This erudite Guardian article by John Gray presents a detailed analysis of evil in the modern world, and links this to religious and secular thought. Here are a couple of quotes: “There are some who think the very idea of evil is an obsolete relic of religion. For most secular thinkers, what has been defined as evil in the past is the expression of social ills that can in principle be remedied. But these same thinkers very often invoke evil forces to account for humankind’s failure to advance. The secularisation of the modern moral vocabulary that many believed was under way has not occurred: public discourse about good and evil continues to be rooted in religion.” “The efforts of believers to explain why God permits abominable suffering and injustice have produced nothing that is convincing; but at least believers have admitted that the ways of the Deity are mysterious. … In contrast, when secular liberals try to account for evil in rational terms, the result is a more primitive version of Manichean myth.* When humankind proves resistant to improvement, it is because forces of darkness – wicked priests, demagogic politicians, predatory corporations and the like – are working to thwart the universal struggle for freedom and enlightenment. There is a lesson here. Sooner or later anyone who believes in innate human goodness is bound to reinvent the idea of evil in a cruder form. Aiming to exorcise evil from the modern mind, secular liberals have ended up constructing another version of demonology, in which anything that stands out against what is believed to be the rational course of human development is anathematised.” * A dualistic view of the world, in which good and evil are separate forces that have coexisted since the beginning of time. theguardian/news/2014/oct/21/-sp-the-truth-about-evil-john-gray
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 08:53:40 +0000
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