CNN's Larry King Live Tackles The Question of Good Versus Evil

Los Angeles, California—In a recent broadcast, CNN’s Larry King, asked: “What makes someone kill? Why does God allow innocent children to be abducted and murdered? Is good actually stalked by evil?”

King invited Spiritual leaders and other experts to debate these profound, eternal and unsettling questions, in a program which aired April 22, 2005.

King’s guests were Dr. John MacArthur, Christian pastor of Grace Community Church in Southern California, also a best-selling author and a host of the Global Ministry Grace to You; Deepak Chopra, the well-known spiritual teacher and best-selling author; Father Jim Keiter, Catholic priest and editor at large of http://www.Catholicexchange.com; Char Margolis, spiritual intuitive and best-selling author, and Roger Depue, the legendary criminal profiler, formerly with the FBI, author of a new book “Between Good and Evil.”

King started with Roger Depue. His new book is titled “Between Good and Evil: A Master Profiler’s Hunt For Society’s Most Violent Predators.” Roger Depue headed the behavioral science unit, worked for the Bureau for 21 years and after retiring, joined a seminary and became a religious brother.

LARRY KING: “What is your concept, Roger, of evil?

ROGER DEPUE, Former FBI agent: Evil is the—that which is not beneficial to a person’s emotional well-being or general well-being. In other words, evil is destructive to one’s personal well-being.

KING: Do you think it is—with all your study of behavioral science and profiles, do you think there are people born evil?

DEPUE: It’s an interesting question. There may be some genetic predispositions for evil, but I think that the majority of it is from the developmental process. The period of upbringing, socialization, if you will.

KING: So you don’t believe in the bad seed or criminal mind?

DEPUE: I think that there’s possible—it’s possible that there’s a genetic predisposition to evil. Many traits are inherited, but I think it’s the way the person lives in society and the experiences that he has which brings out this evil potential into reality.

KING: Deepak Chopra what do you believe?

DEEPAK CHOPRA, author: Well, I believe that there are two forces in the universe. The first is creativity, and evolution and truth, goodness and harmony. And then there is the force of entropy, and inertia, and chaos, and separation, and anger and rage. It’s our shadow self. All experiences by contrast.

I don’t think people are evil. I think what happens is we have these two tendencies, divine and diabolical, the sinner and the saint, the sacred and profane. And what happens is when there are certain conditions like extreme degradation, lack of respect, sense of injustice, that fuels this for separation, anger and rage.

Because in our subconscious mind, we have these atavistic, primitive impulses that are dark and dangerous and secret. And it’s potential in everyone. It’s not that certain people are evil, it’s a potential in everyone.

KING: John MacArthur, what do you believe?

JOHN MACARTHUR, pastor: Well, I think it’s not only a potential in everyone, I think it’s a reality in everyone.

KING: We all have some evil in us?

MACARTHUR: Absolutely. The Bible is very clear on that. All of us are evil. All have sinned, the Bible says.

KING: So, how then how do we separate? We put some in jail, and some we don’t.

MACARTHUR: Evil doesn’t manifest in all of us the same way. Not everybody is as bad as it is possible to be. There are restraints—restraints because we’ve been taught moral law, the way we’ve been brought up, because we have come to know God, there’s a Holy Spirit restraint, there’s restraint by conscience, there’s restraint by law and government. I mean, not everybody is as bad as they could be.

But I think that—Roger Depue pointed out a really important point, he was talking about one of the guys in the FBI that he was speaking with who said to him, it is really easy to get into the criminal mind. And he said he lay down at night, this friend of his, and said, my God, that’s me.

And I think every one of us know down inside there’s potential for evil there and reality of evil is there.

KING: Char, what do you believe?

CHAR MARGOLIS, author: I believe life is a school and we’re here to learn. Life is like a battery, it is all made up of energy. And there’s a positive and negative energy. A battery doesn’t run unless there’s a positive and negative charge. And we’re always being tested and tempted by the negative or the evil energy or the negative energy, but goodness has more power than evil. But you have to work harder for it to win.

KING: And some might call this the devil, right?

MARGOLIS: Yeah, but I think there’s also different levels. I don’t think there’s good and evil. I think—I believe that there’s a spirit world. And as in everyday life there are good and bad people, in the spirit world there are good and bad people.

And in the spirit world, there are different neighborhoods we can go to. And it depends on how we live, what our actions are, our conscience. When we die it is not how famous we are, how rich we are, it is our deeds. What did we do. And did we live with a clear conscience of goodness and love and compassion for others.

KING: Father Keiter what do you believe?

