Good and Evil

Over past few years, I have distanced myself from every small mundane thing that gets attributed to God! While, I do not know if He exists or not, but I am not ready to believe that He manages things at a micro level. I have started looking for reasons, other than divine intervention, as an explanation to the mundane things that happen around me. Question that I am not able to answer is how small is small or how mundane is mundane for God, if He exists!

Earlier, it was thought that only Earth existed which of course meant that Earth was the only thing that God had to worry about and hence his intervention or hand was seen in everything, from mass disease, to war, to a freak accident on the road. However, as Earth lost its importance in the vastness of universe, it no longer is the only thing for the God to worry about hence may have fallen down a few notches in His priority list. What if tomorrow we discover that this universe is not the only universe that there is? What if we realize that there are infinite universes? Would we still hold a place of importance in the God's scheme of things?

What I do not know is where it ends or where it all began. Only when I have a clear understanding of that, would I be able to accept or reject existence of God with certainty. Till then I have my eyes and ears open, ready to see and learn things that takes me closer to that goal. Not sure, if I'll be able to get there in my life time, but I am hopeful.

Different but related issue is that of good and evil. If I assume that God does not interfere in daily affairs, would that mean God does not care about good and evil? Would it be right to believe that good and evil are not absolute and have nothing to do with God? Would good and evil not get defined in relation to society and the general rules that the society imposes on all individuals for the general good of the society?

My logic of good and evil - reader’s discretion advised - good is all those actions that allow the general society to thrive, under the present evolutionary conditions. On similar lines, evil is all those actions that puts the general well being of society at risk, under the present evolutionary conditions. Note that I have mentioned "under present evolutionary conditions". Why is this so important? Well, what may be good for the society today may not be so in future, based on what may change in the environment and surroundings. The same actions that are considered evil today may become part of how we live, since that may become necessary for the species to survive. It may be difficult to digest this, since we evaluate everything in the timescale of one lifetime or two or max three, however, the changes that I am referring to happen over hundreds and thousands of years. The rate at which these changes happen is so gradual that it does not come as a shock but as part of species’ collective behavior change.

There is an interesting work of fiction – The Time Machine, by HG Wells which illustrates this point very lucidly. The protagonist uses the time machine to travel 800,o00 years into the future. He finds that there are two human races, one that lives above the ground and another that lives under. The one under the ground feeds on the race that lives above ground. He, of course, finds this shocking.

Precursor to this situation is that the moon was struck with a huge meteor and broke. At the time that the moon was hit with the meteor, there were huge upheavals on Earth. Of the humanity that survived, some continued to live on the surface of the Earth and some went underground. Over many thousands of years both these races diverged genetically, so much so that the race that developed under the ground started feeding on the race on the surface, for its survival.

Protagonist enters into an argument with the lord of the race that lives under the ground. The lord says, “Who are you to question evolution of past thousands of years? It is no more evil than a carnivore eating a herbivore.”

I rest my case with a final observation that, good and evil is not absolute but is temporal in nature! It has nothing to do with God, if He exists. Just so that my point is clear, my argument is not a case for negating existence of good and evil. Good and evil do exist. However, what is considered good or evil today may not be so forever and hence may have nothing to do with God. That is all!