Is there really evil, or just the absence of good?

[AlienCraft]

Originally posted by: Kadarin

Originally posted by: mjrpes3

Originally posted by: Kadarin
I would posit that there is no such thing as absolute "good" and absolute "evil", and then challenge you to show otherwise. My belief is that the concepts are both relative and abstract, and really depend on the culture within which someone exists.

Inflicting intense pain on an innocent person for the sole reason of deriving pleasure from their suffering is a universal evil.

I would agree that it's wrong, but not that such wrong is absolute. Just because I don't know of a society where that is acceptable does not mean that such a society isn't possible.

Moral Relativism for a tie. :thumbsdown: Pick a side. No one lives forever.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: IGBT
..your fatal flaw is the concept of an "ideal world". It is and always will be shades of gray.

"Ideal" may not have been the proper term. "More advanced" world, perhaps.
Shades of gray? No kidding. You apparently didn't read anything past the first sentence.
It's ok, eco-KOOKism isn't spread by reading, you'll be fine.

 

[AlienCraft]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: IGBT
..your fatal flaw is the concept of an "ideal world". It is and always will be shades of gray.

"Ideal" may not have been the proper term. "More advanced" world, perhaps.
Shades of gray? No kidding. You apparently didn't read anything past the first sentence.
It's ok, eco-KOOKism isn't spread by reading, you'll be fine.

By reading CRAP, it sure the hell is! And who knows, they might be unstable and unabler to handle it?! Think of the Children! :laugh:

 

[IGBT]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: IGBT
..your fatal flaw is the concept of an "ideal world". It is and always will be shades of gray.

"Ideal" may not have been the proper term. "More advanced" world, perhaps.
Shades of gray? No kidding. You apparently didn't read anything past the first sentence.
It's ok, eco-KOOKism isn't spread by reading, you'll be fine.

..since your back peddling, re-read your own original statement and you'll find plenty other phrases and words to back peddle on. ahh life thru the rear view mirrior.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

Originally posted by: moonbit

Originally posted by: gorcorps
Personally I think there's two sides to this. Being 'evil' is definitely tied to what you're brought up to think is bad. If you aren't told what's bad, then you may act bad in other people's minds even though you never thought of it that way. And there are those who know what's bad, and do it anyways.

This is a great start. "Evil" is relative across personal perceptions, and across cultures. The debate is in whether or not there is such a thing as an evil that is universally evil. Then there's the personal dimension of the motivation to choose to do bad rather than do good.

That's all I got. I'm running on reduced brainpower.

Murder is universally evil. There ya go.

What if you could murder the next hitler before he killed anyone? I know, I know, Godwin's law, but my point is: there is always a "best" course of action, but no action can be universally defined as good or evil.

Would most christians stop the romans from murdering jesus? Not if they're really christian.

 

[Tiamat]

Is there cold? or is it just an absence of heat? Thermodynamics tells us the answer to this. By comparison, evil is simply the absence of good. It is all a relative scale. You just choose a nomenclature so that you are consistent.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: theflyingpig
Evil is the natural state of things. It is what makes this world beautiful. Humans must learn to embrace evil in all of its forms. Only when we can accept our evil nature will we be complete.

Ruthlessness is the natural state of things, good and evil are constructs humans place upon them. Kinda like how HTTP is layered upon TCP/IP. 🙂

 

[So]

Originally posted by: IGBT
..secular progressives say child murders and rapists just need treatment. secular progressives are the epitome of evil.

There is a point where people are so fucked up that no amount of treatment can "fix" a person, but really, I agree with the notion that if possible, it is morally better to try and cure a person than to kill them, and furthermore, that nobody wins simply by punishing someone for revenge. Prisons are for the protection of society, not to make criminals feel sad.

Edit: and I don't care if you want to call me evil for believing that. If you think that feeling compassion and wishing for restraint is evil, then maybe we should get YOU some treatment.

 

[IGBT]

Originally posted by: So

Originally posted by: IGBT
..secular progressives say child murders and rapists just need treatment. secular progressives are the epitome of evil.

There is a point where people are so fucked up that no amount of treatment can "fix" a person, but really, I agree with the notion that if possible, it is morally better to try and cure a person than to kill them, and furthermore, that nobody wins simply by punishing someone for revenge. Prisons are for the protection of society, not to make criminals feel sad.

Edit: and I don't care if you want to call me evil for believing that. If you think that feeling compassion and wishing for restraint is evil, then maybe we should get YOU some treatment.

..you fail again. it has nothing to do with revenge. incarceration or the death penalty is the price the guilty pay for their behavior.

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: Kadarin
I would posit that there is no such thing as absolute "good" and absolute "evil", and then challenge you to show otherwise. My belief is that the concepts are both relative and abstract, and really depend on the culture within which someone exists.

What are we supposed to do? Come up with a list of things which are universally considered "good" or "evil" across all known cultures? I daresay that I could do just that. You're asking us to prove a negative...might as well hypothesize that there is no such thing as an absolute nuclear strong force, and ask for a proof that all atoms obey it.

