[hawaiian mage]

I don't know. I think I understand most of what your saying (I'm not really into religion at all, so I probably don't have full meaning of the references) and the old saying of "there cannot be light without shadow" is a fairly satisfying way to explain imperfections, but the "psychological reductionism" approach still just seems to make more sense to me. I feel that we are born as beings capable of receiving, processing, and therefore learning information. Evil is only what harms, but in human behavior no one harms unless they have self-justified and benificial reason for doing so (even if that reason is projected vengance upon innocent people or some kind of sick sadism, those being emotionally satisfying by creating feelings of justice and power respectivly.)

As far as I'm concerned evil works like this. Stealing as an example.

1: A person learns that a material objects or money gives them satisfaction
2: This person sees people with said object and realizes that s/he can take it from them when they are not looking
3: This person realizes other people experience the world much as s/he does
4: This person realizes that if they had the said object but it was taken from them it would make her/him feel unpleasent
5: The person realizes that if s/he took the object from them they would probably feel the same unpleasentness

How a person makes use of this information is how s/he decides whether or not to steal. If s/he grows up in a place where stealing is already prevailant the harm assosciated with stealing becomes distant and seems like a normal thing that you can either benifit by or not. If the person sees that Fredy Meyer is a gigantic corporation and the impacted harm from stealing is going to be meager, the benifit from taking the object may seem to outweigh it. If a person has just not ever considered that other people feel pain or the person does not really feel pain themselves (this would be a prime case for a psychopath) then stealing does not have an intrinsic consequence. However, if the person realizes that while s/he cannot stop other people from stealing but can at least reduce it by not stealing anything themself, they will sign the unspoken social contract and agree not to steal things from any one else in order to form a more productive society. While they may want the object still they will decide it is more important to "do onto others as others do onto you." Ultimatly productive cities will thrive while ones full of robbers will slowly parish.

Basically what I'm saying is that information affects behavior, not souls of pure good that tell us what to do. Information with conflicting benifits (getting the object verses projecting how you'd feel if the object were taken from you) is what creates the feeling of having a conscience and a devil's advocated. The reason we even discuss philosophy or explain religion is becuase we want to effect behavior with our information. And just becuase the inner workings of the brain can be explained logically makes the act of preforming good no less noble.

Sorry if this is drabble you've heard a thousand times before, but this just the input from a devout athiest who studies psychology. It makes sense to me any way.