deciding on good and evil

When people do evil in Jersey they need to be found out, judged and, if found guilty, receive appropriate punishment for their misdeeds. An interesting situation exists in Jersey about who decides whether a person is guilty or not.

If an evil deed - an offence - has been specified in a Law made by the States of Jersey then the Jurats of the Royal Court decide. But if the evil deed has never been recorded in a States Law and is part of the long established customary law of the island, a jury must decide. 

If you were guilty, which would you prefer - to be judged by Jurats or to be judged by a jury? Which judges might not discover the truth? And if you were innocent, which then?  Which judges would be more likely to see the correct truth. 

But, whether guilty or not guilty, it is reassuring to know that what actually constitutes a criminal offence - that is, what is evil and what isn't - is pretty well established by society as a whole, either through the customary law or through States Laws.

An interesting situation arises when one factors into this the quotation above from the first book in the Christian (and Jewish) Bible. Take a look.

The picture is of newly-created man, having been given the whole wonderful earth and all its living fruits and plants, being told by his creator that the fruit of only one tree was prohibited. And that, if the prohibited fruit was eaten, the man would, for starters, know good and evil. And, if he knew that, he would die. The one and only evil thing about eating that fruit was that, because it would be disobedient to the LORD God to do so, the end would be death. Death through knowing good and evil.

To "know good and evil" must mean that the man would then have "moral autonomy" - the man would then have decided for himself what was good and what was evil. This would be attractive to any human being. If I, alone, have the authority and autonomy to decide what's evil then I can decide that something that I want to do is not evil. I can do it. Interesting that, if that is my decision (as a morally autonomous person) neither Jurats nor jury could touch me when I did it - because I'm the one to decide what's good and what's evil. No wonder the man and the woman both decided to eat the prohibited fruit.

In Jersey, a decision about what constitutes evil is taken democratically - by a majority vote of States members who themselves have received a majority vote of islanders. But the weakness remains—men and women, individually and collectively, allow themselves to do what they want to do. Majority public opinion might see something as good and not evil solely because it benefits the majority of voters despite the fact that the thing is detrimental to the minority or to those without a vote - including because they live elsewhere. An example of the latter is internet gambling. It could be decided to be good by the majority in Jersey (being “profitable” to us) - when it will be damagingly evil to some whom we shall never meet. 

But, as indicated in Genesis, it's not only others who are harmed by our autonomous decisions. A man or woman may well decide to carry out a particular evil for his or her own good and much later find out that the opposite effect has arisen. Examples are decidions fregarding alcohol, smoking, promiscuity, drugs, lies, fraud... The list is endless. Indeed, men and women daily do evil - even murder - for their own good—and reap suffering and death a while later. 

And death comes to all of us autonomous beings. Why is that?

"Moral autonomy" then has come at a terrible price for each of us. The first man and weoman, according to Genesis, chose to do one prohibited action—for their own good. What the action actually was (stealing an apple?) was of far less importance than the decision to do evil (by being disobedient to a simple prohibition of the creator LORD God) - to do evil for his own good, in particular so as to continue to have sole authority to decide in future what was right or wrong.