What we define as "doing evil" is what people do out of ignorance. For example, people in the past didn't "know" that slavery is wrong. They were ignorant to that. So when the ignorant people of the past took slaves they were simply doing evil out of their ignorance. "Ignorance bumping its head in the dark" symbolises an action sprouting from ignorance. That's my take on it, anyway.
Well, that's what I got that from it as well.. I disagree with it. I think the very definition of evil requires the perpetrator to understand that what he's doing is wrong.
Good is founded by Morals, Evil Is founded by Intention. Example, I a morally just person would kill a Child Molester, that is not evil. It is not evil to expunge evil, nor is it good. Good is not to let him go unpunished for that is evil also. There are more evil intentions than good ones, basic humanity. But humanity had a card called morals which the good just people put in place. Morals have nothing to do with good and evil, good and evil are intention based. Morals are not.
yep, sadly... None of us are perfect. I am an eye for and eye. A person on that code needs to find peace. As such, there is no evil, there is no good. There is only action and reaction.
Humanity is too generalised a term. What everyone is referring to as evil doesn't apply to the whole species of homo sapiens. All those attributes everyone's referring to that supposedly make us evil are just a feature of our civilization; which includes all of us here on this website. I'm not referring to the western or eastern civilization or anything; but all those civilisations put together who, as already described by others, in the quest for progress, are destroying themselves and their planet. It includes most of humanity, since mostly all of us are now a part of that society, that civilisation which lives in the notion that humans are made to conquer the world and be its master. However, not all humanity is along this same route. We are merely one out of the many life patterns adapted by our species; and surely the most contagious and unsuccessful. As anthropologically shown, most aboriginal and tribal cultures in the world have survived for much longer than the roundabout 10000 years (since the advent of agriculture) our current trend is going to allow us to live. It is mostly forgotten that those remaining factions of our species still exist; leading us to the misleading notion that all of humanity is evil. Read Daniel Quinn for more thoughts along the same line. Coming to evil, that too is a relative term. What may be evil for one individual, community, or species could be beneficial for another. Crusades and Jihads have fervently been vouched as good by their own supporters, but most of the world would disagree. The same way, one person unilaterally exterminating humanity (since most of it is, in the end, by common definition and standards 'evil') would be deemed as evil, but the rest of the planet may beg to differ.
Evil, Good, Perceptions, all are based on an individual's experience. Is it evil to torture children? What if torturing a few children made the rest of the world content or even happy and long-lived? Isn't evil to deny that to the rest of the world for the sake of these children? But wait. Perhaps you believe in objective reality and objective morals. Fine. I invite the objective being that set these morals in stone to simply elaborate on them. If Good exists objectively then that which is good is good no matter what, and likewise evil. There goes your free will. Good and Evil become no more than labels, it may as well be the red team and the blue team. Not a fan of these ideas? I would like to submit that most things labeled "evil" are thus labeled because they can be harmful to an assigning organization or perhaps to a society. If pedophelia was legal, would those who keep children from being used for such things be vilified? My opinion: Evil is a word with too much power. It evokes ideas that make the cro-magnon in us all gibber. Experience tells me that there are times when anything is more or less desirable. Chocolate: Good? Evil? Giving it to a child? Giving it to a severely diabetic child? The circumstances of these things decide the morality. Perhaps you want to give it to a child to induce diabetes. Is giving chocolate to a child evil, or just the motivation to do it, or neither? There is no overarching evil or good, merely circumstances in which we inflict what we think is either on the unsuspecting world.
Uhm Hammie, I didn't write those definitions. There are from the dictionary. Good and evil do not exists in my opinion, at least not objectively. I thought I made that clear in the OP, but perhaps I should have worded it better. I think you're overshooting the point of this thread here. Objective reality exists, no doubt about it. But objective morals.. well, the combination of those words is just damn stupid. Morals cannot be objective, they are subjective in nature. Free will is another topic. I don't think it exists though. According to those definition a large portion of the human population would be evil from one persons view. Overlay the views of all people and no one person would be unanimously considered good (-evil). Or you can look at humanity as a single entity. According to the definition of 'evil', humanity is then evil. In addition to what I wrote above (which was perhaps stretching it a bit), the only objects in the universe that can ever be considered evil are those objects that can understand the concept. According to our current knowledge that only leaves ourselves.
pardon me for interrupting but that is precisely why the apple doesnt exist. the problem is that the apple DOES exist and the other is just more abstract and complicated however this does not negate its existence. for an example: Good= a pat on the head. Bad (evil)= a spank on the coolie in anger.
Enmos-Really? Do you understand Evil as a concept? Does anyone? If not, by what you are saying, is anyone evil?
Once again, good and evil do not exist in the real world. But the concepts still exist.. If I understand the definitions of the concepts, I understand the concepts. Right ?
Oh come on. Nothing exists objectively. Reality is what you subjectively experience inside your head. While I can have a copy of the experience, I can not have the experience you had. Thus if we see one apple on a table and you pick the apple up and eat it and I have the experience, there exists two apples. One you ate. One I saw you eat. Understand?
I understand but I kind of feel that you've jumped the gun. I agree that each of the two people would experience the apple differently but I think that there still exists only one apple: "In the philosophy of Kant, an object as it is in itself independent of the mind, as opposed to a phenomenon. Also called thing-in-itself." I agree that there are two phenomenons which would be each subjective experience of the apple but the apple, the thing-in-itself, is "independent of the mind."
But no thing-in-itself can be known without a person to experience the thing-in-itself existing. Thus reality is only in your mind anyway. There is one apple because you experience one apple. If it were possible to observe both experiences, that apple would probably start out as multiple apples a la an alternate reality to an experiencer. Thus all things exist and nothing exists. It is impossible to truly know whether there is anything beyond what you experience, and once experienced, can it be proven that it was, indeed, experienced? Just because my subjective view of a reality is similar in one place to your experience certainly does not mean that both experiences of reality are the same, or verify each other at all.
No, it's not. Perception is subjective. Reality is not. And why are we discussing objective vs. subjective reality in this thread ? - Nothing really matters.. (The thread takes a while to get there) - Objective reality: How do we know it exists ? - What is real ?
For evil to exist you must have a reality, correct? Do you want me to presuppose reality? Say so then.
Merely because it is not known does not guarantee that it does not exist. There's two options here: A. The apple exists only in subjective realities and the number of apples that exists is equal to the number of subjective minds experiencing it (Your suggestion). B. The apple in-itsef exists separately from all subjective minds and each observer recieves a different experience from the apple (My suggestion). Now, I don't see either of us determining which is true and which is false.
They rely on the same data to come to different theoretical answers. I see no way to verify either idea. I guess that's the way philosophy goes, though, isn't it?
