I caught a video from Talk Heathen today, where a caller had some problems understanding the concept of evil from a religious context. I see this kind of thing all the time, especially from the religious and I think it’s time we talked about it.

Fair warning, this is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable.

A lot of this, I see from the religious and I think that’s not that hard to break down. Religion does a lot to push a particular moral and ethical ideology and people get programmed by their blind faith to think some things, even things that are perfectly normal activities, are simply declared as evil because someone, once upon a time, wrote a book of mythology saying so. You have to remember that the same book justifies slavery, beating your wife, stoning your children to death and genocide. That’s not a good place to get your moral sense IMO. The character of God in the Bible is downright evil.

At least it could be. Because we all have to remember that evil is a purely subjective term. What some people call evil, other people are just fine with and vice versa. There is no objective definition of what constitutes evil. Yet a lot of people, perhaps even most, will tell you they can identify what “evil” is. They just can’t explain how they know it.

I’ve pointed this out in the past with a post I did on Matt Dillahunty and slavery. He asserts that slavery is inherently evil, although he might not use that word per se. It’s his opinion and he’s certainly not alone in it, but that doesn’t make it objectively evil or wrong or whatever terminology you want to attach. Doing the actual work to demonstrate your views have any inherent validity is difficult and therefore, a lot of people simply make declarative statements and expect everyone else to go along. Matt, as I pointed out, he simply assumes he’s right and declares anyone who disagrees to be wrong, full stop. That’s not the way reasonable people debate however.

Yet we see a lot of people who can’t get that through their heads. And in this call that I’m talking about, the theist even mentioned Hitler and went on and on about how no morally-correct person could ever think that anything Hitler did or thought could ever be acceptable and that’s just pure subjectivity. I see a lot of that. I run into people on a regular basis whose position is generally “if you don’t agree with me, then you are morally wrong by default!” Except how do you justify that? They can’t. They just insist that it’s true. In fact, I’ve pointed this out in the past that people will make excuses why nobody can ever rightfully disagree because there’s a list of nasty qualities that anyone who isn’t on your side must have, just because they disagree. “You can’t be a good person if you don’t believe what I do!” Yet that’s utterly ridiculous.

That’s something that happens a lot, as anyone who has watched my videos will know. The religious, and it’s certainly not limited only to them, they simply declare that their beliefs are so with no way whatsoever to objectively back up any of it. Lots of people do exactly the same thing, whether or not they have a religious backing to their positions.

I’m not saying that Hitler did good things. I don’t. I happen to share the subjective view that what he did was bad. I just recognize that it is a subjective view. I also subjectively agree with Matt Dillahunty that slavery is a bad thing. I just recognize that my views are subjectively derived. Yet a lot of people just go on as though their views are automatically correct just because they happen to hold them and that’s simply not demonstrable or verifiable at all.

It’s why I keep asking people “how do you know that” and “how have you objectively verified your assertion to see if it’s demonstrably so?” Unfortunately, there are far too many people who never put their positions to the test. They don’t know why they think what they think. In the case of religion, a lot of that comes down to indoctrination, but even beyond that, societal pressure gets a lot of people to sign onto common belief systems simply because it’s more convenient than doing otherwise. It’s often difficult to think for yourself.

Now we can talk about why and how morality works the way it does and perhaps we should because a lot of people just don’t understand it. That’s why they think morals were handed down by an invisible spook in the sky. They simply don’t comprehend how human societies work in objective reality and even when it’s explained, it’s just easier to think “God did it” even though that’s absurdly untrue. Reality isn’t as cut and dried as a lot of people wish it was. It’s why you hear a lot of theists saying “wouldn’t it be nice if we just had a book that told us what to do?” Sure, that would be nice, but that’s not how any of it actually works! That’s immature thinking. You have to actually deal with reality and far too many people refuse to do that. Nice doesn’t mean anything. Reality does.

It’s why, the second people start tossing around “evil”, I pull the discussion over and try to get their justifications for it. If it’s just your opinion and you’re willing to acknowledge that, fine. It’s just a label that you’re subjectively attaching to a specific subject. It’s the people who think that things are objectively evil that run into problems and often, they have a severe emotional reaction to being called out on it. Yet we have to call people out on their bad thinking. Poor reasoning skills cannot be permitted to go on in an intelligent discussion. Again, it’s why the religious never really get anywhere. They simply don’t know how to think rationally. Whether anyone likes it or not, that’s a problem that needs to be corrected, no matter how badly it makes them feel. I’m not evil for expecting rationality. I just have higher standards than they do.

Kind of sad, isn’t it?