Does evil exist?  A friend of mine does not think so.  People do bad things, yes, but they are not evil.  Moreover, she says, a cognitive and active "evil" is not roaming through the world.

     Millennia ago, Augustine observed that evil is the privation of good.  That is, when good diminishes, evil is born.  But, the prelate added, evil does not exist in palpable form.  It is simply the result of a decrease in good.
     On this, in addition to the horrific school shooting in the U.S. earlier this week, I draw your attention to the case of Ian Brady, a forthrightly unrepentant torturer and killer of several young children in Great Britain in the 1960s. 
     Brady died some years ago at the age of 79.  (His love, Myra Hindley, who assisted in some of his deeds, lives on.) Some would say that Brady was evil, through and through, that there was no good in him. Furthermore, the acts he committed, many people feel, were entirely evil as well; there was absolutely nothing good about them.
     If people are made in the image of God, though a highly tarnished image at that, however, we cannot say that Brady was entirely evil.  Above and beyond all else, he is a human in the image of his creator.  Nonetheless, he did what most of us consider to be bad and evil things.
     And that's the point.  If we determine evil on the basis of our situation--and we definitely do--how do we ultimately know what really is evil?
     The short answer is that we don't.
     Is my friend right?  Only if we are all alone in the universe.  Only if there is no God. If there is no God, however, we'll never really know, absolutely, what is evil.
     Or even that it exists at all.