I’ve been working for about a year now on this set of theories/observations about religions, which I like to describe more broadly by the term story-systems, for reasons which I’ll discuss some other time. One of the things I’m especially interested in is how people attempt to maintain the “purity” of their religious systems. A fundamentalist, to me, is somebody who is extremely preoccupied with this. I like to think of it as a matter of being true to the “brand-identity” of a religion.

One of the classic tricks which fundamentalists (in any religion) will do is to suggest that ideas, feelings, concepts, events or characters which do not jive with the brand-identity of their religion are categorically evil (or something milder maybe, like dangerous or undesirable). It’s sort of a knee-jerk response to label something as evil. It’s almost like an autoimmune response from the story-system. As a result, the concept of “evil” becomes sort of a catch-all receptacle for anything which they don’t want to formally admit into their story-system. Pathogens, germs, bacteria, viruses, whatever. And it acts as a sort of protective quarantine area to hang onto all these baddies. It gives these conceptual landmines a rigidly defined place within the story-system, so that they do not run amok and destroy the self-contained reflexive structures upon which all story-systems rely. In other words, the role of “evil” is to neutralize anything in the religion which would interfere with your “suspension of disbelief.”

There’s a trick to it though. Even by acknowledging these things as “evil” within the story-system, you’re still giving them a pass to come inside the realm of the story-system. And by introducing any new elements, the whole thing gradually starts to change. Symbols are forced to become more dynamic to incorporate additional meanings. Evil is the most dynamic of all symbols, because it ends up having the most outside meanings grafted onto it (religious syncretism). For example, the Western image of the Devil consists almost entirely of non-Christian elements culled from a wide variety of sources and traditions.

For your average member of a religious system though, there’s not going to be much trouble here, because they are trained to be fearful of and feel guilty around the symbolic evil centers within their religious system. So they steer clear. But what about members of a religious system who are rebellious (or otherwise not satisfied)? What about teenagers and other discontents? They are going to be trying to strive against the values which their parents hold, and will be naturally drawn to the darker elements within their religious system, since they contain not fully resolved or explored meanings. They may thus develop emotional attachments with these expansion points despite their official label of evil. And they may develop intellectual attachments and understandings through research and exploration into these things. For most, rebellion is a phase which they grow out of, and then return to a more mainstream usage of the system. But they may retain some subtle traces of their intellectual/emotional attachment to evil-expansive things. These traces will then gradually spread out to influence other symbols and concepts within the story-system. For others, these explorations into the dark side will take them outside the orbit of their religious story-system altogether. Their suspension of disbelief will be completely shattered, and they abandon the religion, in favor of some other system. So ultimately, evil acts as an entry-point for new ideas into a religion, and also acts as an exit point from that religion.