FATHER JIM KEITER, Catholic priest: We’re obviously, on this journey to perfection. And so there’s a constant struggle within each of us as created by God this evil and this good. And throughout life, through the constraints, the restraints that the other guests just mentioned, we learn through moral law, we learn through our parents, we learn through teachers and so forth. These are strengths. And the ultimate perfection, when we reach that, we choose good and we avoid sin, we avoid evil.

KING: And how about those who choose bad?

KEITER: You know what? That’s the mystery in how God has created us. You know, we as Catholics believe that God has created us in this journey, this journey towards perfection, but he’s created with us that free will, that free choice to choose. And there’s within that choice is where exists that potential evil at all times.

KING: Roger, how do you look at the predator who says, I can’t help it? I see a young person and I can’t help it. Is that a choice?

DEPUE: I would, first of all, say that I see it as a continuum between good and evil. And that some people are clustered more on the good side, some closer to the evil side. Hopefully, most of us are somewhere closer to the good side.

However, there are people, Larry, who enjoy hurting others. There are people who enjoy killing. Ted Bundy, for instance, talked about how he enjoyed in the strangulation of his victim, how he enjoyed the moment when life passed from the eyes of the victim. And that made him feel like God.

And so here we’re talking about a person who is very close to that edge of evil. And I think that much of that begins early in life. And has to do with a fantasy life where the person begins to have thoughts of evil and begins to nurture them and eventually they become a fantasy. And the fantasy moves toward an obsession and the obsession then…

KING: Takes over.

DEPUE: ...allows him to have less and less control, that’s correct.

KING: Deepak, what compels someone to harm a child?

CHOPRA: Well, that is a particular illness, I think. You know, when people go after children that is definitely impulse that is psychopathological.

But you know, in general, most people who do hurtful things have been harmed themselves. They’ve been the subject of abuse, or they’ve been brought up in degrading conditions.

KING: But that’s not an excuse, is it?

CHOPRA: Sorry?

KING: Is that an excuse or a reason?

CHOPRA: No, it’s an understanding. Unless we have understanding—you know, if you always have this polarization that we are good and everybody else is evil, which we right now have this in our international conflicts, there’s never going to be a resolution, because each side demonizes the other. You know? We are perceived as evil by our perceived enemies.

So we have to have an understanding of the conditions that create that. And if you don’t do that, there will never be a resolution. It is always this fight between good and evil.

KING: We’re talking about good and evil.

John MacArthur, do you understand the sexual predator of a young child?

MACARTHUR: I cannot comprehend that. I cannot comprehend anything…

KING: Is that the ultimate evil act?

MACARTHUR: On a human level, yes. On a human level, that has to be.

KING: What if it’s not—what if the person doing it has no control over the urge to do it?

MACARTHUR: I think by the time they do it, they have no control over it. It’s how they got there. And how we have to go back to the beginning and see to put restraints on these kind of people so they don’t end up that way. That’s a series of choices that get you to that point.

KING: How do you spot them? You think it’s a choice, someone chooses too?

MACARTHUR: I think there’s a series of choices that begin in childhood maybe, because—maybe informed by parental things, as you heard. It may be because of abusive situation in the home. Somewhere along the line, and the breakdown of the family and the breakdown of Godly character in the home and family, we potentate this kind of thing and those kinds of bizarre people who go that direction ultimately.

KING: What of the spiritual world—you represent that world—what does it thing of…

MARGOLIS: Well, first of all, I think it is really important for people to have healthy mental health. I think psychology is a very important field. And that thoughts create reality. Thoughts are things. And we have free will. We have choice. And it’s not all planned out, because we’re here to learn lessons, so we have a choice to do good or bad.

KING: Are you saying a predator of a 6-year-old boy chooses that he wants to do…

MARGOLIS: Well, first of all, if their parents hurt them or molested them, maybe they feel it’s OK to do that. But if they were psychologically healthy, they wouldn’t be doing this. And a lot of times, fathers are doing this to their kids, and the mother knows about it and doesn’t want anyone to see it, so they put it under the carpet because they don’t want to cause problems in the marriage.

KING: But then we go back to why is the father doing it to the kid?

MARGOLIS: Well, yes, exactly. Why is he doing it? Because some how he’s either—because either he’s chemically imbalanced. But also in the spirit world, just one second, please. Sorry. I think that we all are guided by the universe. And if you want to call it God—and I believe in God—spirits that to me God is love. And that sometimes those trickster energies can come in and also influence…

KING: So it is not controlled by the person? The trickster coming in?

MARGOLIS: No, no. I’m just saying that sometimes that can happen.

