Here's a Frontpage interview with an author who addresses evil from a purely psychosocial-behavioral POV, and dismisses any theological considerations as necessary for understanding the nature of evil and how to combat it:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Ar...Article.asp?ID=18829

quote:

I think Christians have a very serious difficulty explaining why there is so much evil in the world. They would say that evil is the result of the misuse of freedom by human beings. This, of course, is true. The difficulty for Christians is that they believe that God created everything, including human beings, and if human beings misuse their freedom, then it is because God made them so that they could and would misuse it. This implies that the Christian idea of God as perfectly good is not true.

Gimme a break! This guy's a theological lightweight who doesn't have the foggiest what Christianity really teaches. Sheesh! I don't even know where to begin to try to clarify this, except to say that the notion that God created humans so that we "would" misuse our freedom is ridiculous!

quote:

If God is perfectly good, then why did he create imperfect beings who will use their free will to do all the evil that horrifies decent people? And if we do not have answers to these mysteries, then we do not know that God exists, we do not know what is good and evil, we do not know, for instance, that terrorist acts, genocide, torturing innocent people are evil. Nor do we know that God is perfectly good.

See http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c1p7.htm for the official teaching of the Catholic Church on this topic.

From the article:

quote:

The difficulty for Christians is that they believe that God created everything, including human beings, and if human beings misuse their freedom, then it is because God made them so that they could and would misuse it. This implies that the Christian idea of God as perfectly good is not true.

The best explanation I�ve heard yet for the existence of evil is from C.S. Lewis (I forget which book). Basically Lewis still assumes a Fall and some sort of rebellion, but his idea is that even though god knew there would be a rebellion, and thus the accompanying suffering, that He could see that, through this Fall brought about via free will, and through Christ, that we would achieve a level of joy and goodness that was not achievable if He had simply created a race of automatons to begin with. I�m still not quite clear on how it is we can somehow have new bodies in heaven (or however this works) and be so attuned with Christ that we would no longer be sinning�but presumably would still have free will. Seems to me we could have jumped right to this state of development. And that would imply, once again, either an incompetent or cruel god�or both.

And Lewis didn�t quite get around to successfully explaining how this plan was superior if, for instance, people were sentenced to ETERNAL damnation (think about that for a second) for being, say, butt buddies.

I�m still deep in thought about the problem of evil. The best explanation I can come up with is that evil is indeed a necessary part of having a free will (and I�m not sure what kind of implication this may have for the existence or even the possibility of a pleasant afterlife). But that�s only half of the equation. The other half is that suffering is, in effect, a form of concentrated love (perhaps love as seen from a view that is 180 degrees in the opposite direction). If you think about it, suffering is the thing that drives people to true love, compassion and wisdom. Take just the case of the Buddha. Here we had a well meaning, but ultimately soft and spoiled, nobleman who wanted to understand suffering. So what does he do? He apparently becomes an extreme ascetic, suffers greatly, and nearly dies of malnutrition. And it is then, after the suffering, that he gains true wisdom.

Good post, Brad.

I guess we should be glad that someone is at least taking evil seriously and trying to describe it.

quote:

Kekes: . . . I see evil as having three components: the malevolent motivation of evildoers; the serious, excessive harm caused by their actions; and the lack of morally acceptable excuse for their actions.

That's really not bad, except for two tautologies (e.g. evil happens because of evil intentions and the lack of an acceptable excuse -- i.e., evil happens because of evil! ).

But why this axe-grinding about religion, and Christianity in particular?

quote:

Kekes: . . . I think Christians have a very serious difficulty explaining why there is so much evil in the world.

No we don't! The devil, a culture formed from false self beliefs, our own false self, the accumulation of countless years of evil actions -- quite a build-up of things (karma, as it were). No theologian has the slightest problem explaining how the magnitude of evil we see at times can come about, and why it often resonates so widely. This guy is out in left field!

quote:

But it is possible, I think, to identify four conditions that are in varying degrees responsible for evil. The first is some positive malevolent motive of the evildoer. The second is the evildoer's failure to see what he is doing as evil, a failure that may be the result of self-deception, indoctrination, stupidity, self-centeredness, and so on. The third is the existence of social conditions to which evil is a possible reaction, such as injustice, poverty, racial or religious or ethnic intolerance, and so on. The fourth is that the existing laws are weak or they are weakly enforced so that evil actions are not forcefully prohibited.

