Do you believe in

Discussion in 'Quackenbush's' started by alden, Sep 6, 2008.

  1. alden

    alden 1,000+ Posts

    I don't believe in evil. I think people do things for a reason, not simply because they are evil. There are crazies, but these are individuals, not groups. Even if a group of people follows a psychotic crazy guy, they still have their reasons for doing so.

    I don't want to point the finger at one side (since this is not exclusively a partisan issue), but this bothered me about the R convention. Several times speakers referred to "fighting evil". It also bothered me when Bush came out with his "Axis of Evil" thing. Following this path, I see us fighting the symptoms, not the sources. It also serves to impede dialogue with these people. While it may shore up the "America, f**k Yeah" contingent, it really puts off the people in areas we need to connect with.

    So who believes in evil? Am I having a hard time with this because I'm not religious?
     
  2. ProdigalHorn

    ProdigalHorn 10,000+ Posts


     
  3. Art Vandelay

    Art Vandelay 500+ Posts

    What Prodigal said. We all know there are plenty of people like that in this world. I think "evil" is an apt word for them.

    I do think some people get too hung up on the religious meanings of the word, though.
     
  4. alden

    alden 1,000+ Posts


     
  5. ProdigalHorn

    ProdigalHorn 10,000+ Posts

    A lot of it can be subjective. I tend not to think of regimes or countries as evil per se, because I'm not sure it really applies for the reasons you just mentioned. Societies invariably are going to look after their best interests and likely will do it at other nations' expense - national sovereignty dictates that.

    I think it's a gray area, but ultimately I think motivations are more clear in some instances. Did Hitler try to take over Europe purely to promote his nation's welfare? Personally I doubt it, but even if he did, the actions that he took in the process clearly pass the "evil" smell test.


     
  6. Sangre Naranjada

    Sangre Naranjada 10,000+ Posts


     
  7. alden

    alden 1,000+ Posts


     
  8. gobears92

    gobears92 Guest

  9. ProdigalHorn

    ProdigalHorn 10,000+ Posts


     
  10. alden

    alden 1,000+ Posts

    I appreciate your thoughts, ProdigalHorn. I suppose evil has a clear religious meaning, but I think it has a vague (or maybe just subjective) secular meaning.

    I'm afraid that the language we use is sending a very bad message abroad. When US politicians (who are Christians of course) talk about battling evil and that our war is a holy cause, this freaks out even the peaceful, non-extreme Islamic people. It's the same effect here when an Islamic politician talking about jihad. It's definitely leading away from trust and understanding.

    I don't want to go too far off on this tangent, but on the suicide bomber:

     
  11. blueglasshorse

    blueglasshorse 1,000+ Posts


     
  12. Michael Knight

    Michael Knight 1,000+ Posts

    Dick Cheney comes to mind
     
  13. TexasGolf

    TexasGolf 2,500+ Posts

    That did not take long.

    Yes

    "It" believes in you.



    [​IMG]
     
  14. BattleshipTexas

    BattleshipTexas 1,000+ Posts

    If you live very long and don't live a sheltered life, at some point you will see, experience or be confronted with evil. Not just bad luck or someone doing something wrong. I mean real evil.
     
  15. Coelacanth

    Coelacanth Guest

    Evil is, fundamentally, an adjective and not a noun. It functions as a noun only as an abstraction, and only to the extent that we understand its use as an adjective.

    So what sorts of things can be evil? A person, an object, an act? I think we have to start with the idea that certain acts are evil. Sadism might be the most obvious example. Sadistic acts are evil acts; in fact, they are particularly evil because they bring no material gain to the sadist. That is to say, a truly evil act is more palpably evil if it has no selfish component. Its end – its cause – is not self, but suffering. I’m no animal rights activist, but people who drown puppies in burlap sacks are committing an evil act, in my opinion.

    Evil is an adjective we use to properly identify acts that are designed to cause suffering.

    So, can a person be evil? I will agree with Aristotle that “we are what we repeatedly do”. If we habitually commit evil acts, then we are indeed evil.
     
  16. schnarkle

    schnarkle 500+ Posts

    I believe there is evil, just as much as I believe there is good.
     
  17. 9/11 was pure evil.
    yes i believe in evil.
     
  18. beencounting

    beencounting 500+ Posts

    all a matter of opinion based on needs and political/individual interests.
     
  19. Hornius Emeritus

    Hornius Emeritus 2,500+ Posts

    Were humans not around to perceive it, would evil exist?
     
  20. Sangre Naranjada

    Sangre Naranjada 10,000+ Posts

    No, Emeritus, I don't think so. Humans are the only creatures on Earth that can construct an abstract value system that defines concepts like good and evil, both in absolute and in contextual terms. Without a value system, good and evil don't exist. Only animal behaviors, some driven by instinct and some learned from a reward/punishment feedback system in the environment, would exist. It's not evil when an ugly pack of hyenas kill and eat a cute little antelope fawn - they are just doing what their nature dictates.

    Find another sentient species that can construct abstract value systems and modify its behavior because of it, and I'll revise my position.
     
