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Philosophy and Theology once debated the cause of evil in the world,
speculating whether it had a metaphysical nature:
is it a fundamental part of the cosmos which competes with goodness?
Or is it because of the free Will of Humankind?
Then, of course, they debate free will vs determinism.
Many religious types of people believe there is a Devil and it's his fault,
then the question arises: is it God's fault for creating the Devil.
Then the circular arguments go on until everybody gets tired,
with little understood which could help humanity solve its problems.
Each of us has a brain with a very large associative cortex.
The largest part of a human brain is not hardwired at birth.
The possiblities for each young brain are inestimable at that point in life.
And the complexity of all the possible circuits that can develop in a human brain
are, well, mind boggling.
This complexity is why things can go wrong.
And when this amazing complexity becomes a complicated tangle of miswired circuits,
humans do evil.
It's like a person is taken over by a kind of computer malware,
a program alien to the original intent of the brain/computer.
This is not to say metaphysical evil exists in the universe.
It probably doesn't.
You just can't have a system (us) with near infinite adaptability,
and the incredible reprogrammable complexity that entails,
without significant room for errors to accumulate causing some units (some of us) to
fall into harmful programmed behavior patterns.
We are a lot like a computer with Windows software though far more complex.
A Windows computer must be able to download gazillions of different kinds of software
so it can be adapted to all the different tasks they are used for.
To be adaptable, they must be open to changes,
lots of complicated changes.
So viruses are possible because of a computer's openness to
all kinds of possible changes.
WebTV is virtually immune to viruses because it is not open to installing
outside (non-WebTV) programs.
It's a great tool, but it can only perform the functions that Microsoft puts in it.
I suppose if someone built you a computer hardwired with all your favorite software,
it would be completely immune to takeover by spyware, viruses, and all the bad stuff out there.
But if you ever found a need for some new function,
you would need to scrap it and have a new one built to your new specifications.
Now, if Nature had hardwired humans for what it thought would
be all the abilities we'd ever need to survive and have fun,
say,
agriculture and how to build nice homes and sports cars,
virtually none of us would malfunction and become bad people,
but how would we adapt to, and survive natural disasters or major climate changes?
How would Nature do interesting new things?
The answer is,
Nature would have to scrap us and start over as it may yet do.
But Nature packed us so full of adaptabilities that potentially nothing will remain beyond our grasp.
And yet, every point of adaptability in us is a point for possible mistakes to accumulate in our programming
and utterly undo us, as individuals or as a species.
From Shakespeare's Hamlet:
...this majestical roof fretted with golden fire why, it appeareth no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! What irony indeed. What will we be? Foul pestilent vapours, or gods. |