When we look at good versus evil, we see that evil follows certain patterns in thought processes and in actions. Earlier posts — Subjectivity, Who is Right or What is Right? and Lying — point to a pattern specific to evil: aversion to objective truth/reality.
One reason for evil’s aversion to objective reality is that objective reality has a way of revealing how horrible evil really is. The Bible states in John 3:19-20 “the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed”.
Another reason for evil’s aversion to objective reality is that objective reality/truth often interferes with the wicked schemes of the evildoer.
Note that the goal of the evildoer’s scheme is not necessarily to do harm. Often the evildoer simply aims to get something that he/she wants, and regardless of whether anyone else gets hurt in the process. However, if objective truth says no, you do not have a right to get this thing that you want, then objective truth becomes the evildoer’s adversary.
This is why evildoers lie so much
The aversion that evildoers have to objective truth is the reason that evildoers lie so much. Lying and deception are the evildoers’ way of diverting the attention and awareness of others away from objective truth/reality and onto an alternate reality that they have manufactured that meets their corrupt agenda.
Sometimes the evildoer will rationalize and claim that he/she is only telling a lie to spare someone’s feeling or “protect” them. Here, the evildoer figures that we cannot possibly call him/her evil if he/she is only trying to protect the other person from the ever-so-brutal truth.
In reality, this brutal truth is the liar’s enemy. The liar does not want to be the bearer of bad news, and he/she knows that if the other person were to receive this bad news, then he/she would be hurt and there would be a moral obligation on the part of the evildoer to show compassion. Evildoers do not want to have to show compassion. They would rather lie and deliver false good news so that the other person is happier, at least in the moment. Then the evildoers can move on with their merry day.
Another reason evildoers like to tell people what they want to hear is that being the deliverer of good news makes one more popular. When we form an association between a person’s face and good news, we start to want to see that person’s face again. Knowing this, evildoers want to only bear good news, even if it is false news.
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
― Thomas Sowell
When you truly care about someone, you will tell him/her the truth, even if it hurts in the moment. You know that it will be in the better interests for this other person in the long term.
Evildoers pretend to want the truth
While evildoers tend to have an aversion to objective truth, they are more than happy to pretend to want the truth. They may even project their aversion to truth onto others, accusing others of “not being able to handle the truth”.
Sometimes evildoers will pretend to adopt evidence-based thinking. What they are really doing is cherry-picking the evidence—sometimes false evidence—in favor of what they want to believe. They are prone to finding evidence for what they believe when it isn’t there. Meanwhile, they also turn a blind eye to any evidence against what they believe (or want to believe).
Indeed, when you hear the phrase “there’s no evidence that…”, it is a red flag that the speaker is not necessarily the evidence for both sides. The phrase “there’s no evidence that…” is often laced with the burden-of-proof logical fallacy. When someone uses this phrase, he/she tends to mean “I am not consciously aware of evidence for A being true, so I beseech you to acknowledge that A is false”. Problem is, who ever said anything about evidence that A is false?
When someone claims that he/she has “not seen any evidence” for something, he/she may be telling the truth. He/she may really not have seen any evidence for such-and-such a thing; but there is a catch. He/she may have done little to no research, which means that no matter how much evidence there is for such-and-such a thing, he/she would never see it.
One group of people that often pretends to adopt evidence-based thinking is corrupt medical professionals. Some medical professionals are prideful and like that sense of power and control they have over their patients. They know that their patients depend on them to provide medical care for them and write out their prescriptions…that is UNTIL the patients find out about intensive lifestyle changes that could potentially fix their chronic medical conditions so that they do not have to get as much medical care anymore.
These corrupt medical professionals would not want the patients to fix their chronic health problems with these lifestyle changes that do not require a prescription, so the doctors may try to convince the patients that “there’s no evidence that lifestyle changes are effective in treating or reversing heart disease/cancer/diabetes/etc”. Has the doctor seen the evidence? Maybe not, but this is not because there isn’t any evidence. The doctors may not have taken the time to read the science literature about lifestyle changes in disease. Therefore, no matter how much evidence is documented in the science literature, these doctors are not going to see it. After all, why would these corrupt medical professionals actively seek out evidence for something that they do not want to be true to begin with?
