Evil Without God

Norm Geras has a number of reflections  (scroll through the links at the top) on the idea of evil:

Yes, the term 'evil' can have a religious connotation, but it doesn't have to. And unless we think we can do without the concept of evil, those of us who aren't religious had better be prepared to defend a secular notion of what evil is; because otherwise we're going to have to describe as merely 'wrong' the very worst cruelties and horrors that people perpetrate against one another, and which I was going to exemplify by quotation here, but on consideration will spare you from having to read about, and just leave to your imagination and your knowledge of the world. Anyone who has some knowledge of the world knows how rich the human record is in actions and events that scald the mind and rip the soul; and not to have a word for and a concept of these, other than 'wrong', is to be landed with an impoverished moral vocabulary.