continuing on in the book.. page 19..

<font color="blue">Are some people just “evil”? If not, how do they learn to be so awful? Occasionally you hear of a horrendous crime—an 80-year-old woman is brutally assaulted, being raped, stabbed many times, and perhaps the head or body parts cut off and buried. No one can understand why a total stranger would do this. In one’s mind one paints a picture of intense, uncontrolled rage. The act is so extremely abhorrent that one can’t imagine oneself doing such a violent, revolting and senseless thing. Most people might say “the person who did that is an evil person.” That is about as far as one’s explanation can go.

For most people that may be all the explanation of behavior they need. In some peculiar way “evil” explains what has happened. But the term isn’t an adequate explanation. “Evil” says the acts are bad but it doesn’t clarify the reasons or the means by which “evil” forces caused this atrocity. “Evil” is one of the oldest explanations of terribly bad behavior. It is a religious concept, coming from the ancient notion of opposing good and evil forces—God and the Devil--fighting for control over people’s lives and worldly events. At other times in less serious and bizarre circumstances it is said almost as a joke, “The Devil made me do it.” That may be a subtle request that the listener not undertake a deeper analysis of the speaker’s motives. “The Devil did it” may also be said more seriously to help explain some shamefully inconsiderate, immoral, or selfish behavior or to escape some responsibility for what one has done.

It is like saying “it was not entirely my fault” or “I don’t know why I did it.” There are many abominable acts committed for unfathomable reasons. I don’t refer just to mass murder of unknown people (the World Trade Center Towers, the Washington, D.C snipers) but also to leaders who plan genocide (Hitler, Malosovich, and Sudan or Uganda leaders) or start or prolong unnecessary wars, businesses that deceive or cheat lots of people, and so on, as well as spouse and child abusers, rapists, sexual abusers, petty criminals or ordinary cons, and people who are cruel to animals. One can see why the most horrible and least understood acts of these people might be called “evil” because the term reflects our fear of and disdain for immoral acts.

But when “evil” replaces explanatory scientific terms and methods, it blocks our getting knowledge about the true causes of terrible violent and weird behaviors. Let’s think about that a little bit.