The classic problem of evil claims to find an inconsistency in the joint existence of God and evil. If we define God as a being that is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, then God’s existence will be inconsistent with the existence of evil, since any perfectly good being will prevent evil given that he knows about it and has the power to do so. Thus the traditional concept of God is said to be paradoxical, given the existence of evil. Other familiar concepts also lead to paradox: truth (the semantic paradoxes), sets (Russell’s paradox), and any vague concept (the Sorites paradox). Yet we don’t normally suppose that these familiar paradoxes demonstrate the nonexistence of the things in question: we don’t conclude that nothing is true or that no sets exist or that no one is bald. That is because we think we have good antecedent reasons to believe that these things exist, and so we set about trying to resolve the paradoxes—not eliminating the things in question. We often find no convincing resolution. If we had strong reason to believe in the existence of God, then presumably we would adopt the same attitude toward the paradox presented by the concept of God: if we thought the ontological argument was sound, say, we would not reject the existence of God in the face of the problem of evil, but try to disarm the paradox. But since we don’t have such a convincing antecedent argument, we tend to suppose that the paradox of God and evil disproves God’s existence. Since we can’t deny the existence of evil, we end up denying the existence of God.
I am interested in whether the problem of evil really demonstrates that the existence of God is inconsistent with the existence of evil. For if it does, the inconsistency is not as obvious as (say) the inconsistency of the concept of a round square, or the concept of a chair that is not a piece of furniture, or the concept of a married bachelor. My question, then, is whether it is possible to dissolve the appearance of paradox, thus rendering God’s existence at least consistent with evil (it is a further question whether God exists). Is the traditional concept of God as omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly virtuous inherently and irremediably paradoxical, given the existence of evil? I shall argue that it is not.
The essence of the problem concerns God’s apparent tolerance for suffering, especially extreme suffering on the part of innocent people (and animals). This seems to show that he is not perfectly good, given his power and knowledge; indeed, it is often taken to show he must himself be quite evil. Before I tackle this problem head on I want to consider a related problem, which I shall call “the problem of insufficient goodness.” There is a certain amount of goodness in the world, but there could be more goodness in it—people could be happier, more knowledgeable, more virtuous, more aesthetically sensitive, and whatever else you think constitutes goodness. Given that God is benevolent, why doesn’t he produce more goodness? Why doesn’t he produce the maximum amount of goodness? Not to do so looks like a moral failing on God’s part. But then God cannot be perfectly good, which by definition he is supposed to be—in which case he does not exist. God tolerates a lack of maximal goodness in the world, which shows that he is less than perfectly virtuous; so the traditional concept of God is inconsistent with the moral imperfection of the world, given that this is not the best of all possible worlds.
That argument sounds fishy and unpersuasive—why? Because it presupposes a form of extreme utilitarianism: it assumes that one of God’s duties is the maximization of happiness (or other intrinsic goods). But that type of normative ethics has all sorts of well-known problems, construed as a theory of moral duty or obligation. I won’t rehearse these problems here, merely observing that we don’t generally think an agent is immoral just because she does not commit herself to generating as much happiness in the world as is humanly possible. We don’t think we are obliged to drop everything and travel abroad to help the poor, leaving family and responsibilities behind, even if we accept that doing so will maximize net utility. Of course, there are philosophers who think we are seriously immoral for not doing so—those who accept the extreme utilitarian theory. But many do not—those who adopt a more deontological approach to ethics. The former philosophers think we are the moral equivalent of murderers for not devoting ourselves to helping the poor, sick, and dying; but the latter philosophers protest that this is a highly revisionary account of moral obligation, which they see no reason to accept. They define moral duty by a set of specific rules, not by the imperative to maximize utility.
