THE DEBATE
Nobody disputes that good is real. Evil works against good. There is a debate over what it means to say that evil exists or in other words what evil actually means. Evil is typically understood as moral evil (human/divine actions), natural evil (hurricanes, disease) and metaphysical evil (a “force”). But those are the types. We look at the word evil.
There are two proposed suggestions about how evil is to be understood.
1 - Evil is a substance, a power, a thing. It exists in its own right. We will call that substantial evil.
2 - Evil is only a distortion of good - essentially it is good in the wrong place and time and has no existence of its own. We will call that parasitic evil. Evil is not something that exists on its own, but it is something we truly suffer and do because it is the corruption of what is good.
Religion says God does not make evil and there is nothing there to make and we take good and twist it. That sounds like a word salad and a game and so it is. It is as circular as, "My father is perfectly good. What seems to be wrongdoing on his part is in fact a test. He is testing us." Religion will not say, "We will just say that evil matters and leave it at that. We don't need to know all about the plague and exactly what it is to oppose it."
So religion presumes that there is no substantial evil and evil is just a failure for good to be what it should be.
No matter what evil is, it uses goods to lend itself cover. How effective and good are the goods that can be that easily turned into a mask? How good is a family community when an alien, an evil paedophile, is able to abide in it?
Substantial evil would be clearly the opposite of good. Parasitic evil would just be deformation of good rather than an opposite. The parasite needs the host. Religion has to teach, "To say that evil is the opposite is giving it too much power and too much credit. The evil will use that error to their own benefit. It will lead to grave damage." So it calls you evil if you hold that evil is or may be substantial. You are bullied to agree with its idea of evil.
When people say that evil works against good they talk and act as if it is the opposite of good. This needs repeating: ALL WHO CONDEMN EVIL GIVE IT ENERGY. ALL. And especially if they offer non-solutions such as sacraments, religion and prayer.
Opposition alone would not prove that at least one side is good.
Evils often oppose other evils. That leads to a lot of confusion among us. It draws us to evil thinking it has an answer. It is not as obvious as trying to fight fire with fire. It is more devious than that. It is more harmful than that.
Many, particularly in religion, deny that substantial evil exists and then act as if it does. They talk from both sides of the mouth. They condemn assuming that evil has any substance or that it has any real power over good. They then condone assuming it as long as people lie about it.
You are often told that evil is the opposite of good. Then you are told that evil cannot be that for it is merely a lack of a good that is not there and is nothing in its own right. The glass being half full of water does not mean the empty bit opposes the water. But what is clear that evil like the empty space in the water could be nothing but to us, the way we perceive, the way we respond, it could be taken and treated as an opposite. In fact it is. We can't help that. We engage in reification in many things - think that our notions are something concrete, eg that our love is magic. So it is no surprise that we talk and act as if evil is much a thing as good is, we set them up as rivals in a literal sense.
I am saying that if there is no evil as in power or force it could be human nature to treat it as if it is a power and force. And it is. So to us, it is as good as real. You make it real to you and to everybody you touch.
People worry about evil if it is substantial. But if it is not and we make it as good as, we do damage to our peace of mind and to community cohesion. We will corrupt.
Let us assume people really can and do think evil is just a lack of a good that is not there and not a substance. We must remember that if substantial evil appears in a situation it is not going to be substantial evil for all involved. If John experiences substantial evil or is part of it and it is part of it is him it will be contained. Many will not see it. Many will not see how bad it may become. People maybe think it is an example of how good is a mere distortion of evil. They are thinking about how there seems to be a context of good around it. It is like how you think you have an excellent dish when you don't see the fly in it. The good stops you seeing the bad is there and what it is. In other words, it is no wonder if you think that evil is just distorted good and gives rise to good.
ATTEMPTS TO OVERTHROW THE NOTION OF EVIL BEING SUBSTANTIAL
Nobody can show or test that evil is not a real force. They only assume it.
There is no direct proof that evil is only good that is not good enough which makes it bad.
So attempts to show that evil is not real the way a brick is are argued indirectly.
The attempts involve -
1 trying to show that substantial evil would look terrible but no evil is that repulsive and even the worst gives hope of better things
ANSWER: The experience of a person who suffers total depression and says they experience evil as a real thing is ignored.
2 trying to show that evil is a mere parasite on good for it takes good and twists it
ANSWER: If evil is a crafty substantial force it will want you to think that. It prevents you pinpointing and thus getting it dealt with correctly.
3 trying to show that a pure evil being cannot exist for evil is destruction so it would not exist if it could manage to be totally bad!
ANSWER: So an evil person exists less than a good one! To say that if Satan became totally evil he would not exist is clearly stupid.
4 trying to show that as evil depends on good it cannot last and will wreck itself
ANSWER: Evil burning itself out tells us nothing about what it is. You cannot look at the harm something does and work out from that what it actually is. Well-written letters arriving in the post do not mean that a person wrote them. AI could have.
People pretend to know that evil is a non-substance. So much for arrogance and lying being sinful and evil!
SUBSTANTIAL EVIL NEED NOT BE TOTALLY OBVIOUS
Substantial evil invokes a monstrous image of something totally repellent and dangerous. Fair enough but you are only going to see the tip of the iceberg. Evil can even look good and still be substantial evil. Pure poison can look like it is fresh well-water. Substantial evil can take any form it wants. If it wants to show total ugliness it can. If it wants to look good it can.
Substantial evil does not mean something has to be as bad as you can imagine. It only means it will be as bad as it can be. Maybe it wishes it could be more destructive. Maybe it would be if it could. The man who wants rob one safe does not have to want to rob the other.
