Evil

Clever ethicists write clever apologetics for the cold-blooded murder of babies.

I sometimes despair of the value of argument. There are moments–and this is one, I fear–where a civilized society would take St. Louis’ advice, take such people, and “stick a sword through them as far as it will go”. When the intellect itself is so corrupt as to deploy all its artillery in the defense of cold-blooded baby slaughter, it becomes extremely difficult to engage it. It reminds me of the demon-possessed Weston in Perelandra, by turns clever (angels are, recall, superior intellects) and idiotic (Weston: “Ransom. Ransom. Ransom” Ransom: “WHAT?” Weston: “Nothing.”), utterly committed to the denial of life and God. What appalling evil. It requires exorcism, not argument. It must be expelled.

And yet, in a world where fools are not yet committed to such evil, but prone to become so when the devil’s minions make clever arguments, I suppose it must be argued with. But how in hell do you argue in such a way as to supply fundamental moral intuitions to blithering moral idiots? If a person can’t see that slitting an infant’s throat is a Bad Thing, what possible method of moral suasion can be used to make a moral imbecile–and particularly a highly educated moral imbecile–capable of the sense God gave a goose? I sometimes begin to suspect that the violence of the Old Testament was sometimes the only language fallen man could understand and that treatises on ethics for cretins who hurled babies into the flames were not as educational as the siege, famine, slaughter and exile God in fact permitted in his providence.

Don’t take that as a thought. Just as a cry of pain. We are a civilization facing an awful reckoning. Be glad I’m not God.