[Avoiding_Sulla]

If you genuinely believe that[all good things flow from God], then you must be a dualist (which I doubt you are) because, by logical extension, all bad things must flow from somewhere else, which would make Old Scratch co-equal with God.

C.S. Lewis answers this in Mere Christianity in the chapter "The Invasion."

I personally think that next to Christianity, Dualism is the manliest and most sensible creed on the market. But it has a catch in it....

Lewis goes on to describe the two independent good and bad "powers, or spirits, or gods." Both existing from eternity, neither made the other, neither "has any more right than the other to call itself God. Each presumably thinks it is good and thinks the other bad."

Then Lewis attends to the charge that it's all a matter of taste. Which is Good and which is Bad? So he lays out for us some revealing comparisons and juxtapositions of the two forces, until we must confront the paradox here:

If "being good" meant simply joining the side you happened to fancy, for no real reason, the good would not deserve to be called good. So we must mean that one of the two powers is actually wrong and the other is actually right.

But the moment you say that, you are putting into the universe a third thing in addition to the two Powers: some law or standard or rule of good which one of the powers conforms to and the other fails to conform to. But since the two powers are judged by this standard, then this standard, or the Being who made this standard, is farther back and higher up than either of them, and He will be the real God. In fact, what we meant by calling them good and bad turns out to be that one of them is in a right direction to the real ultimate God and the other in as wrong relation to Him.

Lewis goes still further in dissecting Dualism. Noting that "...in reality we have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is bad. The nearest we can get to it is cruelty." [I have been maintaining that Amalek may be the exception that proves the rule]. He makes the point that the cruel get some benefit from being cruel, some "good things. The badness consists in pursuing them by the wrong" method, way or in excess.

At the end, Lewis describes supernaturally what we see in the natural world [a connection I make in the link above]. Just as we see natural and man-made parasitics accompany all work or potential for work in the well studied science of thermodynamics, Lewis said this about the bad force.

Put it more simply still. To be bad, he must exist and have intelligence and will. But existence, intelligence and will are in themselves good. Therefore he must be getting them from the Good Power: even to be bad he must borrow or steal from his opponent.... The powers which enable evil to carry on are powers given it by goodness. All the things which enable a bad man to be effectively bad are in themselves good things -- resolution, cleverness, good looks, existence itself. That is why Dualism, in a strict sense, will not work.

That is why Dualism, in a strict sense, will not work. But it definitely worthy of our efforts here on FR and in the world at large, to consider it and all that it brings to mind.

[EternalVigilance]

Thank you for that great post, and for the work you obviously put into posting it.

I have a copy of Mere Christianity on my desk, and have been rereading it as I have had time over the course of the last few days.

I had just read the passages you quoted yesterday, in fact. ;-)

Great stuff, from one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century.

Regards...EV

[steve-b]

Put it more simply still. To be bad, he must exist and have intelligence and will. But existence, intelligence and will are in themselves good. Therefore he must be getting them from the Good Power: even to be bad he must borrow or steal from his opponent....

Here, we have a switch between two different definitions of "good". Existence, intelligence, and will are "good" in the sense of "desirable" or "beneficial"; the distinction between the two powers posited by dualism depends on "good" in the sense of "morally upright". The two concepts can exist independently of one another -- one need only cite an example of a real, intelligent, and/or strong-willed advocate of an evil cause (e.g. Josef Stalin), or a fictional, stupid, and/or easily distracted advocate of a good cause (e.g. Inspector Clouseau).

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Fran,

In your commentary of yesterday The Good Don't Last Too Long, you took a substantial tangent to explain the difference between "good" and "right." As you can see here and at 199, and at steve-b's response at 198, more than a year ago he and I discussed this briefly.

Certainly your commentary complements ours. I was hoping this might add something to yours.

-Av