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Turner Myers
Eric Ekstrand
WRI 111
Wednesday Nov. 13
Does Evil Exist?
Evil is commonly understood to be something that is bad, injurious, mischievous, or wicked.
Augustine was the first philosopher to frame the problem of evil and address it in a formal way. Even in
his time, people questioned the reasoning behind the existence of evil. My goal is to clear up the doubts.
Writers and scientists widely portray evil in their works from The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo to
Does Evil Exist? Neurologists Say No. by Ron Rosenbaum. Our literature and scientific experimentation
also tend to depict events as a simple struggle between good and evil, with evil being depicted as a
wholly malicious character, such as in The Brain on the Stand by Jeffrey Rosen. The question I am
planning to explore is Does Evil Exist? Although the answer may seem straight forward, the writers of
the three articles come from opposing viewpoints on the existence of evil, making it difficult to conclude
on a definite answer as to its existence.
Phillip Zimbardo offers a psychological account of how ordinary people sometimes turn evil and
commit unspeakable acts. Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971. In that study,
college students were selected from a pool and randomly assigned the roles of either a guard or an
inmate. The study was supposed to last two weeks but ended shortly only after six days into the
experiment. The assigned guards and inmates were taking their roles too literally and behaved in the
way that real guards and inmates might act. The guards dehumanized the inmates causing inmates to
develop psychological issues. Two inmates were so mentally distraught they had to be released early
from the experiment and tended to. Zimbardo’s point is that as much as we are capable of good, we are
equally capable of evil. The Stanford Prison Experiment explores the dark side of human nature. “If you
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put people in a bad place, do the people triumph or does the place corrupt them? Would violence that is
endemic to most real prisons be absent in a prison filled with good middle – class boys? These are some
of the explanatory issues to be investigated in what started out as a simple study of prison life.”
(Zimbardo 20) Zimbardo argues that as many good people there are in this world, there are bad people.
Situations bring out the worst in people when they are tough and this creates alter egos in people that
would not normally act evil. The college boys that were selected for the Stanford Prison Experiment are
not evil people, but who is to say that good people can’t be evil? Evil exists whether we like it or not and
it is determined by the situations we face. “Peer pressure had been identified as one social force that
makes people , especially adolescents, do strange things – anything – to be accepted.” . . . “This fear of
rejection when one wants acceptance can cripple initiative and negate personal autonomy. It can turn
social animals into shy introverts. (Zimbardo 259) Wants and desires can cause people to do things
unexplainable. People will do whatever it takes to get what they want no matter what the consequences
may be. This is related to real life situations such as initiation into a fraternity or a gang. Potential
members commit acts they would never do in order to gain acceptance in a particular group they favor.
Zimbardo leaves the reader with the impression that evil does exist but can be hidden by the faces of
seemingly innocent people.
Neurologists suggest that there is no such thing as evil. Are they right? “No secret in most of
these works is the disdain for metaphysical evil, which is regarded as an antiquated concept that’s done
more harm than good. They argue that the time has come to replace such metaphysical terms with
physical explanations – malfunctions or malformations in the brain.” (Rosenbaum 1) Neurologists and
scientists are beginning to take a scientific approach the replace prior theories of evil with logical
scientific explanations as to why people act in ways incongruent with their normal behavior.
Neurologists refer to chemical imbalances as “Brian Bugs” (Rosenbaum 1) that cause the behavior
formerly known as evil. There is no such thing as evil because studies have proven that most all heinous
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acts are committed by innocent people who have been victimized by chemical imbalances or
malfunctions in the brain. Scientists are connecting certain evil acts and violent behaviors with different
parts of the human brain. “This empathy circuit, he tells us, consists of 13 specific regions of the brain
involved in the generation of nonevil choices, among them, “the prefrontal cortex”,” the inferior frontal
gyrus”, and the “posterior superior temporal sulcus.” (Rosenbaum 3) What scientists are saying it that
evil does not exist due to the fact that everything ever considered evil can be explained and understood
through a scientific lens. In opposition to this theory of the existence of evil, how could one pardon the
murder, rape, and dehumanization of innocent people simply because the evil doer suffers from a brain
tumor or a chemical imbalance in the brain “making” them do it, whereas they would not normally do?
We cannot excuse life for the scientific explanation behind evil. Whether or not someone suffers from
brain imperfections, does not excuse the evil act.
The theme of scientific explanation for acts of evil reoccurs in The Brain on the Stand by Jeffrey
Rosen. Here, evil is depicted as a wholly malicious character in the form of brain malfunctions. “Mr.
Weinstein’s cyst when historians of the future try to identify the moment that neuroscience began to
transform the American legal system, they may point to a little – noticed case from the early 1990s. The
case involved Herbert Weinstein, a 65 – year old ad executive who was charged with strangling his wife,
Barbara, to death and then, in order to make the murder look like a suicide, throwing her body out the
window of their 12th floor apartment on East 72nd street in Manhattan. Before the trial began,
Weinstein’s lawyer suggested that his client should not be held responsible for his actions because of
mental defect – namely, and abnormal cyst nestled in his arachnoid membrane, which surrounds the
brain like a spider web.” (Rosen 1) Is this to say that people who commit murder or other unspeakable
acts, that they will be excused because of brain defects? What does this have to say about how we view
human life? Although the evil doer may not have complete control or awareness of the act committed
because of a defect in the brain, this is in no way excusable. The victim of that evil doer is still dead,
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raped, and robbed of a potentially successful and happy life. “And since all behavior is caused by our
brains, wouldn’t this mean all behavior could potentially be excused.” (Rosen 1) Rosen is saying that all
acts of evil with brain defect in the report may be excused. What about the family of that murdered
child? Or the husband of his raped wife? Their attackers are not held responsible for their actions
because of brain defects? The counter argument would be that evil completely, without a doubt exists,
because people do evil things due to chemical imbalances and malfunctions in the brain. Every act of evil
can be backed up with scientific reasoning. Further into Rosen’s article, he mentions another instance
where someone committed an act of evil due to a defect in the brain. “. . . When a colleague asked him
to help in the trial of a convicted serial killer in Florida named Bobby Joe Long. Known as the “classified –
ad rapist”, because he would respond to classified ads placed by women offering to sell household
items, then rape and kill them, Long was sentenced to death after he committed at least nine murders in
Tampa. Gur was called as a national expert in positron - emission technology, or PET scans, in which
patients are injected with a solution containing radioactive markers that illuminate their brain activity.
After examining Long’s PET scans, Gur testified that a motorcycle accident that had left Long in a coma
had severely damaged his amygdala. It was after emerging from the coma that Long committed his first
rape. Long was released from his original death penalty and placed in an institution to aid in Longs
recovery. Rosen is saying that evil does not exist because it is not the person committing the act of evil,
it is the brain defect that is doing the evil act. Rosen also states that these evil doers are unaware of the
acts they are committing and therefore, cannot be held responsible for their actions. So what happens
to the nine murdered and raped women? What about there rights?
The question Does Evil Exist is one that has no definite answer. Throughout my exploration of
the question, on multiple occasions I felt as though I had answered my question to then change my mind
about the matter of the existence of evil. Evil comes in all shapes and sizes, good people are just as
capable of evil as they are capable of good. Although many evils acts are the results of a defect in the
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brain, they are in no way, shape, or form excusable due to scientific explanation. You cannot give back
life once it has been stolen. “If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere
insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and
destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who
is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”