Let us suppose that God is a deontologist, not a utilitarian (rightly so, in the opinion of many). He therefore does not believe that he has any duty to spread as much happiness as he possibly can; nor does he think that mortal beings have any such duty. He will accept that it is a good thing if people (and animals) are happy, but he does not believe it is morally binding on him strenuously to bring about such happiness—just as human deontologists do not believe it is morally binding on us to do everything we can to increase human (and animal) happiness to the maximum. As a deontologist, God thinks it is his duty to obey a list of moral rules—such as not lying, stealing, murdering, breaking promises, being unjust, committing adultery, coveting one’s neighbor’s ox, and so forth—but among these rules there is none that requires him to maximize happiness among all sentient beings (the Ten Commandments contain no such edict). So failing to live up to that extreme utilitarian principle does not, for God, count as a lapse from moral perfection—any more than it does for you and me. This means that if we live in a world in which happiness is not at the maximum possible, God cannot be accused of moral imperfection—so there would be no argument against his existence based on the absence of perfect happiness (whatever exactly that might mean). There is therefore no paradox involved in the idea of a less than perfect world that contains an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God. And the reason is that morality, correctly understood, simply does not demand the production of maximum general happiness. If God were to be found guilty of some other moral transgression—say, lying or breaking a promise—then indeed that would show him to be less than perfect, in which case he could not exist as traditionally conceived. But he cannot be faulted for failing to do what is not morally required of him. To use traditional language, he can be convicted of no sin.
Can he be faulted for not removing all forms of suffering? Can an ordinary mortal be faulted for that? Again, the utilitarian says yes, but the deontologist says no. Suffering comes in many forms, from mild irritation or displeasure to agonizing pain. Is it anyone’s duty to set about alleviating all forms of suffering, no matter how trivial and mild? Are you required to devote yourself to making people feel a little more comfortable, by removing every hint of disagreeableness from their lives (so long as you do not suffer as a result of your generosity)? Hardly. Nor is God required to do any such thing. The world might be a better place without any suffering in it, but it is not anyone’s moral duty to bring such a world about, even if he or she has the ability to do so. Certainly, we do not go around blaming people for not embarking on comprehensive antisuffering expeditions—striving to remediate every slight pang of unpleasantness in as many lives as possible. We do not take ourselves to have a general duty to remove suffering wherever it is found. But what should we say about extreme suffering? Already we can see that this will not be a simple all-or-nothing matter, given that not all suffering must be alleviated. Is God at fault for tolerating extreme suffering? What about death, destruction, and maiming, caused by earthquakes, fires, and floods? Here is where our moral intuitions start to turn against God, because we think we would never allow such terrible things if we were in his position.
But is that so obvious? Let us imagine that there are many universes, each containing innumerable life forms: let’s say a billion universes with a billion advanced life forms in each. Suppose God lives in one of them, but that he has power over all. Suppose too that he has other things on his mind, apart from mortal suffering and its alleviation (he has to think about creating further universes, about his plans for sending a savior to a given universe, about where to send the billions upon billions of dead, and so forth). At any given moment there is a lot of suffering in the totality of universes, which God could in principle prevent. Is he morally deficient for not doing so? Well, consider his emissary Jesus: he lived in one place all his life and did nothing for people outside of that place, despite his evident ability to perform miracles. Why didn’t he travel more widely and use that ability to help people in foreign lands? Why didn’t he devote himself to combating extreme suffering wherever it was found? He didn’t, but we don’t generally suppose him to be a moral monster. The reason is that we don’t take ourselves to be moral monsters just because we ignore extreme suffering in different parts of the world. That is, we don’t think we have a moral obligation to abandon home, family, friends, and work, in order to alleviate as much severe suffering as we possibly can. For we are not extreme utilitarians, but moderate deontologists: we think we have core local duties that are binding, and these do not include generalized impersonal suffering-alleviation. It is quite true that I know of distant suffering and also that I have the power to do something about it, but I don’t think I have a duty to do everything I can to stop it (such as contribute most of my income to charity). I don’t think I am morally obliged to tend to animals dying in remote forests, nor to help with the pain of strangers I know are in pain. If the suffering were right in front of me, I might think differently; but as things are I don’t think my duties extend as far as the extreme utilitarian suggests. In fact, I think the utilitarian philosophy leads to a bad ethical outlook, because of the various problems with it that have been pointed out (especially the way it conflicts with questions of justice). We do regard ourselves as failing in our duties if we lie or break promises or act unjustly, but we don’t regard ourselves as under an obligation to extinguish as much suffering in the world as is humanly possible, even when the suffering is extreme (and how extreme would it have to be?).
