Why Evil is Weaker Than We Think

Evil is certainly a powerful force in our world. We are witnessing it live in ...

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Evil is certainly a powerful force in our world. We are witnessing it live in the form of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But is evil ultimately as powerful as it is popularly portrayed? Does evil perhaps contain in itself the seeds of its own destruction? Join David and Curtis in this week’s fascinating discussion about the inherent weakness of evil. 

Show Notes:

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  1. Melissa Feagins

    If you give me a free day, I could read either Austin or Tolkien and be able to find entertainment and virtue in each. (Although at the moment, I am not reading either in my free time.)
    Don't pick on K. S. Prior because fantasy isn't her jam, David, you like DC more than Marvel.

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    LeighAnnNC

    Jane Austin, hands down.

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    Cthocas

    I listened whilst doing chores so I may have missed it, but I heard no discussion of the classical formulation of evil as "privatio boni", or privation of good. Theologically speaking, evil has no ontological being or substance in itself; it is nothing. Metaphysically, literally, nothing. Evil is a mere shadow God permits for a temporary period in his unbounded and inscrutable wisdom, and it will be rectified and banished on the day of judgment. (For a poetical glimpse of this theodicy, read the opening of Tolkien's Silmarillion, in which Iluvatar—God—repurposes Melkor's perversion of the divine primordial music to make an even more beautiful melody.)

    Personally, I think our age of Pax Americana gives us a false sense that the triumph of "good" worldly forces (i.e., free and democratic nations) is some universal inevitability. Instead, the West may very well crumble in the next century, and the following 500 years could be dominated by cruel empires, ambitious generals, and petty warlords. Such is the experience of most human beings for most of history, and our era of relative peace and liberty could be looked back upon as a curious accident.

    Our ultimate hope isn't that things will go swimmingly here on Earth, that the Avengers always figure out a way to beat Thanos by the end of the story. Instead, our hope is that all evil, including the evil we ourselves commit, will be undone by God's perfect love in the eschaton, and that evil is shown to be a nothingness out of which God can create new beauty.

    tl,dr; rings of power is terrible and david is a bad man for liking it

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  4. John Alsdorf

    I'd love to see a follow-up (continuation) of this podcast. My wife and I listened yesterday as we drove home, and were fascinated by thinking of many of the implications for our own lives and engagement in what's going on in our nation at present. There are lots of questions I'd like to see you address when you do that follow-up.
    One important one: the ease with which we identify ourselves with the "good" and those with whom we disagree with the "evil." Our mutual friend John Inazu addressed this in one of his recent blogs ( https://johninazu.substack.com/p/when-you-are-wrong-becomes-you-are ).
    One very effective counter-argument to that oh-so human tendency is found in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's famous line about the line between good and evil running through every human's heart (found in his Gulag Archipelago where he's wishing he could write off, categorically condemn the cruel guards in the Gulag, clearly far worse persons than he and his fellow prisoners....but then realized that he couldn't draw such a neat line between himself and them.)
    So please...keep the conversation going.

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    Francesca

    Very enjoyable show.

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    JonathanRRogers

    This episode was very disappointing. I'm sure both David and Curtis are aware that the Soviet Union expended many times the lives that the US and other Western powers did to defeat the Nazis and that Soviet and US production were both essential components of the Allied victory. It also seems highly unlikely that either David or Curtis would consider people living under Stalin's rule to be "free." I have no idea how they can justify David's assertion that the WWII Axis powers couldn't match the "manpower or capacity of free peoples."

    More generally, I agree that it is important to examine the power of good and evil. However, speaking about "the side of evil" in a war undermines that endeavor. Russian soldiers may be demoralized by their failures in Ukraine or because they don't think it's justified, but I doubt many think they're on the "side of evil." David tells a great story about soldiers refusing to kill a child used as a human shield in Iraq. He doesn't ask whether those soldiers were on the "side of evil" for unjustifiably violating the sovereignty of the country they occupied.

    “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”

    ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

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    1. Brendan Bossard

      Jonathan, the Soviet Union wound up having to expend millions of souls and rubles in its war effort against Germany because it played games leading up to Barbarossa. Churchill writes about how the USSR attempted negotiating division of spoils with the Axis powers. Their pact with Germany enabled them to divide Poland and absorb the smaller Eastern European nations. Britain could have gone to pot for all Stalin cared. Hitler duped him and he came begging for help from Britain after Germany invaded. All of this could have been nipped in the bud by actually doing the right thing and not succumbing to greed. Russia would be much stronger today if her people had not allowed evil people to take power. Right now there are a lot of Russians who are regretting they ever allowed Putin to come to power. Alas, shake hands with the Devil, and the Devil gets his due.

