Good, Evil, and The Law

Technology A kingmaker and godslayer (deicide) of epic proportions. intersects heavily with morality, ethics, and philosophy. The great moral quandaries of its intellectuals are boundless, but outside of their towers are those in the moral trenches compelled to answer the hard questions right now, consequences and all.

Individuals who probably did not expect to hold such deciding power are now answering the weighty philosophical questions one way or the other, and with the advent of encryption, federation, machine learning and digital currencies — one of those questions is the question of evil.

We could opine at great length about the present affairs but let’s instead take up an ecclesiastical The historical Christian Church (ecclesia) and its doctrine (ecclesiology). view to explore the question of evil as answered in the past. The King James translation The King James Version is possibly one of the most ridiculed translations, but that probably works in its favor. The difficult read encourages a detachment from modern biases. will act as the entry point to discuss a subset of the historical answers to this philosophical question. I’m not a philosopher and surely don’t claim to be one, consider me a layman. There be multiple dragons below.

Why does evil exist?

Evil exists because the law exists. That was the easy answer in past ecclesiologies; but today it is provocative The start of a circular argument, but fallacies of this nature are useful for reaching interesting conclusions. and supposes an unconventional conclusion. If one accepts that evil exists because the law exists, then it must follow that without the law there is neither good nor evil, as there is no punishment. Meaning that the law was made for the evil which completes the circular argument. The evil in this context is implicit and some call it total depravity This idea is ancient. Paul, a reformed persecutor and Apostle of the first–century period ecclesia, draws a similar argument when reasoning with the Greeks in his letter to the Romans.

Qualifying what it means to have no law is enticing, Anarchy and all of its trappings. but first, let’s explore an implicit conclusion that follows if there is such a relationship between the law and evil. That conclusion is simple: To establish the law is to explicitly create good and evil. That surely sounds asinine, but the ecclesia embraced this summation completely. Take for example the 8th century BC prophet Isaiah as he speaks of Cyrus the Great, the prophet Micah speaking of Maroth, or Paul as he draws a strong comparison of a potter molding clay when speaking of supreme sovereignty.

The implicit side effect of establishing the law is sometimes referred to as the monopoly Jean Bodin & Thomas Hobbes. on violence. In more neutral terms: the monopoly of force. The paradoxical absurdity between, good, evil, and the law (God) under specific premises is sometimes called the logical problem of evil. For the sake of entertaining the question of evil further, this ecclesiological view of the law sidesteps the problem of evil as asking the wrong question.

Instead, if an authority A god, government, ruler, creator, or judge. establishes the law, and as a side effect creates good and evil, and thereby wields and enforces a monopoly on violence; then what is, in essence, good and evil? That question is easier to entertain with another question.

Who determines good and evil?

Why the government of course. If we can accept that a creator of the law possesses implicit knowledge of good and evil, then who better an expert on good and evil than the government itself. This isn’t a novel concept either, the book of Genesis says explicitly that those who know good and evil are like An entity’s knowledge of good and evil is not enough to convince the observer that it possesses the power of a god. gods.

Let’s further say that relative to the government the average citizen possesses no knowledge of good or evil, that is — until that citizen hires a lawyer or becomes a lawyer. The lawyer adorns the government’s likeness and appears to wield its powers. In the ecclesia, lack of knowledge in the law is no saving grace. Violation in any point confers punishment just the same.

Such conjecture reveals a more puzzling problem: Governments and citizens contemplate the nature of good and evil. This presents a set of dualisms and controversies that unravel between contemplators of good and evil and further expands into two opposing and abstract An enigmatic axiom that is extended at will. genres of good and evil with its specificity The actionable definitions or specifics changing throughout the histories. encapsulated. The knowledge of good and evil appears to differ between observers.

The existence of evil as we have seen is paralleled to the identification of good and evil. However, if the creator and the observer of the law both know good and evil — then who holds authority in knowing? Is it the creator of the law, or the observer of the law? This higher level dualism is unavoidable and is sometimes expressed today as apparent and absolute authority.

One could pontificate at length about the influence of knowledge on authority, The idea that responsibility exceeds authority. The one who holds the most responsiblity effectively wields all the power at any given time, regardless of absolute power rank. but one thing is apparent: If good and evil are opposing and abstract, then even observers create laws The Law of Moses (Tribe of Levi) or The Law of the Medes and Persians are cursory examples within the ecclesia. for others to follow. These observers paradoxically, become creators. This introduces the peculiar perplexity of multiple creators — a controversy of gods among gods. The spheres of influence from each god are in conflict continually, and the winner sets the rules sub-globally. Those within the sphere. The sphere of authority is sometimes called sphere sovereignty.

