And usually these are not so much evil principles as the evil, larger-than-life actors who personify them - a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein.
Sin was not the results of the abuse of free will, but merely the outcome of an inborn evil principle.
All suffering is punishment for sin; even when a child suffers, this is the punishment of the inborn evil principle.
These mythological pieces dealt with people, dynasties, and probably the struggle between good and evil principles.
The evil principle deprecated in that religion, is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind.
Our enemies know this, and that is why the terrorist Zarqawi recently declared war on what he called the "evil principle" of democracy.
He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike.
These critics saw Caleb as attacking the current established order, that Godwin was effectively spreading his "evil" principles throughout society.
As the physical world and the human body was the creation of the evil principle, sexual abstinence (even in marriage) was encouraged.
Yet all the evidence pointed to the co-existence of an evil creative principle, a Satan.