ONE OF THE MORE POIGNANT POST-911 MOMENTS...:

Would We Still Have the Concept of Evil Without Religion? (David Frankfurter, September 30, 2010, Big Questions)

Evil in Western parlance is not the ha-ra or the dybbuks of Judaism or the shaytan or jinn of Islam, which are much more complex ideas that reflect the diverse ways we experience danger, misfortune, seduction, and betrayal in society. To pronounce someone or something "evil" means inevitably to place that person or event outside the realm of complex human acts and motivations, or the capriciousness of the natural world (or spirit world), into the realm of the altogether monstrous. In expelling that subject from the realm of comprehension, we thus refuse to accept the humanity, the social contexts, in which terrible acts might be done or comprehended; and the more people and events we relegate to that monstrous realm, the more we begin to reify that realm—as something separate and antagonistic, a world of Satan.

I would indeed argue that this idea derives from the basic features of organized religion—which by nature frames social and moral experience—but more from Christianity itself, which sought to articulate a supernatural evil at a cosmic, polarized dimension from its very earliest generations.

...came when Andrew Delbanco was on PBS with Bill Moyers trying to reckon with the reality of evil

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 4, 2010 6:29 AM