posted
I can find no concensus on what "evil" actually is. It seems to vary from person to person.
I'll start it out from my confusing position. I really don't see any good or evil, but merely motivations. However, I have a strict code of moral conduct, based mainly on the golden rule. This gives me a basis to act in a manner I feel is correct, but does not help me identify that which is truely evil.
So, what is evil? It is reletive, obviously, and considering the amount of time people spend on identifying it, someone must have some guidelines to share.
What do you consider evil?
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posted
Hmmmm, ignorance is a form of evil that many people do not recognize, as it leaves one's motives clear. Yet ignorance is sin, I think, or rather, almost all sin is ignorance.
I seem to hold myself responsible for outcomes, too, and not just having good intentions. I mean, almost nothing is more generative of suffering and sorrow in this world than a well-meaning dunce with a bee in her bonnet.
I will never forget the image of Jacob Brownowski, in "The Ascent of Man" kneeling in the mud at Auschwitz, mud infused with the ashes of the corpses of many thousands, holding a handful of that mud and saying, "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you could be mistaken."
[ June 17, 2004, 02:09 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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posted
<laughs> Natural selection is considered a valid basis for morality? Hmmm, I thought that idea went out of favor about 60 years ago or so.
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posted
Not a fan of it myself. I think there is no reason an "intelligent" being should lower themselves to the law of the jungle, to which animals must adhere.
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Do you mean killing to defend my children? A neghbor's child? A chiuld in another country? Claiming I am killing to protect my children when I have ulterior motives?
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posted
This is a question that simply cannot be answered without getting metaphysical. From a completely atheistic point of view, there simply is no such thing as objective good or objective evil; instead, those words become whatever you want them to mean, and there's nothing at all about the universe that says that what Stalin did is any worse than what Martin Luther King did.
Objective good and evil can only exist within the confines of theism, because only theism has the power to say that an abstract concept is "true."
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posted
I disagree. Certainly about the idea that morality is a strictly theistic construct. I believe that we can develop a morality that has nothing to do with Gods.
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posted
I believe that evil is objective, but people's viewpoints of it are arbitrary. Many different things are evil, and we are yet to figure out the common denominator which makes them all immoral. Truth be told, I don't think we ever will-- at least not in a way that can be explained objectively.
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posted
Ignorance about what is evil and what isn't constitutes one of the major forms of evil-in-the-form-of-ignorance.
Honestly, we don't consider slaughterhouses to be evil, here and now, yet the similar houses of death constructed for the purpose of ridding Germany of what those in power considered vermin, are. Wasn't the German leadership's real problem that they were ignorant about what is and isn't evil? Weren't they doing good in their own eyes?
Aren't most people, for most of the time, doing good in their own eyes? Or at least they are worrying about their own concerns to the exclusions of the welfare of others in a way that they don't consider to be evil, aren't they? Those who are aware of and declare their own evil (Celia aside) seem rather rare.
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posted
Another good example comes to me from my reading about the phenomenon of slavery in the world today. Slave owners (throughout time and in all cultures) seem to say things like this, "Those people aren't capable of taking care of themselves. If I paid them with money, they would just spend it all on liquor or drugs. I am doing them a great service, acting as a loving parent to them, taking care of them for the time they are in my care. Their work is mentally very easy and the fact that they are slaves means they don't have to worry about money or raising children or making ends meet. It's truly a mercy that I am performing for these people."
Yet if slave owners and social darwinists are not evil, then what is the meaning of the word?
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posted
Having good motives is totally not enough. One also must have a worldview which reflects truly the actual moral universe we inhabit.
Put it this way, if women really were the moral and intellectual inferiors of men, if they really were on the level of domestic animals, then the Taliban and their ilk would be absolutely right to treat them as such. It's only because women are, in fact, true moral agents, and the intellectual equals of men, that the Taliban's policies toward women are evil. Again is this not merely a matter of ignorance?
[ June 17, 2004, 03:13 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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posted
I go the other way from Polio. I think of Good as objective, solid, and real. Evil is merely that which pollutes or distances from Good and is entirely relative.
Except, of course, as Kat pointed out, for Celia.
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quote: Wasn't the German leadership's real problem that they were ignorant about what is and isn't evil? Weren't they doing good in their own eyes?
No, I can't agree with you on that.
Bad things happen because people are ignorant. Evil can only happen when you aren't ignorant, and do bad anyway.
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posted
So the safest and surest way to eliminate evil is to lobotomize every baby at birth. <poof> Instant goodness.
