"...having no remedy for evil but only for the image of it as they conceived it to be."

With this sentence Cormac McCarthy (in The Road) summarizes one of the great motivating factors in human history – Evil; it’s been blamed (by some) for causing every war, pestilence, natural disaster, terrorist attack, personal property crime and dirty thought.  The irony is that Evil (that is Evil as opposed to evil), like its counterpart Holiness, doesn’t even exist.   Humans are the only creatures with a conception of Evil.  We’re the only species that believes forces with intent, invisible and manifested alike, prowl the world.  Such ego to believe such nonsense.

News flash: there are no Satanic intentions, no demonic machinations.  

Religion has survived the scientific revolution (so far) but will continue to exist for a number of reasons, not the least of which are shit happens, and people die. Individually, these calamites can be overcome; we can deal with car accidents or grandma buying the farm.  What we (humans, that is) have a harder time is that sometimes shit happens and people die (SH-PD) as a result.  It’s sad enough when a child dies, or a drunk driver kills someone, but when SH and PD as a direct result (i.e. a drunk driver kills a child), then everyone breaks out with the huge, unanswerable, why?

Religion is a sort of OCD, but instead of the merely physical, or the more complex psychological, religion infects one’s entire sense of being – the “spiritual.’  A religious person can be so compulsive and have such strong belief in that compulsion that they not only, for example, wash their hands, they’re going to wash your hands…at the same time, in the same way, using the same soap, and the same water temperature in the same (or similar) building, while uttering the same magic words, so they can justify that their way is the only way to cleanliness.  (But don’t you dare recognize that your lack of piety is merely germs, because that would be the real world (aka science), and we can’t allow them or their agenda of information.  You have to recognize that illness is caused by Evil spirits crawling over you vile flesh…especially the  you-know-where-parts….dirty, dirty, body parts!)

If they can cure the Evils of the world they will thus cure the world of Evil, then all will be well.  Everything, if you look deep enough, is caused by Evil: 9/11, Katrina, Obama, swine flu.  In the past (and for some people today) Evil was (and still is) responsible for bad weather, earthquakes, eclipses, failed crops, and every manner of deformity, mental illness, bad habit, nervous tic and even gender itself.  Women, after all, are the worst Evil of all.

Like the Christian who sees Jesus’ face in a sidewalk puddle or on his toast, evil-seekers see the demise of civilization, hell, the end of the world itself, in every song lyric, short skirt and normal bodily function.

I’d pity them if they weren’t so fucking dangerous.