The Most Popular Moral Heresy in the World | Mark P. Shea | CWR
Consequentialism and why we can’t do evil so that good may come of it.
In the previous two pieces in this space, we have looked at two
fallacies: the ad
hominem and the genetic
fallacy. Both fallacies are, like
all fallacies, bad ways of trying to achieve good ends. For arriving at Truth is, of course, a very
good end, but fallacies are poor ways to get there. To be sure, sometimes even fallacious arguers
can occasionally arrive at truth despite their bad arguments. So, for instance, it may be that the guy I
claim is too ugly to understand science is also factually wrong about the earth
being 6,000 years old. It could be that
the member of the McCoy clan whose every utterance I and my fellow Hatfields
reflexively reject is, in fact, wrong about the infield fly rule. But the fact remains that I arrived at a true
conclusion despite, not because of,
my ad hominem or genetic fallacy. It was
a matter of dumb luck, like throwing my racket and scoring a point in
tennis. If I learn from this experience,
“Throw my racket more” and not, “Learn to play tennis better” I may get lucky
now and then, but the (pardon the pun) net result will be that I become a
terrible tennis player.
Likewise, if you stick with fallacious reasoning, you may now and then reach a good end by accident, but the overall result will be that you will not reach the end you seek, but something evil. It may be an intellectual evil such as wilful stupidity or it may be a moral evil such as talking yourself into knocking over a Qwiki Mart in the name of economic justice. Very often, it will be both. But it will not ultimately be anything good because good ends do not justify evil means.
The notion that good ends do justify evil means—also known as “consequentialism”—is probably the most popular moral heresy in the world. We all believe it to some degree or other. You could argue, in fact, that it’s practically the definition of sin. It’s what Adam and Eve attempted when they sought the good end of “wisdom” by the evil means of disobeying God. It’s what everybody tries every time we sin. And we do it because we all want something good: we all want happiness.
Everybody? Even…Hitler?
Yeah. Everybody. Every sin is committed in pursuit of something good. Power, money, health, peace, security, comfort, sex, love, honor: all these things are good in themselves. It’s only when we try to get them by disordered means that evil comes into the picture. And in fact, the nobler the goal you seek, the greater the temptation can be to do something monstrous to get it. So in Hitler’s case, he thought he could get happiness through a renewed and powerful Germany and he thought he could get that via race war and mass murder. World War II and the Holocaust were caused, as all evil is caused, by people looking for happiness in radically wrong ways.
At this point, the cry will often go up, “Stop humanizing Hitler!” That cry against humanizing a human is telling: Why on earth is it offensive to point out that Hitler was, in fact, a member of the same species we are and subject to the same desires we are?
Answer: because we want to believe that Bad People are motivated by pure evil while we are motivated by basic goodness.
So the interior narrative goes something like this:
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