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        JonathanRRogers

        It sounds like you'd agree that speaking of the Axis powers as "evil" and the Allied powers as "good" is simplistic.

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        1. Brendan Bossard

          First, I was responding directly to your statement, "the Soviet Union expended many times the lives that the US and other Western powers did to defeat the Nazis and that Soviet and US production were both essential components of the Allied victory" by adding the historical context. The Soviet Union under Stalin was a very evil regime that became ensnared in a bloodbath because of that very evil. They were lucky God set a fool against them. They unfortunately appear not to have learned the lesson and are now paying dearly for their foolishness yet again.
          Second, nuance is useful only as far as it allows us to gain insight. If, however, it becomes a smokescreen that keeps us from perceiving universal spiritual truths it becomes a detriment to wisdom. Here is a universal spiritual truth: not a single human being is good in the truest sense of that word. Each of us is broken. Sin infuses everything we do. That is why there is no perfect solution to any major moral problem short of a new heaven and new earth. That is why the free nations allied with one tyranny to defeat three tyrannies that threatened the world; why a free nation dropped two atomic bombs on one of the enemies to end that war; why a free nation intervened in the affairs of Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East (namely Afghanistan and Iraq). Sin corrupts everything.
          Here is another universal spiritual truth: there is objective good and objective evil. Some of us sinners accept this and strive for that objective good; some of us strive for that objective evil. Whether the latter thinks it is evil is irrelevant because it is objectively evil. One can measure the relative goodness or evil of a people or a cause by the general behavior of those involved in the matter. It is objectively evil to rape, pillage, and murder. It is objectively good to attempt to preserve life and human dignity by defending it against those who rape, pillage, and murder. Sometimes those who strive for the good must use violent means to defend against incursions of evil. That is why the free nations stood up against the Soviet Union after Germany and Japan were conquered. (I believe God used Germany and the Soviet Union to punish each other.) That is why a free nation preserved life by bringing Japan to her knees by dropping atomic bombs on her. That is why South Korea is still free. That is why a free nation went on what turned out to be fool's errands in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq--not efforts at conquest, but efforts to confront the evil of, first, the communist bloc led by the Soviet Union, then Islamist terrorism. These efforts are all far cries from the evils perpetrated by the former Axis and Soviet Union and present-day Russia against Ukraine.
          So if you want to be nuanced, by all means have at it! Just do not let it hinder you from perceiving relative goodness of peoples and causes.

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            JonathanRRogers

            Evaluating relative goodness of peoples and causes was central to my point. Do you think it was wise and moral for free nations to support the Soviet Union? Knowing how evil and destructive it would be for half a century after WWII and how much destruction the Cold War wrought in general, I find it impossible to justify helping Stalin in any way. Maybe the leaders who made that decision were naive or maybe they thought the ends justified the means.

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    2. Melissa Feagins

      You're not wrong about how much Russia gave toward defeating the Axis. However, I have always found that morally akin to God using Babylon to destroy every other enemy of the Israelites before King Darius and then King Cyrus let the Israelites rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.

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        JonathanRRogers

        Comparing the Soviet Union to Babylon may make sense. That's very different from David's claim that the Axis powers were defeated by "free peoples."

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    Stomaino

    Listening to the podcast, I was reminded of the words of Mammy Yokum, “Good is better than evil because it’s nicer.”

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      JonathanRRogers

      I was reminded of the words of Dark Helmet, who said that, "evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."

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    Chany Ockert

    I read every year The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Jane Austen's books (as bedtime reading). Just sayin'.

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      JonathanRRogers

      I have read The Lord of Rings, but not any of Austen's works. I don't why they cast shade on Austen. Read what you find meaning in.

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        CynthiaW

        Jane Austen's works are about real humanity in a particular, real environment. Tolkien is something very different.

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          JonathanRRogers

          That makes sense to me. Comparing Tolkien to Austen doesn't make much sense.

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            CynthiaW

            One can compare and contrast any two things X and Y. However, it's not always edifying.

            Tolkien and Austen were, you can say, doing the same thing: writing books to share their vision of the world, publishing books to make money. Beyond those very basic elements, though, they were on very different tracks.

            Because they were both interested in persons in the world - our different social environments, our desires and how we go about satisfying them - I can see how there could be an interesting paper identifying some similarities and differences.

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  9. M.B

    LoTR was mentioned in the podcast. I was thankful for this because my own thought on this is the doom of Sauron was assured on Mount Doom. Hints of this are sprinkled throughout the story, Even the name for the mountain Tolkin chose was a hint to that prior in his fantasy world. This is why I am less inclined to enjoy the Star Wars Story. In my understanding it is Ultimate Good, vs Ultimate Evil. Who's goanna win? At least this time?

