I mean, in a way evil can help sometimes. When evil things happen with evil people because they brought it upon themselves... I think its a little like karma. In this way evil could be a way to do justice.
Like a murderer, a rapist, or just a corrupt politician that by getting involved in such evil deeds open themselves for evil to be comitted against them too.
In other situations we could use evil to defend ourselves against it if we are defenseless. Sometimes, extreme aversion for evil can make us defenseless, and if we feel free to use evil as a weapon agaisnt evil we would be more safe. Pacifism, and moralism can be weaking sometimes, so in some situations maybe "The means does justify the ends".
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All things have the potential of good or evil, but there is no such thing as pure good or pure evil, there is always a mix. So something that is evil could have a good effect. As for example; what Hitler did was evil, but because we saw what he did, we are more aware of the potential evil that can be done. If the world learns from this lesson and never forgets, then that would be a good that came from evil.
There is no such thing as evil. Everything is relative. 5 billion people may percieve an act, thought or idea as evil while 100 percieve it as good. People believe Hitler's actions and intentions were evil, yet he did not....go figure. The word evil itself is merely an aural/visual representation of a person's thoughts and/or feelings........
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I agree, however, I keep things simple, and talk about good and evil. I use expedient means to bring people to an understanding. Most people will not understand what you are talking about; I could be wrong.
Evil itself is always bad, regardless of consequences.
Intent > Action > Consequence
If the intent and/or action are evil, or lacking good, the consequence is irrelevant. No one gets into a car accident and goes "Well, my mom died, but at least I don't have to put her in a nursing home or pay car insurance anymore." To define evil as anything other than bad would be like saying darkness can sometimes be light. And the analogy connection there is that while both ideas need each other to contrast and thus be identified, it doesn't mean they are interchangeable. If anything, making them or their products interchangeable would disrupt the meaning. Good itself cannot be evil, nor can good acts, though the consequence can be viewed as "bad" or "unfortunate" if it was not viewed as beneficial or in accordance with moral good.
Example: a surgeon intends to save a patient's life (good) and performs life saving surgery (good) but the patient dies (bad or evil outcome). Why would we believe that the intent and action were possibly evil because of the consequence? Medicine is a good in that it allows people to aid and save lives. But people can be allergic and it can kill people. Is it thus evil? Was the medicine itself evil for being an instrument of an evil outcome, even though the intent and action was essentially good in nature?
No, that doesn't make any sense. And neither does the idea of evil being "good" sometimes. Now, it may be your point that evil can inadvertantly cause some good, but this isn't a philosophical revelation or a reason to reevaluate the notion of evil; it's just the way things happen. Consider this: I drop a coin of Fate. It will cause a chain of reactions that will eventually either war or peace, an outcome which I cannot predict nor affect. If I drop the coin, and it causes peace, does that determine that my intent was to cause peace? No. Because of all the variables in life, we cannot determine 100% all outcomes. Therefore the outcome of an action should not determine its nature as good or bad, but the action and intent should, which we DO have control over.
Anyways, the nature of consequences does not preclude objective morality and prove consequentialism.
That's a particularly subjective and religious approach to the issue. I could say that believing in good or bad neccessitates both, but that's just rhetoric and nonsense. Intent is separate from action in that not all intents are realized, while actions always are. Also, not all actions come from intentions; there are forced actions or poorly thought-out actions as well.
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When you think something it creates karma that is malleable or that can be changed. Example; lets say you work night shift and go home at 3:00 am everyday. You come to an intersection, a stop sign, and there is never anyone crossing when you stop. If you think, “why am I stopping, there is never anyone here?” you have created karma that my lead you down a bad path. After doing this for months, you just decide to go through the stop sign with a causes look both ways. You have now set that karma into action, but only because you first created the malleable karma. As time goes by you get more and more relaxed about this intersection until one day you hit a car that you didn’t see because you didn’t look for it, because you didn’t think you needed to. Karma is nether good nor evil it is both.
This is a religious viewpoint and a rather over introspective one in my opinion. While I'm fond of the phrase "What goes around..." I don't seriously believe in some mystical and predefining force such as "karma", and I don't accept it as a rational answer to my points, either.
But it is interesting to see someone who does believe.
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What is good and evil?
I have noticed that dependent opposites are usually abstractions of some other thing. So, good and evil are really two aspects of something. What do you think that could be?
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Please don’t be distracted by religious terms. Karma is not something mystical, although it is sometimes conveyed in that way. Karma is simply put, the totality of cause and effect at every moment. I’m not talking about karmic choice which would be a mystical aspect of karma, just the mechanism of cause and effect.
__________________ I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species that I realized you aren't actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. And the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we...are the cure.
Karma is not supernatural, it is more psychological, an explanation for why some suffer, and some do not.
Anyway, what do you have agaisnt religious viewpoints ? Independetly of being used in religion it is philosophy. Your opinion is just philosophy like them, why is your opinion any more right ?
Arguing all-encompassing ideas of cause and effect is rather misleading in an argument about is evil sometimes good. That's like trying to find the original cause of all, since that would in effect be the original point of good acts and bad acts. The topic is too vast with too many variables to use in debate for anything other than amusement or rhetoric. How can intent, whether realized or not, affect the order of cause and effect in the world anyways? How would you prove that without resorting to pseudomysticism?
Firstly, the idea of karma IS supernatural.
kar·ma )
n.
Hinduism & Buddhism. The total effect of a person's actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person's existence, regarded as determining the person's destiny.
Fate; destiny.
Informal. A distinctive aura, atmosphere, or feeling: There's bad karma around the house today.
None of those are practical and nonreligious or mystical answers.
Secondly, I think religion has no real place in a debate. When you have religion, you have inherited or mythos based ideals and beliefs that aren't supported by logic. And if I'm arguing rationally, why combat my points with that?
I combat thy objective and rational thought with my own personal beliefs!
Gender: Male Location: Southern Oregon,
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You took what I was saying too far. I was trying to limit my use of the word karma in my second post, but you still took it too far.
Intent is a cause. If you intend to pick up a pencil, you will start the process of picking up the pencil. If I think I wish you were dead, then I have created a cause that at that moment has an effect on me and me alone. I may do nothing about it, but what I’ve already done is done. Therefore, intent is an action.
IMO
I do not believe in good or evil. To me, they are tools for describing something. So, by thinking I want to kill someone, I have brought myself down to a lower level then I wish to be. My intent has created an effect and I have suffered because of it. With in the constraints of myself, that kind of thinking is evil, but I can learn from it and become a better person. So, there is evil turning into good.
The answer all depends on what 'you' consider to be 'evil'. Because no one, not even Osama Bin Laden does what they do just to be evil- they always have an alterior motive that, in their head, justifies what they do in a 'good' way.
Evil as you define it can include war and violence, but total oversion of such things could only lead to more of it unless there could one day be a society where people for the most part lived in peace with eachother.
So evil by your standards isnt always bad- but evil can NEVER be good. Mostly because it is a paradox. Good things can come from evil but the act itself is always bad.
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KMC Community Forums
Mar 22nd, 2006 05:01 PM
I don't want them to know what I'm doing. 