That's not bad, but it's hardly anything novel. He might add ideology to the list, but I think it's implied. He also might add secularism as a good example of such an ideology, but that might shoot him in the foot.

quote:

Kekes: (after harping on the dangers of religious dogmatism): Political ideologies are just as dangerous as dogmatic religions.

D'oh! How about MORE dangerous!

quote:

Kekes: We recognize evil by actions that cause serious excessive harm. We, then, ask: what motivated the person who performed the action and is there some morally acceptable excuse for it. If we find that his motivation was malevolent and there was no acceptable excuse, then we know that the actions were evil.

That's not bad, but it's still infected by tautology: evil exists because of evil motivations, great harm, etc.

Evil can also happen when people are well-motivated, and it can also happen to a "small degree."

quote:

Kekes: Yes, you got right what I believe: evil is man-made. And I don't just believe it, but give cogent reasons for it, which can be found in the book. If there were no human beings, there would be no evil.

That would be MORAL evil, of course. The rabbit who gets eaten by a fox experiences a kind of evil as well, but not MORAL evil.

Of course, he cannot possibly know if MORAL evil exists without human beings; that's our experience, but if there are other spiritual entities in the universe, it could exist among them as well. And, in fact, that's what the teaching on fallen angels implies.

- continuing . . . (transferring files from one hard drive to another).

quote:

Kekes: . . . I see evil as having three components: the malevolent motivation of evildoers; the serious, excessive harm caused by their actions; and the lack of morally acceptable excuse for their actions.

Think about this great pivotal insight, which is no doubt a radical statement in a PM world. But . . .

a. How could someone with a malevolent motivation who does serious, excessive harm ever come up with a "morally acceptable excuse" for their actions? Why even mention that third qualifier -- as if a malevolent intent and great harm weren't enough!

B. Suppose someone has a good intent, but does excessive harm without a morally acceptable excuse (e.g. communist "purges"). Evil? Maybe not, under this guy's schema.

Etc.

Not very precise, and still amazing that he thinks he's onto something that invalidates Christian moral theology.

This author is clearly another antagonist trying to stir us away from the reality and truth of evil spirit who has enslaved many, as well as having them under his control. Thank you Holy Spirit for God's Graces and protection.

quote:

Kekes: Yes, you got right what I believe: evil is man-made. And I don't just believe it, but give cogent reasons for it, which can be found in the book. If there were no human beings, there would be no evil.

Phil said: Of course, he cannot possibly know if MORAL evil exists without human beings; that's our experience, but if there are other spiritual entities in the universe, it could exist among them as well. And, in fact, that's what the teaching on fallen angels implies.

I think C.S. Lewis makes a great point in "Mere Christianity" that the existence of our sense of morality and justice (a sense that is strongly consistent between people and a sense that is ever being refined, and because it can be refined suggests an absolute) strongly suggests a source of this morality. (He says the same thing regarding our ability to reason in "Miracles" and makes a very good case for this.) And so to say that evil is purely a man-made notion doesn't sound right. Oh, surely we have the ability to recognize evil because of our relatively advanced brains/souls. And perhaps to commit moral evil (I like your rabbit/fox analogy�I never thought of that) one has to be sufficiently advanced. But I don't think man creates it. As you said, moral evil could exist among other spiritual entities in the universe.

Sorry, guys. I didn't think much of Kekes' criticisms re: Christianity, but thought it would be interesting to start a thread on this topic, since "evil" easily bridges both politics and religion, with so many examples these days.

The guy clearly has a personal disdain for Christianity, or religion in general, and comes across as thinking he's settled the matter for everyone else by settling it in his own mind. But as Phil points out, he hasn't apparently looked very deeply into the theological perspective and all the work that's been done over the centuries in reflecting on this matter.

What I find interesting in Kekes is his need to believe in evil while being equally close-minded re: its religious dimension. He may feel he's doing the world a service by taking the subject out of its traditional context and secularizing it. This wouldn't make him, automatically, a leftist, but I do wonder what his views might be on other subjects. But I doubt I'll read the book. Folks that summarily dismiss religious faith usually come across as both shallow and quite confident in their views.

I read through some of Kekes' book provided by Amazon, and it does look interesting, but weak with a reductionistic assumption. His critique of Christian notions of evil seems to pull-up short around the Enlightenment idea that the problem of evil is one of failed reason and will, but at least in the pages made available by Amazon, he seems to set that up in a facile way, kind of like a straw man for his argument; his argument seems to be: evil is a human moral evaluation in an amoral universe.