    It is the LoTR world that provides the most hope and assurance that in the end it is little and humble things, (though very Great). The underestimated, that through seemingly impossible odds, not alone, prevail.

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  10. Mark Myers

    As a hardcore military buff myself, here's my take on the issues being talked about. First of all, Napoleon himself noted that "the moral is to the physical as three to one". The mindset and espirit of a military absolutely matters, and nothing rallies an army to action like defending their homes from a savage invader. It should be noted that one's own side need not be bound by a moral code to have that kind of reaction--the Red Army of WWII was certainly an unethical army, but just listen to the propaganda song "Sacred War", and you'll get an idea of how aroused to action they were.

    But beyond that, democracies actually have a long history of punching above their weight in warfare. This isn't just a U.S. thing--the Republic of Venice lasted for a thousand years until Napoleon conquered them. When you're fighting for a cause you believe in and not just for an autocrat's glory, you're going to go the extra mile to win. Remember how the U.S. had victory gardens and gasoline rationing during WWII? Germany didn't have any of that until after Stalingrad. Moreover, dictatorships in general have a long history of handicapping their militaries. That sounds bizarre, but think about any dictatorship's internal politics. When you're a dictator, you're rightly going to be worried about a coup d'etat, and so you'll see the military as a threat to your power. To avoid being on the wrong end of that, you'll choose generals based on loyalty rather than competence. You're also going to discourage initiative in the rank-and-file because you don't want your authority being challenged. Well, a top-down command system like that is going to have its clock cleaned by a military with a decentralized command system that preaches initiative at all levels. That doctrinal difference was the key reason Israel ran circles around the Arab nations in its various wars, despite a similar discrepancy in material.

    Now, for a few criticisms. Going to your example about the kid in Iraq, that level of empathy is certainly commendable, but it's possible for even "good" armies to not have it. The WWII-era U.S. military was certainly more ethical than the Wehrmacht or Red Army, but that certainly didn't prevent the firebombing of Dresden or the atomic bombings of Japan. It was actually fairly common for U.S. troops in the Pacific theater to collect grisly "war trophies" of Japanese troops' body parts, a practice that would arouse massive condemnation if done today. Human psychology is such that we don't like simply killing innocent people--UNLESS there's a large sense of distance between killer and killed, particularly racial/ethnic. White supremacy and the massive differences between American and Japanese culture made it fairly easy for GIs to see Japanese as essentially "nonpeople", making that kind of atrocity psychologically easier. Of course, that same dynamic is working against Russia in a big way in Ukraine--Russians and Ukrainians have a common culture and even speak the same language, so Russian troops committing atrocities there are likely really struggling.

    Also, regarding Curtis' argument about evil being "based on lies, violating boundaries, and relies on fear"--well, 1 and 3 are Military Practice 101 for everybody. Fear is the foundation of deterrence and single-handedly prevented the Cold War from going hot (remember MAD?), so it's a positive thing in moderation. As for 1, lies are routine in war and can be a major war-winner. The Allies did a masterful job convincing the Germans that their D-Day offensive would be focused on the Pas de Calais and not Normandy, even going so far as to create an entire mock army that they allowed German intelligence to "learn" about. The problem comes when you lie to yourself and deceive yourself into believing your own rhetoric (this is another major problem that dictators have, but it also comes up in democracies, as in Vietnam). Finally, violating boundaries may seem like something only "bad" actors do, but invading Iraq was certainly violating the principle of state sovereignty and was roundly condemned across the world as a result. The difference was the Bush administration was making the argument that Saddam was an evil man and deposing him would be a moral act, an argument that Putin actually is making but doesn't pass the laugh test. Invading Iraq in hindsight probably wasn't the best idea, but it falls into a separate category as the Ukraine conflict.

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      JonathanRRogers

      You're certainly correct about racism playing a role in the brutality of the Pacific war. Don't forget that it wasn't just on one side. The Japanese saw themselves as superior to everyone, including the Chinese and Americans.

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      1. Mark Myers

        Absolutely. Japanese racism played a major role in the brutality of their actions throughout the war, from the Rape of Nanking to the Bataan Death March. The difference, of course, is that no one questions the Japanese were the villains of the conflict. I emphasized American racism to make the point that even the "good guys" can be quite morally flawed.

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          JonathanRRogers

          I agree with you and object to the idea advanced in the podcast that there are good and evil sides in war. I think that there are just and unjust reasons to wage war. Separately, both good and evil are done when waging war.

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