I believe in absolute truth, simply because all of the scientific evidence seems to suggest that it exists...the outcome of an experiment seems to depend on various consistent and predictable factors that behave in the same way in all other parts of the universe, and any variation that we find is attributable to some unmeasured variable which may have been unknown before. However, once this is accounted for, the experiment is once again consistent. We will never understand every aspect of this universal truth, but what parts of it that we are able to experience are indeed universal. It doesn't seem like such a big stretch for me to posit a universal morality, at least for this species--sure, not all cultures will agree on the particulars, and some aspects of it may be more immediately clear to all than others, but it can still exist almost independent of society.

Now I'm not saying that I have to be right or you have to be wrong (although my personal belief is that we can't both be right😉), but there is no scientific way to "prove" that absolutes exist...we can simply point to a mass of evidence suggesting so, or argue that the inconsistency of said evidence suggests just the opposite.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: IGBT

Originally posted by: So

Originally posted by: IGBT
..secular progressives say child murders and rapists just need treatment. secular progressives are the epitome of evil.

There is a point where people are so fucked up that no amount of treatment can "fix" a person, but really, I agree with the notion that if possible, it is morally better to try and cure a person than to kill them, and furthermore, that nobody wins simply by punishing someone for revenge. Prisons are for the protection of society, not to make criminals feel sad.

Edit: and I don't care if you want to call me evil for believing that. If you think that feeling compassion and wishing for restraint is evil, then maybe we should get YOU some treatment.

..you fail again. it has nothing to do with revenge. incarceration or the death penalty is the price the guilty pay for their behavior.

What? "Price?" Can I get a discount? Yes, I know that jail is what we do to criminals, but you don't seem to get that there has to be a reason why we do it. We don't do it for kicks, we do it for a reason.

So, again, I ask you -- instead of simply asserting it, why do we send people do jail? For that matter, why do you punish a child? To rehabilitate them...to stop that behavior. You do so in the most efficient, effective way possible. Prisons serve a dual purpose in that matter, to protect society and to provide a means of rehabilitation. Nobody natural law says that rehabilitation has to be gentle, nor does anything imply that it has to be violent. The only matters in question are its efficacy and it's economic efficiency.

 

[dawp]

There is no good or evil. Would you call a croc or a shark evil? Or a giraffe good? They're just doing what comes natural to them.

 

[DangerAardvark]

Originally posted by: So

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

Originally posted by: moonbit

Originally posted by: gorcorps
Personally I think there's two sides to this. Being 'evil' is definitely tied to what you're brought up to think is bad. If you aren't told what's bad, then you may act bad in other people's minds even though you never thought of it that way. And there are those who know what's bad, and do it anyways.

This is a great start. "Evil" is relative across personal perceptions, and across cultures. The debate is in whether or not there is such a thing as an evil that is universally evil. Then there's the personal dimension of the motivation to choose to do bad rather than do good.

That's all I got. I'm running on reduced brainpower.

Murder is universally evil. There ya go.

What if you could murder the next hitler before he killed anyone? I know, I know, Godwin's law, but my point is: there is always a "best" course of action, but no action can be universally defined as good or evil.

Would most christians stop the romans from murdering jesus? Not if they're really christian.

The irony is that any good secularist would.

 

[IceBergSLiM]

everything must have its opposite. its how the universe maintains balance.

 

[acheron]

When I saw the thread title, I really thought it was going to be a Harcadio thread.

 

[Crono]

Evil is the corruption (twisting or perversion) of good.

 

[Mr Pickles]

Can we please stop using analogies in threads with the word "philosophy" in their title description? They contradict each other too severely to make any progress in communication.

Why does good win over evil as far as taking the premiere state? You are saying that evil is the absence of good. Do you think good is simply the absence of evil? One has to be the solid state if you are using the word absence as if one is constantly present and the other just shows its (evil) head every once and a while.

There has to be a limbo. I feel that good has to be expressed in some way. You simply cannot do good just because you aren't doing bad; and the reverse. The limbo would be not doing good or bad at all. People are capable of not doing good deeds or bad deeds at any time. There is a stale center there.

 

[Mr Pickles]

Originally posted by: gorcorps
We talk about cold like it's something we can measure. How cold is it? Has it gotten colder? etc... but really cold is just the absence of heat. Heat can be measured as it's just energy, but cold can't be measured. It's just a term we use to describe the absence of heat.

Sorry I wanted to quote this too. Again, you are saying that cold is always prevalent in the atmosphere unless heat interferes with it. Why can't heat always be prevalent in the atmosphere unless cold interferes with it? Which one is your solid state.

I'm guessing the hokey religious thread had to do with the classic debate on weather or not humans are naturally good or naturally evil. Makes sense.

 

[darkxshade]

While cold & dark is the absense of heat & light... evil is measured in another way. Simply put, evil is the presense of politicians. 😛

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Originally posted by: darkxshade
While cold & dark is the absense of heat & light... evil is measured in another way. Simply put, evil is the presense of politicians. 😛

And the french...😀

 

[oznerol]

Heat is quantifiable. It is measurable. It is energy. It is something physical. The same goes for light. Light is photons. It is a particle (and a wave).

