One of the features common to many religions is the idea of dualism, or, more precisely, good-evil dualism. This is a religious worldview that sees an on-going struggle or battle between good and evil both in the world and within the soul. For many, dualism is often expressed in the concepts of heaven and hell. The concept of good-evil dualism is found in cultures and religions throughout the world.
In the mythologies of many religious traditions, there are stories of battles, fights, and conflicts between good gods and evil gods, between noble warriors and evil demons, dragons, and other entities. The daily life of the people is seen as a struggle, both externally and internally, between the pure and the impure, between good and evil.
In monotheistic religions, dualism is often evident in the belief that certain religions are good, and others are evil. Generally, this is expressed in the ethnocentric idea that our god is good while the god(s) of others are bad; our religion is good while other religions are bad or false or evil. This form of dualism has resulted in many religious wars. In his book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris provides a few examples:
“The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews v. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v. Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians v. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v. Hindus), Sudan (Muslims v. Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims v. Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims v. Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists v. Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims v. Timorese Christians), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians v. Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis v. Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. In these places religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last ten years.”
A few examples of good/evil dualism are described below.
Zoroaster
One of the classic examples of good-evil dualism can be seen in the work of the Persian prophet Zoroaster (this is the Greek version of his name; in Avestan it is Zarathustra) who preached that there was only one god: Ahura Mazda (the Wise Lord) who was the creator of all things and the source of goodness. Only good emanates from Ahura Mazda, thus evil is seen as having a different source. According to Zoroastrian beliefs there is a struggle between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, who is seen as a destructive force. In his entry on Zoroastrianism in the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Willard Oxtoby writes:
“A salient doctrine is the teaching concerning the struggle between good and evil.”
Only by aligning themselves with the forces of good—Ahura Mazda—against the forces of evil can people receive the blessings of this life and benefits in the afterworld.
In many revealed religions (i.e., religions which have been revealed to a single founder) it is common to associate the new teachings and the new concept of the god as being good and the old teachings and the old gods as being evil. In this manner, the ancient Persian deities, known as daewas, were described by Zoroaster as not being worthy of worship, as they are spirits of destruction.
Zoroastrianism envisions a great struggle between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu after the creation of the world. Angra Mainyu defiled Ahura Mazda’s creation by bringing earthquakes which created deep valleys in the once beautiful, unscarred surface of the earth. Angra Mainyu forced the sun away from its ideal position so that today it only reaches this position once each day at noon. After the prophet Zoroaster was born, the struggle between these forces began to turn in favor of goodness.
Ahura Mazda created humanity so that they could take part in the great struggle between good and evil. For this purpose, the people were given free will. Each individual has a moral responsibility for each action taken and every person has the opportunity to reinforce goodness in the world. When all humans choose good (asha) over evil (druj), then Ahura Mazda will triumph over Angra Mainyu and with this Heaven and Earth will unite.
Judaism
Judaism is, of course, one of the oldest monotheistic traditions. In Judaism, duality is seen as an individual struggle as each person is born with the capacity for both good and evil. In his chapter on Judaism in World Religions, Carl Ehrlich writes:
“The individual has to bear the responsibility for his or her actions and life becomes a struggle between the inclination to good (yetzer ha-tov) and the inclination to evil (yetzer h-ra). One who struggles with moral ambiguity and triumphs over temptation is—according to one view—more highly regarded than one who has led a completely blameless life.”
Christianity
Christianity, a religion which was influenced by the earlier monotheistic Zoroastrianism, includes a duality worldview: a world divided into good and evil, pure and impure. Many Christian theologians see the existence of evil in the world as being permitted by their god for some higher good. Concerning Christianity in the United States, Katherine Stewart, in an article in Free Inquiry, writes:
“They relentlessly promote a message that the world is divided between the pure and the impure, insiders and outsiders, and assure their followers that if they conform, they will be on the inside.”
In many versions of Christianity, the occurrence of natural disasters such as floods, storms, earthquakes, and pandemics, are blamed on the forces of evil (e.g., Satan) which have resulted in people breaking religious taboos, such as promiscuous sexuality, homosexuality, and so on. In an article in Free Inquiry, Shadia Drury writes:
“In the Christian imagination, the hardship and suffering that human beings endure is seldom the result of bad luck, natural calamity, ignorance, or the folly of imperfect human beings. It is a function of intentionally malign forces and diabolical conspiracies inspired by the Devil.”
The histories of religion in the Americas provide many examples of Christian duality in which Christianity is seen as good and all other religions are viewed as evil or as being aligned with Satan. When the first Christian missionaries came to North America, they often viewed Native American religions as a form of evil, which they characterized as being inspired by Satan. Elizabeth White, in an article about Jesuit missionaries and Salish Indians published in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, writes:
“Catholicism represented the good, true, right, and divine; Native religion signified the bad, false, wrong, and diabolical. Priests of the Catholic faith conducted God’s work; medicine men of the Native religion worked for the Devil.”
