Monthly Archives: January 2025

The Origins of Evil

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Where does evil come from? The Billy Graham Organisation knows:

…the Bible does reveal two important truths about where evil comes from. First… evil comes from the Evil One — that is, from Satan… Satan is a powerful spiritual being who is absolutely opposed to God, and is far stronger than most of us realize. He isn’t equal with God, but is totally evil, and repeatedly works against God. Jesus called him “a murderer from the beginning…. a liar and the father of lies”.

No, not really. Evil is not a supernatural being cavorting around an unseen, undetectable spiritual realm while inflicting havoc on our reality (see here). Satan is not the embodiment of all evil for the simple expedient he and his minions do not exist.

What else does the Bible have to say about the origin of evil? Fake Paul in 1 Timothy 6: 9-10 claims that ‘…the love of money is the root of all evil’. He goes on to say, ’while some coveted after (money), they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows,’ which sounds suspiciously like a snipe at early Christians who refused to hand over their worldly goods to the cult.

Now, while greed and avarice can undoubtedly lead to wickedness, the love of money is not the root of all evil. Vindictiveness, spite, fear, ignorance, stupidity, hatred, lust for power, sexual lust, jealousy, coveting another’s property or territory, religious beliefs and deceit (take note, fake Paul): all can, and do, lead to evil.

Let’s give the Bible one last chance.

The author of Mark’s gospel has Jesus say:

What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man (Mark 7:20-23 NKJV).

While ‘Mark’ is talking about ritual purity in this bizarre mix of low-level immorality, religious offences and actual wickedness, he nails it as far as the source of evil is concerned. It emanates from human beings, most often, from men. While women are also capable of committing evil acts, and children too sometimes, most are perpetrated by men. 

It’s not easy finding evidence for this online, where misogynistic, religionist have taken over, claiming women are more evil than men on account of Eve eating the forbidden fruit. They also argue that women are more evil because they ‘hold a grudge longer’. However, a little digging dispels this ridiculous notion. Consider:

Are most dictators men or women? (Men, almost exclusively);

Are most genocidal acts initiated and carried out by men or women? (Men, almost exclusively)

Are most murderers men or women? (Men: 98% of murder convictions are of men);

Are most rapists men or women? (Men; 99% of convictions are of men);

Are rape gang members men or women? (Men, almost exclusively);

Are most child abusers men or women? (Men make up 88% of perpetrators);

Are most school shootings carried out by males or females? (Males, on a ratio of 145:4);

Are most terrorists men or women? (Men, on a ratio of 5:1);

Are most crime lords, drug barons and death-cult leaders men or women? (You already know the answer…)

Are most victims of sexual abuse male or female? (Female: 1 in 5 compared with 1 in 7 males)

Almost all malicious and unnecessary infliction of harm on others, nearly every evil act ever committed has been and is committed primarily by men. Only a small number are carried out by women. However, just because most evil is committed by men, not all men are evil. More than this, most human beings don’t commit ‘evil’. Neither do most Christians, though there does seem to be an inordinate number who are prepared to sexually abuse others. Nonetheless, many are happy to blame Satan for what evil there is, including their own. Attributing human evil to a malevolent fantasy figure is a duplicitous attempt to evade both responsibility and culpability.

In any case, according to true believers Satan’s main occupation is sowing the seeds of doubt in the minds of Christians, in an attempt to lead them away from Jesus (2 Corinthians 11:30). Satan is, when all is said and done, a pretty hopeless prop, not ‘a powerful spiritual being’ but an enfeebled metaphor for the evil that some humans engender.

Afterthought:

Where does goodness come from? That too is human. All compassion, kindness, consideration, empathy, helpfulness, love, joy and peace come from us.

Or not, as the case may be.

Live Backwards

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I wanted in this post to think about the source(s) of evil, given it cannot be supernatural. However, defining evil isn’t as straightforward as I anticipated. The Oxford English Dictionary offers ‘Profoundly immoral and wicked’ while Merriam Webster goes for ‘morally reprehensible: sinful, wicked.’ Other dictionaries also mention both immorality and wickedness, replacing one concept in need of explanation with two. ‘Wicked’, it seems to me, is synonymous with evil, which doesn’t get us any closer to defining it. There are problems with ‘immorality’ too, as what constitutes immorality is frequently culturally determined.

