Does evil exist??

The simple answer to this question is no, it doesn't.  Before you get all riled up, let me explain why.  Humanity is made up of people, all of whom are somewhere on a behavioral spectrum from pure good all the way to pure evil...I use the term good and evil only to describe societally accepted extremes.  Most people will fall in the middle somewhere where there is both good and evil in equal or about equal measure.  If you look at a standard bell curve below, the 68% in the middle is where most people fall.  on either side of that middle section is 14% either side where a person can be more left than right and vice versa.  the remainder (at least for this essay) can be described as pure good or pure evil.  Keep in mind, this is all based on the scientific principal of standard deviation.  I am guessing that if one were to devise a survey with questions ranging from complete evil to complete good and ask these questions to a random sample, this deviation would be represented.   Again these questions would be based on accepted societal definition of good and evil acts.









Now that we have defined the populace, we can get to the meat of my assertion that evil does in fact, not exist.

The above bell curve applies to nearly anything you care to challenge as long as humanity is involved.  To prove my assertion, I am going to point out several situations that will require you the reader to think about your feelings of the scenario and rate it 1-10, with 1 being pure good and 10 being pure evil.  Keep in mind, I am not trying to change your mind about anything except the original premise.

1.)   You are on safari in Africa and are told by the guide that today there is a wedding in a village that you just happen to be visiting.  The bride in this wedding is a lovely young woman of 11 years, and the groom is a very well respected 45 year old in the village.  The bride will be the third wife of the groom.  Is that wedding good or evil?

2.)  In an Aboriginal tribe somewhere in the south Pacific, a ceremony of passing is being celebrated.  The deceased will be cooked and served to his descendants as is their custom.  The belief that consuming ones ancestor is to assure that their energy would continue to live in all of their relatives.  Is this act of reverence good or evil?

3.)That same Aboriginal tribe, before cooking their ancestor, removed a portion of his skin.  This skin was preserved and made into a drum skin.  This drum becomes a ceremonial summoner of the spirits of the ancestor during rituals.  Is this practice good or evil?

4.)  Deep in the Brazilian jungle exists a tribe of pygmy.  This day is a coming of age ceremony for a 9 year old girl that crossed over to womanhood by beginning menarche.  The girl is laid down and is sexually penetrated by all adult males (all males in or past puberty) that are not related to her to ensure that the essence of her mate (that was chosen for her) could enter her womb and allow for a successful carriage of offspring.  Is this ceremony good or evil?

For the purpose of argument, let us assume that each of these things are documented somewhere and are indeed factual situations. (I did just make them up for the purpose of illustration, but they could in fact exist)

The answer to all 4 questions is neither good nor evil.  The participants of each of these situations is doing what has been culturally expected of them.  It has been well documented that a number of places in the world (even today in the 21st century) marry their young girls off as soon as they reach menarche.  It is also not uncommon for young girls to be involved in the sex trade.  Not the same as a penetration ceremony, but similar in principal.  As for the other two, I could see a ceremonial reason to use a part of an ancestor or consumption of said ancestor.  I would think in the mind of the tribe, it would be a great honor to be consumed and used to make a drum so that my spirit would always have a place to go.

I guess the basis of this argument hinges on how much of a critical thinker you are and how rigid you are as far as morality is concerned.  Personally I feel that it would be wrong of me to judge any of the four groups based on some archaic form of morality that does not even apply to the subjects.  I feel that holding another to my standard of morality is inherently a negative prospect as the subjects have not experienced the things I have nor had the enlightenment that I have.  It would be akin to holding a lion responsible for a child charging into the pride and getting killed.  The lion did nothing it was not designed to do.  It viewed the small human as a threat and dealt with it accordingly.  We as a species need to step back and recognize our animal origins and remember that not too long ago (in the cosmic scale) we were not much more advanced than the lion and we killed far more quickly.

Now that I have explained a few things, let me put it into perspective.  Humanity strives to label things to put them into some sort of classifiable structure.  It is very hard for me to think of anyone that is pure evil or pure good.  Think for a second...if we never had any negative occurrences (in our own perspective) then we could not by definition recognize a good occurrence.  That is pretty much the only thing modern religion has gotten right (in my opinion).  Humanity is flawed...we will do wrong (perceived) and violate the accepted moral standard that is Christianity.

I believe that we are all a bit of everything.  We can be cold as ice one minute and warm and fuzzy the next.  We kill to survive (meat animals) and we kill to protect ourselves.  It is neither good nor evil as we are doing what we were designed to do.  Humanity is designed to be both good and evil (per our invented scale of morality).

So, as a recap, evil does not exist because we are doing what we were designed to do according to our own cultural norms and have arbitrarily assigned one extreme as evil and the other as good, when in reality the vast majority are somewhere in the middle of the bell curve.

Something to think about, huh?