nothing since there is a further succession of six working days after the Sabbath, even for God.
All of the foregoing explanation might of course be entirely false, but if that is the case, then any distinctly different " true " explanation must by Occam's philosophical razor principle have just one inital assumption for there cannot be fewer, as does the above explanation and yet still preserve the requirement that each person has an intrinsic need for happiness that has a perfection satisfying the four above minimum attributes. The true explanation would be unique. If such a simpler explanation could never be found, then practically such an explanation does not exist, and only the original explanation, presented above, for human existence on Earth remains, this being the true version. Facile or simplistic explanations that assert that perfect happiness is unattainble or that man has not been created to be perfectly happy - not in this world but in the next - must necessarily be false, for they deny the truth of the initial premise.
True or Perfect happiness in this world - temporal happiness - is having the reasonablly moral certainty that we are expeditiously working towards [toward] our salvation, right up to the end of our life, so that when we die - at a time and place and in a manner unknown to us - we will immediately, or after a time of purification, then enter Heaven.
Suicide is an evil because this action is an offence [offense], the theological term being " sin ", that violates the sovereignty of God who is the author of life and death and this would most certainly place salvation in jeopardy. Encouraging or assisting someone to commit suicide would be an evil thing to do.
People who have commited suicide - a tragedy - did so in order to escape what they found was unbearable unhappiness. Their fallacy is that they have assumed that the depression, previously called by the name melancholia, or mental anguish could never vanish and their suffering would be lifelong without hope of remission, whereas they might have found perfect happiness in later years, in the measure that can be found on Earth if only they had exercised the moral virtue of patient endurance or fortitude. Should someone be destined never to find relief from clinical depression throughout their life, this situation could never justify suicide or euthanasia.
The happiness of this world which is synonymous with pleasure, with the exception of the true happiness cited above, for seventy years average, even if not occasionally punctuated by periods of misery, does not qualify to be called perfect happiness. This has to be deferred to the next world. Any happiness here, in this world, is always unexpected and ever a transient.
Here it is useful to comment on the ancient Semitic writings that have been collected into one book - the [Holy] Bible. This book has never gone out of print ever since the invention of printing and many more or less reliable translations in almost every language spoken on the planet are available that contain a greater or lesser number of the original books. Extra books are included or excluded depending on which brand of Christianity is purveying a particular version, there being seventy-three books in total in one particular edition comprising forty-six books in the old dispensation and twenty-seven books in the new dispensation. Readers should beware, for the Bible is capable of interpretion in many distinctly different ways. It has been said that basing their lives on a particular understanding [interpretation] of the Bible, some have sought to establish a heavenly Jerusalem on Earth, only to be bitterly disappointed. Clearly then, the Bible needs an authoritative interpretation, if this Book of books is to be of any value other than just a work of world class literature. SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 14:02, 18 August 2012 (UTC) SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 15:10, 17 August 2012 (UTC)SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 12:14, 2 September 2012 (UTC)78.146.188.9 21:40, 4 September 2012 (UTC)87.113.154.173 13:11, 5 September 2012 (UTC)87.113.154.173 13:17, 5 September 2012 (UTC)SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 13:55, 8 September 2012 (UTC)SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 13:59, 8 September 2012 (UTC)SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 21:12, 10 September 2012 (UTC)SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 10:35, 17 September 2012 (UTC)SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 20:33, 18 September 2012 (UTC)SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 20:49, 18 September 2012 (UTC)SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 18:01, 27 September 2012 (UTC)SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 18:26, 27 September 2012 (UTC)SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 21:12, 5 October 2012 (UTC)SHAWWPG19410425 (talk) 11:24, 6 October 2012 (UTC)