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The Value of Myth in Depicting the Conflict Between Good and Evil

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In October 2013, three young friends living in the Washington DC area — a male-female couple and a male friend — went out to a number of local bars to celebrate a birthday. The friends drank copiously, and then returned to a small studio apartment at 2 a.m. An hour later, one of the men stabbed his male friend to death. When police arrived, they found the surviving male covered in blood, with the floor and wall also covered in blood. “I caught my buddy and my girl cheating,” said the man. “I killed my buddy.” The man was subsequently found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

How did this happen? Was murder inevitable? It seems unlikely. The killing was not pre-planned. No one in the group had a prior record of violence or criminal activity. All three friends were well-educated and successful, with bright futures ahead of them. It’s true that all were extremely drunk, but drunkenness very rarely leads to murder.

This case is noteworthy, not because murders are unusual — murders happen all the time — but because this particular murder seems to have been completely unpredictable. It’s the normality of the persons and circumstances that disturbs the conscience. Under slightly different circumstances, the murder would not have happened at all, and all three would conceivably have lived long, happy lives.

Most of us are law-abiding citizens. We believe we are good, and despise thieves, rapists, and murderers. But what happens when the normal conditions under which we live change, when we are humiliated or outraged, when there is no security for our lives or property, when our opportunities for happiness are snatched from us for no good reason? How far will we go to avenge ourselves, and what violence will we justify in order to restore our perceived notion of justice?

The conflict between good and evil tendencies within human beings is a frequent theme in both philosophy and religion. However, philosophy has had a tendency to attribute evil tendencies within humanity to a deficiency of reason. In the view of many philosophers, reason alone should be able to establish that human rights are universal, and that impulses to violence, conquest, and enslavement are irrational. Furthermore, they argue that when reason establishes its dominance over the passions within human beings, societies become freer and more peaceful. (Notably, the great philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith rejected this argument.)

The religious interpretation of the conflict between good and evil, on the other hand, is based more upon myth and faith. And while the myths of religion are not literally accurate in terms of history or science, these myths often have insights into the inner turmoil of human beings that are lost in straightforward descriptions of fact and an emphasis on rationality.

The Christian scholar Paul Elmer More argued in his book, The Religion of Plato, that the dualism between good and evil within the human soul was very effectively described by the Greek philosopher Plato, but that this description relied heavily on the picturesque elements of myth, as found in the The Republic, Laws, Timaeus, and other works. In Plato’s view, there was a struggle within all human beings between a higher nature and a lower nature, the higher nature being drawn to a vision of ideal forms and the lower nature being dominated by the flux of human passions and desires. According to More,

It is not that pleasure or pain, or the desires and emotions connected with them, are totally depraved in themselves . . . but they contain the principle of evil in so far as they are radically unlimited, belonging by nature to what in itself is without measure and tends by inertia to endless expansion. Hence, left to themselves, they run to evil, whereas under control they may become good, and the art of life lies in the governing of pleasure and pain by a law exterior to them, in a man’s becoming master of himself, or better than himself. (pp. 225-6)

What are some of the myths Plato discusses? In The Republic, Plato tells the story of Gyges, a lowly shepherd who discovers a magic ring that bestows the power of invisibility. With this invisibility, Gyges is able to go wherever he wants undetected, and to do what he wants without anyone stopping him. Eventually, Gyges kills the king of his country and obtains absolute power for himself. In discussing this story, Glaucon, a student of Socrates, argues that with the awesome power of invisibility, no man would be able to remain just, in light of the benefits one could obtain. However, Socrates responds that being a slave to one’s desires actually does not bring long-term happiness, and that the happy man is one who is able to control his desires.

In the Phaedrus, Plato relates the dialogue between Socrates and his pupil Phaedrus on whether friendship is preferable to love. Socrates discusses a number of myths throughout the dialogue, but appears to use these myths as metaphorical illustrations of the internal struggle within human beings between their higher and lower natures. It is the nature of human beings, Socrates notes, to pursue the good and the beautiful, and this pursuit can be noble or ignoble depending on whether reason is driving one toward enlightenment or desire takes over and drives one to excessive pleasure-seeking. Indeed, Socrates describes love as a type of “madness” — but he argues that this madness is a source of inspiration that can result in either good or evil depending on how one directs the passions. Socrates proceeds to employ a figurative picture of a charioteer driving two horses, with one horse being noble and the other ignoble. The noble horse pulls the charioteer toward heaven, while the ignoble horse pulls the charioteer downward, toward the earth and potential disaster. Even so, the human being in love is influenced by the god he or she follows; the followers of Ares, the god of war, are inclined to violence if they feel wronged by their lover; the followers of Zeus, on the other hand, use love to seek philosophical wisdom.

