Agnostic Guide Chapter 7 - Good and Evil

Energy and Physics

Religions claim to answer that feeling in each of us that there’s something bigger out there somewhere exerting control over our world and our existence. Many of us have a hope some sort of universal justice controls everything and strives for goodness. We hope we’re surrounded by a natural good. We don’t like bad things to happen to us, so naturally we wouldn’t want a general evil to exist without a general goodness to counter it. The truth may be a lack of control is the reality and there isn’t a universal justice dictating good and evil.

Think: “We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff.” - Carl Sagan

We’re made up of atoms from stars dying long ago in supernovas. All of the matter in the universe is essentially made of stardust at the basic quantum level. The greater power we feel out there may only be the powers of energy and physics in the grand universe. Our atoms are a part of this energy and physics connecting all of existence.

There’s an undeniable greater power to the universe we should be able to feel in the core of our being just as we feel the pulse of the natural world close to us. All of the energy and physics of the universe acts upon the matter within it, including the stardust which is us. We aren’t individuals completely isolated from the universe and each other. The energy and physics governing and impacting our being provides both the desirable and undesirable as natural traits.

Natural Good and Evil

Every language has a word expressing good in the sense of something having a desirable quality and bad as being undesirable. A standard of good coming from energy and physics may be the standard of simply following the true nature of our natural existence. A standard of bad or evil may be anything which is counter to that true nature. This isn’t a simple definition since we still have to determine what’s natural and the true nature of our existence.

Saying it is good to be alive and it is evil to end a good life are easy generalities to make. It gets more complicated if a person causes very evil actions against others. It may be better for humanity to end the life of people bringing us all evil. There are the interests of a common good which may outweigh the good for an individual when they’re the cause of evil for others. The subject of good and evil quickly moves into ethics and morality, but it’s useful to first define the essence of good and evil.

Think: Do you define good and evil with your own mind or do you emotionlessly follow a defined list provided to you by a supreme being lacking shades, nuances, or conditions?

Good and evil aren’t distinct boxes you can check off as something being only one or the other. They’re definable as a spectrum of objects, desires, or behaviors with the good direction being the morally positive one and evil being morally negative. Good is a broad concept typically associated with life, charity, happiness, love, prosperity, and justice. Good is based on the natural love, bonding, and affection beginning at our earliest stages of development. Goodness is a product of knowing truth. Goodness might represent a hope of natural love existing as a continuous, expansive, and all-inclusive thing. Good might just be whatever produces the best consequences for people and their state of well-being.

Differing views exist as to what evil is and why it might exist. Evil is typically associated with conscious and deliberate wrongdoing, discrimination designed to harm others, destructiveness, and acts of unnecessary or indiscriminate violence. This means an object, behavior, or action which is simply bad also has an ill intent behind it.

Many religions and philosophies claim evil behavior is an aberration resulting from the imperfect human condition. Evil is sometimes attributed to the existence of free will. The religious view believes a deity created evil or allows evil to exist. The philosophical view sees evil in natural terms of simply existing as undesirable qualities.

Religious Good and Evil

Good and evil is presented by most religions as an absolute standard defined by their deity. This has meant slavery, genocide, and many other actions generally accepted as atrocities can be defined as good as long as the deity defines it as good. Likewise, actions which may not have negative or undesirable impacts on anyone could be defined as evil simply by the deity defining it as evil regardless of our human views. This can be used by outside observers to impose their morality on other people even though they’re not personally impacted.

Religious absolute definitions of good and evil counter any logical or emotional definitions for what’s actually right and wrong. Relying on religious teachings to define good and evil in the world denies us the opportunity to measure and weigh the merits and qualities of objects, desires, and behaviors as they exist in the natural world. The spokesperson for a god can decree good and evil as they see fit.

Think: Would you accept without question a religious view that your suffering or death could be defined as good?

Natural good and evil simply exist because we can perceive the desirable in contrast to the undesirable. This is why bad things can happen to good people and vice versa. It seems so natural to me this is the true nature of goodness. I don’t feel the same frustrations I see in religious people when bad things happen since I’ve developed a better understanding of it. Many religious people hope there’s an omnipotent power of good. They think they’ll receive goodness with the support of that omnipotent power as long as they have the right beliefs. I’ve seen that power fail time and time again to great disappointment of the believers.

