MSI Press Blog

  What Is Evil? 1. The Question What is evil. Not as a villain in a story, not as a label we slap on what we fear — but as a real, persistent question: What do we mean when we say something is evil? 2. The Human Angle You see a news story that makes your stomach turn. You hear about cruelty that feels incomprehensible. You witness someone act with coldness, calculation, or indifference to suffering. And you think: That’s evil. But then you pause. Is it? Or is it brokenness? Ignorance? Illness? Is evil a force, a choice, a shadow, a wound? 3. The Inquiry Philosophers and theologians have offered many lenses: St. Augustine : Evil is not a thing, but the absence of good — like darkness is the absence of light. Manichaeism : Evil is a real, opposing force — locked in cosmic battle with good. Kant : Evil is the corruption of the will — choosing self-interest over moral duty. Schopenhauer : Evil is the blind will to live — trampling others in pursuit of desire. Nietzsche : Evi...

  1. The Question Is there free will. Not as a philosophical abstraction, but as a lived tension: Am I choosing, or am I just reacting to forces I don’t understand? 2. The Human Angle You stand at the crossroads of a decision — one that feels small but isn’t. Do I speak the truth, or keep the peace? Do I stay, or go? Do I forgive, or protect myself? And in that moment, you feel the weight of everything behind you: your upbringing, your culture, your trauma, your biology, your habits, your fears. You wonder: Am I free to choose, or am I just the sum of my conditioning? 3. The Inquiry The question of free will has been wrestled with for centuries: Determinists say everything is caused — by physics, genetics, environment. Choice is an illusion. Libertarians (in the philosophical sense) argue that we have genuine agency, even if it’s mysterious. Compatibilists try to reconcile the two: maybe freedom is choosing within constraints. Mystics suggest that the self wh...

  1. The Question Does God exist. Not as a theological proposition, not as a debate-stage challenge, but as a human ache — the kind that rises in the quiet moments when no one is asking us to be clever. 2. The Human Angle There are moments — small, almost forgettable — when this question slips into the room unannounced. A child asleep on your chest, breathing in that slow, trusting rhythm. A sunrise that feels like it was painted just for the five minutes you happened to look up. A grief so sharp it rearranges the furniture of your inner world. A coincidence so precise it feels like someone nudged the universe into alignment. None of these moments prove anything. But they stir something. They make the question feel less like a puzzle and more like a pulse. 3. The Inquiry Across traditions, the question has been answered with: Yes, of course — God is the ground of being, the source of consciousness, the architect of order. No, of course not — God is a projection, ...