Good is subjective. It is emotion. The absence of good cannot be measured, because the presence of good cannot be measured.

Though you can try and twist your logic around to all opposites, really. Is sweetness is the absence of bitterness? Is softness the absence of hardness? Maybe slow is merely the absence of fast?

 

[gorcorps]

Originally posted by: Mr Pickles

Originally posted by: gorcorps
We talk about cold like it's something we can measure. How cold is it? Has it gotten colder? etc... but really cold is just the absence of heat. Heat can be measured as it's just energy, but cold can't be measured. It's just a term we use to describe the absence of heat.

Sorry I wanted to quote this too. Again, you are saying that cold is always prevalent in the atmosphere unless heat interferes with it. Why can't heat always be prevalent in the atmosphere unless cold interferes with it? Which one is your solid state.

I'm guessing the hokey religious thread had to do with the classic debate on weather or not humans are naturally good or naturally evil. Makes sense.

I'm assuming here that the science of thermodynamics that have been tested and proven hold true. We have accepted that heat is just energy. Because we use that as our base point cold is just the absence of that energy. So it's not that cold is always there until heat interferes, it's that varying degrees of energy make up what we call a 'temperature' which is nothing more than a scale that we use to give a rough estimate of thermal energy.

You don't 'cool things down' by adding cold, you do so by losing heat. Heat is the quantifiable amount of energy, cold is just a word we've become accustomed to using in the absence of heat.

 

[gorcorps]

Originally posted by: Mr Pickles
Can we please stop using analogies in threads with the word "philosophy" in their title description? They contradict each other too severely to make any progress in communication.

Why does good win over evil as far as taking the premiere state? You are saying that evil is the absence of good. Do you think good is simply the absence of evil? One has to be the solid state if you are using the word absence as if one is constantly present and the other just shows its (evil) head every once and a while.

There has to be a limbo. I feel that good has to be expressed in some way. You simply cannot do good just because you aren't doing bad; and the reverse. The limbo would be not doing good or bad at all. People are capable of not doing good deeds or bad deeds at any time. There is a stale center there.

Read this:

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language.Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions (such as mysticism or mythology) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument.

That's pretty close to what the majority of this discussion has been. Don't put philosophy on a pedestal and claim that if a group of AT dwellers do it it's not the 'proper way' to do it. By definition, we're forming reasoned arguments about a general problem concerning truth vs. opinion, existence, and others. As much as it may hurt to admit it, we're philosophizing.

 

[Dumac]

Is there really such a thing as a cat, or is it just the absence of dog?

 

[SlitheryDee]

You have to identify what good and evil are supposed to be in order to make that judgment. Not what they actually are right now, because that's always going to change somewhat, but the reason we feel the need to identify things as either good or evil. Good and evil are always going to be relative to society or the human race in general. What is good is anything that is mutually beneficial for all (humans) involved. What is evil is destructive behavior for no benefit to any or for the benefit of one at the expense of the other.

As with many elements of human behavior, I think this is best explained in evolutionary terms. Human society functions best when its constituents are "good", which is to say, generally respectful of others and willing to help in times of need. This fosters an atmosphere of security and mutual dependence in addition to assuring maximum genetic diversity through more individuals surviving to reproduce. Each individual performs his/her end of this bargain for purely selfish reasons, because of the awareness that the likelihood of reciprocation is greater when they do. That is not to take away from the feelings of gratitude and fulfillment on both ends of every exchange of favors, but only to identify them for what they are.

An "evil" individual is actually a malfunctioning member of this social structure who acts in a manner that decreases the likelihood of reciprocation and therefore ostracizes themselves from the rest of society. What are things that we typically think of as universally evil? Killing another human being by itself may not be counted among them, because there are cases where this might be justified. If we define murder as unnecessarily killing another human being for no reason other than one's own benefit or pleasure in full knowledge of the impact this will have then we have an evil act. The reason for this is simple. Society is disrupted irreparably if its members are in constant fear of being killed by each other. This logic can be extended to the entire range of acts that are considered evil. Evil acts are carried out by individuals who do not even pay lip service to the idea that they must give in order to receive. The "good" people will therefore align themselves against the "evil" people in the interest of the human race as a whole.

In this light, good and evil can be viewed as wholly separate forces each with their own potential values. Within each overall "good" individual is a small amount of "evil", which is defined as their likelihood of acting in a manner that reduces their chances of reciprocal benefits. There is not a single bar with good at the top and evil at the bottom, but two bars labeled "acts which increase likelihood of reciprocation" and "acts which decrease likelihood of reciprocation". An "evil" person has the evil bar high enough that humanity is uncomfortable having them around, while the opposite is true for a "good" person. One can also draw another conclusion from this. Because society continues to operate in a more or less stable fashion, it could be said that the natural state of people in general is overwhelmingly "good". If evil were as rampant as some think it is the result would be anarchy far beyond what is observed today. No, the vast majority of humans are aware of their place in society and their responsibilities toward it, which is what makes the deviants so notable.