Then why is God under an obligation to eliminate suffering? He may deplore suffering and feel compassion for the sufferer, but why must he do everything he can to prevent and alleviate it? Like the rest of us, he has other things to think about and doesn’t want the distraction; he may also have more local concerns (such as whether to send his only son back to Earth on a return mission). As a deontologist, he accepts that he must not cause harm and suffering, but he doesn’t accept that he has to remedy it whenever it occurs. He thus acts rightly according to his own morality, and according to the morality that most humans share. God is a good Kantian. So far, then, we have found nothing in God’s conduct that conflicts with this kind of morality, and hence nothing that could disqualify him from moral perfection (assuming such a morality to be correct). He is perfect, from a deontological point of view. He has never broken any sound moral rule. He has never sinned. He “tolerates suffering” in just the way the rest of us do: he allows a vast amount of it to happen when in principle he could prevent it. If God intentionally brought about extreme suffering, then he would have a lot to answer for, since there are moral rules against that; but it is a very different matter merely to allow it to happen when you could in principle do something about it. Only a simple-minded utilitarian could fail to appreciate that distinction, but a deontologist finds it vital.
Two objections might be raised. The first is that it is clearly wrong to fail to alleviate preventable suffering when it is right in front of you. That may be true, but why suppose that God is present at the scene of suffering whenever it occurs? God is not present in the spatiotemporal world at all, as we are; he always transcends that world. We might think of him as always distant, as we are in relation to foreign lands, but existing in his own dimension—though, being omniscient, he knows exactly what is going on. The distinction between being there and not being there does not exist for him, so he is not ruled by the demands of spatial or temporal proximity. He is not literally standing right there next to the wounded man and coldly declining to help him. The second objection is that we have not yet explained how a perfect God could create an imperfect world—one that he knew would have lots of preventable suffering in it. But that is a separate question, not the question I am trying to answer here—which is why God tolerates suffering when it occurs. He might have had all sorts of reasons for creating the kind of world that he did (one might be that the notion of a perfect world is incoherent). Note that people who create things often know that evil will occur in those things, but they do it anyway—as when parents create a child that they know will suffer in the normal course of life, or an architect creates a building that is bound to have bad things happen in it. We do not generally regard people as to blame for these creative acts. In any case, my question is different, namely how to explain God’s tolerance for suffering. And the point is that tolerance for suffering, of the kind that God evidently exhibits, is not actually inconsistent with unimpeachable virtue—if we accept the deontologist’s view of morality. In effect, the critic of God is presupposing an extreme form of utilitarianism: but that is not a position we are required uncritically to accept.
God is not claimed to be unjust by the traditional argument from evil: if he were, that would be straightforwardly incompatible with his complete virtue. But what should we say about the punishments of hell? They certainly seem disproportionate and cruel, not just at all. I agree: the existence of eternal damnation would be inconsistent with God’s virtue. But supervising hell is not part of the very definition of God, merely a contingent add-on: so the right thing to say is that there is no such place as hell. There cannot be a hell, given that God is just—which he by definition is. So that part of traditional theology has to go—and a good thing too. But earthly suffering is a fact, so we cannot just deny its existence. What we need to do is explain how the existence of suffering is consistent with the existence of God as morally unimpeachable—and the suggestion is that it is because of the correctness of deontological ethics, which does not condemn the mere tolerance of suffering. If we had a proof of God’s existence, we could use the problem of evil to prove the correctness of deontological ethics, given that it is the only way to remove the apparent inconsistency. What I am suggesting, reversing that, is that if we assume deontological ethics we can render the existence of God nonparadoxical. I think this is easy to see by considering the (alleged) problem of insufficient good, since we don’t have much of a tendency to think there is a moral rule requiring everyone to promote as much good as possible as widely as possible. But then it is a small step to accepting that neither do we have an obligation to alleviate all suffering, whether mild or extreme. Our moral duties are more limited and more local than that, as deontologists have long urged. Thus the resolution of the problem of evil turns on which ethical theory is correct; there is no knockdown argument that God must be failing in his moral duty unless he prevents or remedies every instance of suffering. Since I favor deontological theories, I am ready to give God a pass with respect to his moral behavior. Nothing in the traditional problem of evil shows that God is a sinner. The concept of God coexisting with evil is not paradoxical after all. It is because we are operating with a deontological conception of morality that we don’t immediately accept that the existence of evil shows that God must be less than perfectly good. It takes an injection of utilitarianism to make us wonder whether he might be flawed after all.
