Goodness and badness

[For a discussion of the evidence dealing with goodness and badness, see Modes of the Finite, Part 1, Section 5, chapters 10 and following.]

The very first temptation of mankind was "to become like gods, knowing good and evil." It is a temptation for two reasons: first, it is a lie, because God does not think in terms of good and evil; and secondly, thinking in terms of good and evil allows us to pretend that we are gods and put ourselves in the place of God.

If the Christian is really serious in trying to think as God thinks, the very first thing he has to face is the problem of evil in the world. It is not even a question of how God can allow bad things to happen (or bad things to happen to good people), but if absolutely everything depends on God's actively producing it, how God can cause things which are bad.

There have been any number of "solutions" to this problem through the centuries, most of them inconsistent with the nature of God as free and independent, or the cause of everything finite.

For instance, there is the view that bad things happen as a punishment for sin. The Book of Job is actually a refutation of this theory. It supposes, taken in one way, that God is "angered" for our sins and visits damage on us to satisfy his wrath--which implies that our sins can actually bother God, which in turn implies that we have some control over him, because we have done something that he didn't want done, and he is so miffed by it that he slaps us around.

But that implies that God depends on us and can be affected by us, which is impossible if He is infinite and our creator.

Another sense in which bad things as punishment can be taken is that God isn't actually angry, but that the sin, as a disruption of the Divinely established order, needs a punishment to restore the order. What this says is that two wrongs make a right. In this case, of course, Divine forgiveness would mean leaving the "disorder" intact, and would be inconsistent with a God who would inflict harm to restore it. Further, the harm (the punishment) is objectively a disorder, and it is hard to see how two disorders can establish order. That is, if I cut off a man's arm and get my own cut off as punishment for it (which sounds "fair,"), then how is "order" restored by having two maimed human beings instead of one?

Both of these senses of the "punishment" theory, of course, run up against the revelation in Job. Good people suffer. Suffering is not a punishment for sin. They run even harder against the Beatitudes: "It is good for people to suffer; it is good for them to be oppressed because they are virtuous."

No, you can't explain bad things happening in terms of a punishment for sin. Actually, the punishment for sin is nothing but the sin itself: as I said in the last chapter, the sin consists, not in "doing harm," but in setting up an impossible goal, and the "punishment" is the eternal striving for a goal that you know can't be reached. Bad things that happen to the sinner are no more a part of the sin's punishment than the bad things that happen to good people. This is what Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes, the "preacher") is saying in that book of the Old Testament.

[Actually, there is a sense in which the "punishment" theory of evil in the world is true, but it is very complicated. See The Problem of Evil and the Kingdom.]

Some try to explain bad things' happening by saying that if they didn't happen, things would actually be worse. God "allows" the bad things to happen so that greater good can come from them. But first of all, God doesn't just "allow" these bad things to happen; he causes them. There was an earthquake in Mexico city shortly before I wrote these words, and thousands of people died horrible deaths, buried for days under rubble. In what conceivable way would these people have been worse off if they had not died in this way? Perhaps they would have been saved from hell. But in that case, how are the people in hell better off for being there? And what of the people--there must have been some--who, about to expire in agony under tons of debris, instead of repenting and praising God, cursed him, and damned themselves because of what happened to them?

After all, it would be easy for God to have a universe with no evil at all in it: simply create nothing. Then, with God alone in existence, everything is not only good, but infinitely good. It is not the case that God + a world is "better" than God alone, because God's goodness is infinite, and the finite world does not add to the goodness (it simply reflects it in an imperfect way). That is, when I teach my child that two and two are four, and he acquires that idea, there is not "more" of the idea that two and two are four, nor is there "more" of "two-and-two-are-fourness." So when God creates a good universe, the amount of goodness has not increased. Hence, if he were to choose not to create, there would be infinite goodness and no evil; from which it follows that the best way to achieve the "greater good" would be not to create anything. And certainly God knows this, if I can figure it out; and therefore we can conclude that the solution to why bad things happen is not "so that God can bring greater good from them."