Evangelicals, for example, regard same-sex relationships as immoral (so that’s me told) as is sex outside marriage. When I was involved in the church, dancing, drinking and listening to rock music (with all its backward messages!) were anathema. In some countries today many of these behaviours attract the attention of so-called morality police and are punishable by death (how moral is that!) Then there are those who fail to keep their word. Within months of being elected, the UK government under Keir Starmer has reneged on almost every promise they made prior to the election. Everyone expects politicians to lie so perhaps allowing ourselves to be duped by them means they’re not entirely responsible. Let’s not forget too that for some, eating meat is immoral, as is using fossil fuels. Our eating meat and our burning fossil fuels, that is.

So, are the practitioners of such relatively low-level, and disputed immoral acts – being gay, having non-marital sex, drinking and dancing, lying, using oil, eating meat – actually evil? Are women who have abortions, and the people who carry them out, evil? Of course not. It’s debatable whether some of these behaviours are immoral to begin with, but even if they are, immorality does not always equate with evil. I would argue that while all truly evil acts must, by definition, be immoral, not all (supposed) immorality is evil. Somehow personal immorality lacks the scale and awful consequences of true evil.

The Sanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy is much nearer the mark when it comes to defining evil:

Evil must involve harm, and it must be serious enough to damage its victims’ capacity to function normally… Furthermore, the harm must be unjustified…

I’ll adapt and paraphrase this as ‘the malicious and unnecessary inflicting of harm on others’ to give us a working definition of evil.

So, who qualifies? Hitler obviously. Putin certainly. Other oppressive regimes. Murderers. Hamas. Child abusers. The gangs who have raped very young girls in numerous UK cities. How about the God of the Old Testament? He orders the cruel deaths of Israel’s enemies (Deuteronomy 7), promotes the smashing of babies’ heads against rocks (Psalm 137:9) and orders the taking of prison-of-war virgins as sex slaves (Numbers 31: 17-18). Later, Jesus – like father, like son – relishes the opportunity to put his enemies to the sword (Luke 19:27) and orders those who don’t believe in him be consigned to hell where they’ll be tortured forever (Matthew 25: 41-46). This is evil by any definition.

So, given there isn’t a God nor a heavenly Jesus, from where does evil originate? I’ll get to that, at last, in the next post.

What to make of the Supernatural

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When I was young, about 8 or 9, I was frightened of creatures that invaded my bedroom in the dark: monsters under the bed, devils in human form lurking in the shadows, that kind of thing. One night when I couldn’t sleep through fear, it came to me that if these creatures were real then so too were the super-heroes I loved: Superman, Batman and the Legion of Super-Heroes! Now, I knew these DC characters didn’t really exist and so I reasoned (I think pretty well for a 9 year old!) that that neither did their evil counterparts, the monsters and devils I was scared of. With this realisation, the horrors were vanquished. Shadows were just shadows. There was nothing scary under the bed.

Somewhere in a recent comment, either here or elsewhere (I can’t remember which nor can I find it), someone informed me that I make the a priori assumption that the supernatural isn’t real.

The term a priori is used with abandon by people who don’t necessarily know what it means so here’s how The Oxford English dictionary defines it:

relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge which proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than from observation or experience.

I’ll take that. The only way one can assess the supernatural is through reasoning and deduction. There’s no independent evidence for it that can be considered; no external phenomenon to observe and analyse; no science, history or philosophy books that take it seriously or even consider it. I have no personal experience of the beings that supposedly inhabit the supernatural realm; no gods, angels, spirits, demons, ghosts or goblins have manifested themselves in front of me. I’ve never experienced magic, spells or exorcisms, at least not ones that can’t be explained far more convincingly in other ways. So what does that leave in terms of evidence?

Fantasy stories and religious texts. These are the only sources of information about the supernatural, and at least one of them is entirely fictional. Fantasy stories are by definition fiction. They are made up. Similarly, religious works are the products of minds from before the advent of science; explanations of the world and human experience that their creators could construct only in terms of their localised, pre-scientific superstitions. No-one outside of those who’ve chosen to believe in them takes them seriously, which is why their claims are never considered in serious science or history books (Ken Ham’s ‘scientific’ publications are nothing of the sort; they’re religious texts masquerading as science.)

That the supernatural has to be argued for, from an assumption that it does exist, is clear indication it does not; such powerful beings would surely be apparent in the real world, just as they are in Stranger Things (a fiction in case you’re not sure.) No-one has so far demonstrated that the supernatural is real. It is possible to argue it is but only through reliance on the same religious texts, the authority and reliability of which is in dispute on such matters

So, do I make an a priori assumption the supernatural doesn’t exist? Yes, in the sense I take it a priori that it doesn’t. Is this an assumption? No, it is a conclusion arrived at through an assessment of the evidence – there isn’t any: consideration of accounts of the supernatural reveals they’re fictional or prescientific, while personal experience of the apparently supernatural is better explained by rational means. I don’t therefore assume the supernatural doesn’t exist, I deduce it does not.