Beginning with that reductionism, it will probably be easy for the author to follow through on any number of examples with explanations that no longer beg the question. He seems to suggest that the nagging question of evil is misplaced, and that we are haunted by it because it is a fixture of the natural order of things, so named because of the paradox it presents only in human consciousness. This does make for a rather tidy philosophical construct, but requires an assumption that leaves much to be desired when we consider morality from a human developmental point of view. IOW, I'd hate to see what kind of parent this guy is, if he is one.

Any parent with an intact capacity for empathy knows how early empathy appears in the behavior of the child. Of course, one can see a more rudimentary form of it in animals, and perhaps in dolphins, apes, etc . . . it is more like us than we are comfortable in admitting. But what is compelling, and left out in Kekes' view (apparently), is the great remorse children can feel when they do hurt someone else. This isn't often seen if they are shamed, but their ability to respond tenderly, and how it is necessary to cultivate that tendency in the child by how we treat her, can make either Kekes' case, or C.S. Lewis' regarding moral law. Nevertheless, the emapthetic parent has a sense of interiority that Kekes has relegated to the junk-yard of pre-modern philosophical assumptions.


So if, as Kekes argues, evil is simply a naturalistic aspect of evolution's impersonal mechanism, then so many dimensions of human experience have to be dismissed as illusions; this is weak in two ways. Firstly, if evil were just as endemic to human consciousness as the good, we'd hardly be experiencing the degree of order we now do. Kekes seems to argue that this perceived order is no different than the relatively well-ordered animal world. Since he seperates reason from any phenomenological consideration of conscience, it is rather difficult making an argument against him, as he views reason as a kind of epiphenomenon itself. The epistemological angle collapses when you reduce everything from the outset to unanimated biological impulses. As such, making C.S. Lewis' argument that a natural moral sensibility pervades human consciousness is groundless for Kekes.

What is lost in Kekes' reductionism is also, of course, any notion of spirituality. But rather than our making cicular arguments in defense of spirituality, what Kekes has to deal with in his randomly, non-designed universe, that nonetheless has impersonal order to it, and mainly how to live with himself in this house of mirrors. It is all fine and well to write a philosophical treatise on evil and excuse oneself from more interior-oriented questions, but it certainly suggests a rather suffocating existence.

What I find intriguing, and disturbing, is how many of us, in losing our sense of interiority, come to experience the world as such a grey existence. Kekes' book looks well-written, but in the few pages I read, reading in-between the lines suggests a man with an almost hollow feeling capacity, or one that involves a talking head being carried around by a solid, inanimate body. It is, of course, unfair to characterize the author in such a way without knowing him, but hard not to consider this possibility in one whose reductionisms almost require such a profound disconnection from the soul.

In somebody with such an ease in reducing the landscape of human consciousness to naturalistic mechanisms, it is just as easy to see, or speculate, on how he came to his view of evil. Without a sense of interiority, a deep sense of goodness is just as obscured. To really feel evil as the unique force it is, as I've experienced on several occasions in the Kundalini process, and to see it veiled in so many other ways in my tendency to fall into a trance state, requires what Rudolph Otto describes as "religious feeling."

Brad, I'd recommend Rudolph Ottos's book "The Idea of the Holy," if you haven't read it. It is this capacity for perception of the mysterious, and empathic sense of the Holy, that is missing entirely from Kekes' work, based on his early, founding assmptions in the book.

Once we have at least some direct experience of the archetypal world informing our consciounsess, and perhaps some sense of non-local connectedness between ourselves and others, either through prayer beyond, but including, the archetypal, or through enhanced psychic sensibilities as K emerges, then the world really does reveal its animate nature, and how it is a multi-dimensional domain of forces beyond such simple renderings as Kekes'. Kekes' world, or the one he suggests in his book, is simple, but mostly dead, and therefore a very complicated one to survive in, as it leaves no room for any experience of interior peace, poetics, goodness or grace. As such, the mind and its machinations are all that is beyond physical decay, and with little room for a response of wonder that would dangerously suspend his conclusions.

What I find interesting in Kekes is his need to believe in evil while being equally close-minded re: its religious dimension. He may feel he's doing the world a service by taking the subject out of its traditional context and secularizing it. This wouldn't make him, automatically, a leftist, but I do wonder what his views might be on other subjects. But I doubt I'll read the book. Folks that summarily dismiss religious faith usually come across as both shallow and quite confident in their views.