So the "solution" to the problem of why bad things happen if God is good lies in the fact that goodness and badness are human ways of looking at things, and God does not look on things in that way. That is, it is a peculiarity of our way of knowing that there are "bad" things and "good" things at all; for God, nothing is either good or bad.

Hence, if we are to acquire God's way of looking at things, we must get rid of thinking of things in terms of goodness and badness.

This is no small task. Let us consider why we think in terms of goodness and badness, and what these terms actually mean.

To make a long story as short as possible, we call something good when it agrees with our idea of the way it "ought" to be, and bad when it falls short of this idea, or somehow contradicts our expectations for it. For example, a good typewriter is one--let us say--that allows us to type at top speed and doesn't jam; a bad one would be one whose keys stick.

The question is how we get this idea of how things "ought" to be. We must get it somehow from experience; but it can't be simply from experience, or nothing would be bad. That is, the bad typewriter is a typewriter, and so it can't be giving us the idea of "the perfect typewriter," or we wouldn't find it falling short of that idea.

The answer is basically this: we compare objects like typewriters and see what they have in common or what they are related to (in this case, to writing by tapping on the keys). We then "pull out" this common characteristic and consider it absolutely, without paying attention to individual differences; this is called "abstraction." Thus, we have the abstract notion of the "purpose" or "function" of the typewriter.

Since this abstract notion has no limitations (because we have ignored them by abstracting), we then compare individual cases to this, which now functions as an ideal.

We can use this ideal in two ways: (a) comparing it with individual objects, we can discover whether things are typewriters or not (e.g. we might think that, say, a computer is a typewriter because it has a keyboard; but then we discover that it doesn't print on paper what you write into it, and so we learn that our idea of this thing as a typewriter was mistaken.

Or (b) we can use the idea we formed as a kind of "standard" to which things have to "measure up." For instance, instead of considering ourselves to be mistaken in thinking of the computer as a typewriter, we can think of the computer as having something wrong with it because it doesn't print on paper--in which case, we call it a "bad typewriter." It doesn't do what we expect a typewriter to do.

Notice that it is no accident that mistakes and "badness" are paired in this way. Both of them consist in comparing the world in front of us with our idea of it (our expectation as to what it is). If we use the facts as the standard to which the idea we have is supposed to agree, then we call the agreement "truth" (and say we have a true idea about things) and the disagreement "error" (and say we made a mistake). If we use the idea as the standard to which the facts are supposed to conform, then we call the agreement "good" (and say that the thing in question is a good thing) and the disagreement "bad."

So badness is just a mistake looked at backwards. It isn't, of course, quite that simple. There is the kind of "badness" which involves an idea not based on facts, and one which involves an idea derived from facts.

The computer as a bad typewriter is an instance of the first kind of badness. A computer is not really supposed to function as a typewriter, and so the person's considering it as one is really a perverse distortion of reality. But this is different from considering as a bad typewriter a typewriter with a key that sticks. In this second case, you have reason to say that it is a typewriter, and that it is supposed to function in a certain way; but it doesn't.

Similarly, when we consider it bad to be blind, this badness has a basis in fact, because what do we have eyes for if not to see? It is our nature to be able to see; and so a person who can't see has an abnormally limited nature. But it would be perverse to consider it bad not to be able to play the piano like Peter Serkin, because there is no reason to expect anyone but a supremely gifted pianist to be able to do this.

But even in the legitimate case, we derive the idea of what "the nature" is from a comparison of many cases; and then we set a "lowest point" of limitation below which we consider the individual abnormal, and say there is something wrong with it.

But there is nothing really in the nature of the thing which says it can't be limited below what we consider "normal" (because obviously many individuals are limited to this great degree); and so the "lowest limit" below which badness occurs is always arbitrarily put, and is relative to us, not actually "out there" in reality.

Let me give an analogy. When does heat change into cold? There is no such quality as "cold," actually; heat is molecular motion, which, above 273 degrees below zero Celsius, is always occurring. So at zero degrees Celsius (the freezing point of water, 32 degrees Fahrenheit), there is plenty of heat present. But it's cold when there's so little heat that water freezes.

