In the abstract--for this is what the radical skeptic must always do, is think in terms of the abstract and never the concrete--in the abstract, there is the idea that the universe is a cold, relentless, temporary accident, with no purpose, no design, and at base, born and carried about by blind, pitiless chance (though Dawkins denies that it is Chance). Such as the so-called New Atheists of today. They are really a strange mixture of logical positivists, crude empiricists, and postmodern relativists who have all one thing in common, and that is the there is no purpose to life, as the only meta-narrative that is true is that we came from nothing, and will dissolve into nothing. This is the Western story in terms of naturalism, Darwinism, and materialism. The irony is that this Story is one of progress through science and technology with a view to human prosperity. What the purpose for such prosperity is, no one knows, because we came from nothing and return to nothingness. Then there comes the problem of evil and suffering, that cantankerous blight upon progress so-called. And like the Hindus, there is a patent denial that evil exists. The Hindus call it maya, which means, "illusion." For the Nothing Man, evil is an illusion, and it alludes to nothing except that we came from nothing and return to nothingness.
They even go so far as to say (some of the Nothing Men) that there is no such thing as objective moral truth. There is no objective evil, they say, and there is no objective good. Though, they say, Religion is most certainly Bad, and we must keep it private at all cost, for the sake of the Common Good (remembering that there is no objective evil or good). Heh.
I think that in order for someone to deny that objective moral evil exists, that they must have a neurosis. One's conscience must have the beginnings of what occurs in sociopaths and psychopaths in order to believe that objective moral evil does not exist. Here is what I mean.
If you can look at the bodies stacked up in flimsy, bony piles at Auschwitz, Dachau and the whole host of other concentration camps, the gas chambers, the showers, the ovens, the tables where children were cut open and bled, where their little shoes were piled, up, where the hair of the prisoners was shaved off and kept for a safe prize, along with the gold of their extracted teeth--if you can witness that and say to yourself: there is no objective moral evil--then you have a mental disorder. You have a neurosis, and you have a problem.
If you can go to the slums of the 3rd world and watch an American tourist rape a five-year-old girl and watch her scream in terror and bleed and cower in fear as she is beaten by the Mama San, if you can listen to these men talk about how they enjoy doing what they do to these little girls and say to yourself: there is no objective moral evil--then you have a serious problem. You have a mental disorder and you need to get some help.
If you can watch a doctor plunge a steel spike into the brain of a baby that has crowned the vaginal lining and is about to be born, only to have its skull pulled open and its brains sucked out by a vacuum and you call that a woman's right to choose--Reproductive Rights--then you have a neurological disorder: your conscience has been seared as with a hot iron and the scar tissue makes it unable for you to feel. If that is you--if you don't cringe at that thought and say to yourself: this is evil!--then you have a serious problem.
If you think Joshua's campaigns against the Canaanites were morally objectionable, and yet say that no moral, objective evil exists--then you have a mental problem: you are living with cognitive dissonance and living a life of self-deception: you have a serious disorder of the mind. Get some help!
If you realize that you have been living a life of self-deception, there is hope: Jesus Christ has the power to cleanse you and forgive you and make you into a new person. By all means, do so now, before it is too late, and you lose yourself in the quagmire of a neurotic abyss, from which there is no return.
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