Granted, I�m not too comfortable with the belief in devils and demons. But neither am I comfortable with the notion of evil being just a man-made thing. One might think of evil as the absence of love. But clearly it seems that evil has the capability of existing wherever and whenever a sense of empathy exists. And clearly, at least to my mind, it is difficult to reconcile so much evil and pain with a universe supposedly created by a good god (and not just a friendly, congenial, or happy-go-lucky god, but supposedly a god who is pure, concentrated and eternal love, through and through). Inevitably, again, at least in my mind, there is no easy way to get past the fact the god created this system (this universe, the physics, feelings, etc.) in which free wills will do so much harm. That's perhaps the hardest and most relevant question and one that I think shouldn't be overlooked by simply saying (rightly so, from a certain point of view) that humans, ultimately are the doers of evil by the choices they make. Perhaps both religion AND Mr. Kekes make the mistake of trying to reduce it all down to the human dimension as something human-made only, even if they do so in different overall frameworks. Perhaps that's why, from the religious point of view, devils and demons are brought into the picture. It relieves god of responsibility for this overall system in which so much suffering takes place. But to me that seems as much of a crutch as anything that Mr. Kekes is proposing.

I was sort of meditating on this question last night while walking through a mountain wilderness. If one believes in prayer (and especially if one believes in answers to prayer) I was sort of told, in so many words, "Transcend the matter of suffering and evil. Put it aside. It is irrelevant. Expressing love is the purpose of life and all you need to do."

And truly, we would have FAR less thinking to do on the problem of evil if so many of us didn't, at least from time to time, act like such cold, heartless, unloving bastards.

WC said: �his argument seems to be: evil is a human moral evaluation in an amoral universe.

I didn't realize that humans created humans, the brain, our central nervous system and, in fact, the feelings of pleasure and pain (without which I'm not sure how we could discern evil). It seems as if he's saying, for example, that humans created the cosmic background radiation because we're the only beings who can detect it. Rather simplistic, if you ask me. Unless I'm the one missing something and being simplistic. Has happened before, ya know.

Brad, I'd recommend Rudolph Ottos's book "The Idea of the Holy," if you haven't read it. It is this capacity for perception of the mysterious, and empathic sense of the Holy, that is missing entirely from Kekes' work, based on his early, founding assmptions in the book.

Speaking of heartless bastards, thank you very much, WC, for adding to my backlog of reading material. That certainly sounds like a book I will want to read. Thanks.

Good topic indeed, w.c., and a good source to use for opening it. It's pretty pathetic, as you noted, that he dismisses the Christian wisdom of the ages on this topic and believes he has come up with something novel and more explanatory.

What's interesting is that in his examples of great evil, he mentions the Albigensian Crusades (a very dark moment in Church history) but not Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Mao, Osama bin Laden and other "masters of the art." Bad omission!

----

Good reflections, Brad and w.c.

Maybe we can move on to discuss the topic without reference to Kekes?

"I didn't realize that humans created humans, the brain, our central nervous system and, in fact, the feelings of pleasure and pain (without which I'm not sure how we could discern evil). It seems as if he's saying, for example, that humans created the cosmic background radiation because we're the only beings who can detect it."


Folks like Kekes seem to miss what you're saying here because the notion of creation itself is denuded to reflect, perhaps, a degree of their own inert imagination. Evolution without a shred of creationism in it isn't, IOW, just a theory about external mechanisms, but, IMO, a litmus for how the theorist experiences himself. The simple logic of "Did we create ourselves, or spiraling galaxies ?," requires a sense of wonder that is substantial in itself. Otherwise, mechanics is all we're left with, either for contriving a sense of personal well-being, or for descriptions of the world around us. Without wonder, the question you pose just falls further into the reductionism needed to keep the theorist feeling safe.

I'm betting you'll really like Otto's book, Brad. It's classic, and rich, and short.

And so for starters, and minimally, I'd say that to have any epistemology capable of capturing the notion of evil without resorting to reductionism, there has to be a phenomenology of evil, where the development of interiority leads us to understand the physical universe as the microcosm of that archetypal world.

w.c., why not post some of your reflections from your Amazon.com perusal of the book as a review on Amazon? Could be helpful to some.

