* A Graver Error on Evil

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                          Link to Mr. Graver's YDN article         

·                          _______________________________        

·                                 theantiyale 

• 11 hours ago

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"no community of any sort immune from the resolute, ever-marching ubiquity of evil."

In an otherwise articulate article by Mr. Graver, this phrase seems uncomfortably irresponsible, close to a vision of evil as a force with boundaries and a self-hood, an organizing principle, which moves through history as a knowable construct.

It is out of superstition that the vague belief in trans-epochal forces has been transformed into a specific personification of evil by biblical passages , literature and art.. That personification (e.g. satan, mephistopheles, lucifer) then takes on a shape which manipulates the vulnerable in destructive ways, a self perpetuating cycle of superstition.

Caution, Mr. Graver, caution:

Evil may be ubiquitous, but it does not march, is not everlasting or resolute, and has no organizing principle.

It is random.

Entirely random.

Paul D. Keane
M. Div. '80
M.A, M.Ed.