Beginning in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Christianity portrayed Islam as an evil religion and waged a series of wars against Muslims (the followers of the religion of Islam) and the Jews. More recently, many Christian Protestant fundamentalists characterize Islam as an evil religion. Christian fundamentalist Pat Robertson had this to say about Muslims:
“These people are crazed fanatics and I want to say it now: I believe it’s motivated by demonic power, it is satanic and it’s time to recognize what we’re dealing with.”
Jerry Boykin also sees Islam as evil:
“We’ve got to love the Muslims enough to stand up against the evil that we see them perpetrating in the name of Allah, but at the same time we’ve got to offer them the Gospel of Jesus Christ in one way or another.”
Conservative Christian writer Gina Miller also describes Islam as Satanic:
“Islam is a demonic, militant-political-religious ideology born of the children of Ishmael, and like them, it has greatly proliferated. It is one of Satan’s premiere deceptions, tyrannically ensnaring countless millions of people.”
Another example of good/evil dualism in Christianity can be seen in anti-Semitism. Viewing Judaism as somehow evil and impure, and blaming Jews for the death of Jesus, there is a long history of anti-Semitism in Christianity. In the Crusades, the Christian armies often began by attacking European Jews. In 1096, for example, the Crusaders slaughtered between 4,000 and 8,000 Jews in Speyer, Worms, and Mainz. Jewish writer Sheldon Gottlieb, in article in Free Inquiry, describes his experience in the United States:
“After the public school I attended was forced to comply with government-mandated weekly religious released time education, inevitably the epithet ‘Christ killer’ was hurled at me. It became the theme of my next day’s encounter with fellow students, followed by gang beatings in school stairwells and the teacher punishing the Jew by telling the Christians that such beatings should take place in dark alleys where they would not be seen.”
Christianity is a religion but contains many different sects. One of the major divisions came in the sixteenth century in which Christianity divided into two major groups: Catholics and Protestants. During the English Reformation, which started in 1633, the Protestants sought to destroy all of the images, such as paintings and statues, which had been in the Catholic churches. Protestant iconoclasts viewed this art as “graven images” that people worshipped, thus making them “evil.”
Islam
Islam arose in the seventh century CE based on the revelations received by Muhammad from the angel Gabriel. Like other monotheistic religions, Islam sees itself as the only true religion. Islam envisions a constant struggle (jihad) with the forces that hold Muslims back from the divine. As is seen in other revealed religions, earlier gods and other religions are often seen as forces of evil.
Today, some Islamic groups see the struggle between good and evil as a struggle between Islam and Western culture, particularly Western materialism and the freedom of Western women. In his book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris writes:
“Muslim extremists are certain that the exports of Western culture are leading their wives and children away from God. They also consider our unbelief to be a sin so grave that it merits death whenever it becomes an impediment to the spread of Islam.”
One example of the duality of good and evil can be seen in the Muslim Malay villagers in Rusembilan, Thailand. Ethnographer Thomas Fraser, in his monograph Fisherman of South Thailand: The Malay Villagers, says about their belief:
“When God created Adam and Eve, Satan, still in good favor, was granted his request for immortality and unlimited fertility. Even after his expulsion from Paradise and the destruction of his magnificent heavenly palaces on account of his deception of the first human couple, Satan retained his gifts, and in addition, was granted the power to deceive all those who neglected to follow the Law of God. In his work since that time, Satan has created a vast number of offspring to assist in his deceptions.”
Dualism is sometimes a convenient way of explaining why there is evil in the world and why bad things happen.
Navajo
Another example of dualism can be seen among the Navajo Indians of North America. In Navajo culture people are born with bi-polar opposites: good and evil. Evil, described as a small grain of dust placed at the back of a person’s head, causes evil thoughts, bad dreams, and mistakes. According to Frank Waters, in his book Masked Gods: Navaho and Pueblo Ceremonial:
“Everybody releases a ghost at death no matter how good he is, for some evil must have become attached to him through thoughts or unintentional deeds.”
Waters goes on to say:
“A Navaho ghost, then, is the embodiment after death of the evil in man’s life.”
Polytheism
While polytheism is generally tolerant of a variety of different gods, religious beliefs, and mythology, in some of the polytheistic cultures, there are good gods and bad gods. For example, among the Maya in Central America, benevolent gods bring rain, fertility, and good fortune, while malevolent gods are the cause of sickness, death, famine, and natural disasters.
Atheism
Atheism is not a religion per se, but a philosophical and/or religious viewpoint which is not based on the concept of a god or gods. For some monotheistic religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, atheism is an expression of evil.
On the other hand, there are many atheists who see theistic religions, particularly Christianity and Islam as forces of evil. British philosopher A.C. Grayling, in his book Life, Sex and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, writes:
“There is no greater social evil than religion. It is the cancer in the body of humanity.”
Religion 101/102
This series present various topics relating to religion in a very broad sense in which the concept of religion is not restricted to Western religions or to god-centered religions. Religion 102 is an expansion of an earlier essay. More from this series—
Religion 101: The Evolution of Morality
Religion 101: Confucianism
Religion 101: The Great Awakenings
Religion 101: The European witch craze
Religion 101: Women and marriage under ancient Irish Brehon law
Religion 102: Mythology
Religion 102: Christianity and the flat earth
Religion 102: Agnosticism