  21. Coelacanth

    Coelacanth Guest


     
  22. Coelacanth

    Coelacanth Guest


     
  23. buckhorn

    buckhorn 1,000+ Posts

    Evil most certainly exists, though it is an assessment that is relative to situation, beliefs, values, etc. Evil is not a thing. I agree with the above statements to that effect.

    I don't believe in 'evil' in the way that people believe in christ's status as the son of god or in a way that derives its apparent truth from a set of doctrines handed down via religious teachings, etc.

    I tend to agree that it is not really a word that should be used in international affairs. Of course, it has a nice ring, so its gets lots of play on the international scene, but it almost always hides an agenda that is itself extremely destructive ( I mean, everyone's favorite bogeyman, Hitler, no doubt believed that the Jews were a pestilence that needed to be removed if the health of Germany/Europe was to be rescued -- the man had morals and used those morals with a practiced rhetorical flair to whip up millions behind his 'evil' bidding).

    I further tend to think that it is often the case that politicians that summon the term 'evil' for their political purposes are pandering to some of man's lowest, least trustworthy instincts and habits. By my way of thinking, it promotes a certain degree of thoughtlessness and chauvinism which is wholly unnecessary. When McCain is asked about what he intends to do about 'evil' in the world, I cringe, when he says 'we're going to defeat it' I double-cringe. What a simpering, pandering, dull-witted response (especially when the question is asked by or on behalf of some kind of poo-bah pastor who clearly means to investigate a religiously-based, objective concept of the term).

    BTK or these other people who derive sexual/personal pleasure from inflicting pain and humiliation and death are reasonably considered 'evil,' especially as their is no real moral underpinning to what they do. The pleasure principle has gone haywire with them. Here 'evil' is an adjective describing actions that are based in illness or deviance so profound that really understanding the 'nature' of the person seems difficult. Moreover, this 'evil' is primarily an extreme violation of the 'Golden Rule,' which is to say that it is not objectively 'evil,' but rather an extreme violation of widely held beliefs. There have been times when people felt that doing something horrible to certain kinds of people, whether for sexual gratification or not, did not rise to the level of 'evil' as the torture was no different than abusing an animal or some other thing that constituted abject thingness (slaves are a good example).
     
  24. NBMisha

    NBMisha 500+ Posts

    My reading comprehension must be off. I thought Coelacanth and Sangre were making complimentary points.

    Evil is fundamentally an adjective, only available to sentient beings as a value perception. Whether it exists depends on if the question is "does it exist for people" (yes), does it exist independently of people (no).

    Evil storm out there, headed this way.
     
  25. OrangeChipper

    OrangeChipper 1,000+ Posts

    "Cold" isn't a thing. It's a way of describing the reduction of molecular activity resulting in the sensation of heat. So the more heat we pull out of a system, the colder it gets. Cold itself isn't being "created." Cold is a description of a circumstance in which heat is missing. Heat is energy which can be measured. When you remove heat, the temperature goes down. We call that condition "cold," but there is no cold "stuff" that causes that condition.

    Here's another way of looking at it. Did you ever eat a donut hole? I don't mean those little round sugar-coated lumps you buy at the donut shop. I mean the hole itself. Donut holes are actually what's left when the middle is cut out of a donut. There's a space called a hole, a "nothing," the condition that exists when something is taken away. Same thing with a shadow. Shadows don't exist as things in themselves; they're just the absence of light.

    Evil is like that. Evil isn't like some black, gooey stuff floating around the universe that gloms onto people and causes them to do awful things. Evil is the absence of good, a privation of good, not a thing in itself. "

    Quoted from...The Link
     
  26. Sangre Naranjada

    Sangre Naranjada 10,000+ Posts

    Coel,
    Excellent response. Gives me something to chew on.

    Hornius really juiced this thread up with his question, didn't he?
     
  27. Hornin Hong Kong

    Hornin Hong Kong 1,000+ Posts

    Many times while playing Dungeons and Dragons I would run into evil characters.

    Aditionally there is this proof of evil:


    [​IMG]
     
  28. NBMisha

    NBMisha 500+ Posts

    I have an idea, forming in my head.
     
  29. Hornin Hong Kong

    Hornin Hong Kong 1,000+ Posts

    Og's got an idea.
     
  30. accuratehorn

    accuratehorn 10,000+ Posts

    I believe one of the key questions of religion and philosophy involves evil-are people born evil (all people), and must rely on their religion/philosophy/value systems to keep them from falling into "evil," or are they born good, and evil is some type of aberration, bad choices, mental illness, or other flaw of mind or character?
    I agree that many things called "evil" depend on your point of view, especially in wartime. The victor gets to define evil after the event, and prosecute the losers for their evil acts, for example. The winner's acts aren't evil, because they won, which proves God was on their side.
    We say Japan was evil because they bombed Pearl Harbor and mistreated POW's. We say Germany was evil, for national agression and the Holocost. Japan says we were evil for dropping the atomic bombs on them, and Germany says we were evil for fire bombing Dresden, a civilian target city.
    It's not all black and white, but many see things that way.
    Somebody like Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, binLaden, I would call them evil. Are they sick, mentally ill, inately evil, or convinced that what they were doing was right in their warped value system? I don't know-difficult questions to try to wrap your mind around.
     

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