Opus 2018-167: The Good, The Bad, and the Rest of Us

Right and wrong.  Good and evil.  Do they exist?  Yes.  Every human being in the world that is healthy and mentally stable will admit there is right and wrong.  If nothing else they will admit there is a wrong way to screw on a hose.  We may disagree on what to put in each category but we would agree with the concept.  A universal idea like that must come from somewhere.

It does not come from evolution.  Animals don’t have wrong and right.  When I was in Vietnam you would not believe some of the ways the bored GI’s tried to entertain themselves.  I had my books.  I wrote letters.  One time I took a break and went outside to see what all the noise was about.  A group of very bored soldiers had found a bitch in heat and were playing games with the males that wanted to breed her.  The dogs didn’t look at it as right and wrong.  All they knew was instinct and acting on it.  The soldiers knew right and wrong and I doubt if they ever told their current or future wives how they spent that afternoon.

New born babies don’t know right from wrong.  I speak as one who has been spit up on and listen to the little toots that babies make.  They drool and flop.  It is what they do.  If left alone they won’t get much further but we keep coaching and modeling and eventually we get adults who demonstrate what they have been coached on.  It is a battle all the way because it does not come naturally. 

Where do we adult get our ideas of right and wrong?  For an advanced culture to develop and thrive they need some kind of religious roots to tell them where to draw the lines.  Pragmatism isn’t enough.  Rich men think having many wives is a great idea as long as they can divorce them when it is convenient, thus polygamy.  Strong men think they can enslave the weak.  If you had taken a poll in ancient times about slavery I think that most of the people against it would be the slaves themselves.  Religion gives boundaries. 

When you remove the religious boundaries you end up with what modern Marxism has shown us.  In every case where Communists have been in control you have had genocidal levels of murder and mayhem.  If you know enough about history to recognize that the Nazis and the Communists were both socialistic then you realize that the godless governments of history make the victims of religious wars into small change and footnotes.

Which religion is best?  I obviously have an opinion but I express that often enough in other places.  Ethical behavior is pretty much nonsense without the guidance of religion.

homo unius libri