What is Evil?
A few weeks ago, we started discussing explanations for the co-existence of a good God and the existence of evil. However, we didn’t discuss exactly what we mean by the term evil. There are different kinds of evil, natural evil and moral evil, for example. For useful discussion, we should make sure we’re on the same page…so here goes:
Though it is very real, evil does not have an existence of its own.
What does this mean? It sounds like a contradictory statement (It’s real but doesn’t exist) or maybe the teachings of an Eastern or New Age religion. The the idea here is not that evil is an illusion. Christianity teaches that it is very real. However, rather than an entity that exists on its own, evil is the absence of something rather than a ‘thing’ itself.
As an example…Does cold exist? Cold is a word created to describe a situation involving the absence of heat. It does not have an existence in itself, only in relation to a lack of heat energy. Similarly, darkness is an absence of light, but does not exist as a created substance. Light consists of a complex mix of particles and waves, but darkness has no substance and can only occur in relation to light…it is the absence of light.
In the same way, evil exists as the corruption of something else that already exists. Dr. Ron Rhodes describes evil as “the absence or privation of something good.” It is not a ‘thing’ in itself. This begs the question…if evil is the absence of good, where does goodness come from?
Moral and Natural Evil
There are two types of evil: moral evil and natural evil.
Moral evil is evil committed by free moral agents and includes crime, cruelty, class struggles, discrimination, slavery, genocide, and other injustices.
Natural evil involves things that ‘just happen’. Moral agents are not responsible for natural evil such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and other natural destructive events. Random events like a moose running onto the road in front of your car or contracting a disease would also fall into this category.
Ultimate Standard of Good
The evils we just discussed exist as a corruption of good. They are a corruption of morals, values, human rights, and nature. They do not exist in of themselves. For something to be called ‘evil’, there must be an ultimate good or moral standard to compare it with. Without a standard for comparison, how could we call anything evil?
If there was no such thing as light, there would be no darkness. If one could not point to the way things ought to be, then there would be no reason to think that the present situation wasn’t already ‘as it was supposed to be’ in the first place. Similarly, in order to have evil, there has to be a standard of good…which is how things are supposed to be.
Where does this ultimate standard come from? Who determines this state of ‘how things are supposed to be?’ If there is such a state, and I believe there is, it has to come from a higher authority than humanity…which points to God. This blog so far has shown that the best evidence points toward the Christian God.
If the standard for good was created by humans, it would be subject to change and not binding…and evil would be a changeable and subjective idea…dependent on the definition of good and changing as the human-generated definition of good changed. The only way for this to work is if morality is subjective and the most horrendous acts you can imagine…are not objectively evil or wrong. We’ve talked a lot about objective morality in former posts. A quick look at history’s murderous dictators, torturers and serial killers will convince most people that objective good and evil, along with objective morality, does exist.
I hope this either sheds some light on evil…or confuses you enough that you check out other apologetics resources that can explain things better and in more depth!
Next time we’ll discuss how the most common argument against the existence of God…the argument that says the co-existence of God and the existence of evil doesn’t make sense…was what convinced a well known literary and scholarly genius that God DOES exist.
Until next time.
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