By Luiz Felipe Ponde
Why does evil exist? This question opens up space for many answers, many of them contradictory.
We can immediately say that it is one of those questions that reveals the regret of metaphysics, as Fernando Pessoa said, because, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as “evil”, but only phenomena that please some and do not please others. others. , or even if everyone doesn’t like it.
These, like volcanoes, epidemics, sea quakes and earthquakes, are natural evils. Therefore, they are not bad at all.
Neither nature nor the universe is moral. Both are not intended to harm anyone. Therefore we say that nature and the universe are morally blind.
In philosophy, we say: neither nature nor the universe has any intention of causing harm to anyone.
Another way to answer this question is to say that there is no evil except that shit happens or that bad things happen because things in the world are subject to chance – luck or bad luck.
Often unintentional human actions cause harm to others, such as technical errors, management errors, ignorance and irresponsibility; in short, the chain of possible causes for unwanted events – bad events – is endless, and we don’t have time for infinity here.
However, no matter how we respond negatively to the existence of evil, we continue to suffer it irreversibly.
Some separate natural evil – which is not evil in itself – from moral evil – caused by humans. This would be, for many, the possible scope of our action against evil.
Next, naturally, we face good technique, science, management and politics – the rarest of the four.
We spend our lives facing various evils, from moral to natural, and end up losing the battle with the most terrifying natural evil of all, which is death.
The problem would therefore be the postulation of the existence of an “evil in itself,” a metaphysical or purposive entity, which would aim to cause suffering, destruction, injustice, and the like to man and all creatures that populate the universe.
The pure and simple indifference of the universe and nature to our suffering is already experienced as evil for us, as the writer Albert Camus said.
Religions, in general, make evil a metaphysical principle. Demons, spirits without light, “bad energies”.
Spiritism, the harshest of religions, understands evil as something to be settled in installments, like bills paid in each incarnation.
Christianity has a more serious problem than other religions in answering the question, “why does evil exist?” You know why?
Because Christianity invented that God is love, that God is good and all-powerful, and then messed it up. He was forced to create another principle (Satan), somewhat uncontrollable, that blows things up everywhere.
The problem persists, because then the question changes to “why does God, who is love, good and all-powerful, allow the demo to paint and embroider?”. No one knows how to answer this question satisfactorily.
Many Christian theologians and lay people say that the cause of evil is free will. God created us free, and we choose badly.
Unfortunately – for all the sympathy I have for much of theology, which is a very sophisticated form of religious philosophy in many cases – I have to say that this answer does not hold.
As the young nihilist philosopher Ivan Karamazov, a character in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, says, there is no answer that forgives God for the suffering of an innocent child.
If God exists, God is cruel or weak. Spiritists, with their positivist pocket logic, will say that the child chose to suffer before incarnating to pay a moral bill of past incarnations.
Finally, as they say in philosophy, the argument from evil is a checkmate in Christianity. Bring him to his knees.
Practicing atheists scoff at this argument. Smart people answer that evil is relative. Don’t let them tell us; we would never have imagined such a sophisticated diagnosis.
Thank you very much!
When we open the door from relativism to a reflection like this on evil, we invite nihilism to dinner. And from this, everyone is afraid.
Even atheists and “Toddynho” relativists.
With information from Gazeta do Povo
