Meeting of the Minds, April17, 2017

  On April 17, 2017 the Wise Guys met again for a more or less free wheeling discussion involving public policy. John B. suggested a subject that was unusual for the Wise Guys, i.e. what our parents taught us. Only one person elected to address the question directly and responded  that his father taught him about morality. This response led to a discussion of evil. The group talked about the nature of evil and how and why evil at times triumphs over good. A pertinent and eternally troubling question is why an all-knowing God would countenance such an outcome.  Although few in the group were admitted theists, they pursued the subject with vigor, particularly from the point of view of evil perpetrated by man, so-called moral evil.

  They brought up the issue as to whether evil disproves the existence of God. Why would an all-knowing and loving God allow for evil.  The answer to this question has been sought for thousands of years and is subsumed under the heading of theodicy. According to this theory, one cannot understand all of God’s plans or more pertinently, the presence of evil allows man to have free choice, the choice to be good or bad. An answer proposed by John B. was that Christians must identify the bad before they can define the good. The choice to pursue evil or good makes man a moral agent, a quality reserved for man and denied to animals.

   Earl H. continued the discussion of evil by referring to an article in the New York Times, entitled “U.S. Drops ‘Mother of all Bombs on ISIS Caves in Afghanistan” The NY times article dealt with the issue of collateral damage. The authors of the article were troubled by the fact that there was uncertainty about how many people were killed and the extent of involvement of innocent civilians. The article notes other incidents, specifically, those  in  Mosul and Syria  wherein innocent civilians were harmed.  Their conclusion was that our country has been inured to inflicting suffering on both the enemy and on innocent people. John B. responded that the NYT reignited his dismay over American values in peace and war and that humans seem to be moving towards a common fate as technology leaves no one safe from machine-induced massive, indiscriminant killing.

  

   Earl H. then discussed an article from the online newspaper the Seattle Intelligencer entitled A Man From the Holocaust.  It dealt with  Elie Wiesel who survived the Holocaust  to devote the remainder of his life to the memory  of the 6 million Jews killed by the Germans.  Though termed a survivor, he barely survived. He  dwelled in the past, reminding others about the potential evil existing in all men. The same article reported on a lecture, delivered by Wiesel at Seattle University entitled After Auschwitz, Can we believe?  Wiesel was concerned with both belief in God and belief in the goodness of man. In answer to the question where was God at Auschwitz, Wiesel responded with another question, where was man? Wiesel  found himself unable to believe in a God who  abandoned the Jewish people. Eventually he reconciled with God  but had not forgiven man and remained pessimistic about the future. . Wiesel retorted  “For the first time, we have weapons to destroy us totally and I doubt man’s wisdom not to eventually use them.” This conundrum led into a further discussion concerning the nature of evil.

  

  The group was  frustrated by the fact that they could not define evil. We were reminded that discussions of evil involve philosophy. In general, philosophy does not answer questions  directly and completely but uses arguments to clarify the issues. Socrates used discussion and argument to seek the truth.  This process has been termed dialectic.  Mary Wollstonecraft, a philosopher and writer, provided a simple answer as to why men are sometimes evil. She posited that the choice to pursue evil might be due to a mistaken  belief that evil may lead to happiness , the true good that all men seek.

   The session ended with the question  posed by John “do we expect the world to get better or worse?” Most thought that things would  get worse.  Karen N. attributed this attitude to her natural pessimism.  One cannot help but to be pessimistic after many of us witnessed the greatest evils of all time including world wars, the holocaust, and the killing of innocent people. Like Elie Wiesel, we mistrust man whom we cannot forgive for his persistent embrace of evil.  Apparently, we must await the Kingdom of God for it is surely not yet in our midst.

Posted by Arthur Banner