Phil and Brad:

Along with this train of thought, it seems that evil can only be understood to the extent that awareness of goodness within the soul through grace is experienced. I'm really moved at how deeply Julian of Norwich understood this.

What's interesting is that in his examples of great evil, he mentions the Albigensian Crusades (a very dark moment in Church history) but not Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Mao, Osama bin Laden and other "masters of the art." Bad omission!

That�s a good pick-up, Phil. As WC said, "He may feel he's doing the world a service by taking the subject out of its traditional context and secularizing it." How does one NOT talk about Hitler and Stalin if one is discussing evil? Between the pseudo-religion of far right Nazi fascism and far left Stalin leftism (communism in this case) it would seem that these two things contain about everything one would need in terms of discussing the attributes of evil. THAT evil has been done in the name of religion is rightly repugnant to us, and particularly so, for it is religion that seriously attempts to address the question of evil and to minimize or overcome it (at least in Christianity) in a rational and moral way. Being human, we don�t always succeed and I think religious institutions ought to be held to a very high standard in this regard. After all, we could care less if our doctors were good golfers or not, but they had better be competent when in surgery. But is this standard equally applied to one�s favorite social, economic or political systems? Or is it just enough that one has "good intentions"? If one takes the time to actually read all of Kekes� book, that might be a useful lens to use in evaluating any biases. But surely we�re sort of getting at least a mild waft of liberal, perhaps anti-religious bias from what we�ve read so far.

WC said: Along with this train of thought, it seems that evil can only be understood to the extent that awareness of goodness within the soul through grace is experienced. I'm really moved at how deeply Julian of Norwich understood this.

What books do you recommend, oh heartless creator of backlog?

But from your above comment I�m reminded (mea culpa) how easily we are blinded to our own evil, no matter how small a form it may present itself. And, really, isn�t much of the evil in this world not of the "rape and murder" variety but of the small, annoying, soul-draining type? And isn�t this type of evil so powerful and thus draining because we are bombarded by such occurrences almost wherever we go (even inside our own head)? I have no doubt that the many small acts we commit, or are exposed to, sort of add up and are the groundwork for the larger evils. After all, Hitler probably doesn�t stand a chance in hell (pun intended) of rising to power if all those little anti-Semitic thoughts and jokes that people banded about as harmless would not have been considered such trifles in the first place. (Note: I�m not suggesting we take a blowtorch to the first amendment. What we ought to allow legally is a different matter from what we ought to accept from ourselves morally�at least in this pluralistic and democratic day and age.)

Having just said the above, doesn�t that just SCREAM for the need for organized and thoughtful religion? Because surely you can see that the needs (and the realties) of the secular WILL NOT AND NEVER CAN SUFFICIENTLY ADDRESS THE MORAL ASPECTS OF LIFE.

Brad:

"After all, Hitler probably doesn�t stand a chance in hell (pun intended) of rising to power if all those little anti-Semitic thoughts and jokes that people banded about as harmless would not have been considered such trifles in the first place. (Note: I�m not suggesting we take a blowtorch to the first amendment. What we ought to allow legally is a different matter from what we ought to accept from ourselves morally�at least in this pluralistic and democratic day and age.)"

"Having just said the above, doesn�t that just SCREAM for the need for organized and thoughtful religion? Because surely you can see that the needs (and the realties) of the secular WILL NOT AND NEVER CAN SUFFICIENTLY ADDRESS THE MORAL ASPECTS OF LIFE."


I agree, and the distinction you make shows the tension between the legal and moral domains that in Europe have almost entirely collapsed. Well said, and important insight and illustration, I think.

Julian's classic "Revelations of Divine Love," or "Showings," is available most recently in the Classics of Western Spirituality edition, which you can find on Amazon. The Introduction is a slow read, but the scholar writing really shows what a great theologian this dear soul was, and how theology is really only as good, or deep, as the theologian's prayer life, which bears upon this idea that the more we experience how beautifully we are made, the more quickened we are to our fallen nature. Julian explicates this paradox in such a way that understanding her renders a knowing and sensing that is itself transforming.

Julian's reflections are not a slow read (except for how they spontaneously engender meditation and prayer), with short and long texts, the latter with more of her developed musings as she came to understand her experience more intellectually. But all the way through, one is caught up between God's love and mercy and His truth and sovereignty/righteousness. Usually these qualities are polarized/conflicted in the human imagination, but Julian is able to show how they emerge within the soul as healing and redeeming compliments.

