Good and Evil: Whence?

It would not be right to leave this discussion without giving some thought to the origins of the absolutes and to the relativity we have been investigating. Where do these ideas come from we ought to ask? The answers we get are also confused ones. Some will say they come from God. They will say that God has created things that way and He is the ultimate Good which Plato likened to the sun. On the other hand many will argue that these are simply thoughts in our heads and they evolved along with our brains as tools for survival.

If we point out that gentleness and kindness and that right or wrong, good or evil have no place in a struggle for survival. We may get the reply that some species have evolved in the security of the herd, the clan or the family. Therefore it is the survival of the herd, or the herd, clan or family that is good, while its destruction, by the claws, teeth or hands of predatory beasts or other tribes, is evil.

It needs hardly pointing out that this “bad” destruction, may be also “good” for the destroyers, so we have a contradiction. Both sides to the argument have difficulties. Why should an all-wise, all loving and beneficent Creator want to force his creation to undergo immense pain, and suffering and cruelty in a struggle for survival in order to achieve the dubious results of modern “civilization”? How can expedience and the survival instincts of either predators or the herds they prey upon lead us to ethics, philosophical discussion and the moral absolutes which human society cannot live without?

On the other hand the Judeo-Christian viewpoint is also bedevilled by the sad flaws in religions and the shortcomings of Christian people in the practice of the precepts they claim to believe. Both religion and atheism tend to an irrational dogmatism leading to shouting, frothing at the mouth and to hurling insults at the, perceived, enemy.