Mal, religión y saberuna lucha relacional-integral frente a una realidad ambivalente

Abstract

There is a permanent need for asking what is evil, whether it exists or not and how can human beings handle with it. This study argues that evil has a real content (something-someone) and that it can be defined around the following elements: excess and extreme intensity, suffering, false and tricky knowledge (trickster is called also the devil) , and cruel intention. We can speak on objective (destructive) evil when there is quantitative or qualitative excess and on moral evil when there is an excessive suffering than can be hardly understood. As to origin, evil (as chaos, violence and conflict) is previous to mankind, as it is shown in the unnecessary and excessive cruelty that takes place among animals or at the universe. Therefore if we accept the existence of God it must be also accepted that such a God includes evil and not only goodness. The opposite only can be supported in terms of a psychological need of human beings but not in terms of requirements of divine essence. This conclusion derives from the study of the Bible (Genesis, Book of Job, Revelation), Enoch and Qumran, Hesiod, Zoroaster, Ugarit, Enuma Elish and mysticism. For those non-believers the term God can translated by “a mysterious and ambivalent reality that constitutes a complex and ordered system”. In fact, human being, God, reality, and therefore also evil, are characterized by ambivalence. Therefore, human beings must accept evil’s existence and renounce to justify it as a precondition to face it. Some of the arms-tools to fight against evil (i.e. Hope) are also ambivalent, and even evil can use against evil with some conditions. Nevertheless, the main tool to fight evil in such a context is a new kind of amplified reason applied to a relating and integrating approach to wisdom-knowledge where religion, philosophy, psychology and science can work together. This approach can be more successful when we take the branches of knowledge that combine deepening with experimenting.