Evil Exists

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Sargon
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28 Mar 2008, 6:31 pm

Quote:

Evil does not exist in a vacuum. We need a baseline for it. I wish this baseline was universally accepted by all humans, but unfortunately no. Experience and history have taught most of us what evil is, and yes, it is subjective. Evil is manifested in an action, behaviour. I certainly know what evil is, and how I would define it:

Intentional harmful interference of a sentient being's enjoyment of life by the infliction of pain and suffering, whether directly or indirectly, and leading to maiming or death. Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad Evil or Very Mad

So, if I know you plan to interfere with a sentient being's enjoyment of life by inflicting pain and death on that being, and I stop you by interfering with your enjoyment of life by inflicting pain and causing death, I'm now evil? Also, by that definition, pretty much any nation that got involved in any war ever fought would be considered evil (so, soldiers who fought for the Allies are evil because they killed Germans who were having fun killing the Jews). Even if you edit your definition to say responding to an "evil" act is not considered evil, I think your definition is still somewhat lacking. Why were/are the Jews killed/oppressed? According to some Nazis it was because they planned to destroy the German way of life and were participants in the some vast Zionist conspiracy and must be stopped before their plans reach fruition (the Jews were planning the evil act and so they must be stopped).

As long as it is subjective (which you agree it is) then you cannot define it in such a way (even if everyone agrees that is the correct definition, it cannot be applied realistically for the above reasons).

Bollinger
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28 Mar 2008, 6:43 pm

Ragtime wrote:

So, Hitler can't claim he killed in self-defense when God confronts him, because the Jews were an intergrated part of the German people, and the Fatherland was never the same without those 6 million people's continuing contributions of great skill and devotion

Just for the sake of accuracy: there were about 600,000 Jews in Germany in 1933, when the Nazis took over. Many of these, I don't know exactly how many, emigrated and survived the Holocaust. The 6 million or so Jewish men, women and children slaughtered by the Nazis came from many different European nations. More of the 6 million were from Poland than from any other single country, probably around 3 million.

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MR_BOGAN
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28 Mar 2008, 9:53 pm

I think there are different degrees of evil. I mean Scott isn't as evil as Dr Evil.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w27meg0YfEU[/youtube]

greenblue
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29 Mar 2008, 3:32 pm

I can see the debate here about it with Hitler as an example, as well, several examples we can put about acts we find aborrent, most of us, but why do we find them and define them like that?

I think this question has taken different perspectives on how evil does exist and how it is suppose to exist to us to be able accept the validity of its existence.

Does evil really exist?
I believe that in order to accurately answer that question we have to have a concept of evil, some say that it doesn't exist, but why?

matsuiny2004 wrote:

Evil is a human concept and does therefore not exist, people are jsut as capable of doing good as they are at doing bad. They have a choice.

I agree that evil is a human concept, if evil does not exist then how come people are also capable of doing good and bad, they shouldn't exist either, wouldn't they?

As I perfectly agree that the concept of evil or bad and good are human concepts, they still have validity, evil is a concept based on human constructs made to identify actions that are considered morally wrong by some standards, which I know the concept of what is wrong have changed over time and it is quite different in many societies.

A concept most accepted today, is that evil is doing something that causes pain and suffering and damage to others in which the person who does the action is completely aware of it or the action is Intentional. Other than that then it is not actually evil, even though depending on the situation some actions get punishment even if they are not actually intentional.

So, yes, evil does exist, and yes it is a human construct and perhaps measurement could be a better way to say it, clearly it is not as a solid object (which I find funny the claim of nonexistence because of this) that we can touch or smell, but a concept that has perfect value in society just as the the whole concept of morality.