KING: So then are we controlling it or not?

MARGOLIS: Sometimes we are and sometimes we’re not.

KING: How do we know when we’re not?

MARGOLIS: Not everything in life is black and white.

MACARTHUR: And I would agree with that. I think, you can get so out of control in your life, that you yield up to demon power. Great illustration of that in the life of Jesus, there was a boy possessed of a demon. And the demon kept slamming the boy into the fire. This is classic destruction of a child in the scripture. And it was the demon that was slamming—now you can ask the question how did that demon get residence in that boy? And of course, sin opens up anybody to that potential.

KING: We don’t have all the answers, though, do we?

MACARTHUR: We don’t know the exact answer to that.

KING: Father, is your church which was faced with the problem of this, has it investigated the whys, why someone does this?

KEITER: First of all, you know, it’s an atrocity that, one, I personally cannot fathom. But when we talk about evil, I think we do need to make the distinction that evil can—is objective. In that we as human beings, we’re created by God. As created by God, we always seek the good. So even when we sin, we’re not choosing an evil, we’re seeing a good. And that’s the great mystery and that’s the malfeasance that takes place. The lie that takes place of evil. We actually are seeing something that’s good, but because of culture, because of environment as we’ve heard, because of upbringing, the lack of family life, all these things, you know a person might not—I mean, when you said they don’t have that opportunity to choose the good, if they’re in that presence and they’re just so compelling, it’s an addiction.

KING: Are you saying that the sinner thinks he’s doing good?

KEITER: The sinner, as we believe as Catholics, as a human being we can only choose the good. And so when we sin, we’re actually choosing something that we think is good, but objectively, it is evil. For example, a mother that may go out and steal bread to feed her child. Well, the intention of that mother is to feed the child. The circumstance is she needs to care for the child. But objectively stealing is always evil. It’s always a sin.

MACARTHUR: That doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Because you can talk about bread, but what are you going to talk about, when you talk about a predator. What are going to talk, when you talk about a guy burying a girl—a little tiny girl in plastic bags alive in the…

KING: And the answer is you don’t have an answer?

MACARTHUR: Well, The answer is this, that’s not good no matter how you cut it. That’s not somebody seeking good.

MARGOLIS: I agree.

MACARTHUR: horrible evil.

KEITER: But that person…

KING: What are you saying, father?

KEITER: But that person that’s committing that horrid crime at that moment in their minds, they don’t see a wrong. I mean, something is compelling them to do that.

MARGOLIS: Oh, come on. Look, if you’re raised with knowing good and bad as a child, you’re going to know what’s right and long.

KING: So, wait a minute. No, I’ll back him up a minute. So in other words, this person doing this is saying, I know I’m evil, oh, boy I’m bad. You’re saying they’re saying that?

MARGOLIS: I think—I think some people…

KING: The villain combs his hair in the morning.

MARGOLIS: I think some of them are and some of them aren’t.

KING: Well, that’s easy to say.

MARGOLIS: But some of them are—but there is no answer—there’s no cut clean answer to this. Some of them are and some of them aren’t. But many people know right and wrong. Weren’t you taught right and wrong from your parents?

KING: Let me—yes. But also—all right, I’ll get to the question of who’s right is who’s wrong. Who’s evil is who’s good?

Now, Roger Depue, the men who took those planes on 9/11 into buildings, they thought that they were killing evil people. They thought that America was evil. So isn’t a lot of this perspective? Now, we view that as an evil act, but if they view us as evil, where’s the balance?

DEPUE: Yeah, I think that perspective is a good word, Larry. And what we need to do is put a lot of these things that we’re talking about in perspective. The people make decisions and they’re responsible for their decisions. We were talking about the child as a victim of the predator. I just wanted to weigh in on that for a minute.

I’ve never met a child molester who didn’t believe that he was doing no harm to the child. I mean, they all believe that they’re not hurting the child. In fact, the child likes it, enjoys it, and so there’s no harm done. What they don’t understand is that they’re—is that they’re interfering with that child’s future, that that child will probably never be able to have a normal sex life because of that experience.

KING: But why don’t they know that? Why doesn’t the victimizer not know that?

DEPUE: I think it’s because we all have basic needs. Every human being has approximately 25 basic needs; one of them is sexual gratification. I think that’s what father was talking about, in that the needs themselves are good.

However, if we have unsatisfied needs, what happens is that we begin to—we begin to seek satisfaction. In other words, if you take a need like recognition, if you don’t get enough recognition as a child, then you seek attention. You seek recognition. If you get too much recognition, then you’re spoiled, you think that everyone in the world owes you adulation.