That means that "cold" is a term like "bad." "Cold" is relative to us. As far as we are concerned, heat has changed into its opposite at the freezing point of water. This is not objectively true; but it is true relative to our comfort. Notice that Mr. Fahrenheit put his zero 32 degrees lower than this; so for him and his followers, heat doesn't "change into its opposite" until we get a good deal less of it. That shows that the zero-point is arbitrary, even when it has a basis in fact--because it is a relative zero, not an absolute one.

Similarly, "badness" always is relative to the way we consider things. Things can have any limitation right down to the level at which they don't exist. Human life can last 120 years, 90 years, 20 years, one day, five minutes, a half a second. All of these are possible limitations on the length of life. We consider it bad for a life to last less than, say, 50 years; but there is nothing in the nature of life that says it has to last that long. The "badness" is relative to the way we consider things.

Similarly, we consider it bad to have any of the sensations called "pain." This is because it is of the nature of pain to let us know (in general) that something destructive of the organism is happening to it--as when you feel pain at being burned. If you couldn't feel pain, then, you could have a hand burned off without realizing it; so in that sense, pain is useful, and is not in itself bad.

And in itself, it's simply a sensation. The first taste a person has of liquor is distinctly unpleasant ("painful" in that general sense), because the organism is warning the person that this stuff is poison; and the sensation of getting drunk ("intoxication" means "being poisoned"), the dizziness, upset stomach, etc., is hardly what a person would spontaneously consider pleasant. But our society has defined the taste of liquor to be the kind of thing that a "sophisticated palate" finds pleasant, and the sensation of getting intoxicated as "really having a good time." We have defined what is in our natural state a pain as a pleasure, and, precisely because it is a rather violent sensation, we consider it a great pleasure, and proceed to poison ourselves eagerly.

So not even pleasure and pain are objective. They are simply sensations, and whether they are called "pleasures" or "pains" depends in large measure on whether the culture regards the acts as "good" or "bad." We will never solve the alcoholism problem in this country until we as a society define the sensation of getting drunk not as "evil" or "sinful" but as "unpleasant" or "disgusting." (In our perversity, if we define something as "pleasant but evil" the "evil" turns out to be an added incentive to perform it--because we are proving that "evil" is just a term that the fanatics use and has no basis in fact; which, of course, is to some extent true.)

Now then, the opposite of "bad" is "good." Something is "good" when it lives up to our preconceived idea of it. The philosophers hold that everything real is good; and what they mean is this: If we have an accurate idea of something, then clearly, (since our idea agrees then with the reality), the reality agrees with the idea--and so the reality is good. That is, if you see a blind man--who is, to be sure, abnormally limited--but you consider him as he is, and not as if he "ought" not to be this limited, then you are considering him as not having something wrong with him; or in other words, you consider him as something good. He is good, but abnormally limited.

I am not trying to say that there is anything wrong with considering a blind man as having something wrong with him and trying to correct his blindness--because in fact, blindness is an abnormal limitation, and sometimes it can be corrected. But you don't have to look on it this way. And especially if it can't be corrected, then looking on it as something that "ought not to be" rather than as a limitation only leads to frustration. That is, the blind person can't do a lot of things that sighted people can do. But if he focuses on what he can't do as if he "ought" (because he is human) to be able to do them, then he is worse off than the blind person who focuses on the things he can do as an individual and refuses to look on himself as "a member of a class" and a defective one at that.

In this connection, Jesus' story of the workers in the vineyard is instructive. Some worked all day for a normal day's wage; others worked less, down to a single hour, and got the same wage. The workers who worked all day complained, and the owner of the vineyard said, "What are you complaining about? You got a day's wage for a day's work. How does what I do to these other people affect you?" The injustice comes, in their minds, not because they were looking at themselves and their work and its pay (which was a fair wage), but because they were considering themselves in relation to the others, in which case a fair wage became unfair. This comparison with others, Jesus says, is not the Christian attitude.