The principle of authority spheres is foundational, with examples all throughout the ecclesia. In short, any entity imputing good or evil, whether alive or dead, is not just like a god — but truly Knowledge and imputation as the foundational aspects of a god. The observer considers an entity that imputes or accuses other entities of good or evil as a god. That entity has apparent authority. becomes one.

Ideological battles are fought constantly and indefinitely within a larger divination war with varying levels of violence. Force that parallels the scope of imputation. Many observe the law but only few create due to its paradoxical requirement of monopolized violence. Perpetual battles between our gods and would be overlords on Earth are fought to decide the decider of good and evil, which are two Or more, but an observer’s natural disposition reduces all disparities into two irreducible and opposing axioms (Duality). opposing and abstract mights. In some ancient civilizations, child sacrifice was upheld as a moral good — Canaan’s ruler Molech is one such example.

If we continue with this ancient ecclesiastical philosophy it starts to become easier to answer the question of why evil exists. The controversy of many gods fighting amongst each other is too problematic. A better approach requires peeking into the very essence of evil itself. One could sneak a glimpse at the essence of evil by removing all gods and consequently removing all laws. Paul argues Many of Paul’s arguments mirror the belief systems of his opponents. He used perhaps one of the most powerful forms of persuasion — becoming all things to all people. See his first letter to the Corinthians, the ninth chapter. a similar point with the Greeks.

Those who have no laws are a law unto themselves, meaning observers in the face of no external laws, create internal laws. The laws that they make are scoped to a more natural and daresay noble instinct. The Law of Nature (Natural Law). See John Locke and the ancient Greek’s Natural Law. This line of reasoning appears to zero in on a more satisfying answer, but asking the question of no law is to ask a final and more sinister question.

What is evil?

Take away all laws, by removing all gods, and we stare into the face of evil itself. Evil Hannah Arendt would say that evil thrives on apathy. is the source of fear — the primary essence of terror. A rather anticlimactic conclusion but a circumspectual answer in the ancient ecclesiologies.

Evil as the source of fear is a word play, but should not be taken in the sense of fear as the absolute root of all evil. The sense is closer Not exactly but this wording suffices. to the idea that if pain is a source of fear, and suffering a source of fear, then pain, suffering, and evil would be apparent equivalents. To put it another way; fear becomes the source of a new evil.

The ultimate end of fear is the terror of death, preempting the final natural law that no man has escaped; all eventually die. This axiom pervades the minds and perturbs mortals continually. In the ecclesia, this internal law and its derivatives guards the fear of the final evil, the king of evils, and the king of terrors — death itself.

In the mortal’s mind, anything that so much as points towards death is evil. Within the scope of this idea, laws act as the fundamental instruments that regulate fear; the essence of terror, and subsequently the propensity of death. Any external entity perpetuating terror challenges the law directly in the most blasphemous way. It would be trivial to usurp or gather the powers of a god quickly with terror The supposition that virtue can be derived from terror — to be terrifying is to be virtuous. See Robespierre’s ideas of terror emanating virtue and the Committee of Public Safety’s Reign of Terror. alone.

Evil is also mutual; one who is afraid perpetuates From a show of force, to verbal denunciations, or even inventing powerful weapons. evil to remove the source of one’s fear. This is not particularly eye opening, but the fearful within the ecclesia are considered to be some of the most dangerous and unpredictable.

Death, the king of terrors, additionally invites the infinite unknown. Foreign and unknown entities become implicitly evil. The unknown imputes fear, fear brings terror, and ultimate terror motivates death. Many civilizations have destroyed the unknown without second thought.

Paul’s take on the conscience in a calculative sense, turns the problem of mutual evil into multiple bounded or scoped problems of evil. The conscience acts as a delimit, such that if the evil converges, One or more convergent evils. then there is some route to peace. Where none, one, or two or more evils coexist in a mutual relationship. The greater of the convergent evils isn’t always the target.

This is primarily the idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If an external entity attacked the Earth, peace among Earthlings would be realized instantly. In the common hypothesis, but it’s more complicated that that. The attacking forces would become an obvious Perhaps why hostile empires, monopolies, and other coalescing powers rarely stand the test of time. convergence of evil, but in practicality, evil as it is perceived is mostly divergent — it cannot be pinpointed quickly or identified easily.

Lastly, the conscience and the knowledge of good and evil appear as two entirely different domains. Paul discusses this distinction when summarizing the ecclesia’s laws of liberty in the context of two men’s opposing consciences.

Conclusion

The shapeless conflict between good, evil, and the law is continual, its winners and losers painted throughout the halls of history. The technological landscape is transforming fast and in the real world, fear appears to be increasing steadily. What new evils are on the radar? Who will be the kingmakers? Who will be the godslayers? In this context, a godslayer is a god who is killed and then resurrected. Those who answer such questions are possibly the ones you least expect.