GOOD AND EVIL IN THE THREE BASIC PHILOSOPHIES
In Type 1 religion, man is basically divine. He can improve himself spiritually and advance toward realization of his own divinity. “Good” is anything which helps him to advance spiritually toward this high state of awareness. “Evil” is anything which pushes him deeper into the swamp of ignorance and delusion.
In Type 2 religion, man was created by God with the duty to believe and to obey. After death, he is rewarded or punished accordingly. “Good” is believing the true faith and obeying God’s commandments. “Evil” is not believing the true faith and violating God’s commandments.
In materialism (“Type 3 religion”), all is matter. All life, including man, has evolved spontaneously from interstellar dust, which has condensed into suns, planets, and eventually protoplasm. Matter follows the laws of physics. When a man dies, that is the end of his individual self-awareness. Materialism does not offer any ethical guidelines. “Good” and “evil” have no objective existence. To believe in the objective reality of spiritual beings, or psychic phenomena, or good and evil, is superstitious nonsense. Good and evil are nothing more than matters of personal preference.
GOOD AND EVIL INVOLVE LIFE
Good and evil are spiritual things. Good and evil relate to life. Life is spiritual. Happiness and sorrow, joy and suffering, love and hate, ambition and failure, desire and achievement – these are all spiritual phenomena. These are phenomena of life.
Living organisms have both a material component and a spiritual component.
Different arrangements of matter in space are neither good nor evil in themselves. In biology, there is nothing about ambition, love, joy, or suffering. In the equations of relativity and quantum mechanics, there is nothing about awareness, decision, or happiness. But if life is involved, then the living organism may find one arrangement of matter to be helpful and desirable, and hence “good”.
Even in materialism, when there is life, there is good and evil. Good and evil exist in relation to life. Atheists can be zealous about the evil of religion and the goodness of science. Even though there is nothing spiritual, evil definitely exists. The Communist, who prides himself on “scientific materialism”, denounces vehemently the evils of “capitalism” and “capitalists”.
Harm to life is bad. Unhappiness is bad. Suffering, injury, and destruction are bad. Truth is good. Deception is bad.
WHAT THINGS ARE GOOD?
Even though the basic nature of good and evil is viewed differently in different philosophies, the general description of what is good is very broadly agreed upon.
The mother who loves her children and takes good care of them is good. The mother who beats her children and neglects them is bad.
Murder and stealing are bad. This agrees with the Sixth and the Eighth of the Biblical Ten Commandments. Most people who are not Christians agree with these two rules.
Working hard and taking care of yourself are good. Making it possible for others to work hard and to take care of themselves is good. Getting along with others and working cooperatively are good. Destroying things that others have worked hard to create is bad.
Truth is good. Deception is bad. Scientific and technical knowledge is good.
IN POLITICS, LIBERTY IS GOODNESS
It is the nature of man to seek happiness. This can be widely agreed upon. To seek happiness, man must be free. This can also be widely agreed upon.
Therefore, Liberty is a right that can be agreed upon by all decent men.
Spelling this out in more detail, the four basic rights, in order of importance, are Liberty, Life, Property, and Contract. The rights to life and property follow naturally from the right to Liberty. If life or property can be taken away from you, then you do not have Liberty. The right to contract is an extension of the right to property, and simply means that you can trade things and make commitments that must be honored.
LIBERTY, WAR, AND FINANCE
The three great issues in politics are Liberty, War, and Finance. These match up with the four basic rights.
Liberty is the greatest issue of politics, and is in fact the basic purpose of politics. This is the most basic and important of the four basic rights. Liberty is the highest good in politics.
War is not the only time when people get killed. But it is certainly the time when people get killed in the largest quantities. War is when the most evil is done in the least time. People often believe – incorrectly – that peace is the highest good in politics. This issue matches up with the right to life.
Government finance involves taxes, spending, welfare payments, fat contracts given to corporations, regulation of businesses, government debt, inflation, and economic booms and busts. These things include many ways of violating the right to property.
Thus we see that the hot issues in politics, now and throughout the ages, are matters of ethics, questions of right and wrong, questions of good and evil.
If politics is essentially about good and evil, and about making ethical judgments that affect large numbers of people, then surely it is a matter of great importance that truly good and honest men should be elected to political office.
Conversely, given the inherent power of political office, it can be expected that evil men and their agents will swarm to government and do all possible to gain political office and use that power to their own advantage.
Thus, inherently and inevitably, politics is a great conflict between good men and evil men.
THE U.S. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
The U.S. Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men”.
In these noble words, the rights to Liberty and life are enshrined as the highest ideal of government, and it is stated bluntly that the purpose of government is to establish and to maintain these rights.
THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution says, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”.
Here again, it is stated bluntly that the purpose of the Constitution is to “secure the blessings of liberty”. We also want “domestic tranquility” and “common defense”, which means war if necessary but hopefully peace. “Justice” would certainly include defending the right to property. The great issues of politics – Liberty, War, and Finance – are all covered.
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