You see what I’m saying? And so walking down the middle line is critical for all 25 of these needs.

One of them is sexual gratification. If in your childhood, you have your need for sexual gratification satisfied in some bizarre way, then that carries with you. And there are many kinds of pedophiles. There’s a fixated pedophile that will zero in on a child, let’s say, between 8 and 10 before puberty. And that—that molester may be—may have been a victim at that time in their life. And so that idea of sexuality with children at that time in your life may become fixated. And now…

KING: I got you. Hold it. Deepak, I want to move with other—there’s so much to cover here.

CHOPRA: Sure, I know.

KING: Deepak, if they…

CHOPRA: There’s one very important question that you raised, and that is…

KING: If the men on 9/11 thought they were attacking evil…

CHOPRA: Absolutely.

KING: ... then is it perspective? Who’s evil is whose?

CHOPRA: It’s perspective in that case. But you know, coming back to pedophilia and whether there’s a choice or not, this is the eternal argument, you know, do we live in a universe of determinism or free will. And the answer is, it’s simultaneously both. You know, if you don’t have awareness, if your consciousness is constricted and fearful and isolated and you’ve been subjected to trauma and child abuse, then you more or less become a bundle of conditioned reflexes and nerves that’s constantly triggered by people and circumstance into very predictable outcomes.

So many of these pedophiles cannot help themselves. And you know, not to really belabor the point, but there’s been a huge scandal of pedophilia in the Catholic Church. And, you know, these are very good, upright people, brought up with high moral standards, but the repression and the guilt and the moral rage that comes with that allows this shadow to emerge. And these Catholic priests can’t help themselves.

KING: John, don’t you think that very often doctrinaire creates this?

CHOPRA: Absolutely.

MACARTHUR: No…

KING: You don’t think so?

MACARTHUR: I would take another approach to that. I would say that’s potentially true, but I would say the only thing that is going to end everybody having their own standards of what is right and wrong, the only thing is to have a uniform authority, a single set of laws that govern the whole world.

And that’s of course why the Bible was written. God’s law is there. It’s explicit about how we conduct ourselves in this world.

KING: But there are moral people who don’t believe that law.

MACARTHUR: Sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is the law of God. And if everybody does right in their own eyes, then you got a collision…

CHOPRA: There are five billion people on this planet. Not everybody is a Christian.

MACARTHUR: I didn’t talk about being a Christian, although I wish everybody on the planet were a Christian.

CHOPRA: I know you would. I know you would.

MACARTHUR: But at the same time, I’m talking about law. I’m talking about moral law, given by God.

CHOPRA: Moral law is a byproduct of your awareness. It’s not some law that you follow and…

MACARTHUR: Then I am the source of moral law? I don’t think so. I think God is the source of that moral law. And that’s…

CHOPRA: In your case, the definition of God is just, you know, some…

KING: Where does our—where does it come from, Char? Where does our morality come from?

MARGOLIS: I think it comes from what we learn as a child. And also what our conscience tells us.

KING: And where does the conscience come from?

MARGOLIS: Our conscience, I feel, comes from our guidance from a divine being—call it God, call it the universe, call it ...

KING: What about sociopaths?

MARGOLIS: ... you know, Allah or God or Christ. Whatever, it doesn’t matter, if we are all based in love and compassion and truth with one another.

KEITER: Larry, that last word that she said is truth, and that’s the main thing that we really need to be focusing on here, is there’s objective truth. When he was—John was just referring to moral law, I mean, we could—instead of saying moral law in relation to Christianity, we can just talk about natural law. And we’re talking about objective truth. And what’s going on in the culture and the world today is we have cultural relativism, individualistic relativism, where people are creating their own moral law rather than it being objective. For one person, this is a lie and for someone else it’s not.

MARGOLIS: You know what the biggest problem is?

DEPUE: Larry, I just wanted to make one observation…

KING: Let me re-introduce our panel. John MacArthur, in addition to the others, is president of the Masters College and founder of the Masters Seminary.

Deepak Chopra is “The New York Times” best-selling author. One of his latest books is “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.”

Father Jim Keiter is the editor at large of the CatholicExchange.com and pastor of Assumption parish in Omaha, Nebraska.

Char Margolis is a spiritual intuitive and author. Her newest book is “Life: The Spiritual Intuitive’s Collection of Inspirational Thoughts.”

And in Washington is Roger Depue, the retired chief of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. Worked for the bureau for 21 years. After retiring, joined a seminary, became a religious brother, and is author of “Between Good and Evil: A Master Profiler’s Hunt for Society’s Most Violent Predators.”

