Basic Assumptions: Good and Evil

In the presence of all relevant facts, choices can be accurately and objectively denoted as good and/or evil. Good and evil is not a matter of opinion. Assessment of good or evil is a skill that can be honed to more accurately reflect the objective reality.

All of us recognize the difference between good and evil without being taught. What must be taught is the great value of doing good over the value of serving our lower natures. Guidance is also valuable as we learn to make fine distinctions in the relative value of good choices, and the relative cost of evil ones. This is especially important when every available option is both good and evil to some degree.

Certain things are rather easy. Taking the life of another is evil. There are times when we consider it to be justified, but even so, the killing itself is understood to be evil, and some other good that may come of the death is considered to outweigh the evil. It is in measuring the weight of some good against the weight of some evil where we contend with each other. The most difficult moral decisions are those in which the ratio of good to evil in each option seems very close to one.

One area where we often disagree passionately about what is the greater good or the greater evil, is abortion policy. The most passionate pro-choice advocate recognizes the value of the life of the unborn fetus, and the evil in destroying it. The most passionate pro-life advocate recognizes the value of a woman's freedom to choose, and the evil in taking it. The disagreement begins in the evaluation of how evil each alternative is. And there are many levels of cascading consequences that result of whatever choice might be made. We might consider the quality of life or degree of happiness that child might enjoy or suffer. We might consider the effect of the potential life on other lives to which the child would be closely tied. We might consider how each policy will affect the health of women. We might consider a woman's level of competency in making such a decision under the influence of pregnancy hormones. Each of these things has a weight that affects the overall decision.

In any choice, if we knew and understood more, we could discern more clearly the values of each aspect of the choice and the weight of the good and evil that would be done. The less we understand, the less accurate will be our perceptions of the relative weights of good against evil. It stands to reason then, that if we knew everything, if we were omniscient, we could perfectly discern the weight of good and evil in each possible option. No matter how small the difference in value, we could determine with certainty which choice is best, with perfect objectivity.

Therefore, good and evil is not a matter of opinion, but a matter of knowledge and understanding. There is always one greatest moral option. If we wish to do good, our quest is to discover that correct choice, and make that choice. If we simply choose what we want, and try to justify our choice after the fact, we are playing an entirely different sort of game.

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