Actually, I did this when I was 8 or 9.

It’s the End!

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AI shows how it’s done. Arrange your elements carefully, and – hey, presto! – Jesus appears!

I’ve reached the end! The end of Jonathan Cahn’s The Dragon Prophecy that is. He has me convinced: the end of the age and the world itself, is just around the corner. He looks around the world, particularly the Middle East, sees the state it’s in and dives into the scriptures to uncover the prophecies that presage present day events. He then reveals how, collectively, these scriptures accurately describe the state of the world today following Hamas’s invasion of Israel on 7th October 2023.

Had he collected these passages prior to 7th October, would they have accurately foretold the events of that day? They should’ve done if that’s what they are really about. So where was this expose before 7th October? Where were the books, by Cahn or anyone else, revealing how the Bible predicted in detail, events that still lay in the future? Predicatbly (pun intended), they don’t exist. Cahn’s The Serpent’s Prophecy could only be written with hindsight, after the events, 7th October 2023 in particular, that he’s decided fulfil biblical prophecy. The prescience of these ancient scriptures is only apparent, to Cahn if no-one else, in retrospect.

He gathers disparate verses together to demonstrate how they do indeed predict current events. He omits many that don’t, even though they too appear to prophesy the future. He does this because they don’t fit the picture he’s trying to create: his interpretation of events in Israel and the significance he wants ascribed to them.

Cahn disingenuously forces unrelated verses to work together, like pieces from different jigsaw puzzles, to create a picture that loosely and disjointedly conforms with and thereby confirms his own conclusions. 

The culmination of The Dragon’s Prophecy is that the time is right and the stage set for Christ’s ‘return’. Cahn advises his readers to surrender to him before he comes though the clouds to do unspeakable things to them. While none of the ‘prophecies’ he’s pressed into service have ever been fulfilled and are certainly not being now, this one must surely be the greatest of the Bible’s failed prophecies.

Does all of this sound familiar? It should. Starting with Paul and the gospel writers, numerous hacks have pulled together biblical prophecies to show how events of their times fulfil the conditions for Christ’s return.

More than this, the gospels were created in exactly the same way that Cahn creates his end-of-the-world scenario. Mark, Matthew and Luke, ruthlessly plundered ancient Jewish scripture to show how their suffering Messiah (whether real or not) was predicted there. Significantly, no-one prior to the early days of the Christian cult believed that these particular scriptures foresaw a suffering Messiah who would die for the sins of his people before coming back to life. The scriptures could only be made to do so in retrospect. After some claimed to have seen the risen Jesus, early cultists began to scour the scriptures for passages – how many they had to ignore or misinterpret! – that could be made to create a loose, disjointed picture of their super-hero. It’s how Paul attempted to persuade others that Jesus was the Messiah (1 Corinthians 15:3,4 etc).

So Cahn is doing nothing new, finding a ready audience for his particular sleight of hand.

Back by unpopular demand – it’s the New Year Pop Quiz!

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All set? Here we go!

1. Which one of these fantasy figures actually exists?

2. For which one of these ideas is there refutable/verifiable, corroborative scientific evidence?

3. Which one of these events is demonstrably historical?

4. Which one of these phenomena is verified and corroborated by psychology?

5. Applying logic and reasoning, which of the following scenarios is most likely to be true:

6. Which of these statements is verifiably true?

Answers:

Question 1. The answer is none of them, though C, Donald Trump, comes closest. 10 points if you put C, none if you plumped for any of the others: despite the volumes written about them there isn’t an iota of  evidence that they exist.

Question 2. Award yourself 10 points for B, though if you’re a True Believer this is the only one you think isn’t true. There is an abundance of refutable/verifiable, corroborative scientific evidence that it is. You can only wish there were for the other three.

Question 3. A is correct – 10 points. There is a considerable amount of evidence that the moon landing occurred on 20th July 1969. There is absolutely none at all that the other three are historical. For the sake of argument, let’s say they’re mythical. Nul points if you think otherwise.

Question 4. The answer is all of them. Oh no, wait… that’s my cognitive dissonance speaking. D is the only one of those listed recognised by psychologists. My bad and 10 points to you.

Question 5. The answer is of course E. Award yourself another 10 points if you thought outside the box on this one. (You can also have 10 points if you said they’re all equally likely, as in ‘not at all’.)

Question 6. 10 points for D. 

Scores: 

If you scored 50 or more, congratulations! If you scored nothing at all, you are confirmation that question 6’s answer – D. Human beings are capable of believing just about anything – is true. Well done.

A happy new year to you all.