This morning on BBC Radio 4’s\u00a0“Though for the day”, the Right Reverend James Jones claimed “Evil triumphs when the imagination is inebriated with evil”.<\/p>\n
So as a logician I would like to know what exactly “evil” is. Can it be measured (like energy)? Or detected by our (5) senses? Does it conform to the known laws (models) of physics?<\/p>\n
For something so darn vague it is amazing how much we use it day to day. We blame so much on it, and justify so much in its name.<\/p>\n
But in a strange dichotomy, if you pay close attention the the professions (medicine, law, engineering, etc) you will find scant mention of this concept – it does not help in the treatment of criminals or the mentally ill it does not explain earthquakes or building collapses – it seems has no use in the real world, but is used by politicians and preachers like a moral blank-cheque.<\/p>\n
I therefore suggest that the concept of evil is a relic from a mystical past in which gods were invoked to explain thunder and demons to explain crop failure.<\/p>\n
Surely all talk of someone being ‘evil’ or an act being ‘evil’ has no place in our secular world?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning on BBC Radio 4’s\u00a0“Though for the day”, the Right Reverend James Jones claimed “Evil triumphs when the imagination is inebriated with evil”. So as a logician I would like to know what exactly “evil” is. Can it be measured (like energy)? Or detected by our (5) senses? Does it conform to the known […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,15,24,26,27,31],"tags":[252,115,192,267,206,269,271,226,227],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprovincialscientist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprovincialscientist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprovincialscientist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprovincialscientist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprovincialscientist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theprovincialscientist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theprovincialscientist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprovincialscientist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theprovincialscientist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}