Ronald Reagan said that the Soviet Union was an evil empire, and many people agreed. He also later suggested to some high school students that if we had a common enemy from space (aliens), we would probably need to join forces with the Soviets. It’s very hard for me to understand how millions of people in the former Soviet Union are now less evil than they were when Reagan first told me they were evil. But then again, I still have problems understanding how former east-block countries are now in NATO! How did all this evilness evaporate? Through God’s grace? How does this evil wax and wane?!
Ah, one last ambiguity to clear up. I'm not expecting a Conservation of Good and Evil law when talking about invariance. I'm talking about invariance with respect to observer situation. Thus I expect both the Scientifically Moral Jew and Muslim to agree on which acts of either side are evil. Also, I don't expect the application in practice to be either simple or without ambiguity. What I look for is and underlying set of "laws" and "equations" which are hopefully fairly compact and have a certain "beauty" to them, just as we see in other branches of science. I'm reminded of the fact that Newton developed his mechanics without the aid of the best experimental setups (air bearings, or vacuum), yet was able to grasp the fundamental principles. The messy details of energy dissipating interactions were way beyond his time, yet he could see past those effects. We need to do the same with Good and Evil to make progress. Much of what people call situational ethics, IMO, is the friction of life overlaid on the Newtonian world view of religious Right and Wrong. Sometimes, you must account for the friction in your calculations, sometimes you can safely ignore it. |
