"The objective is not to establish law and order or the happiness of mankind, or to substitute good for evil but diametrically the opposite, mainly to produce anarchy and discontent of so potent a nature that the complementary forces to annihilate one another through the intensity of their friction." (quote from unknown author)
This quote describes the Sabbatean doctrine to bring forth the Messiah, and what power is at its core. Those of us schooled in Christianity don't know that there is another side to the argument of good and evil. In fact any logical approach to good and evil will tell you that evil is what allways wins in a competition, and therfore must be in control of our social institutions.
Aleister Crowley — 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.'
Evil is the word we use to describe those circumstances that impede our desires unjustly, and is caused by one or more people. If we are hungry and then someone eats a burger in front of us, is this petty evil, or is it just bad manners? Why is genocide a great evil if all of us must die anyway, whereas the death penalty is somehow not evil. Evil is simply a point of view and is relative to the society you claim and the education you were given.
Without man there is no evil. No one thinks that a tiger eating a rabbit is evil, yet we all think your mother eating her sisters baby certainly is. Consider any animal killing everything it encounters, both plant, and animal, not because of hunger but just to destroy, do we call this evil or dysfunction?
Our desires come from the same sexual evolutionary motive found in most animals, they are mostly based on our need for sexual dominance, procreation, and survival. This is what German Philosophers call the "will to life, or spirit," which is the force behind the third person of the trinity, and gives rise to most words, love, hate, evil, etc.. all which express a point of view of our base desire for sexual dominance. What is called "the will" is the fountain from which our description of reality arises, we mostly see and do everything relative, or in context to our "will", all seen or understood from a specific human cultural point of view.
How a community defines words like evil is a cultural choice, which will define the nature of our society and how each individual defines his world. How we define words is dictated by the society and language we live within. What is evil to one society can be pleasure or justice, to another, and the same is true for the individual.
If within us is the ability to cause evil, there is also within us, the ability to eliminate it.
If your faith includes the concept of Satan, you essentially believe in two opposing forces - one good and one evil, akin to the Christ and the devil dichotomy or the Persian, Zoroastrian view of Ahura Mazda and his adversary Angra Mainyu. However, if you consider God to be the flawless creator of the universe, then attributing evil to Satan contradicts the notion of a wholly good Almighty. If your understanding of God is of a benevolent entity, then evil must be distinct from God and could be seen as a human construct, a result of ignorance and abuse.
We must not forget that we are hairless apes, and governed by the same social-sexual drivers of apes.
In western religion, the root of evil is absurdly understood as the fall of man or original sin, the consequence of a temptation via the eating of the tree of "Knowledge of Good and Evil." In Jewish tradition, the Tree of Knowledge and the eating of its fruit represents the beginning of the mixture of good and evil together. Before that time, the two were separate, and evil had only a nebulous existence in potential.
To attempt to understand evil in a religious context, is as absurd as understanding physics from fairy tails.
Evil is a value judgment we make as a society, and then we raise our children accordingly. This is also true of morals, as this concept is flexible, and relative to the particular society you are concerned with.
Our English language was developed by Europeans and molded by the morality of our Church. Western culture evolved from a Christian dogma designed to govern with little interest in truth. The conflict between good and evil is a Zoroastrian theme that is wonderful for scaring parishioners into Church. The root of the concept of the Soul and Trinity is Platonic, and in that belief “Evil is a disorder of the soul caused by ignorance.” For a Platonist God is a good and perfect creator, and we know God through the Soul, if our Soul does not know God, then we are ignorant, and it is through our ignorance that evil takes place
Since evil has nothing to do with God, we should stop asking God for a remedy. If evil is of concern, we should take steps to correct the flaws in society. Maybe we could help educate people so we have less ignorance.
Clearly "evil" is a problem, it is a task to be done, and a repair that needs attention. As with all tasks we have ever undertaken the primary factors for success are our will to change, and knowledge to do so. It is for this reason that we need to be aware we are operating on the architecture of an ape, and must adjust our "will" and redefine the words we use.
The dysfunction we observe in society often stems from our conception of evil and its attribution to Satan. Believing in a mysterious entity responsible for human dysfunction can lead us to abandon efforts to address the root causes. To create a better society, we must remove Satan from our worldview.
Our current Religion is a form of mind control used to mold people into a mass ready to be governed for the benefit of an aristocratic class, a method of willing enslavement of a lower class. Western religion proclaims freedom only after death, declares knowledge is bad for mankind, and provides God as the solution for suffering only if you attend Church, and pay a fee. Quite the opposite is true, knowledge is what provides salvation from suffering, and the truth will set you free, yet our animal nature makes us competitive which is the cause of all suffering, and produces what we call evil.
Evil comes from the different shades of repression of the human spirit. To confirm this statement try an experiment - take a child, torture and abuse him or her, then see if the resulting behavior of that child grows up to resemble evil.
“You made me.” Charles Manson
Do the same to a society and you will have the same result in mass.
In summary: Evil is a factor only because we need it to create fear in the people we enslave. There is no "will" to eliminate it because the upper class profits from the concept, and the rest of us are too stupid to do the repair work needed for its elimination.
"The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding."
ALBERT CAMUS, The Plague