The nature and purpose of love is also discussed in the Symposium. In this dialogue, Socrates relates a fantastical myth about human beings originally being created with two bodies attached at the back, with two heads, four arms, and four legs. These beings apparently threatened the gods, so Zeus cut the beings in two; henceforth, humans spent their lives trying to find their other halves. Love inspires wisdom and courage, according to the dialogue, but only when it encourages companionship and the exchange of knowledge, and is not merely the pursuit of sexual gratification.

Illustration of the original humans described in Plato’s Symposium:

In the Timaeus, Plato discusses the creation of the universe and the role of human beings in this universe. Everything proceeds from the Good, argued Plato. However, the Good is not some lifeless abstraction, but a power with a dynamic element. According to More, Plato gave the name of God to this dynamic element. God fashions the universe according to an ideal pattern, but the end result is always less than perfect because of the resistance of the materials and the tendency of material things to always fall short of their perfect ends.

Plato argues that there are powers of good and powers of evil in the universe — and within human beings — and Plato personifies these powers as gods or daemons. There is a struggle between good and evil that all humans participate in, and all are subject to judgment at the ends of their lives (Plato believed in reincarnation and posited that deeds in one’s recent life determined one’s station in the next life.) Here, we see myth and faith enter again into Plato’s philosophy, and More defends the use of these stories and symbols as a means of illustrating the dramas of moral conflict:

In this last stage the essential truth of philosophy as a concern of the individual soul, is rendered vivid and convincing by clothing it in the imaginative garb of fiction — fiction which may yet be a veil, more or less transparent, through which we behold the actual events of the spirit world; and this aid of the imagination is needed just because the dualism of the human consciousness cannot be grasped by the reason, demands indeed a certain abatement of that rationalizing tendency of the mind which, if left to itself, inevitably seeks its satisfaction in one or the other form of monism. (p. 199)

What’s fascinating about Plato’s use of myths in philosophy is that while he recognizes that many of the myths are literally dubious or false, they seem to point to truths that are difficult or impossible to express in literal language. Love really does seem to be a desire to unite with one’s missing half, and falling in love really is akin to madness, a madness that can lead to disaster if one is not careful. Humankind does seem to be afflicted by an internal struggle between a higher, noble nature and a lower nature, with the lower nature inclined to self-centeredness and grasping for ever more wealth, power, and pleasure.

Plato had enormous influence on Western civilization, but More argues that the successors to Plato erred by abandoning Plato’s use of myth to illustrate the duality of human nature. Over the years, Greek philosophy became increasingly rationalistic and prone to a monism that was unable to cope with the reality of human dualism. (For an example of this extreme monism, see the works of Plotinus, who argued for an abstract “One” as the ultimate source of all things.) Hence, argued More, Christianity was in fact the true heir of Platonism, and not the Greek philosophers that came after Plato.

Myth is “the drama of religion,” according to More, not a literally accurate description of a sequence of events. Reason and philosophy can analyze and discuss good and evil, but to fully understand the conflict between good and evil, within and between human beings, requires a dramatic depiction of our swirling, churning passions. In More’s words, “A myth is false and reprehensible in so far as it misses or distorts the primary truth of philosophy and the secondary truth of theology; it becomes more probable and more and more indispensable to the full religious life as it lends insistence and reality to those truths and answers to the daily needs of the soul.” (p. 165) The role of Christian myths in illustrating the dramatic conflict between good and evil will be discussed in the next essay.

Religion as a Source of Evil – Part 2

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In a previous post, I critically examined the claim of contemporary atheists that religion, and more broadly a lack of reason, has been a predominant cause of evil in history.  In response, I argued that evil in religion was an expression of deeper causes rooted in human nature, so abolishing religion would not address the fundamental problem of evil.  In addition, I argued that reason itself could not be a solution to evil because reason was too easily used as a tool of self-interest.  However, even after accounting for the deeper causes of evil, there remained a difficult question: what good is religion if it does not actually make human beings better?

