Evil: Defining by Combating
...an prevail over them indefinitely. Of course, some people are smarter and stronger than others; but even the strongest can be brought down by others acting together (Hobbes). If people cannot prevail by their own strength, what hope do they have? Can people, for example, rely on the charity or good will of other people to help them? They definitely cannot due to the fourth and final fact. It is the fact of “limited altruism (Hobbes).” Even if people are not wholly selfish, they still care a lot about themselves; and they cannot simply assume that whenever their vital interest’s conflict with theirs, they will step aside and let them feast (Hobbes). When one puts these ideas together, a dark picture emerges. Everyone needs the same basic things, and there aren't enough of them to go around (Hobbes). Therefore, people will be in a kind of competition for them (Hobbes). But no-one has what it takes to prevail in this competition, and no-one, or almost no-one, will be willing to throw away the satisfaction of their needs in favor of others (Hobbes). The result, as Hobbes puts it, is a "constant state of war, of one with all." And it is a war no-one can win. The logical person who wants to survive will try to seize what they need and prepare to defend it from attack (Hobbes). But others will be doing the same thing. This is why evil must exist. Take everything away but the morality, and it becomes a luscious soil for deceit and violence to stem and prosper (Iron Goat). Hobbes isn’t just ranting. He pointed out that this is what actually happens when governments collapse, just like a civil insurrection. People begin desperately hoarding food, arming themselves, and locking out their neighbors (Hobbes). (What would you do if tomorrow morning you woke up to discover that because of some great catastrophe the government had collapsed so that there were no functioning laws, police, or courts?) Also, the nations of the world, without any meaningful international law, exist in the "state of nature," and they are constantly at one another's throats, armed and distrusting (Hobbes). Now to conquer this state of anarchy, evil must be conquered through cooperation (Hobbes). In a stable and cooperative society, the amount of needed goods can be increased and distributed to everyone (Hobbes). However, two things are required for this to happen. First, there must be guarantees that people will not harm one another. People must be able to work together without fear of attack, theft, or treachery (Hobbes). And second, people must be able to rely on one another to keep their agreements (Hobbes). Only then can there be a division of labor (Hobbes). If one person grows food and another spends their time helping the sick, with each expecting to share in the benefits created by the others, each person in the chain must be able to count on the others to perform as expected (Hobbes). Once these assurances are in place, a society can develop in which everyone is better off than they were in the “state of nature (Hobbes).” The only flaw is; trust cannot happen on a scale of such magnitude as the world. States will always argue and nations always war (Paulast). Morality is the seed of evil and evil the seed of morality (Paulast). So perhaps if looked at with an impartial eye, every act can have no meaning and remain neutral within a larger scheme of things. The Bahai faith believes in a concept similar to that (Sojourner). They believe in a unified world where everyone’s God is the same God, just with a different name and a different way of worshiping Him (Sojourner). The Bahai is considered to be the most neutral of all faiths and in result, has no religious enemies (Sojourner). However, the Bahai do believe in evil (Sojourner). Not in the same way as the common Christian since the Christian believes that things like greed, lust, and anger are all sins (Holy Bible). The Bahai believe those ‘sins’ are only sins if they are used in the wrong manner (Sojourner). “Greed, which is to ask for something more, is a praiseworthy quality provided that it is used suitably. So if a man is greedy to acquire science and knowledge, or to become compassionate, generous and just, it is most praiseworthy. If he exercises his anger and wrath against the bloodthirsty tyrants who are like ferocious beasts, it is very praiseworthy; but if he does not use these qualities in a right way, they are blameworthy (Sojourner).” Even the most neutral of religions believe there is still evil and seem to understand that without evil, there can be no morality and it is through that belief that one can create existential meaning in life (Fine Folie). It is plain that evil does exist and with that knowledge, one can only then try to define it. As stated before, the basic ‘ultimate’ evil seems to lie in the hearts of all the Stalin’s and Hitler’s of the world (Fine Folie). Hitler’s genocide of 3.6 million Jews and Stalin’s slaughter of 20 million Russians is world renown as the most cruel and malicious acts to have ever been conducted. The defining process needs to start somewhere, so imagine for a moment that Stalin’s 20 million murders’ is what evil is (Thomasine). Unarguably so, this is a perfect example of something that no-one can disagree with (Thomasine). Now look at the single man killed in the streets of New York. Is one murder less evil than the other? A question that man has never been able to answer is how to morally weigh human life (Veliquette). One might say that killing the 20 million is more evil than killing the one, but it is too common that the crucifixion of Christ falls up into that ‘most evil’ category right with the Hitlers and Stalins (Fine Folie). The brutal beating to near death and crucifixion of a man considered to be the Son of God by every Christian religion is considered to be almost on the complete opposite of the ‘good and evil spectrum.’ Christ was flogged into a bruised and bleeding pulp, then whipped over his entire body (including his face) with not only a couple cat-of-nine-tails, but whips with shards of glass, bone, and metal laced in the ends to further stick into his skin and tear him apart piece by piece (Holy Bible). A mocking crown of thorns was even placed and pressed into his scalp to further the pain of the blows to the head (Holy Bible). Then, after seeing his bruised body, his people turned their back on him for a final time and screamed for him to be crucified (Holy Bible). His constantly bleeding body, which was ripped to shreds, then had to carry the cross out of the city and partway up a mountain where he would have not only his wrists nailed to his burden of a cross, but his feet as well (Holy Bible). Christ hung there, asking for water and receiving vinegar, watching his killers gamble in front of him while beating off his few followers who simply wished to kiss his deteriorated flesh (Holy Bible). Only the scourging was unique to the Christ experience, (even the worst of the worst criminals would only receive 39 lashes with the cat-of-nine-tails in accordance with Jewish law) (Paulast). The crucifixions happened everywhere in that time period, especially in the times of Rome. Christians were beaten and crucified in the coliseum and the end of Sparticus’s reign is a famous depiction of a merciless slaughter by crucifixion (Iron Goat). “Let us not forget the story of the slave leader Spartacus, which I'm sure you have all heard. 6,000... I repeat 6,000 Roman slaves were crucified along the Appian Way. I was told it was about the distance between Denver and Colorado Springs, with 2 people crucified on each side, every 16 yards (Iron Goat).” One can’t say that one of these acts of brutality is more evil than the other. Life is not something you can weigh and neither is any other ‘evil’ deed. Stealing, insulting, it doesn’t matter what someone is doing… evil cannot be weighed against evil (Thomasine). There is no ‘bar’ to be set on what is evil and what isn’t (Thomasine). The next step, then, is to help define what exactly is evil. Islam is a good place to start since the religion claims to be a religion of peace (Sojourner). The meaning of the word Islam is important in itself. It defines the religion as a whole since it is one of the only religions that isn’t named after a prophet, God, tribe, or some sort of Messiah (Philips). Christianity was named after Jesus Christ, Buddhism after Gotama Buddha, Confucianism after Confucius, Marxism after Karl Marx, Judaism after the tribe of Judah, and Hinduism after the Hindus (Philips). The Arabic word "Islam" means the submission or surrender of one's will to the only true god worthy of worship "Allah" and anyone who does so is termed a "Muslim", The word also implies "peace" which is the natural consequence of total submission to the will of Allah (Philips). So evil, in the case of the Islam religion, is everything against the will of Allah. The recourse of not following Allah or, in fact, doing the opposite of what the Islam scripture teaches is generally a violent one (Sojou...