Before we take calls, you wanted to add something, Roger?

DEPUE: Yes, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the nature of life itself. If we look at life, we’ll get some ideas about how people come to be the way they are. We begin as an infant with a totally selfish perspective. We’re totally concerned with our own self and gratification of our own needs. But as we grow through childhood and move toward adulthood, the other becomes important. And so you have self on one side and other on the other. And we move from self to other, and we begin to realize the importance of others in our lives. And that goes all the way to the point of others being the common good, and even to the extent that in marriage we give ourselves to the other; the other gives themselves to us.

And then we go to the furthest extreme, and that is the other with the capital “O.” And that’s the religious concept, where we want to do the will of God and we completely submerge our personal self to the will of the other.

KING: How does that take us to evil?

DEPUE: Now, what I want to say is that in this whole selfishness, if we don’t move toward the importance of the other, that’s what happens. We become narcissistic. We become overwhelmed with our own importance and the satisfaction of our own needs no matter what. And I think M. Scott Peck referred to this as “the malignant narcissist.” And many of these people fall into that category.

KING: Deepak, were the men who took the planes on 9/11, were they evil?

CHOPRA: Well, certainly from our perspective, they were. And anybody who…

KING: But from theirs, they weren’t?

CHOPRA: From theirs, they weren’t. I mean, you know, it’s traditional, as I said, to demonize the enemy. Unless you do that, it’s impossible to kill. So you know, we end up comparing our ideas of acceptable slaughter. So we don’t think it’s evil to drop a bomb with depleted uranium. And if women and children die on the streets, we call it collateral damage. From the other side’s perspective, that’s evil.

But of course, our idea of worse form of slaughter is a beheading or a suicide bombing. So you know, it is all a question of your cultural, your religious and your spiritual indoctrination.

KING: Well said. Now, John, how do you balance that? They don’t think they’re evil. They think you’re evil?

MACARTHUR: Right, and I think you have to go back to the standard, the universal standard of the law of God which is that killing is evil.

KING: Therefore, we kill, and they kill, we’re all evil?

MACARTHUR: The next question to ask is, are they the evil aggressor or are they the defender of those that are being killed?

KING: They would argue that with you.

MACARTHUR: Well, they would say they are—but there’s no question they were the evil aggressor. I mean, the people they killed were not attacking them. The bottom line is, you can justify a war on the basis of defending people from deadly force that is being pushed upon them. Always in our country, we have stood for the people that are being harmed.

KING: Yeah, but if you’re a mailman in Hiroshima, that explanation ain’t going to go far.

MACARTHUR: I understand that. I understand that.

KING: It ain’t going to work.

MACARTHUR: I’m not saying it’s a perfect—it’s a perfect solution. But I at least can say there’s a place to stand up and defend people who are being destroyed.

KING: Well, obviously, those people were innocents.

MACARTHUR: I mean, stopping Hitler with World War II, you know.

KING: But other innocents have always been killed.

MACARTHUR: Sure.

KING: Killing is…

CHOPRA: Larry?

KING: Killing is as American as apple pie.

MACARTHUR: It’s not going to be a perfect situation, of course.

KING: Yes, Deepak?

CHOPRA: Since 1945, if you look at the statistics, more children have died as a result of war than soldiers. And you know, we have a very convenient term for it. We call it collateral damage. I mean, this is the way, you know, words can soften our perspective of what’s really happening. Right now, there are 35 wars going on in the world. And you know, we, this country, which I’m proud to be a citizen of, is the purveyor of weapons of mass destruction all over the world. We are the largest seller, trader and…

KING: So, all right, what then, Char…

CHOPRA: We make the weapons that kill us frequently.

KING: We do evil things, too, right?

MARGOLIS: We do evil because…

KING: OK. MARGOLIS: ... one of the laws of the Ten Commandments is thou shalt not kill. OK? So…

KING: We’ve all broken that, right?

MARGOLIS: I grew up with the Ten Commandments. And I believe in them. But I also believe that thoughts have power, and that’s why prayer is important. And our biggest problem in the world is communication. One person’s angel is another person’s devil.

KING: How do you change that?

MARGOLIS: How do we change it? By educating the children, by allowing people to be free, to have their beliefs…

KING: But your education may not be his education.

MARGOLIS: Well, that’s true.

KING: Who does the educating?

MARGOLIS: Well, it has to start somewhere and it has to start with communication. And people basing it in love and compassion for others.

KING: But if they’re born out of pain and anger, you’re asking them to love something…

MARGOLIS: But that’s where the mental health world comes in.

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