Let me end with a parable designed to make the point vivid. Suppose a certain individual, call him Peter, has always had a strong desire to help people, especially medically. He studies medicine and becomes a doctor. He is an exemplary member of his profession, working long hours, often for no pay, always kind and attentive to his patients. Moreover, he is a sterling family man, a great husband and father. Peter’s code of personal ethics is very demanding: he has never told a lie, stolen anything, broken a promise, or committed adultery in his heart. In addition, he does a lot of work for charity, giving up what is left of his free time. Peter is widely regarded as a “saint”; no one has a word to say against him. He ends his life without a blot on his record and is sorely missed. There are many who describe him as morally perfect. But there is one person in Peter’s town who is a convinced utilitarian: he argues that Peter is actually not much better than a murderer, since he never left his town to work with dying people in Africa. He could have saved more lives if he had abandoned his practice and his family and moved abroad. Suppose this is true: by the utilitarian calculus Peter really could have maximized happiness by moving to Africa, thus saving more lives and alleviating more suffering. That is just the way the balance of utilities pans out. Instead of curing 10,000 people he could have cured 15,000 people. The question is: Who do you think is right, the utilitarian or the rest of the people in the town? Is Peter evil for not acting in the utilitarian way? He “tolerated evil” by not preventing as much of it as he could. Isn’t God in the same position as Peter?
Suppose you live in a town with an exceptionally good mayor, call him Keith. Not only is Keith an excellent mayor, he is the best mayor in the world—none greater. He is admired by all, even worshiped. But there is also another man in town who is a terrible criminal, call him Mick. Mick is a very bad man indeed, constantly doing quite evil things, hated and feared by all. He spoils the experience of living in the town. He can occasionally be seen about the place, with his orange skin and flamboyant hairpiece, always up to no good. Keith also is regularly glimpsed, with his healthy glow and fine head of hair. They are never seen together, though—no doubt because of their very different lifestyles and tastes. Everyone just assumes that Keith wouldn’t be seen dead with Mick, yukking it up in some seedy strip bar.
There is a puzzle, though. Keith is not only good; he is powerful—he has the police force under firm control (and there is no corruption there). Why doesn’t he just arrest Mick, put him out of action, thus removing evil from the town? Hell, why doesn’t he just have Mick quietly eliminated? You, as a concerned citizen, find yourself obsessed with this question—though other people seem unperturbed by it. Keith has the power, he is supremely good as a mayor (no kickbacks and such), and he is well aware that Mick causes a lot of suffering to the townsfolk (Keith has security cameras everywhere). Yet he allows Mick to persist and thrive, always up to his evil tricks, quite incorrigible. It is true that Keith sometimes publicly reprimands Mick and warns young people to stay away from him, but he never does anything—he lets Mick be. Why? Why?
After some years of observing this curious coexistence and puzzling over it, you formulate a daring hypothesis: Keith is Mick! That is, Keith and Mick are one and the same man: it’s a classic Frege case of one individual having two modes of presentation, and hence being supposed nonidentical. This is why they are never seen together, and why Keith lets Mick live among them and get away with his evil deeds. You have also noticed a strong resemblance in the slope of the nose and other telltale signs. Why Keith should feel the need to live this double life is an additional puzzle—maybe he just enjoys the deception, or likes to slum it once in a while. And suppose you are quite right: the two men are indeed one. You have good reason to believe this, and it is true, and nothing else makes sense—so we can say that you know that Keith and Mick are numerically identical. This is despite the fact that one is supremely good and the other supremely bad—it just turns out that one person has both sets of characteristics. Odd, but human nature is odd.
Do we not face the same puzzle with respect to God and the Devil? God and the Devil coexist—one supremely good and the other supremely bad. God is also endowed with tremendous power, being actually omnipotent. He could easily eliminate the Devil or curb his evil ways, and yet he does nothing—he lets the Devil be. They look and sound very different, to be sure, but that proves nothing. Also, we observe a suspicious similarity between the two (analogous to the nose): the Devil actively pursues evil, but God allows evil to occur when he could clearly prevent it. God also seems excessively punitive when it comes to his punishments in the afterlife, almost as if he relishes the eternal suffering of sinners. Some theologians try to explain these unfortunate traits away, but it is hard to deny that there is something worrying here.
