We get so caught up in figuring out how we should behave; we are constantly possessed with judgments as to right and wrong. Normal conversation is filled with familiar opinions as to human behavior. “That’s not the right thing to do.” “That’s so wrong.” “There’s a right way and a wrong way.” “If you do what’s right, you’ll come out ahead.” We carry these assessments even further in our philosophies of life, and as those judgments carry greater serious intent, become known as moral or immoral; and at the most, good or evil. As a matter of fact, our religions carry this value system to the its epitome, telling us that there is an intrinsic Good in the universe which is either a major part of the ruler of all the universe, or, in some religious philosophies, one and the same as the great, one and only, Divine Ruler of all. Unfortunately, there have been multiple millions of humans who have swallowed this false pretense whole, and as a result, have made many violent blunders in their lives. Human sacrifice and mass bombings appear to be a great endemic illness in our current societies, stemming from this errant philosophy.
It is not that we shouldn’t be concerned about the right way to behave. We should do so. As a matter of fact, learning how to behave in relationship to other humans is a most important part of our childhood teaching and guidance. It is a most important part of our maturation into caring and merciful human persons. Learning how to behave in our interpersonal relationships so that we can tolerate each other, learn from each other, and support each other, is crucial to our survival as a species. None of us is going to last a whole lot longer if we accept violence toward other humans as a normal part of our existence, even glorified by our religions. We are all of us, in a combined greater organism as a whole, called life, bound to each other, and will not survive if we are not committed to respect for all other life. We are certainly headed in the wrong direction at the present time, and have a very long way to go if we are to achieve mutual respect, and mutual survival.
If there ever was a single crucial point in human history, at which time we took a very wrong turn in our philosophy of right and wrong, it was at the time of the great Greek philosophers. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle believed that there was a intrinsic goodness in the universe. According to their belief, ignorance was immoral, and learning was the single important pathway to becoming moral. The educated man, they thought, will of himself become more moral. The more educated he becomes, the more he will be in tune with, or a part of, this universal Goodness. This was the basic format used by the Christian religion as it formed, and later by Islam. In those religions, this philosophical great goodness become transformed into a great deity which had created and now controlled the entire universe, and who was totally good in every way. This religious philosophy then necessitated the creation of a great Evil God, in order to account for all the terrible things that befall humans in our lives. And here we go. The pretend monster battle between good and evil has been manufactured, and all those humans who do not believe in a certain way are thought to be evil, and deserve to be killed. Because of this mistaken belief in an intrinsic, totally good God, our religions have served as a convenient substrate for the violence inflicted by one human on another.
There was one other great Greek philosopher, who saw this business of choosing between right and wrong behavior with a great deal more clarity. He understood that we had no evidence for Gods, or Super Beings that controlled everything that we do. He understood that there is no magnificent all-powerful force in the universe which encompasses all “goodness”. He understood that all value judgments which we make, whether that is right or wrong, moral or immoral, good or evil, are purely human valuations, formed to guide our own lives. He knew that we make those judgments without consideration for other life, and knew that those values carried no meaning in all the rest of the universe. For his advanced understanding, Protagoras was severely punished. All his books were burned, and he was banished from his society. It was the price every savant, throughout history, has paid for being too far ahead of his or her time. Each of them has been paid with derision, scorn, ostracism and/or death. The tragedy is that we are still paying dearly for our incomprehension. We still don’t understand that the only good we have is preserving life, and the only evil we have is destroying life.
We have, indeed, a long way to go, if we are to eliminate our own self destruction. Our religions must bear a great deal of the burden for this metamorphosis. We certainly need to follow the moral teachings of our religions, which tell us to love our neighbors, and be humbly, deeply reverent for our creation. That part of our right and wrong we need to cherish. We will never get there, however, until the totally good God of our religions has been usurped from his throne. This God leads us astray in multiple deeply destructive“evil” ways.