If a force is only able to become evil to a degree it is still substantial evil though there are bigger evils. Evil is evil in quality and quantity. A weak evil force can still be 100% evil in quality and in what it aims to do. Evil is a lie and involves lies so it stands to reason that substantial evil needs to be a lie and hide its true nature.
We conclude the following. Suppose there is substantial evil. Would it be 100% evil? Yes. Just because the evil is a "better" one such as dishonesty rather than malice does not mean it is partly good. Better here means not better but more palatable. This substantial evil will protect itself by sowing confusing and hiding among good things.
EVIL IS A PARASITE FALLACY
Is a thief falling short of being honest? Is the hurricane falling short of being a breeze? Evil whether personal or a natural occurrence is accused of being a mere parasite by religion. Those who say evil is not substantial but is just parasitic on good get carried away. They think evil being parasitic proves it is not substantial. Evil can be a real substantial power and still parasitic. To use a bad argument to deny that substantial evil exists is like trying to protect substantial evil from being properly identified and we cannot handle what we do not know. A disease thrives when people dismiss it as something else.
Evil can even look parasitic when in fact it is not. Rust can be put on the bit of iron. Iron rusts but that does not mean that this bit rusted.
Evil being say a gap, a missing good, does not prove that God might not have DELIBERATELY PUT the gap there.
The person who can be honest is not and we assume that the dishonesty is parasitic on his faculty to be honest. But with nature there is only an order that came together by itself. Order is nothing compared to all the raging chaos in the universe. So there is no should or shouldn't as in moral. There is no normal. He maybe has no faculty to be honest least for now. Just because we think he could be better does not mean that it is up to him. Nature is bigger than him and has unknown ways.
When people call evil a negation or falling short but nothing else it is the parasitism they are referring to. Their hypocrisy is shown by how they say they love sinners which is thin when they mean parasites by sinners. It would follow they degrade themselves and encourage parasitism in the sinners if they show them love. A parasite is a person who will try to get something from you and pollute you so you cannot trust them. You are asking for pollution by going to them.
Evil being a parasite or acting like one does nothing at all to tell us what evil is. It only tells us what it is doing or seems to do. That is all.
IS SUBSTANTIAL EVIL A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS?
Can something be nothing else but evil with no light or grey in it at all? Can a spirit be that kind of evil? Can a human being be?
We touched on this earlier but let us explore properly. Christians usually say that since evil is harmful and degrading a purely evil force or person cannot exist for they would just self-destruct. A being has to have some good in it to be able to exist at all. An evil person would need the good quality of intelligence in order to plan evil.
Notice what this argument is doing - it is redefining bad character as destruction/cessation of existence. Destruction is not a moral matter at all. Destruction is not bad in itself and is only bad if intended to do harm. The problem is the kind of person that destroys not destruction. The argument then fails to show us that substantial evil is impossible.
This argument says the closer you get to becoming substantial evil the more you come apart. [It suggest that this idea accuses depressed people of being evil somehow.] If you can never become substantial evil that is not the point. We are being hypothetical. If you cannot do it that does not mean you cannot try. You do your best to become substantial evil. The point is that growing in evil is decreasing as a power and a person. That is dehumanising. The doctrine despite all the denials is saying that it is not murder to kill an evil person even if it is not in self-defence.
The argument that evil whatever it is ruins you and even fools you that this ruin is not happening is frightening. If you are a mass murderer and you feel no more damaged or lacking in freedom than you did when you were good then either the argument is wrong or self-deception is almighty. If self-deception is that good then we can trust nothing. We cannot trust any moral teaching.
No matter what you think evil is, it is clear that an evil person is not breaking down and becoming less of a person the more evil they become. What is breaking down is the person who has to see what is not there and feed themselves lies!
And surely the more you get damaged the less capable you are of exercising free will and choosing evil? The more evil you become then the less you can use free will to do harm and do it wilfully. You cannot be responsible for your evil intention. That is dehumanisation again.
Now if you are going to start a genocide then you must be strongly in the grip of evil and your own evil. You are so ruined that you cannot really have free will. That would ban trying to bring you to justice.
Notice this grip implication divorces free will from the possibility of doing evil. It totally contradicts the notion that evil is only something that happens when people abuse free will. It even makes that doctrine evil! It is evil to help evil by refusing to identify it properly.
EVIL SELF-DESTRUCTS?
If evil is just a parasite then you see that it cannot be as strong as good. It is always in danger of self-destructing.
You say that some time it will? But just because good is stronger and it is attached to good like rust to iron does not mean it ever will. If it can be a parasite now it can still be one in a million years.
We have refuted the view that a being that becomes literally evil as in substance becomes more like nothing. Substantial evil has the potential to stay around forever. But if substantial evil is possible then there is no problem with it staying around only for a while and vanishing. That is not self-destructing. It is just doing its job.
There is no way to tell if evil has come apart or if it is up to something and will come back.
If evil is a substance then to tell people it is just a lack that will dissipate or be filled with good is deceiving. Evil will take advantage of this hope. It is like how the adversary pretends to be injured.
If evil is a substance it will want you to think that the more real it becomes the more it becomes nothing.
The self-destruct doctrine leads to, "Don't bother fighting evil. If you do you only help do what it is doing to itself - destroy it." This turns action against evil into a mere option and implies that though you may act, it is evil that ruins itself not you.
FINALLY
Is substantial evil possible? If we don't know then we do not know what we are dealing with. Fear of evil will be warranted. History has shown what atrocities that fear leads to.
We have found that people talking about evil fall into complete and dangerous incoherence.
God belief is no help with evil. How could it when even the notion of evil is no help with evil?
Human nature implicitly and in some ways explicitly, subconsciously and consciously, thinks evil is more than a mere lack - a kind of reality and substance - and lies about it.