The Moral Symmetry of Good and Evil

By Ken Levi

“I love to kill people. I love watching them die.” So said Richard Ramirez, the notorious Los Angeles “Night Stalker.” Can we say that he, and others like him, are pure evil? Or, is that just a matter of personal opinion? This book is about morality. It’s about proving good and evil are real; that they’re not just an opinion; that they are based on a measurable standard; that the measurable standard comes not from religion, not from philosophy, but from science. What is that scientific standard? Symmetry. It’s how things work in physics, in aesthetics, and even in ethics. The same symmetry that governs the interaction among subatomic particles, that forms the wings of a butterfly, that determines the genius of a snowflake, also has fashioned you and me as moral beings, and has given us the choice between what’s evil and what’s good. That’s what I will explain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ken Levi
• Release date: Jan 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463655597

Ken Levi

I grew up in Boston, moved to Ann Arbor, where I received my Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Michigan, then moved again to San Antonio, where I taught Sociology at the University of Texas. I am the author of seven books: “Violence and Religious Commitment” (Penn State Press), about the suicide and murder of over 900 members of the People’s Temple Church in the Jonestown massacre; “Proving God Exists: Physics, Cosmology, and the Universal Mind,” about scientific proof for God’s existence; “The Moral Symmetry of Good and Evil,” about the scientific derivation of morality; "Knowing: Consciousness and the Universal Mind," a composite theory for solving the “hard problem” of consciousness; "Mind of God," addressing the question, "Does the Universe think?" "Scandal in the American Orchid Society," about treachery and betrayaI in a volunteer organization; and "American Hitler," about Trump and his fanatical followers.I have also published a series of six articles on human consciousness in "The Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research," in addition to several other articles on violence, crime, and delinquency, including "Becoming a Hit Man" (Sage Publications), which has since been cited in over 110 other books and articles.

Book preview

This book began as a debate on the Facebook group Does God Exist. Some of the group are confirmed atheists, while others are devout believers. As you might expect, they clash. What caught my attention was a post that stated,

"When I say that an event or behavior is good or bad, the syntax of the language is to refer outward to the event or the behavior as its object, but it is really a comment about my own state of mind.* When I say that murder is evil, the actual meaning of that statement is that the state of my mind is that I very strongly prefer that the world would be a world without murder. It is a description of myself" (Michael Lepore, *italics mine).

My response to that post was,

So, there is no objective right or wrong?

Thus began the debate. Several members took the position that questions of morality are purely subjective. There is no real right or wrong, they say; no actual good and evil. It depends entirely on the observer’s point of view. Others argued the opposite case. To them, it’s based on the Bible. The Bible is the word of God. So, its laws are absolute and universal.

My own position is different. It’s based on science. I believe that good and evil are real. They’re not just the product of someone’s feverish imagination. People like Hitler and Charles Manson are really, really bad. People like Ghandi and Malala Yousefzai are really, really good. Those are facts. I believe that good and evil are as real as the buttons on your coat. It’s all about moral symmetry.

Moral symmetry describes how people treat each other. But it reflects a far broader kind of symmetry that governs the entire Universe. This universal symmetry is a fundamental principle of physics and cosmology. I will show how the science of the Cosmos impacts our moral behavior.

Before we begin, however, let’s clarify some terms, and let’s also be clear on exactly what this essay is all about.

First, what do we mean by the terms objective and subjective? To put it simply, objective refers to facts, while subjective refers to mere feelings or opinions.

More specifically, objective things are quantifiable and measurable. But subjective things are open to greater interpretation, and are based on attitudes and emotions. For example, if you say the Bible is the most published book in all of history, you can back up this assertion with publication records and statistics. It’s a fact.

But if you assert that the Bible is the most influential book of all time, or that it’s the greatest book of all time, there is no way you could verify this statement. It is based purely on your opinion.

We tend to think of objective entities as nouns, and subjective entities as adjectives. For instance if I say, Joe is a great guy, Joe is a noun, but great is an adjective. Nouns are often solid things, which you can see and touch. But adjectives are only aspects of those things. Adjectives cannot stand alone.

But this distinction between noun and adjective is false. It’s true that great in the above example is purely subjective. Some people might think Joe is a creep. On the other hand, if I say Joe has green eyes and shoulder-length hair, I am talking fact. The terms green and shoulder-length are both easily verified. You might disagree and claim his eyes are really blue. But you would be wrong.

So, when we talk about good and evil, it’s true that both terms are adjectives, not nouns. But they are the kind of adjectives that can be quantified and measured. They are objective facts.

With that in mind, here is what this book is about:

It’s about morality. It’s about proving good and evil are real; that they’re not just an opinion; that they are based on a measurable standard; that the measurable standard comes not from religion, not from philosophy, but from science. What is that scientific standard? Symmetry. It’s how things work in physics, in aesthetics, and even in ethics. The same symmetry that governs the interaction among subatomic particles, that forms the wings of a butterfly, that determines the genius of a snowflake, also has fashioned you and me as moral beings, and has given us the choice between what’s evil and what’s good.

That’s what I will explain.