Our goodness towards others can be rewarded with good in return as a result of humanity and participating in a society. Some people would like to think this extrapolates to receiving goodness from the universe as a reward for our individual good. However, it’d be contrary to everything I’ve ever experienced to believe good people will be rewarded with overall goodness as a universal rule regardless of the nature of creation. The universe doesn’t noticeably return the effect since our own effects aren’t on that level of magnitude.

We can do small things to impact our environment and receive goodness from nature. We can have an impact on keeping clean water and breathable air. However, there isn’t a lot we can do as individuals to counteract or influence the unbiased nature of the universe at large and receive back goodness on a universal scale. Likewise, as evil as a person could be, the universe will not dispense evil back to that person no matter how much we’d hope it happens. Good people are always needed to stop the evil people around them.

Freedom from Evil

Some religions claim a creator of the universe gave us the gift of our existence along with the gift of free to let us decide how we live our lives. This is despite the fact an omnipotent being would have power over everything and the omniscience to already know all of our choices. If an omnipotent being knows it all then free will is only an illusion. The combination of unlimited power with complete knowledge means all results of the use of that power is known including everything leading up to this very thought expressed with this specific sentence.

Alternatively, the first cause of the universe could lack omnipotence or omniscience and only created the environment leading to our existence. That type of first cause may not know or care if we developed in this little corner of the universe. We would have free will from such a creator because it didn’t directly create us and doesn’t control us with omnipotence.

Think: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” - Epicurus

A flip-side of this is we also need to question if an omnipotent being could have free will for itself. If not, then can that being grant to others what it doesn’t have for itself? An all-powerful being is all-knowing of all future actions including the choices and actions of that being. This would mean the omnipotent being couldn’t change any choices including the choices it makes, otherwise the omniscient knowledge would be proven wrong and the being would no longer be all-knowing.

An omniscient being has no free will to choose actions since all actions must be preordained to be known. The all-knowing god is only an observer of his own omniscience since all knowledge of the future precludes any changes to that future. A god with free will would have to be imperfect in knowledge and by definition could not be all-knowing.

The idea of an all-powerful and all-knowing being granting humans free will is one of religion’s biggest absurdities. This idea becomes even more absurd when people believe praying to an omnipotent being alters the outcome of events or saves us from evils which would already be known to occur. If the omnipotent being can’t possess free will then it cannot grant free will to us or provide any alternatives to an all-knowing predetermination for everything in our lives. A god may not be able to protect us from evil because the very act of creating free will negates the traits of omniscience and omnipotence.

Religious people come to us like the pedophile to the child to tell us our father sent them to gain our trust. They try to tell us how we must live according to our father to be free of evil. I’m certain they don’t actually know my real father just like the lies of any other predator. I possess freedom in my existence. If I’m wrong, and there really is an omnipotent and omniscient first cause for the universe, then it doesn’t matter what I think about evil or what I try to do to avoid evil since everything is preordained anyway.

An omniscient being already knows all of existence and time. All of our thoughts would be predetermined. Believing only time can tell us what will come is only an illusion in that case. If there is an omnipotent being then it controls and sets everything into motion to produce the very moment I think this. I either think this isn’t true or the omnipotent and omniscient being which caused my existence made me think this isn’t true. In the latter case, an omnipotent first cause created all unbelievers and predetermined for me to be one.

There’s really no sense in arguing with me since our creator supposedly made me this way for a purpose. I also shouldn’t bother arguing with deeply religious people but I think that’s because they’re generally stubborn about their beliefs. It’s all more proof omnipotence and omniscience in a singular being is a bunch of nonsense. It would mean religious people shouldn't question a God-given disbelief if they can’t question anything that’s created by such a being.

I have freedom from believing a universal evil exists which some religions call Satan. I’m free from fearing an evil an omnipotent and omniscient god created and allows to exist. I don’t have to ask an omnipotent god why something bad had to happen to me since I understand the true nature of evil is without reason or intentional causes.

The unbiased and uncaring universe simply has the undesirable in it contrasting with the desirable. This is the true meaning of good and evil. I know there isn’t a universal good allowing a universal evil to impact our lives since both good and evil exist without motivations or champions. Our struggles against the undesirable aspects of the universe are not personal fights between a god and a devil. We’re just engaging in the eternal and natural struggle between having a desirable or undesirable existence.