I am Ryan McKnight.

I'm Kara Santa Maria.

I am Christopher Smith.

Hi, I'm Andrew Torres.

This is Naked Mormonism.

The Serial Mormon History Podcast. Does evil exist?

Now there's an interesting little Google hole to get lost down for a few hours, but it is an interesting question.

Undoubtedly, evil actions exist because altruistic actions exist, right?

It's a spectrum.

Is there such a thing as a purely altruistic act?

You've heard the phrase, there's no such thing as a selfless act, but if we ignore the

self-serving motivations of the actor, can a specific

action be judged as altruistic and conversely as evil? There's a parody here, symbiosis between

what we consider good and evil propositions, but is it just the substance of fantasy? Good and evil characters exist in two dimensions

in every action flick or scripture or bedside fable since we've had written storytelling,

but is the real world so simplistic? It's not hard for a conversation like this to immediately

shift to the transcendent. If there exists good and evil, then there must be some grand actor or force in the universe leading us to do good or evil, right? If we're going to judge an action to be good or evil, then there must be some kind of higher standard by which to judge it. And where else to posit causation on such a standard than God and the devil?

I don't much care for the problem of evil and conversations about whether or not God exists.

That subject has been debated by people far more intelligent than yours truly for centuries.

What I'm talking about stops before we get to that transcendent level.

If evil actions exist, does evil exist?

Are evil actions merely a manifestation of something we all live with every day? Evil.

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