Evil - What is it according to who?

Re: Evil - What is it according to who?

Grayson said:
Evil can't predate Religion as Religion came with language and the ability to conceptualise ourselves and our place in the world. You can't conceive of something unless you have the language to describe it. So, human development, language and Religion are inextricably interrelated.

Do you think Cro Magnon man had any feeling of doubt, villainy or even the slightest concept of evil when they ousted Neanderthal man out of creation? I don't think so, they did it solely for survival and they did it without compunction. Was evil, the protean force of malevolence steering them down a path of global supremacy of the Neanderthal Untermensch? NO, evil wasn't waiting to exist in a far more developed mind either. Evil has no place in the evolutionary tree, you can't find a single skeleton of this being and there are no records of evil's cousin, Sin, either. Evil is what we define it to be, evil is the south to our moral North and that's only for those of us who define evil by white christian values. Evil is a different being altogether in minds not indoctrinated by Jesus, God and the Devil, so if evil predates man, why doesn't all of man understand the beast in the same way?

Is America evil? A good third of the world's people seem to think so.

Can a Nation be evil? Is evil that powerful, that elastic that it can encompass and subsume a whole Nation?

Or, is evil simply in the minds of men who choose to do no good?

Before we could choose to do no good, we only did what we needed to in order to survive and in doing that, no evil existed did it. Evil evolved along with is, we nurture it and cosset it and we perform acts of evil on scales to horrible to consider, but it is ours, we own it, we gave birth to it and Religion showed us where it lurked.
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That's alot of conclusions to jump to. If I look at my dog, for example, I wouldn't go so far that she understands the difference between good and evil but she understands the difference between right and wrong given the way I've raised her. When she does wrong, she seems to know she has before I even say anything, she hides or walks with her tail between her legs, there are other signs as well. I wonder if a simple system of right and wrong exists in other animals that don't have the human conscience? I'll agree there's a definitely a big step in intelligence where concepts of right and wrong take that next level jump into the realm of the supernatural good and evil, but I think the basic concept of right and wrong exists in all animals with some sign of intelligence, even if they teach it from one to the next. In the "forbidden experiemnts" animals without interaction develop psychosis, so it's a safe bet to say the same would happen with humans.. So if you're asking if the concept of right and wrong existed before modern humans? I would say yes. Evil religion didn't exist before the imaginative people that invented it, but the foundation was always there. Right and wrong evolved from doing whatever was necessary to preserve their way of life, maybe?
 
Re: Evil - What is it according to who?

Six-month-old babies 'can tell right from wrong'

Researchers asked infants of various ages to choose between characters which they had seen behaving well or badly, and found they overwhelmingly favoured the "good" characters.
One-year-old babies who were asked to take treats away from a "naughty" puppet in some cases went so far as to lean over and smack it on the head.
The research, which is being pioneered by a team of psychologists from the Infant Cognition Centre at Yale University, Connecticut, contradicts the belief promoted by psychologists such as Sigmund Freud that babies are born "amoral animals" and acquire a sense of right and wrong through conditioning.
In another experiment, babies aged between six months and a year watched an animated film in which a red ball with eyes tries to climb a hill while a yellow square tries to help push it up from behind and a green triangle tries to force it back down.
At the end of the film, scientists tested which shape the babies favoured by measuring how long they spent looking at a picture of each one. In 80 per cent of cases, the babies chose the helpful character over the unhelpful one.
Paul Bloom, the professor of psychology who heads the study team, said: "A growing body of evidence ... suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.
"With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone."
One-year-old babies who watched one rabbit puppet trying to snatch a ball from a toy cat while a second rabbit puppet tried to return it chose to punish the "naughty" puppet by confiscating some sweets it had been given earlier. Some also smacked the rabbit on the head without being prompted.
Peter Willatts, a senior lecturer in psychology at Dundee University, said: “You cannot get inside the mind of the baby. You cannot ask them. You have to go on what most attracts their attention.
“We now know that in the first six months babies learn things much quicker than we thought possible. What they are born with and what they learn is difficult to divide.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...nth-old-babies-can-tell-right-from-wrong.html

Thought this was a pretty interesting article pertaining to the discussion of whether or not we are born with a moral compass.
 
thedude said:
I think evil is intentionally causing suffering with pleasure and little remorse. That and of course Ouija boards.
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Can you explain a bit more ? What is evil then and why does it have to cause suffering ? I hardly believe it's only for pleasure, there's always some reason ? To feed something perhaps ?
 
Evil can be defined in many ways, ask yourself, is the child who kills a spider evil? Even if he does it out of fear? Is the man who runs over an innocent woman evil? Even if it is an accident? If that driver owns up to his crime, is he still evil? If he runs away from the crime due to fear, is he more evil than the driver who owned up to the crime?

