The future of evil

As America and the West continue to drift away from the assumptions of Christianity, what is the future of attitudes about human evil? How will Western culture regard suffering? How will parents raise their children to enhance their humanity?

All cultures have a basic orientation to the nature of human beings and their relationship to ultimate reality. We can learn about the possibilities, and about the inheritance of today's secular culture, by considering a few from among the spectrum of options.

Eastern versus Western understandings of evil

In Buddhist culture and many strains of Hinduism, for example, the fundamental human condition was considered to be suffering caused by false attachments to illusions of self and reality. Evil tendencies arise from these false attachments. The goal of human life was enlightenment and liberation—known as moksha or nirvana.

Formulations like this are inevitably simplistic. Also, these classic descriptions have been affected by modern thought in various ways. Nevertheless, this model can serve as a helpful point of comparison to other cultures.

In contrast to Eastern religious understandings, Western Christianity considered the fundamental human problem to be sin which brought alienation from God. It was human evil that was responsible for social harms and even mortality. That evil tendency was inherent in human nature. The goal of human life was salvation brought about through acceptance of divine grace.

America's founders were influenced by these Christian assumptions. We argue about whether America was founded as a Christian nation, but this is a misleading description of a debate that is actually about something else—the appropriate role of religion in law and in public life. Obviously, the founders had knowledge of the destructive effects of religion in government and wrote safeguards against that possibility into the Constitution.

On a different level, there can be no question that the Constitutional project borrowed Christian assumptions about human nature and the role of government. The framers expected human venality in political life and tried to counter it, but never believed it was possible to cure it. That is why they sought to create a separation of powers and tried to use ambition to counteract ambition.

Even the implied Constitutional distinction between the public role of government and the private sphere of rights shows the influence of Christian formulations like Augustine’s Two Cities of God.

In this specific sense, America was plainly a Christian nation at its founding.

It is true that secular philosophy and Enlightenment thought also played a role. For instance, Thomas Jefferson’s conception of the right to the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence is an Enlightenment idea that would not be acceptable to an orthodox Christian. But if you substitute the pursuit of salvation for happiness, you can see a parallel even there.

Secular culture needs its own philosophy

Now that America is much less of a Christian culture, how will we come to view the human condition at this fundamental level? American secular culture at the moment is an incoherent jumble of different, competing ideas.

One current tendency is a kind of crude political Manichaeism, with people substituted for gods or forces. There are good progressives and evil supporters of Donald Trump and other racists. Of course, some Republicans employ the same either/or approach in exactly the opposite direction, casting Republicans as good and Democrats as evil.

This tendency is disastrous for politics because it discourages finding common ground and the pursuit of compromise, which are the very heart of healthy politics.

Another understanding, which is closely related, is that human nature is basically good, unless it is tainted by negative influences. This underlies the “we can be good without God” approach. Religion and other forms of philosophy regarded as founded in ignorance are considered to be the basic problem of human life.

In this view, raising a child is not that difficult. Parents just have to keep their children away from these negative influences. If they do that, children will turn out just fine. Social media is now also regarded as a type of negative influence.

The lack of interest in character formation in the organized American secular movement suggests that this is probably the dominant view of human nature among secularists today. Secularists in America don’t talk much about how public schools should teach children to be good citizens—except maybe that children should be taught skepticism. If people are naturally good, why bother with such things?

This approach also explains the political tendency. We are naturally good, while they—our political enemies—have been tainted by outside forces, like racism.

The question for this approach is whether it accurately captures human nature. I doubt that it does. After all, people do terrible things all the time, sometimes in spite of a seemingly normal and healthy upbringing. This optimistic understanding of the human condition may not be warranted.

Tabula rasa, determinism, or something else?

Two current approaches attempt to finesse the idea of human nature altogether.

First, there is the empty slate view, or tabula rasa, associated with John Locke and others. In this view, human beings have no inherent nature and are completely malleable. The way to create a just society is to train good human beings. Raising a child is therefore both difficult and crucial. The history of educational experimentation has been greatly influenced by this view.

Modern science has cast tabula rasa into serious question. It has shown that human beings have many innate drives and tendencies, both individually and as a species.

The opposite of tabula rasa is a materialist view that considers human character to be largely determined by genetics or other forces. This could lead either to an organized effort to improve the gene pool, or the opposite, an acceptance that our fate is controlled by contingencies and nothing can be done to improve it.

However, science has largely discredited this approach as well. Genes may create tendencies one way or the other, but are no longer considered to give rise to inevitable destiny.

We really end up back at having to formulate a comprehensive understanding of human nature. If we don’t take this basic question seriously, we can fall into careless and harmful assumptions.

For example, there are no doubt a lot of people living outside the orbit of organized religion who unconsciously retain the negative Christian view of human nature as sinful, but without any hope of divine salvation. This is a dispiriting viewpoint that suggests a dim future for society. It might be worth trying to inculcate good habits in children, anyway, but without expecting much impact.

Of course, this list of viewpoints on human nature is nowhere near exhaustive. It is meant to serve as a starting point for further discussion.

It is not surprising that secular culture has not yet formulated a comprehensive view of human nature and the problem of evil. That culture is relatively new and is still evolving. But it is now time for such consideration to be taken up in a serious way. There will never be a secular civilization unless thought is given to its foundations.