Is doing evil a necessity of life?

Post Reply New Topic

Thanks for this. Goodbye.

Regards
DL

I was reading the back and forth and I have to bring a different perspective as you seemed to fail to actually connect in your debate. The human being is an animal. All animals compete to survive, even social animals that cooperate within a group must compete against outside groups. Ant colonies fight wars against one another and can wipe each other out in the process.
In the realm of human interaction, competition rewards not only aggressiveness, but also forward thinking, internal cooperation, and innovation. The end result is progress, progress has not come from competition or cooperation alone, but from competition and cooperation together. True cooperation alone has never been achieved on a large scale in a sustainable fashion. The closest examples of that are fascism and communism (theoretical state ownership of everything versus complete lack of resource ownership, both with the core concept of "to each of their need, from each of their ability") while both adhered to a program of social engineering (social engineering uses the concept of eugenics, a state instituted genetic competition which controls who can reproduce, to control populations and guide a population towards a perceived perfection) and created their own inequalities and extreme suffering in their own societies and led to intense competition (WWII, Cold War) on a global scale.
In the technologically advanced first world, almost all business is based on a regulated capitalist system, which is the embodiment of economic competition. As an individual a person must cooperate and compete within their own group while that group cooperates and competes with other groups within the organization which in turn will cooperate with other organizations to further the needs of the industry while competing with them for a share of the market.
Yes, there are also non-rival goods and services provided by government and charitable organizations. Governments are usually divided into factions as they compete for the limited resources of tax revenue. Charitable organizations compete through marketing and awareness campaigns to be seen as worthy causes in the eyes of potential donors.
In short, life is a yin and yang of cooperation and competition. Whenever the balance shifts more toward one over the other there is stagnation or strife.

As for doing evil being a necessity of life, no it is not because competition itself is not evil. (Stealing is evil, lying is evil, needless killing is evil. Anything that is not reasoned and is destructive based purely on emotion/passion is evil. Wanton prejudice is evil, bigotry is evil, hatred is evil. Doing evil is not a necessity, but it is almost unavoidable according to various religions. Unfortunately, for those who do not adhere to a religion, evil can be subjective or nonexistent. I think the question needs to be better clarified for the sake of precision.

Sniped for brevity. Thanks for the well articulated and accurate post.

I see doing evil, as necessary and so did the early church given that hymn, and the fact that we all compete and create victims to that competition. You said that social engineering uses the concept of eugenics but do not see any societies using it via legislation. I do see the eugenics going on within society as a whole as natural and a help for evolution to weed out the least fit.

The losers will see their loss of resources as evil, but I agree that that evil that the winners visit onto the losers is not a sin. Without the competition, the weak would inherit the earth at the price of the fittest.

Regards
DL

It is fact that some human beings do live that way, but there is no proof showing they are are actually *required* to do so in order to survive.


Yes, definitely, and also keep in mind that the question was presented as a positional argument related to something else and not as a matter for debate.