Absolutely Evil

[Cailín]

What a complicated issue! I have been thinking a lot on good and evil recently... And came up with no conclusions, so this might make no sense at all.

1) Being evil from the very first breath to your very last. Which I've always believed that no one is "born" evil, we all have the capability of doing evil, but I just don't think that someone can be evil right as a baby.

I often hear say that young children are innocent and unspoiled. Before children learn morals, they are neither capable of doing right nor wrong, since they have no concept of these things. As long as you are unaware of the law, you cannot break it. Consequentially, most and possibly all children have a unique self-centeredness, allowing them to experiment freely with the boundaries of human morals without feeling restraint out of fear for causing others pain. In that sense, children are really the most evil beings of us all, but blissfully unaware of it - till they see the reaction of their surroundings.

As soon as being evil becomes a choice, it cannot be pure anymore. However, humans perceive evil that was not done consciously as a lesser crime.

I am not sure what I am trying to say. If someone is absolutely evil, he or she will not know good. S/he cannot choose to be not evil. Is a person then still evil? Is not what we humans think of as evil only evil because it was a willful act?

2) Eru being the creator here and I think the representation of absolute good...I mean Tolkien doesn't say there isn't an absolute good? So, if Eru is the absolute good and he is the creator of everything, can he create something absolutely evil? Can he create an equal and opposite force?

Assuming dualism has some grain of truth in it, if there is absolute good, there is absolute evil. By his mere existence, Eru would have ensured the presence of an opposing force. In that sense, he could have created it indeed.

The only thing I eventually can come up with: wholly good is, as wholly bad, the absence of all action and therefore nothing. Logically, Tolkien is right in saying that it cannot truly exist, only as a hypothetical zero point.