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camphortree
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29 Mar 2008, 3:59 pm

i think in many cases evil is very crude shorthand for mental or social illness.

gekitsu
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29 Mar 2008, 7:04 pm

Ragtime wrote:

The Earth exists whether people think it does or not, and the same goes for anything else that exists. So, if evil exists, it exists absolutely. If it doesn't, than it absolutely doesn't. I'm not asking if evil exists in our imaginations; I'm asking if it's as real as the air we breathe.

actually, raggie, that isnt as clear as you state it to be. this isnt directly related to evil but now that bring the point of existence up...
you cant really know that earth exists without a perceiving subject.
direct quote from one of schopenhauers lectures on epistemology, to illustrate the point:
try imagining a world without a subject that perceives it. all the planets are empty and run on their paths for ages on end, the sund get born and decease again, things collide, do whatever...
but everything you imagined, you imagined as being perceived by an eye.
what schopenhauer actually asked his students was "imagine it without imagining it" (because by imagining it, it would be present as perceived by a subject).

that is where you misinterpreted bollingers quotation of nietzsche - in my opinion, nietzsche kept his influence of schopenhauerian thinking for far longer than he claimed; the way nietzsche talks of notions of evil isnt liek you portrayed it: human notions of evil contra objective existence of evil - its rather an attempt to display how the only way, evil is present for humans (as subjective notions) gave birth to the idea of evil as an objectively existing thing, just as human notions of the worlds existence (the only way the world is present to subjects) gave birth to the thought of a world that exists independently of humans.

jfrmeister
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29 Mar 2008, 11:32 pm

Ragtime wrote:

I'm curious how many people think evil is just an invention of the mind, versus real.

I believe it is real. I think that examples of the greatest recorded evils in history, like the Holocaust, are not merely illogical, focused, group negativities, but actual evil. Who's with me on this?

As an Atheist, I agree with you. Just keep in mind that most of the Nazis were Catholics and large factions of the Catholic Church supported the Nazi anti-semetic policies.

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Averick
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30 Mar 2008, 1:00 am

Labeling evil is such a overwhelmingly difficult task.
Notice how the automaton has very little resistance?

Izaak
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30 Mar 2008, 8:12 am

Still waiting... what is the definition of evil being discussed here?

ragtime, anyone?

There seems a lot of bandying about of Hitler's name here. But what about other evil people throughout the ages? What about all the pope's who started the crusades, or Pol Pot, or maybe Mother Teresa?

greenblue
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30 Mar 2008, 12:13 pm

Izaak wrote:

Still waiting... what is the definition of evil being discussed here?

I don't know but jfrmeister and AG have evil avatars

How can we say they are evil? the avatars I mean.

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Awesomelyglorious
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30 Mar 2008, 12:18 pm

greenblue wrote:

I don't know but jfrmeister and AG have evil avatars

How can we say they are evil? the avatars I mean.

I dunno, I'd actually love to prove my avatar to be evil but I just don't know how to do it! :cry:

svend_sved
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30 Mar 2008, 2:09 pm

Define Evil

BesideYouInTime
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30 Mar 2008, 2:33 pm

History is written by the winners and the word evil is relative. No one thinks the american revolutionaries were evil but nowadays they'd be thought of as separatists and terrorists.

Ragtime
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30 Mar 2008, 7:08 pm

Averick wrote:

Labeling evil is such a overwhelmingly difficult task.

Guess that's what organized religion is for, in part.

Sometimes we see an event occur right in front of us, and we know that we're witnessing evil at that moment. It's one of those epiphany moments, where we say, "Whatever I believed before, THIS is what's actually true." We all have those moments.

BesideYouInTime
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30 Mar 2008, 7:14 pm

Ragtime wrote:

Sometimes we see an event occur right in front of us, and we know that we're witnessing evil at that moment. It's one of those epiphany moments, where we say, "Whatever I believed before, THIS is what's actually true." We all have those moments.

I can't say I've ever had one of those. Maybe when I saw the second plane hit on 9/11.

Looking back though, even 9/11 is more complex than good and evil. Frankly I think reducing the situation to those terms post 9/11 was the biggest mistake we made. Osama Bin Laden didn't just wake up one day and decide to attack america. He's actually a fairly astute observer of history and international politics if you can get past the 'convert to islam' stuff he always throws in at the end.

Awesomelyglorious
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30 Mar 2008, 7:18 pm

Ragtime wrote:

Averick wrote:

Labeling evil is such a overwhelmingly difficult task.

Guess that's what organized religion is for, in part.

Labeling evil is an overwhelmingly easy task, labeling it correctly is an overwhelmingly difficult task, and one of the arguments against a lot of organized religion is that it fails at the latter.

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