A Groundswell of Evil
For some strange reason, “evil” is not a term that we hear very often these days. But, whether we hear it or not, evil is “alive and well” across America, and across the globe. A brief look at headlines from print media and internet sources gives ample testimony to this fact. The following list of depravity has been casually collected over just ONE WEEK’S time; it makes no attempt to be comprehensive. For brevity, I’ve not included citations, but if the reader is interested, simply “Googling” the headlines as listed should bring up the corresponding articles. I’ve grouped the headlines by category.
The first category is what I would call perverted and/or sadistic evil:
The most sensational case in this category currently involves Long Island serial killer Rex Heuermann. The headline reads: Rex Heuermann has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder. The text explains that the charges are in connection to the deaths of Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy and Amber Costello, whose bodies were found in close proximity to one another in 2010 on a deserted stretch of Gilgo Beach, Long Island. Below is a photograph of the police removing an item of evidence from Huermann’s house. If you look closely you’ll notice that it is a painting of a BATTERED WOMAN! Such a lovely piece of art to hang in one’s home, wouldn’t you agree? And, by the way, numerous videos of TORTURE PORN have reportedly been found on his computers.
>A Missouri couple have been found guilty of murder and dismemberment of 32-year-old Kensie Aubry. The text of the article also mentions that, for the male, charges include first-degree murder, third-degree child molestation, and first-degree sexual misconduct. The woman’s charges included second-degree murder, first-degree harassment, attempted child enticement, and first-degree sexual misconduct.
Then there’s the category of domestic evil:
>Husband Slits Wife’s Throat at Ice Cream Parlor.
>Man Charged with Murder After Beating Son to Death and Burning Him with Hot Water
>Son Allegedly Kills Mom During Weekend Visit.
>Dad Shoots Newborn and Wife With CROSSBOW.
>Mom accused of locking up sons in ‘horror-movie’ house.
>Kendra Greene, a mother from Florida, has been arrested after allegedly stabbing three employees of a hospital while attempting to steal her 3-day-old child from the neonatal intensive care unit.
>Daniel Petric, age 16, shot both of his parents after his father confiscated his copy of the video game Halo 3.
>Man Kills Wife in Car in Front of Home.
Then there’s just plain “crazy” evil:
>Teen brutally kills his teacher with a baseball bat over a bad grade.
>A prominent Memphis-area surgeon killed in suspected targeted shooting at local clinic.
>Woman shot in head after husband flips off erratic driver.
Then there is a special category, Islamic evil:
>France: Muslim migrant beats and sexually assaults his wife for not being dressed in a djellaba.
>India: Muslims murder Hindu man for having relationship with Muslim woman.
>Egypt: Muslim uses bulldozer to murder Christian, says ‘I hate Christians; I killed him because he is Christian.’
>Fargo, North Dakota: Muslim opens fire on officers working on traffic crash, murdering one, wounding two others.
>Nigeria: Over 50,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since the outbreak of the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency in 2009
>Nigeria: a thousand Christians killed in first 100 days of 2023
>Nigeria: Over 700 Christians Killed as “farewell gifts” to Nigeria’s Former President.
>Uganda: June 17, 2023: School attack: Dozens of PUPILS killed by militants linked to Islamic State.
And, lastly, there’s the category of mass evil, exemplified currently by the war in Ukraine:
>Ukrainian casualties are estimated at upwards of 16,000 dead, a figure that may rise steeply in the counter-offensive’s coming months. Estimates for Russian casualties start at around 25,000. All of this because of the revanchist megalomania of Vladimir Putin.
ALL the above was reported in headlines over just a week’s time. It’s overwhelming, I think you’ll agree.
Now, some people may say that all of this simply reflects the prevalence of psychopathology that runs through the human population. Others may claim it reflects the effect of violent video games and media on the young. Some may say it is the result of societal “neglect” of those in need. I think that there’s likely some truth to each of these assertions.
Curiously, however, the most important cause, in my mind, is less often discussed: the decreasing role that religion plays in modern life. This cause is NOT often discussed anymore because it’s just not “trendy.” The doyens of contemporary culture, i.e. leftist, liberal “progressive” activists, disdain religion and won’t brook any suggestion that religion might be an antidote or preventative of such horor. (The only possible religious exception being Islam, which, curiously, is often given a “pass” regarding the frequent violent behavior of its most fervent acolytes).
Now, in the event that skeptics pooh pooh the idea that increasing secularism is, at least in part, responsible for the contemporary groundswell of evil (they often claim that blaming “godlessness” for society’s ills is “old fashioned,” out of date, or just plane wrong), I would ask these skeptics to consider a “thought experiment” that has been put forth by analyst and educator Dennis Prager. Prager asks, simply, “How many of America’s plethora of mass murderers, do we think, went to mass or temple in the week preceding their awful rampages?” We don’t, obviously know the quantitative answer to that question, but, I bet almost every one of us would answer, intuitively, “none” or, at most, “a few.”* I would invite anti-religious skeptics to keep this thought experiment in mind the next time they disparage the role of religion in the moral and ethical behavior of societies.
*Notice that I didn’t include “mosque” in the thought experiment. The reason that I didn’t include it is that studies have shown that the increasing devotion to Islamic belief, as correlated with mosque attendance, correlates with the INCREASED likelihood of terrorism, the opposite scenario from the effect that religious observance has in Christian and Judaic communities (source: Islam and Suicide Terrorism: An Empirical Analysis by Seung-Whan Choi, Davis Brown, published in Global Studies Quarterly, Volume 1, Issue 2, January 2022. And: Risk Factors and Indicators Associated With Radicalization to Terrorism in the United States, by Allison G. Smith, Ph.D, National Institute of Justice, June, 2018, www.ojp.gov, which consistently lists “Deep commitment to extremist ideology” as a major “risk factor” for terrorist activity). But that’s another story.