Medical professionals work very hard to become medical professionals. They need to get high grades in school, spend a fortune to go to medical school, and then work a number of years as a medical resident with long hours and low pay. After all of that time, money and energy, some medical professionals want to be rewarded with reverence and a sense of power. They become prideful and want their patients to view them as gods in white lab coats who come in to rescue them from any ailment. While a medical professional who is a good person will find it to be intrinsically rewarding to restore patients to good health, a corrupt medical professional will view a healthy patient as one less paying customer that he/she has power over. If there is evidence in the science literature (which there is) that intensive lifestyle changes can reverse many chronic diseases in ways that drugs cannot, then such evidence becomes a potential threat to the corrupt medical professional.
Even when a patient proves that the evidence is in the literature, the corrupt medical professional may pull another trick and claim that the work of these researchers has been “discredited”. Normally, “discredited” refers to something that has been proven false, but sometimes people will say something has been “discredited” not because it was proven false, but rather because not everyone agrees with it, which of course does not mean that it is no longer credible. What other people would disagree with the research on lifestyle changes? Other corrupt medical professionals…
How evildoers evaluate an accusation
When an accusation is made, evildoers will care about the following:
- Who made the accusation?
- Who is the target of the accusation? Is it me? Or is it somebody I don’t like?
- How serious is the accusation?
Not included on this list is whether the accusation is true. To the evildoer, the truthfulness of the accusation is an afterthought at most. This is a manifestation of indifference to objective truth/reality. Of course if the evildoer is the target of a serious accusation that is based on truth, then the evildoer’s attitude towards objective reality will go from indifference to aversion. Here, the evildoer has a secret to hide, and objective reality becomes a threat. If this little secret is exposed, then the evildoer may be held accountable for his/her wrongdoings, and he/she does not want that.
A reasonable and good person will evaluate an accusation based on whether it is true or false. A good person would try to avoid making a false accusation. At the same time, a reasonable person would be willing to make an accusation when there is reason to believe that the individual in question really did do a bad deed that needs to be brought to the attention of others.
Of course the truthfulness of an accusation is tied to who the target of the accusation is and what that person is being accused of. The point is that given the choice between a true and serious accusation made against the evildoer versus a false accusation made against a person that the evildoer does not like, the evildoer will condemn the true accusation made against him/herself moreso than the false accusation made against the other person.
When you make an accusation against an evildoer, even if the accusation is true, the evildoer will often try to discredit it. For example, the evildoer may accuse you of playing the blame game, saying that you are “just blaming him for stuff”. Here, the evildoer does not necessarily care about whether he is truly culpable. It does not occur to him that if something is his fault, then blaming him is the right thing to do. He makes up his own definition of right and wrong. He believes that if he is the target of the blaming or accusation, then the blaming/accusation must be morally wrong. If, however, another person is “getting blamed” instead of him, then in his eyes it becomes okay, even if that other person is not at fault.
“Convince me!” “Change my mind”
At times, an arrogant, smug individual may challenge you to “convince him” of your silly view. He sits there and puts on the façade of the attentive listener. Is he really going to listen to you? Only enough so that he can use any excuse under the sun he can find to invalidate your view, even if it means distorting your view into something it is not.
In such a scenario, this arrogant, smug individual does not care about truth. He does not aim to learn anything from you, nor does he want to. What he really wants is attention. Your attention feeds his ego. He also is attempting to put himself on a grand high pedestal, with you at the bottom systematically being tricked into caring about what he thinks. He knows you want to be heard, and he is dangling the influence you want to have on him right in front of you like dangling a carrot in front of a horse. He knows that once you care about what he thinks, he has some degree of power over you. He also gets pleasure in feeling that he is the center of your world, and not just the center of his own world.