There are lots of ways a person can be defined as "evil", but as you can see, it seems most of them are judged and governed by one main factor; fear.
 
Yep, these are great examples Mikey. It's in the end a matter of perspective isn't it ? I guess there's no real way to define what is evil exactly, according to who, when, why, etc. Sometimes, doing the right thing might be perceived as evil by someone, and it makes sense. Look at all those wars in history. Were one side more evil than the other ? I don't think so, it was opinions and conflicts colliding.

Does that make sense ?
 
Numenorean7 said:
Yep, these are great examples Mikey. It's in the end a matter of perspective isn't it ? I guess there's no real way to define what is evil exactly, according to who, when, why, etc. Sometimes, doing the right thing might be perceived as evil by someone, and it makes sense. Look at all those wars in history. Were one side more evil than the other ? I don't think so, it was opinions and conflicts colliding.

Does that make sense ?
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Was Hitler evil, Stalin? Churchhill? Who knows, remember also that the victor writes the history books. Yours made perfect sense, yes. I just wish I could've made mine more detailed, but I couldn't without muddling it all up.
 
Yes it is always a matter of perspective since everyone justifies there own actions in order to have a free conscience while carrying out wrong doing. People justify murder, adultery, doing drugs and there are always reasons. When it is evil is when it is intentionally harming with no remorse as in Hannibal Lector or Hitler. Some people may even gain pleasure out of inflicting pain and people I'm sure are very aware of when people are in pain. Accidentally killing someone isn't evil but accidentally shooting someone 15 times is a bit excessive. Revenge is usually evil even with the best of reasoning but sometimes we can understand revenge and the reasoning used. Even if we understand the reasoning it doesn't make murder the right thing to do and I'm not usually one to justify killing just cause it was the good guys doing it.
 
Keroscene said:
Re: Evil - What is it according to who?



That's alot of conclusions to jump to. If I look at my dog, for example, I wouldn't go so far that she understands the difference between good and evil but she understands the difference between right and wrong given the way I've raised her. When she does wrong, she seems to know she has before I even say anything, she hides or walks with her tail between her legs, there are other signs as well. I wonder if a simple system of right and wrong exists in other animals that don't have the human conscience? I'll agree there's a definitely a big step in intelligence where concepts of right and wrong take that next level jump into the realm of the supernatural good and evil, but I think the basic concept of right and wrong exists in all animals with some sign of intelligence, even if they teach it from one to the next. In the "forbidden experiemnts" animals without interaction develop psychosis, so it's a safe bet to say the same would happen with humans.. So if you're asking if the concept of right and wrong existed before modern humans? I would say yes. Evil religion didn't exist before the imaginative people that invented it, but the foundation was always there. Right and wrong evolved from doing whatever was necessary to preserve their way of life, maybe?
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I never jump to conclusions as I am too lazy. I may wander up to them from time to time, but jump, never.

Your dog gets its sense of right and wrong from you. You taught it, you conditioned it in true Pavlovian fashion. The evidence is empirical, it knows when it has done wrong.

Right and wrong aren't the same as good and evil. Animals of any intelligence don't know right from wrong. They know what their flange, pack, or other named collective will and won't accept, but that's to do with not being bitten, eaten or otherwise gnashed, snarled at or punched by the boss animal. Chimps will collectively hunt down other chimps families and tear them to bits and eat them raw when some tribal trigger fires in their otherwise friendly little heads. Is that right? To the chimps it is, to us it's just plain wrong.

To determine right from wrong, good from evil, you must first define the architecture of the morality you are going to employ. You have ascribed human values to a mutt and jumped to a broad conclusion over intelligent animal values. You are applying human architecture to animal morality and that won't fly dude.

*Strolls away from the debate...
 
thedude said:
Yes it is always a matter of perspective since everyone justifies there own actions in order to have a free conscience while carrying out wrong doing. People justify murder, adultery, doing drugs and there are always reasons. When it is evil is when it is intentionally harming with no remorse as in Hannibal Lector or Hitler. Some people may even gain pleasure out of inflicting pain and people I'm sure are very aware of when people are in pain. Accidentally killing someone isn't evil but accidentally shooting someone 15 times is a bit excessive. Revenge is usually evil even with the best of reasoning but sometimes we can understand revenge and the reasoning used. Even if we understand the reasoning it doesn't make murder the right thing to do and I'm not usually one to justify killing just cause it was the good guys doing it.
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God sayeth, 'Thou shalt commit no murder'.

God sayeth, 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'.

Murder is bad, revenge killings are allowed. According to Holy work, murder is evil, revenge isn't.
 

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