So we might reasonably consider the hypothesis that God is identical to the Devil: that would explain the fact that their apparent rivalry never turns into actual elimination, or at least confinement. And, of course, they have never been spotted in the same room together, so that their numerical distinctness can be witnessed. God, in fact, always seems curiously otherwise engaged when the Devil is going about his devilish business. We have here a classic Frege case at the level of supernatural beings: different modes of presentation of the same individual. The identity statement “God = the Devil” is a posteriori and synthetic, with the singular terms in it bearing different senses, though having the same reference. We have discovered it to be true (let us suppose) by reasoning about the case—it certainly wasn’t self-evident simply from the meaning of the terms. It would be quite wrong to reject the identity hypothesis on the grounds that our concepts of God and the Devil are very different—that would be a conflation of sense and reference.1 So the hypothesis is an epistemic possibility. It is true that the identity claim would cause a good deal of cognitive dissonance in us, as in the case of Keith and Mick; but from a logical point of view, it cannot be ruled out.
Christianity exhorts everyone to love everyone. Instead of loving only yourself, your family and friends, your tribe or country, you are told to love even your enemies, as well as those who are complete strangers. The idea is that universal love will lead to universal justice—good ethical behavior will result from generalized love. Christianity says: Don’t hate anyone! The trouble with this prescription is that it is unrealistic: we cannot spread our love so widely, and some people really don’t deserve our love. The pretense that we can will lead only to emotional dilution and insincerity, as we force ourselves into a posture of love that we do not feel. Nor is such universal love necessary for justice: it is possible to treat someone justly—an enemy or a stranger—without feeling any affection for that person. Indeed, it is possible to treat a person justly that you hate (this is the best form of justice). But that leaves the question of what emotion you should feel for people in general: should there be no uniform emotion, just variations on love, hate, and indifference? That kind of mixture is what seems natural to humans, so advocates of universal love are opposing what comes naturally. But the problem with the mixed kind of emotional setup is that it leads to strife, injustice, and disharmony. That is precisely why Jesus and others advocated universal love. So are we condemned by our emotional nature to human discord?
Some religions attempt to transcend human emotion—they recommend a kind of emotional distancing from others. No hate, but no love either—just detachment. But that too is psychologically unrealistic, and certainly not natural to humans. Then what is left? Universal love won’t work, a mixture of love and hate is the basic problem, and detachment is not feasible either. That leaves only one possibility: universal hate. This is the type of religion I wish to defend. Note that the hate must be universal: you must hate everyone (with the possible exception of yourself, but even then …). Then you won’t be guilty of treating some people better than others—you will respect the value of equality. If you find everyone hateful, your hate won’t prejudice you against any one individual or group. To recommend universal hate is not to condone unethical behavior: you must treat everyone fairly and justly, with due respect. You must be universally ethical, while hating the objects of your good actions. This kind of emotional stance seems to me psychologically realistic: it is quite easy for us to hate others, and people are objectively hateful. If we are all sinners, we should be regarded as such—hate the sin and hate the sinner. We are a fallen species, violent, vengeful, cruel, selfish, petty, envious, and spiteful—so let us acknowledge that. What is crucial is that we don’t acknowledge it only for certain people: hatefulness begins at home, in family and neighborhood.1 It is not difficult to get into a state of generalized hatred—you just need to cultivate your inner misanthrope. You know what people are like from your own personal experience, as well as from knowledge of history, so you can safely generalize a judgment of universal hatefulness. And it is certainly true that the people you happen to associate with are unlikely to be objectively particularly lovable—they will be as hateful as any other group of human beings.
An objection may be raised: What about love? Are we forbidden from loving anyone in the religion of hate? No! For we can love and hate: love and hate are contraries, not contradictories. Our generalized emotion of hate can be overlaid by an emotion of love, thus producing a state of ambivalence, more or less pronounced. Hate is the default condition, but love may supervene. Every marriage is a love-hate relationship, because human nature is clearly revealed in marriage—and it is not always (ever?) pretty. Also, this love will be more valuable and meaningful against a background of universal hate; it will be experienced as an achievement, both of the lover and the beloved, not just a reflex feeling. You must love despite the hate. Both emotions must be kept in precarious balance, each leavening the other. That is mature emotion—informed, realistic, and clear-eyed. It is not the unthinking simple-minded love of an animal or child (they don’t know how hateful we humans are). We may even within the religion of hate form a casual liking for someone we meet—while never forgetting that we also hate him or her. We are not against love; but we are for hate.
