The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual.... For it is in the solitary mind and s… - M. Scott Peck

In regard to methodology, science has tended to say, “What is very difficult to study doesn’t merit study.” And in regard to natural law, science tends to say, “What is very difficult to understand doesn’t exist.” The church has been a bit more broad-minded. To the religious establishment what cannot be understood in terms of known natural law is a miracle, and miracles do exist.

True listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self.

"When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life — particularly human life — such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may "break" a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head.

Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others-to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredectibility and originalty, to keep them in line. Distinguishing it from a "biophilic" person, one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual, he demonstrated a "necrophilic character type," whose aim it is to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity.

Evil then, for the moment, is the force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness."