Know the death and after it.

Originally posted by percept
Hi there,

When spiders can't see sky due to it's blindness it doesn't mean that there is no sky. Similarly if we can't see soul through our necked eyes it doesn't means that there is no soul. So many people had realised it. Evil are the demons and goods are the angels . A demon is bad for every one and Angles are good to everyone.

Regards
Percept

However, the soul, demons and angels are part of mythology, and are not real. They are symbolic of parts of reality that are real, but have no substance within themselves. They were invented by people of the past who did not know how the human body and mind really worked. However, these people were not stupid. They could see how people behaved and needed to find a way to understand something that was beyond their comprehension. They came up with stories that helped them understand how humans behave, and in a limited way, these stories worked.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Not everyone has a religion. Not everyone with a religion uses it to define their morals.

Many atheists are moral relativists. All objectivists are. Perspectivists (like Nietzsche) are moral relativists be definition, I believe. Most sane people can think of situations where killing someone is at least justified if not highly moral.

As far as I know Satanists actually embrace hedonism not "being evil". In fact something like murder would no be Satanistic because a) people typically don't enjoy murder and b) if you're caught it makes life difficult.

Perhaps religion was not the best example, because as you mentioned, not everyone belongs to a religion. People however still expect a sort of standard of bahavior from one another. You always hear people saying things like "How would you like if I did the same to you?" "Give me a bit of your's and I'll give you a bit of mine." or "What did he/she ever do to you?" and so on.

No matter what religion you do or not belong to, if any, people still ask these sort of questions. They don't simply ask them because what the other person may have done displeases them in some way, but like I said, they seem to be appealing to some standard of behaviour which they expect the other person to know about. I believe, personally that this law of "Right" and "Wrong" or "Good" and "Evil" is for the most part extremely similar for most humans.

As for sanity, you don't have to be insane to have "evil" thoughts, and try to justify them.

Just my opiniopn though. I'm too much of a pacifist sometimes.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Are you sure that Murder = evil? If someone were to have murdered Hitler during WWII, would that have been evil? The same is true about compassion towards your fellow human beings. Sometimes all that compassion does is enable people to do evil.

The act of murder is evil, whether he deserved to die or not. I personally don't believe it is up to us to decide. At the same time though I support capital punishment for certain kinds of crime (kiddie rapists and murderers etc.) So I guess I somewhat contradict my own views. That's just my human nature surfacing.

As far as compassion, if one is driven to do further evil once shown some compassion, then they are the evil one, not the person that showed compassion. Figting evil with evil only begets more evil.

Originally posted by Kosta
Perhaps religion was not the best example, because as you mentioned, not everyone belongs to a religion. People however still expect a sort of standard of bahavior from one another. You always hear people saying things like "How would you like if I did the same to you?" "Give me a bit of your's and I'll give you a bit of mine." or "What did he/she ever do to you?" and so on.

Not to be cliche but talk really is cheap.

Originally posted by Kosta
No matter what religion you do or not belong to, if any, people still ask these sort of questions. They don't simply ask them because what the other person may have done displeases them in some way, but like I said, they seem to be appealing to some standard of behaviour which they expect the other person to know about. I believe, personally that this law of "Right" and "Wrong" or "Good" and "Evil" is for the most part extremely similar for most humans.

They probably do. Unfortunately history has mountains of evidence that people are very elastic about "Right" and "Wrong" especially when it applies to themselves.

Originally posted by Kosta
As for sanity, you don't have to be insane to have "evil" thoughts, and try to justify them.

I never disputed that. However, there are very few actions that are "evil" or "good" simply due to the existance of context.

For example:
Murder. Bad, right? What if it stops the guy from blowing up a building full of innocents (and you)? His life simply is not worth the same as all those people.

Lying? Bad, right? But this time its just for a surprise party.

Setting fire to a small child? Bad, right? He's the nexus point for a Loveraftian alien invasion that will tear its way out of his skull and torturing everyone in the galaxy to death an burning him alive is the only way to stop them. (it could totally happen)

Originally posted by Kosta
...The act of murder is evil, whether he deserved to die or not. I personally don't believe it is up to us to decide. At the same time though I support capital punishment for certain kinds of crime (kiddie rapists and murderers etc.) So I guess I somewhat contradict my own views. That's just my human nature surfacing.

As far as compassion, if one is driven to do further evil once shown some compassion, then they are the evil one, not the person that showed compassion. Figting evil with evil only begets more evil.

You just proved my point. There are times when an act we would normally call evil is in fact good. It is good to stop a mass murderer, even if that means to murder that person.

Have you ever heard of "tough love"? Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is withhold compassion. For example; if you give an alcoholic on the street money because you are being compassionate, what you are really doing is enabling that person's addiction, and enabling someones addiction is evil.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
You just proved my point. There are times when an act we would normally call evil is in fact good. It is good to stop a mass murderer, even if that means to murder that person.

Have you ever heard of "tough love"? Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is withhold compassion. For example; if you give an alcoholic on the street money because you are being compassionate, what you are really doing is enabling that person's addiction, and enabling someones addiction is evil.

Giving someone money is a morally neutral act unless you know for certain (or intend) that the person will use it for destructive ends. And to further your point it could be that the person has turned to alcohol because no one ever cared about her and that single act of compassion might turn her entire life around. Yet another (sappy) layer of moral grey.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Giving someone money is a morally neutral act unless you know for certain (or intend) that the person will use it for destructive ends. And to further your point it could be that the person has turned to alcohol because no one ever cared about her and that single act of compassion might turn her entire life around. Yet another (sappy) layer of moral grey.

My point was that good and evil are relative, and not clear cut. 😄