It really "ought" to be possible to converse about morality without recourse to a religious tradition -- i.e., in a kind of philosophic perspective. That's what Keke is trying to do, only he senselessly and needlessly thinks religious perspectives must be discounted in order to do so.

Catholic moral theologians, however, have long been committed to articulating moral principles in philosophic language. Revelation can help to highlight the moral issues at stake, but their articulation in terms of, say, natural law, do not necessarily require references to revelation. In a pluralistic society, you simply MUST find a way to converse on these matters without pitting religions against each other (not that they disagree all that much when it comes to moral issues).

Why is it wrong to steal, kill innocent people, defame, drive drunk, spread malicious gossip, etc.? You don't need to refer to God to make your case, and believers will lose nothing in sharing their convictions in a secular, philosophical context. Basic human rights are not so difficult to understand; there's even an international consensus on these. The golden rule is also pretty universal. So when it comes to understanding evil and speaking about it in a secular, philosophical context, there's already a lot in place to facilitate that understanding. Violate human rights and the golden rule and you will see evil happen to some degree, regardless of the intent of the perpetrator.

Wnen it comes to understanding the deeper questions, however, philosophical thinking can take us only so far. Like what IS evil? Why should it happen at all? Why not just good? You can respond to these questions to some extent with your human reason, but there will still be much about evil that remains enshrouded in mystery. Religious perspectives penetrate deeper into the mystery, but, in the end, we do not fully understand it.

I'm betting you'll really like Otto's book, Brad. It's classic, and rich, and short.

Just got if for five bucks (plus 3 bucks shipping) used on Amazon�s "Marketplace". (That�s the equivalent service for the terminally eBay-phobic.)

Evolution without a shred of creationism in it isn't, IOW, just a theory about external mechanisms, but, IMO, a litmus for how the theorist experiences himself. The simple logic of "Did we create ourselves, or spiraling galaxies ?," requires a sense of wonder that is substantial in itself. Otherwise, mechanics is all we're left with, either for contriving a sense of personal well-being, or for descriptions of the world around us. Without wonder, the question you pose just falls further into the reductionism needed to keep the theorist feeling safe.

Actually, in all honesty, and without a hint of toadyism, I concur wholeheartedly�and wished I had said that�and my sympathies are definitely with those who have the need to "feel safe". After all, who wants to feel unsafe? But the simplest less-is-more explanation for the universe is a creator whose essence is existence itself. Not that religion doesn�t torturously contort itself using pretzel logic in an attempt to fit its doctrine into the contradictions of both the world and its own doctrine, but it has nothing on what secularists attempt to achieve by saying that nature is all that there is and all that there needs to be. [Perhaps someone could list the problems and contradictions that present themselves (maybe Phil has already partially done so) regarding a naturalist-only view of evil.]

There�s a very good reason that man and woman have always had an attraction to the spiritual and that is because we are smart enough to sense that we do not perceive all that is. Science has certainly had its hay day and that hay day is nearing an end. That is NOT to say that science will produce fewer wonders than it has before. Hardly. Bu that is to say that the pendulum has been swung about as far as it could be toward secularism/materialism and away from an appreciation for the non-material aspects of life. And this is so because the momentum of the wonders of the products produced by science is slowing. It has been the enormous burst of productivity and the subsequent marvels and wonders of science that have fueled this historic burst of radical and rationalism (from which Stalinism drew its power) at the expense of true humanism (to be truly human is to acknowledge the wonder, the mystery, and the transcendent). That carnival show, lovely and wondrous as it was, can�t sustain itself forever any more than Ron Popeil�s pitch (watchable though it is) for the Magic Chef Oven can sustain us for more than a few minutes. (Set it and forget it!)

Living this life, we all feel some type of hole inside. It�s how we try to fill this hole that goes a long way to determining just how influential evil becomes. To simplistically worship at the idol of reductionism (which is easy to do because one can slap a sense of legitimacy on anything and everything if under the purview of science) is to do exactly what many religious people are accused of: Believing in Santa Claus because their minds are unable or unwilling to deal with more complex and perhaps troubling issues.

"Keep the theorist feeling safe." Wow. Those words are going to resonate in me for a while, WC. Well said.

Julian's classic "Revelations of Divine Love," or "Showings," is available most recently in the Classics of Western Spirituality edition, which you can find on Amazon.