But now a further objection may arise: Doesn’t the acceptance of local love vitiate the general purpose of the religion of hate? We were trying to prevent the ills of mixed love and hate, by advocating universal hate, but now we have reintroduced love, thus restoring the problematic asymmetry between the loved and the hated. Aren’t we back where we started (with universal Christian love now threatening)? I take this objection very seriously, and we do indeed need to guard against the ill effects of local love. What saves the religion of hate from relapsing into the mixed position is that universal hate is preserved in the face of local love—we must still hate those we love. We cannot divide humanity exclusively into those we love and those we hate, because that leads to all the human wickedness we witness; but we can avoid this by insisting that everyone be accorded his or her fair share of hate. No one is beyond our hate, not even those we love most. Thus we preserve basic emotional equality.
Some may feel that hatred is intrinsically a bad thing, while love is intrinsically a good thing. But that is completely wrong: there is nothing good about loving Hitler and Nazism, and there is nothing wrong with hating injustice and cruelty (as well as the people who perpetrate such things). It depends on what you love or hate and for what reasons. Hatred is not in itself bad, though many instances of it undoubtedly are. Nor is hate intrinsically unpleasant, especially when it is fully justified; it can be quite invigorating. Hatred is part of our natural emotional economy, and it can be both rational and useful. Of course, we should not aim to promote irrational hatred of humanity as a whole; but a rational and moderate hatred is perfectly justified. If we consider a hypothetical species, stipulated to be especially hateful, then a religion of hate would appear to be the only rational system, perhaps tempered with some local love. If this species insisted on dividing themselves into the objectively hateful and lovable, they would not only controvert the facts, they would also generate the same kind of strife we see in human populations. And preaching universal love to them would be a doomed project, since the evidence of their hatefulness would be palpable. True, they should always treat each other justly and ethically, but that is quite orthogonal to the question of love and hate.
It seems to me that the story of Jesus Christ fits the religion of hate better than the religion of love. Judas, the Pharisees, Pontius Pilate—are any of these characters lovable? No, they are hateful, even those of Jesus’ own tribe, including his disciples. His story justifies extreme misanthropy, not love of humanity. We killed the Son of God! And why exactly should we contort ourselves into loving others, despite their manifest hatefulness? Don’t say it is because this will enable us to treat others morally: morality requires not love, but justice. As Kant says, we must be moral to those for whom we feel no affection—indeed, that is the highest form and essence of morality. Morality is about overcoming our hatred for others—our sense that others are cowardly, defective, malicious, and evil. The crucifixion of Jesus represents all that is hateful in humanity, so we should acknowledge that people deserve hatred (though they may also in some instances deserve love). The story of Jesus (or Socrates) illustrates perfectly the hatefulness of humankind; the question is how to incorporate recognition of that into a religion that minimizes conflict and harm. My suggestion is that generalized hatred is the best method, because it is (a) justified, (b) natural, and (c) egalitarian. It does not discriminate, by demonizing some and sanctifying others. Above all, it prevents preference for those close to us and animosity for those outside the circle of those we naturally love—at any rate, it helps to counteract unfair preference based on love. We should feel partially alienated from everyone, suspicious of everyone, and not entirely thrilled with anyone—so that no sharp division exists in our minds.
Can we hate some people more than others? By all means—in fact, I strongly recommend it. Not everyone is equally hateful. Agreed, this is likely to generate divisions in our emotional attachments, but as long as an underlying note of hatred exists the worst kind of insider–outsider division can be avoided. Shades of gray in degrees of hatred are natural and healthy, and they are compatible with a basic emotional egalitarianism: first hate all equally (but not immoderately), but then hate some more than others. There is no point in straining to love those you really hate and have no desire to love, or those to whom you are completely indifferent; and there will always be those few whom you spontaneously love. The trick is not to forget your general unspecific hatred, or your specific hatred of those for whom you also feel love. Since everyone, with rare exceptions, behaves hatefully some of the time, that should not be difficult.
Isn’t this a rather negative religion? Not really: hatred is not a negative emotion—it is perfectly legitimate and normal—and human hatefulness is a fact that has to be accepted. The point is to give it a prominent place in a religious outlook that seeks to overcome natural human bias. It also gives us a religion suitable for the convinced misanthrope, instead of the partial misanthropy of some religions and the hopeless idealism of others. To paraphrase the Beatles: “All you need is hate.”