Vox Day addresses the famous — or, perhaps, infamous – Problem of Evil in philosophy and theology:
How, Epicurus wondered, could evil and an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God exist simultaneously? Centuries later, the problem was addressed by the Scottish historian and philosopher David Hume, who considered the matter in his “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.” Hume wrote:
Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?
The most obvious flaws in these proposed problems lie not so much with their logic as with their improper definitions and misapplications to specific religions.
Much of Vox Day’s column focuses on Christianity and the so-called New Testament, and his definition of “evil” is based on the assumptions made by that religious paradigm. For the most part, I will ignore those points since I am a Jew. Still, Vox Day’s interpretions of the Hebrew Bible are inaccurate under traditional Jewish thought.
Vox Day writes:
The Bible is very clear on the existence of evil. It even goes so far as to explain, in part, the immutable evil of human nature. The Old Testament is full of one party or another doing “evil in the eyes of the Lord”; the phrase resounds like an ominous drumbeat leading toward the ultimate fall of the kingdom of Israel.
Much of the problem in the column involves inaccurate translations. The word “sin” usually comes from the Hebrew word חט (“cheit”), which means something like “missing the mark” or failing to uphold God’s commandments. Many rabbis compare it to an archer failing to hit the bulls-eye. The Hebrew Bible is clear that humans frequently fail to resist the “evil inclination” and uphold God’s law, but the Bible does not say that there is an absolute-evil quasi-deity ruling the world who is at eternal war with God and always trying to seduce humans to join him. (Some Jews – particularly mystical, Orthodox ones – believe something like this because the Zohar, a major sourcebook for Kabbalah, does contain these ideas. But it was written in Europe during the Middle Ages and was influenced by Christianity.)
Jews do not believe that humans are inherently evil; rather, we are a neutral slates that must try our best to do the right thing despite temptation. Evil, as Christianity defines the term, does not exist in Jewish thought. Evil exists only insofar as the fact that people frequently fail to do what is right.