I just purchased "Daily Readings with Julian of Norwich" which one reviewer recommended in order to get to the more relevant stuff. This probably suits me just fine. Many of the Amazon.com reviews of the full books mentioned that so much of her writing was difficult to slog through. Hopefully a thoughtfully edited version will enhance my experience of her thoughts.

It really "ought" to be possible to converse about morality without recourse to a religious tradition -- i.e., in a kind of philosophic perspective. That's what Keke is trying to do, only he senselessly and needlessly thinks religious perspectives must be discounted in order to do so.

Yes, that makes sense now that you say that, Phil.

Why is it wrong to steal, kill innocent people, defame, drive drunk, spread malicious gossip, etc.? You don't need to refer to God to make your case, and believers will lose nothing in sharing their convictions in a secular, philosophical context. Basic human rights are not so difficult to understand; there's even an international consensus on these. The golden rule is also pretty universal. So when it comes to understanding evil and speaking about it in a secular, philosophical context, there's already a lot in place to facilitate that understanding. Violate human rights and the golden rule and you will see evil happen to some degree, regardless of the intent of the perpetrator.

Well, in that light then it sure looks like Kekes is trying to take a good whack at religion. Or perhaps instead of grounding in religion, he is motivated to ground the idea of good and evil into something thoroughly secular. As you said (or implied�I think), good religious sensibilities, practices and doctrine can be transferred without a problem into something, such as natural law, that is not overtly smelling (if you�ll pardon this use of words) of religion. Perhaps this shows the objective nature of morality and that all morality derives from a source. If this morality is, after all, grounded in more than just the vagaries of the human mind than the sheer logic of it can be condensed to any form and still retain the essence of it. But if one simply says that morality is man-made (as if it is almost an illusion or contrivance) can one really ground good and evil in anything that can stand for long on its own apart from one person�s of-the-moment impassioned appeal to this belief?

Along with Phil's reflections over a moral sensibility shared by most people across cultures, Keke's argument seems to lack what I refered to earlier as a capacity for wonder, or an aesthetic sensibility that parallels the moral one. As a reductionist, which he appears to be, the relative value of evil, or its purely secular rendering, probably makes these domains less attractive. There is an anatomy for this, as in when one's baser instincts or feelings rise up into the chest area. Again, as Phil is saying, one needn't resort to religion in any specific way to appreciate this. When we make reference to "self," we often point to our chests, a strange behavior if the brain were really the only, or primary, organ of consciousness. In our experience of Kundalini, we know that the brain occupies this exclusive place of value only when K is dormant. Once K is strongly activated, then the interiority necessary to more deeply appreciate the non-reductionistic nature of morality and aesthetic feeling awareness is clearly evident. But there is probably no way to access this level of truth through a purely philosophical venture, especially if one begins with strong assumptions of a reductionistic sort.

The HeartMath Institute's findings, showing the heart to embody non-local intuitive intelligence, and the research showing the stomach and the intestines to produce 90+% of serotonin, together indicate the psychophilosophical foundation Keke's is operating from to be obsolete.

Moreover, as K awakens, especially if it does so without too much interference from the false self, one's relationship with other creatures becomes much richer. They sense when K has been awakenened in us. As this happens, the illumination of things begins to make the space of our perceptions a condition of presence, rather than of objects to manipulate. As such, animals participate not only in a limited degree of self-identity, but with a moral sense as well, able to respond to our needs, and even show awareness of those needs in their human companions non-locally, as Rupert Sheldrake has shown in his experiments written up in the book "Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home." It would seem that our heavier brain centers, when K is dormant, diminish our capacity for this sort of awareness animals routinely have. In our having more potential for an awakened, embodied true self, we are also more at risk for conditioning that denudes our psychic faculties.

Even the pre-Socratic writers spoke of a bodily location for moral sensing. There are some interesting theories on the changing consciousness of man, such as E.R. Dodd's classic text "The Greeks and the Irrational," and Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," the latter having been somewhat discredited with the recent animal study findings of self-identity in higher primates and whales, dolphins. Another well-written, and respected essay on the transformation of consciousness in human history is R.T. Rundle Clark's "Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt." The Egyptian metaphors of cobra, falcon's eye, and flame, if read in light of what we know about Kundalini and psychospiritual evolution, show the myths to be musings over these macro and micro changes in kundalini/consciousness.