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posted
I think evil can be best defined as getting pleasure, really enjoying another's pain. For this it doesn't even have to be a human they are watching.
Even in self-defense if you were to kill the person going after you, I would expect at least a little sorrow at having to do it, though any animal even is capable of a him or me mentality.
Evil is when a person smiles and laughs at watching a someone writhe with pain. They don't just cause this pain, but they enjoy it.
There are probably degrees that aren't good, because there are no black and white, but the worst kind of evil is enjoying another's pain.
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posted
There's a thing called "ontic evil" (I have probably mis-spelled this) which refers to bad things happening which are no one's fault, like a person killed in a tornado. It's existence is one of the strongest arguments against an omnipotent, perfectly good God and I'm afraid we have to consider that evil exists outside of people's motivations and awareness, though, of course, their individual culpability does not.
posted
Audeo, have you ever killed in self-defense? I think your theory about that may be off. I think the most common feeling after one kills in self defense is exhilaration that one is still alive, after a life threatening experience. There is often a feeling of joy at the death of the other person. Feelings of sickness or shame or whatever only come later.
We have these theories about what is evil and what isn't, and they change based on our experience of life. I don't think a thrill at killing in self-defense is evil, nor a temporary feeling of joy in the destruction of another person who was trying to kill you, or someone helpless whom you are defending.
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posted
I haven't killed anyone, no, and I do agree that there is an initial thrill, and probably afterwards a residual feeling of righteousness, but I think with there is a wish that you hadn't been compelled to kill. Maybe it manifests as anger towards the person you killed, hating them for attacking you as well as forcing you to kill them. I'm not saying that you'll break down and cry, but that you didn't want to do it, and even after it's done, not you're not happy about having to do it, though that outcome is better than being dead yourself.
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quote:There's a thing called "ontic evil" (I have probably mis-spelled this) which refers to bad things happening which are no one's fault, like a person killed in a tornado.
I think this use dilutes the word "evil." Suffering does not mean that evil has occurred, nor does evil mean that (detectable) suffering has occurred. Evil is one of the causes of suffering, but by no means the only one.
I think it has to come down somewhat to culpability. Ignorance can still be culpable, as long as it's wilfull ignorance.
posted
My church teaches that learning everything we can about every subject possible is of the utmost importance. I think that means something.
If the only thing considered evil is actually knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway, for spite or whatever, then there's very little evil in the world.
Then I would have to say by that definition I absolve most slaveowners, the Nazis, white supremacists, the 9/11 hijackers, the Taliban, and really almost everyone else, from true evil. Instead we will have to say only that they make very unfortunate mistakes.
I use the word more broadly than that. Maybe you think of the evil ones as only those who will willingly condemn themselves to outer darkness at the judgement day (to put it in LDS theological terms)? If so then I don't think we disagree on essentials, only on what name to call things.
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posted
Jim-me, I think that ontic evil sort of blends into other evil-from-ignorance. Because if we knew enough about the weather, and had our act together, the correct warnings in place, the right shelters and public awareness training, and so on, we could have prevented that death from tornadoes, possibly.
That's rather far in the future, that level of knowledge, though. Let's take a more recent example, which will hopefully be more heartfelt. The way the Soviet hierarchy reacted to the Chernobyl accident caused certainly thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands more people to die than was necessary. What exactly that anyone, any individual, did or didn't do, in that situation, should we consider evil?
I just listened this morning to everyone (military and FAA) explain what they did when, and what actually happened, on 9/11. Was there any negligence? Was there failure of due diligence? Could someone, by extraordinary extra diligence, have done something more than they did, have improved the outcome significantly? I'm not prepared to say that anything anyone (with the exception of the hijackers) did that day was evil. They all seemed to do the best they could in a very confusing and unprecedented situation. So are there any parallels between the Chernobyl situation and that of 9/11, in terms of government bureaucratic nonsense, and so on? Was there any evil done?
[ June 17, 2004, 04:03 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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posted
Dagonee: "ak, who's that last one addressed to?"
Sorry, the LDS theological parts were addressed to mph. The thoughts contained are addressed to everyone, though.
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posted
Chris, your definition seems far too limited. Are you saying evil only exists with respect to other people? Is there such a thing as victimless evil (ignoring the actor as a potential victim and leaving theological victims out of it)?
posted
Because evil IS ignorance, to such a large degree, is one reason why nobody is qualified to judge another person, and why the only place to truly do battle with evil, face to face, in hand to hand combat, so to speak, is inside our own hearts.
