Good vs Bad vs Evil

 

 

While Bad Can Not Be Avoided

Evil Can Be

 

Humankind have slaughtered one another over "good vs evil" for millennia.  Lacking a scientific explanation every negative thing that happened was because someone somewhere somehow had offended a deity or perhaps it was an evil spirit, attracted to the secret sins of the populace.   We now understand that disasters caused by nature may be 'bad' but are not 'evil.'    Rather like God, such a disaster just is.   Bad simply exists.

  

The difference between 'bad' and 'evil' is a matter of motive.  For evil to exist there has to be someone who knows it is wrong and still wants it.   Organized religion is largely concerned with controlling the direction of the faithful overall and therefore tends to enforce arbitrary standards of dress and behavior in order to enforce their will on the populace.  It doesn't help that we still have people enslaved to religious cults preaching the belief that everything bad that happens is because their loving God is punishing someone somewhere. 

 

Rather than focusing on "sin" I choose the Gnostic approach that describes sin as "mistakes born out of ignorance."  We all make mistakes.  The goal is to LEARN from those mistakes and NOT repeat them.  It is for this reason that I do not believe in confession and absolution.  If I do something I know is wrong and I feel badly about it, then I just don't do it again.  If I have every intention of committing that sin again -- and again -- then it is totally hypocritical of me to confess and receive absolution. 

 

All crimes are sins, but not all sins are crimes.  The Law which defines temporal legal standards is the absolute LOWEST standard for human behavior.   The law should be geared toward maintaining an orderly safe society in which all persons are treated equally.   Religion unfortunately intrudes on the law turning many human choices into criminal acts.  Consider laws against per-marital sex and out-of-wedlock births, against  inter-racial and same sex marriage, against contraception and abortion -- for some reason religions are terribly focused on private sexual matters that have no bearing on the legal safety standards. 

 

Perhaps this endless focus on humanity's most powerful urge -- procreation and sexual gratification -- is another fruitless attempt at religious control.  Modern sexual standards stress relationships between consenting adults ONLY.   For those who find such activities "an abomination against God" I appeal to their faith in God.   We were given free will by God in order to make (we hope) the "right choices."   Not much point if the law ends access to 50% of our options. 

 

Rather than outlawing our moral choices, religion should focus on making sin unnecessary.  People who have enough do not need to steal.   Lowering societal stress could go a long way to ending murder.   Addictions are a societal problem and sadly, will always be with us.  Society needs to learn that you can not regulate something that is already illegal.  Better to legalize it all and regulate it.  We will not end the death toll from street drugs laced with Fentanyl until we can legally sort pure drug from adulterated product.  Non-physical addictions like for gambling and shopping are harder to treat, but people who have enough and are not stressed to survive are less likely to need the little dopamine hits one gets from giving in to one's urges. 

 

Hate abortion?  Jesus would want us to end the need before we end the option.  We need age-appropriate comprehensive sex education starting in Kindergarten.  We need universally available access to contraception, to Plan B and to drug-based abortions in very early pregnancy.  This has been done in the Netherlands to great effect -- low teen pregnancy rates and fewer abortions.  If no one has to abort for social, financial or educational reasons, that will leave only those rare fetal tragedies which will always be bad, but never evil.