Originally posted by Bardock42
I am aware of my actions? Well, yes I am. And I might find them myself wrong or right. But they are not evil...or good for that matter.
There you have it! You are aware of your actions. By all means you know your actions will have either a postive or negative response (or even sometimes neither) Someone who is aware of his/her actions and causes severe harm to others by all means is evil. Being aware of your own actions ALSO leads to awareness of the consequences. If a murderer knows he'll get the chair for killing 10 people and still does it then he is just evil. The insanity plead is out the window. He fully accepts the consequences of his actions by killing those people.
Originally posted by WrathfulDwarf
There you have it! You are aware of your actions. By all means you know your actions will have either a postive or negative response (or even sometimes neither) Someone who is aware of his/her actions and causes severe harm to others by all means is evil. Being aware of your own actions ALSO leads to awareness of the consequences. If a murderer knows he'll get the chair for killing 10 people and still does it then he is just evil. The insanity plead is out the window. He fully accepts the consequences of his actions by killing those people.
No, positive and negative are subjective terms....falsereasoning. just because I know my actions doesn't mean they have positive or negative effects.
Originally posted by WrathfulDwarf
There you have it! You are aware of your actions. By all means you know your actions will have either a postive or negative response (or even sometimes neither) Someone who is aware of his/her actions and causes severe harm to others by all means is evil. Being aware of your own actions ALSO leads to awareness of the consequences. If a murderer knows he'll get the chair for killing 10 people and still does it then he is just evil. The insanity plead is out the window. He fully accepts the consequences of his actions by killing those people.
Originally posted by Bardock42
No, positive and negative are subjective terms....falsereasoning. just because I know my actions doesn't mean they have positive or negative effects.
How about deductive reasoning, Bardock? If you trivialize yourself you won't get a direct response.
Originally posted by Eis
So... A homosexual that has a homosexual relationship back in Nazi Germany is evil? I mean it hurts other people, his partner, both would be excecuted and he knows it's considered wrong by the government.
Or even a jew that's hiding in some white german's house.
Breaking the law would be a wrong. Laws have a certain degrees of wrongfulness. But such thing as a sexual pleasure can't be consider as an evil. A wrongful act maybe..but evil? I don't think it would be.
Re: No one is evil.
Originally posted by Illuminati
Not Osama Bin Ladin. Not Josef Stalin. Not even Hitler. They all are just different. They have their own way of thinking... And that's the way of thinking they developed.
I have to call B.S. on that. Just because somebody thinks they're doing the right thing doesn't mean that their actions can't objectively be labeled as evil. Killing innocent people to further a poltical agenda is about as evil as it comes. The thing about this kind of "righteous" political killing is that it has a tendency to inevitably corrupt the practioner, so that where there originally might have been "pure" motivations, these eventually slip into something like sinister enjoyment.
Stalin was an evil bastard. Make no mistakes about it. He snuffed out more innocent human life to consolidate and solidify his communist empire than any indiviudal before or since. He also took great delight in staging show trials for his political victims, while personally checking their names off his personal hit list. Hitler, not evil? Maybe not compared to Stalin, but by any other comparison...The reason I rank Hitler below Stalin is that he lacked that extra spark of Stalin malice. Hitler ordered the death camps but would never visit them or allow his Gestapo inner circle to speak of them other than as euphamisms. At least in this respect, Hitler showed signs of a bad conscience. Something Stalin never demonstrated. Plus, Stalin killed something like 4 times as many people.
Other members of my evil all-star list:
Saddam Hussein and his sadistic sons Ude and Kuse.
Pol Pot
Idi Amin--our favorite cannibal dictator.
The Ayatolla Komani
Most of the Nazi inner circle.
Originally posted by Bardock42
WD, you are arguing illogically. YOu are taking your moral standards and say think they have to apply to anyone. Just because you know you'll get the electric chair for doing something doesn't make it wrong to do so.
No, no, no! in this case I'm not arguing the death penalty issue here. I'm saying that if the guy is aware that his actions and the consequences that might follow and STILL commits the murder then by all means he's committing an evil act. Let's discard the electric chair let's say he gets life in prison. Yet he still kills those 10 people. He still committing an evil act.
I'm saying that if the guy is aware that his actions and the consequences that might follow and STILL commits the murder then by all means he's committing an evil act.
Originally posted by WrathfulDwarf
No, no, no! in this case I'm not arguing the death penalty issue here. I'm saying that if the guy is aware that his actions and the consequences that might follow and STILL commits the murder then by all means he's committing an evil act. Let's discard the electric chair let's say he gets life in prison. Yet he still kills those 10 people. He still committing an evil act.
But then every act is evil? When i rescue a child from drowning I know the consequences that might follow and I might STILL commit it ...so that'S an evil act by your reasoning?
Evil is basically a concept invented by man which is used to define basically anything that is opposed to good. As moral creatures with the capacity to reason, we’ve determined that we have an obligation to be good and shun anything that may be considered “evil”. This concept was further imbedded in our psyche when religion drew seemingly clear lines to make the distinction between good and evil.
It could be said that the concept of evil is essential for our survival as a civilized race, whether or not there really is a such thing as “evil” outside our own interpretations of what that might mean. The dictionary defines evil like this:
Evil:
1 a : morally reprehensible : SINFUL, WICKED <an evil impulse> b : arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct <a person of evil reputation>
2 a archaic : INFERIOR b : causing discomfort or repulsion : OFFENSIVE <an evil odor> c : DISAGREEABLE <woke late and in an evil temper>
3 a : causing harm : PERNICIOUS <the evil institution of slavery> b : marked by misfortune : UNLUCKY
If you are religious, you would be more inclined to believe that evil is very real, and the forces of evil are at work in our everyday lives. Those of us who are not so religious would see evil as more of a moral distinction…more of an arbitrary concept. Evil exists just as much as good exists, I suppose. It’s all a matter of discretion.
Originally posted by Illuminati
Not Osama Bin Ladin. Not Josef Stalin. Not even Hitler. They all are just different. They have their own way of thinking... And that's the way of thinking they developed.
Not what I had in mind that you meant, but ok.
All of the examples you gave were driven by ideology, like a lot of people are. Ideology and socialisation makes people behaive in, what many deam as 'evil' ways.
I agree, neither of them were 'evil'...but then again, the deffinition of that word is impossible to create.
Originally posted by Bardock42
I'm afraid it wouldn't, could even be very good for humanity.
You missed the point entirely, Bardock. Doing something that is harmful to humanity(causing somone pain, or death) is objective. I agree that good and evil arent objective, but thats because they arent strictly defined.
Originally posted by Nerevar
You missed the point entirely, Bardock. Doing something that is harmful to humanity(causing somone pain, or death) is objective. I agree that good and evil arent objective, but thats because they arent strictly defined.
I did not miss the point, I guess what you are trying to say is that I actually understood the point, but explained why it is wrong. For one because "good for humanity" is kind of subjective (and when I say "kind of", I mean "totally"😉 and also, because some of the things that are "good for humanity" (subjective) are to most of you not at all moral. Now, for example I would argue that the Holocaust and the second World War were indeed good for humanity, was it good because of that? No.