This question faced one Christian pastor who was horrified by the easy accommodation of Christian churches in Germany to the Nazi party in the 1930s: Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Bonhoeffer’s response to the tragic development of Christianity in Germany will be examined briefly here.

Contrary to the claims of many atheists, the Christian churches in Germany were not exactly steadfast allies of the Nazis.  Leading Nazis despised Christanity because of its alleged superstitions and it’s compassion for the weak, and in the long term Hitler wanted to abolish Christianity.  However, Hitler knew he could not undertake too many battles at once and he did not want to cause division and turmoil in Germany while he needed national unity.  On the other hand, the Christian churches, while opposed to a number of elements of Nazi doctrine, wanted to survive, and largely agreed with Hitler’s policy of restoring German greatness.  So both sides struck a bargain, in which the Nazis permitted the continued existence of the churches as long as they did not challenge the secular authority of Hitler and the Nazis.  Moreover, a “German Christian” movement arose which attempted to reconcile Christianity and Nazism.

A number of leading Christians rebelled at this corrupt bargain, among them Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the founders of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church.  Bonhoeffer initially attempted peaceful resistance to the Nazis, later fled to the United States, but then returned to Germany in 1939.  Bomhoeffer made contacts with anti-Nazi resisters in German military intelligence, some of whom were involved in various assassination plots against Hitler.  When this underground movement was discovered, Bonhoeffer, already imprisoned by the Nazis, was hanged in April 1945.

In historical retrospect, Bonhoeffer is recognized as being one of the few Christian leaders in Germany who bravely resisted the Nazis and was willing to sacrifice his life for his Christian ideas.  As such Bonhoeffer is an inspiration to many, but it’s impossible to recognize the other side of the Bonhoeffer phenomenon — the fact that he was a definite minority, that most German Christians went along with the Nazis willingly and even participated in some of the Nazis’ greatest crimes.  This problem plagued Bonhoeffer’s conscience and provoked him to write a number of letters and essays espousing a newly reformed Christianity he called “religionless Christianity.”

Fundamental to Bonhoeffer’s argument was a concept he adopted from Karl Barth, that of “religion as idolatry.”  Idolatry, according to Barth and Bonhoeffer, occurs when human beings reject the “infinite qualitative distinction” between the absolute goodness of God and the flawed nature of man, and instead worship a god that is created in the image of man.  Under idolatry, human beings worship themselves, their nations, their political parties, and their churches, claiming that these human organizations speak for God or are carrying out God’s will, even when the greatest of crimes are being committed.  In his posthumously published Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer noted, “. . .my fear and distrust of ‘religiosity’ have become greater than ever here.  The fact that the Israelites never uttered the name of God always makes me think, and I can understand it better as I go on.”

It is important to note that Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity” was not  a rejection of faith in God and Christ but a rejection of attempts to claim divine status for ordinary humans and human institutions.  In Bonhoeffer’s view, we don’t need the institutions of religion, which are easily subverted and perverted for evil purposes.  We simply need faith in God, worship, and prayer.  The church itself is secondary and not nearly as important as the individual’s relationship to God.

For Bonhoeffer, “religionless Christianity” was in part an attempt to make the best of a bad situation.  With progress in the sciences and technology making the universe more understandable and life easier to endure, human beings no longer needed God to explain certain mysteries or to cope with suffering.  According to Bonhoeffer, man was “grown up” and could solve many of his problems with technology.  It was no use invoking a “God of the gaps” to account for the remaining problems of humankind, because science could well eventually solve many of those problems as well.

What science and technology could not solve, however, was mankind itself and its tendency to evil, especially when acting in social organizations.  The Nazis excelled with science and technology — they built cutting-edge weapons such as jets and rockets, and their extermination camps were highly efficient in murdering millions at the lowest possible cost.  Man could conquer nature, but how was man to conquer himself?  Christianity in Germany should have been able to address this problem, but the churches only sought self-preservation, and the worship of God was perverted into worship of the German nation and the Fuhrer.  The core meaning of Christianity was lost.  Only the shell of Christianity, in the form of the rituals and the churches, remained.