WC said, and I quote: His critique of Christian notions of evil seems to pull-up short around the Enlightenment idea that the problem of evil is one of failed reason and will, but at least in the pages made available by Amazon, he seems to set that up in a facile way, kind of like a straw man for his argument; his argument seems to be: evil is a human moral evaluation in an amoral universe.

One of failed reason and will? Interesting idea. According to Benedict Joseph Labre in the book, "The Kiss from the Cross", sin is the result men not knowing God�s goodness.

I think the central question raised by Kekes (whether he did so knowingly or not) is rather a simple one: Is there a Higher Truth or not? Is there an objective source of morality (by which good and evil can be judged)? Or can human motivations, assessments, and discernments be explained or written off via a simple Darwinian explanation of everyone doing what is best for his or her own survival, even if our reasoning process gets so complex at times that it resembles some kind of response to a Higher Truth?

As WC indicated, it surely takes a heaping teaspoonful of reductionism to make this latter argument. So one had better be prepared to defend the efficacy of reductionism and I don�t think this can be done. After all, the universe should (and one can certainly at least in one�s mind imagine this state of affairs) be nothing but swirling clouds of trillions upon trillions of individual atoms (or perhaps quarks). It should make no difference how these atoms relate to one another or how they look and act from some higher perspective because, if the truth of reductionism is to be maintained, then those higher perspectives don�t matter. From a reductionist point of view, the real truth is that reality is these trillions upon trillions of elementary particles. Any mystery of higher groupings or relationships is just kicked aside as unimportant because, after all, we have already explained everything on the ground floor, so to speak, at the level of the smallest component. Which is to say, the mystery is denied, not clarified.

Using our imaginations we can see the universe from this point of view where there is nothing but individual quarks and nothing else (or nothing on a larger scale) matters or could matter. But we quickly see how absurd (and how compellingly suggestive to the opposite state of affairs) this proposition is. More complex things do exist and contain properties that can�t easily (if at all) be traced from their constituent parts. That fact alone suggests, at least to me, a different paradigm. That fact suggests that, like unseen radio waves, we as human beings (analogous to a radio) have become sophisticated and complex enough, not to produce morality (or radio waves), but to be able to tune into them, to be receivers of them, as opposed to producers. From a reductionist/Darwinian point of view, we might deny also that the experience of vision exists because we can show that the eye does nothing but move a few electrons around in the brain as a cause-and-effect reaction to our retinas being bombarded with photons.

A better, less convoluted answer to good and evil is that objective good exists. Whether evil is the absence of this good, demons, devils, not knowing God�s goodness, all of the above, some of the above, or some other combination of these things and still others, I don�t know. And surely some of our theological answers have convoluted what might be, at heart, a much simpler answer. But in principle I think it makes much more sense to assume absolute and objective good and evil because we see in our world things which facilitate good and things which facilitate evil. Our pet bias could be, say, that we think socialism is the only possible inherent way to do good, but we must separate our wishful thinking from the objective record. And the objective record of humanity (postmodern and leftist revisionism notwithstanding) is that those who believe only in nature, in materialism, in man as the end of all being have created the largest evils and horrors this earth has ever seen. Those who believe in the transcendent, in God, have done their share of evil as well, and I believe this is so because they have made the opposite error from the materialists. Instead of investing TOO much importance in nature, they invest not enough and sort of abandon our existence here in favor of that which is to come (and thus separate themselves from moral responsibility from what they do to other people here on earth�or they are simply disingenuous about their religious beliefs and are more consumed with acquiring and exercising power). But both types, even Communists, Marxists and socialists are all actively chasing morality. They are trying to create a society with the maximum good and the minimum amount of bad because, at heart, they believe they can do so, and they believe they can do so only because of their innate sense of the weight, strength, and existence of a separate objective morality, even if their worldviews and arrogance won�t allow them to concede that this morality is distinct from them; even if the continue to profess that this morality is a contruct of their own minds � i.e, man made.

Opposite to the hell-on-earth created by those who deny any mystery above or apart from men are the explicate works for good of those in religion. My favorite in this regard is Christianity, but goodness is not limited to just Christians. The good works and exceptionally kind hearts of some people and some institutions (or parts of institutions) is almost undeniable evidence for objective good. And one never gets the sense that these people are creators of this good. They themselves will tell you that there is very little of them at all in what they do. If one is honest, if one is objective, one will see that there are rare people (one wishes they weren�t so rare�and it is our desire NOT to be saints that is the problem) who are conduits of a transcendent, objective good�a good that is not the product of man or woman.