Someone very wise once told me that and it's true. The evil we encounter in the world at large is only for training purposes, to help us discover and combat the evil in our own spirits, where the battle is truly fought and in fact, the only place where it can really be won.
Evil can only really be fought directly in the first person. I find that wonderful, somehow. Exhilarating and humbling and shaming and glorifying, all at once.
[ June 17, 2004, 04:11 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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posted
The confusing thing about defining ignorance as evil, is that, as humans, we cannot know everything. So does this mean that we are all evil?
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posted
Exactly. I've always viewed the fall as the loss of a direct connection to God. It really is about knowledge in many ways - trusting our own rather than His. Now we have to use our own, and all of us come up short because of it.
quote:the only place to truly do battle with evil, face to face, in hand to hand combat, so to speak, is inside our own hearts.
AK, it might not be completely 100% true all the time [cf. the Nazis(tm)* which everyone is citing these days] but it absolutely rocks and should be pondered by all.
Very nicely said.
* -- for those of you who don't know, TSR trademarked the term "Nazi" for their Indiana Jones board game. Could that be why they (the Nazis, not TSR) keep referring to themselves as "National Socialists" now?
posted
I think of the fall as the time in which we changed over from being ignorant of the existence of good and evil, and of the moral consequences of our choices, like a child or animal. That sort of innocence, which wreaks havoc willy nilly but is unaware, is pre-fall.
Then after the fall we're aware, but imperfect. So we wish we could be not evil, but we're incapable of pulling it off. So begins the long process of perfection, which we LDS call eternal progression.
edit: I should add that this process is made possible through the atonement of Christ. That all our efforts are insufficient but for that.
[ June 17, 2004, 04:19 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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posted
Hmm. I've always seen it as the deliberate turning away from communion with God, which could be restored in the Atonement without subverting our free will.
But that's a basic difference we're not going to resolve here.
posted
Dagonee, that may be true. Aren't animals and children in communion with God? They are, and then they innocently do evil, too. So I don't know what that actually means, in terms of your view or my view. Most likely they are both right and neither, as seems to be the way of most of these theological concepts. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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posted
Jim-me, I have to give credit for that gem of wisdom (about the only place where evil is actually fought) where it belongs, to Richard Chiu, who posted here as Survivor long ago.
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posted
If animals can "do" evil then they aren't innocent. yes a lion could kill a child which would be a bad thing (more the ontic evil I guess), but the lion is only acting on instinct and following what its brain tells it to do.
I reject the notion that animals can be truly evil.
posted
Evil is for the most part anything which is opposite to the values/morality that you have. There isn't anything thats honestly inherently evil. Now there are lots of things our general society today feels are evil, and I would to. But that just means that its evil to us.
The only thing that to me is honestly evil is a coward, that doesn't mean someone who won't fight, draft dodgers, etc. the sort of thing you might think I find cowardly. I think a person who is a true coward is someone who doesn't do something of great value to another/other for the sheer pain it might bring them.
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quote: There isn't anything thats honestly inherently evil.
Except for that statement, perhaps?
So, the fact that we consider murder and rape to be wrong is just an artificial product of our society, right? I mean, if we all decided tomorrow morning that it was okay to rape and mutilate people for the fun of it, then that would make it right, right? Right??
posted
Technically speaking yes, and their are many socities before that have thought of rape and many other unimaginable things as all right, if not something to brag about. Now I think its evil, but remember the important word there, think. So yes, if a large culture of thousands got together and thought rape and murder was good it would be good to them, I doubt it would change your or my opinion.
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posted
Paul: "I think a person who is a true coward is someone who doesn't do something of great value to another/other for the sheer pain it might bring them."
I think that's not a bad definition at all. I think I could agree with that. It seems to encompass the Chernobyl criminal negligence sort of thing, and even small things like trying to give information a positive spin to make yourself look good, when that can cause confusion about what is actually going on, and delay the finding of the best solution to the problem.
However, I do believe that ignorance, even when not willful at all, is evil.
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quote: So yes, if a large culture of thousands got together and thought rape and murder was good it would be good to them
No. It wouldn't. I'm glad that my view of good and evil depends on something more than arbitrary human delusion. Those things would not be right even if everyone in the world agreed that they were. There are some things that are just wrong.
EDIT: (Just pointing out that I was replying to Black Fox's post)
posted
And our society does murder, and calls it good, when we execute criminals. So that part is right. Some people feel meat eaters are committing murder by killing animals for food. There is disagreement about what is evil between societies, and even within a society, witness the public debate about the legality of abortion, or prostitution, or drug use.
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