What was the core meaning of Christianity?  In Bonhoeffer’s view, Christianity was fundamentally about attaining a new life by existing for others and participating in the sufferings of Jesus.  In Bonhoeffer’s words:  “It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life. . . . The ‘religious act’ is always something partial; ‘faith’ is something whole, involving the whole of one’s life.  Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life.”

Bonhoeffer’s view of the future of the Christian Church was quite radical.  In his notes for a book he was writing while in prison, he wrote:

The church is the church only when it exists for others.  To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need.  The clergy must live solely on the free-will offerings of their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling.  The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.  It must tell men of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.  In particular, our own church will have to take the field against the vices of hubris, power-worship, envy, and humbug, as the roots of all evil.  It will have to speak of moderation, purity, trust, loyalty, constancy, patience, discipline, humility, contentment, and modesty.  It must not under-estimate the importance of human example (which has its origin in the humanity of Jesus and is so important in Paul’s teaching); it is not abstract argument, but example, that gives its word emphasis and power.

Bonhoeffer’s views would probably appeal today to people who reject the label “Christian” and instead call themselves “followers of Jesus.”  These people are unhappy with the narrow-mindedness of many Christian churches and their involvement in politics; many of these “followers of Jesus” do not even go to church.  But they are drawn to Jesus’s teachings and the example of his love and self-sacrifice.

As for myself, I find a lot of merit to Bonhoeffer’s view of “religionless Christianity.”  But I also see several obstacles to its widespread adoption.  For one, Bonhoeffer’s vision does not appeal to those outside the Christian faith.  Bonhoeffer was fairly insistent that the Christian faith was not just another religion, but in fact a replacement for all religions.  God revealed himself in Christ, and that was that.  Second, the question of what God requires of us when we face particular political and social controversies is not going to be clear all the time, or even most of the time.  People of legitimate and honest Christian conscience may find themselves on opposite sides when faced with questions of war, the duties of the citizen to their government, the proper economic policy, the justice of the laws, etc.  At best, Christ provides general guidance, not specific guidance, and even good Christians may find themselves on different sides of an issue because of different views on the specifics of policy.   Finally, the notion of living for others and suffering with Christ is a noble goal, but extremely difficult, if not impossible, for most people.  We rightly honor Bonhoeffer for following Christ in martyrdom, but how many of us are really willing to become martyrs?  Few, I bet.  Still, even if we only emulate Christ partially and imperfectly, I suppose that is better than nothing, and considerably better than emulating the wrong person.

 

Religion as a Source of Evil

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That religious individuals and institutions have committed great evils in the past is a fact not disputed by most intelligent persons with a good understanding of history.  What is disputed is the question of how much evil in history religion has actually been responsible for, and how to weigh that evil against the good that religion has done.

A number of contemporary atheist authors such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens focus intensely, even obsessively, on the evils committed by religion.  The message of their books is that not only is religion mostly evil, but that most of the evils committed by human beings historically can be attributed to religion and, more broadly, to a deficiency of reason.  They point to the role of religion in slavery, massacre, torture, ethnic conflict and genocide, racism, and antisemitism.  In response to the argument that secular regimes under the the Nazis and Communists have also been responsible for these same evils, Harris and Hitchens point to the willing collaboration of religious authorities and institutions with the Nazis.  Both authors also argue that secular dictatorships suffered from a deficiency of reason similar to that of religious faith.  A greater commitment to reason and to evidence as the basis for belief, in their view, would do much to end evils committed by both religious and secular movements and regimes.

There is a good deal of truth to these arguments.  The world would be much improved if superstitions and incorrect beliefs about other human beings, ethnic groups, and societies could be eliminated.  But ultimately Harris and Hitchens do not seem to understand, or even take interest in, the deeper causes of evil in human beings.

The problem with viewing evil as being simply an outcome of irrationality is that it overlooks the powerful tendency of reason itself to be a tool of self-interest and self-aggrandizement.  Human beings commit evil not so much because they are irrational, but because they use reason to pursue and justify their desires.  It is the inherent self-centeredness of human beings that is the source of evil, not the belief systems that enable the pursuit and justification of self-interest.  Individual and group desires for wealth, power, influence, fame, prestige, and the fear of defeat and shame — these are the causes of social conflict, violence, and oppression.

