Perhaps you fear that if certain undesirable actions aren't labelled as evil, then bystanders will shrug and allow them to continue? I don't think this is true.
I think Cho's actions are best explained through not by pointing to his dead heart and proclaiming 'there was a fountain of evil!', but instead through an investigation of his experiences and his mental health. Taken together I think these are nothing more than a collection of natural circumstances that lead to moronic, senseless carnage.
Simply calling someone evil is an admission of a failure to empathise. Surely the refusal of an attempt to empathise with someone - be they baby-raper, murderer or whatever, is a failing? I happen to believe that abuse in the family perpetuates, and that condemning a father who abuses a son
who was himself abused as a child is misguided.
Clearly not everyone who is abused will purpetuate the distructive behaviour, but I think circumstances have a tremendous bearing on what people do. I think that total free-will, the ability to chose between the right and the wrong action, is not something that is available to everyone at any time.
Clearly, if you are a Christian, then a belief in this ability to chose is central to your faith and I don't expect you to reject it. I just don't see any grounds on which it can be supposed, except the assumptions made in scripture about the individual's ability to chose.
To empathise with someone doesn't make one naieve to their potential danger, and nor does it prevent us from keeping the away from society for our protection. On the other hand, to call them evil is to reject them utterly, and to deny the powerful effect of circumstances on their actions. This doesn't seem very humane to me.
[ABE] Also, lest their be any misunderstanding, I'm not saying that to empathise with someone is in any way to condone their behaviour. Just as it is possible to speak German and yet to find the German language unattractive, I think it is possible to try to understand an 'evil' action without for one second supporting it.[/ABE]
The idea that evil exists is central to the Christian faith because it is the ubiquitous problem for which Christianity is the final solution. But for those who don't share that faith, I don't see how describing something as evil can be anything more than a means of expressing a socially-acquired distaste for an action that is considered in some way disruptive for that society.
Edited by Tusko, : see text for ABE notice
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