MORALITY

Definition

Morality can be defined as rules about what people ought to do. Immorality is the violation of those rules. All known societies have such rules, and we can trace them as far back as the Code of Hammurabi, around 1754 BC, or later to the Ten Commandments, around 1400 BC.

The question here is whether any set of rules pertaining to good and evil are universal. Certainly, every religion makes that claim about its own tenets. Christians believe in baptism; Muslims in the veil; Jews in the Sabbath.

Beyond religion, philosophers from Plato to Aristotle to Kant have attempted to define universal standards of good and evil that everyone should adhere to.

Moral relativists take the opposite view. They claim there are no universal standards. Precisely because religions and cultures have such differing ideas about good and evil, we have no right to say any one of them is better than the others.

The following sections compare and contrast the two positions.

Moral Relativism

In the 5th Century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus told a story about the Persian king Darius. The king asked a delegation of Greeks if any of them thought it was acceptable to eat the flesh of their father’s dead body. His listeners were horrified at the suggestion, and all vigorously protested they would never do such a thing. Darius then asked a delegation of Callatiae from India whether they would consider burning their father’s dead body. And they recoiled in disgust. Yet, it was common practice for Callatiae to do what the Greeks abhorred, and vice versa. From this interchange, the king concluded that there can be no universal moral standard, and that every society has its own peculiar ways (Wikipedia, India).

Moral relativism is the idea that there is no universal or absolute set of moral principles. It’s a version of morality that advocates ‘To each his own,’ and those who follow it say, ‘Who am I to judge’ (International Encyclopedia of Philosophy). To those who take this position, morality is simply a social construct. And different cultures have widely differing constructs.

In 1947, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights drafted a Declaration of Human Rights for all mankind. The American Anthropological Society sharply objected. They maintained, Standards and values are relative to the culture from which they derive, so that any attempt to formulate postulates that grow out of the beliefs or moral code of one culture must to that extend detract from the applicability of any Declaration of Human Rights to mankind as a whole (American Anthropologist, Vol. 49, No. 4, p. 542).

A contributor to Quora, Gordon Hide, states the case this way: morality evolved in societies to improve survival chances through cooperative behavior. Since each society faces its own distinctive set of threats, they developed uniquely different moral codes to adapt to their own special set of circumstances. It would therefore be both impractical and harmful to impose any one culture’s morals on another.

Hide then goes on to argue that moral relativism is therefore not a recipe for anything goes. But rather it is a set of society specific rules to sustain survival.

More harshly, Plato in Book One of The Republic quotes Thrasymachus that Justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger. And in his work On Custom, Montaigne asserts, The laws of nature are really just the laws of custom. He was objecting to what he perceived as the ethnocentrism of Europeans. At the time, the various Western powers were busy imposing their religion and culture on the poor, benighted natives of the New World.

Perhaps the most extreme position on moral relativism comes from the 19th century German philosopher Nietzsche. There is no free will, he declared. Therefore, We should no more call a human being immoral for his harmful actions than we call the thunderstorm immoral for making us wet (259). Free will, he stated, was designed by priests to make us dependent on them (254). According to Nietzsche, all human action is motivated by self interest (254). In effect, if it feels good, do it.

Nietzsche would probably agree with the argument that good and evil are subjective. They’re not facts. They’re just opinions. And everyone is entitled to their own opinions. In that sense, if I call someone bad for, let’s say, stealing apples, that says more about me and my system of values, than about the person I’m condemning.

Moral relativism may be a counter to ethnocentrism. However, it has its drawbacks. For example – ISIS. Are their beliefs just as valid as anyone else’s? And what about such abhorrent practices as slavery or clitorectomy? Do they not strain our limits of tolerance? As Geoffrey Widdison puts it, To genuinely believe in that definition, then they have to believe that torture and murder of innocents, sexual assault, including that of children, and every other form of human cruelty are completely OK if society sanctions them (Quora).

Moreover, anyone violating social norms is, by definition, evil. So, freeing the slaves would be an immoral act in the 19th Century South; same with interfering with a lynching; same with stopping a father in India from tossing acid in his daughter’s face. Under moral relativism, all these deeds would be deemed bad because they disobey local custom.

The critique of moral relativism recalls this passage from Isaiah (5:20 ESV). Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

Moral Absolutism

Moral absolutism is the opposite of moral relativism. Instead of defining good and evil as varying by religion, culture, or individual, moral absolutism holds that there is a universal set of moral prescriptions that apply to all people, regardless of their backgrounds; that there is only one right answer to any ethical question.

1. In Religion

We are most likely to associate moral absolutism with religion. Practically all religions derive their moral precepts from a divine or higher source, and therefore regard any opposing beliefs as false.

The Old Testament commands: Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. In the New Testament, Jesus adds, Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth . . ., and When thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret . . . The Quran prohibits, Taking interest, Sorcery, or Fleeing upon confronting the enemy in battle. The Upanishads urge Cleanliness, The Reading of scriptures, and Regular prayers."

Each of these religions has a sacred text. That text contains injunctions about what people must do and must not do. For believers, those injunctions are moral absolutes.

2. In Philosophy

The concept of moral absolutism also comes from the early Greek philosophers. To