Harris and Hitchens point to Biblical sanctions for slavery, and imply that slavery would not have existed if it were not for religion.  But is it not the case that slavery was ultimately rooted in the human desire for a life of wealth and ease, and that one path to such a life in the pre-industrial era was to force others to work for one’s self?  Is it not also the case that human conflicts over land were (and are) rooted in the same desire for wealth, and that violent conflicts over social organization have been rooted in clashing visions over who is to hold power?  Religion has been implicated in slavery and social conflicts, but religion has not been the main cause.

It is worth quoting James Madison on the perennial problem of oppression and violence:

 As long as the reason of man continues [to be] fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. . . .

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning Government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for preëminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to coöperate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts.  (Federalist, No. 10)

In Madison’s view, religion was but one source of conflict and oppression, which was ultimately rooted in the problem of differing opinions among humans, arising out of human beings’ inevitable fallibility and self-love.

A number of contemporary science experiments have demonstrated the truth of Madison’s insight.  On contentious issues ranging from global warming to gun control, people of greater intelligence tend to be more passionately divided on these issues than people of lesser intelligence, and more likely to interpret evidence in a way that supports the conclusions of the groups to which they belong.  Higher intelligence did not lead to more accurate conclusions but a greater ability to interpret evidence in a way that supported pre-existing beliefs and group preferences.

Sam Harris himself displays tendencies toward extreme intolerance in his book that would make one leery of the simple claim that an enthusiastic commitment to reason would do much to end violence and oppression.  In his book The End of Faith, Harris declares that “[s]ome propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them” (pp. 52-53); he calls for imposing a “benign dictatorship” on backward societies as a means of self-defense (pp. 150-51); and he defends the use of torture on both military prisoners and criminal suspects in certain cases  (p. 197).  Harris even writes dreamily of what might have been if “some great kingdom of Reason emerged at the time of the Crusades and pacified the credulous multitudes of Europe and the Middle East.  We might have had modern democracy and the Internet by the year 1600.” (p. 109)  One can just imagine Sam Harris as the leader of this great “kingdom of Reason,” slaughtering, oppressing, and torturing ignorant, superstitious masses, all for the sake of lasting peace and progress.  Of course, there is nothing new about this dream.  It was the dream of the Jacobins and of the Communists as well, which was a nightmare for all who opposed them.

Edmund Burke, a keen observer of the Jacobin mentality, correctly noted why it was mistaken to believe that abolishing religion would do much to eliminate evil in the world:

 History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same

‘troublous storms that toss
 The private state, and render life unsweet.’

These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts. The pretexts are always found in some specious appearance of a real good. You would not secure men from tyranny and sedition by rooting out of the mind the principles to which these fraudulent pretexts apply? If you did, you would root out everything that is valuable in the human breast. As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors and instruments in great public evils are kings, priests, magistrates, senates, parliaments, national assemblies, judges, and captains. You would not cure the evil by resolving that there should be no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the Gospel,—no interpreters of law, no general officers, no public councils. You might change the names: the things in some shape must remain. A certain quantum of power must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some appellation. Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names,—to the causes of evil, which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice. (Reflections on the Revolution in France)

Nevertheless, even if we accept Burke’s contention that the evils of religion lie in human nature and not in religion itself, there remains one  question:  shouldn’t we expect more of religion?  If religion doesn’t make people better, and simply reflects human nature, then what good is it?

To that question, I have to say that I honestly do not know.  History offers such a superabundance of both the good and ill effects of religious beliefs and institutions that I cannot fairly weigh the evidence.  In addition, widespread atheism is still a relatively new phenomenon in history, so I find it difficult to judge the long-term effects of atheism.  It is true that atheist regimes have committed many atrocities, but it is also the case that atheism is widespread in modern European democracies, and those countries are free of massacre and oppression, and have lower crime rates than the more religious United States.

Perhaps we should consider the views of one Christian who personally witnessed the catastrophic capitulation of Christian churches to the Nazi regime in the 1930s and decided to become a dissenter to the Nazi regime and the German Christian establishment that supported the Nazis.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis in the waning days of World War Two, proposed a newly reformed Christianity that would indeed fulfill the role of making human beings better.  I will critically evaluate Bonhoeffer’s proposal in a future post.