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Do you believe that good and evil exist ?

Do you believe that good and evil exist ?

  • Total voters
    38
Let's forget relativism for a minute here, and I'll just let you have the ball and assume there is some kind of objective morality to all things.

Tell me something.

Is the sociopath, with his mangled neurology, baseline emotion of depression, lack of any joy in life, and inability to understand humanity really purely evil when you consider all those things, none of which he can control?

Is the soup kitchen volunteer worker, who only knows what they are doing is good because it feels good to do it, really purely altruistic when they're essentially only doing it to make themselves happy?

Name me one thing in this world that is absolutely good, or absolutely evil, beyond any debate. Because I can't think of anything.

Life is not simple. People are not simple. Motivation is not simple. All these things are really rather gray.

I understand the reason people are always trying to boil life down to the simplicity of a children's book, but you miss a lot of meaningful things for doing so. You miss out on a lot of understanding and honesty and personal growth when you cut away all of the complexity from life.
 
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SmokeAndMirrors said:
Let's forget relativism for a minute here, and I'll just let you have the ball and assume there is some kind of objective morality to all things.

Tell me something.

Is the sociopath, with his mangled neurology, baseline emotion of depression, lack of any joy in life, and inability to understand humanity really purely evil when you consider all those things, none of which he can control?

Is the soup kitchen volunteer worker, who only knows what they are doing is good because it feels good to do it, really purely altruistic when they're essentially only doing it to make themselves happy?

Name me one thing in this world that is absolutely good, or absolutely evil, beyond any debate. Because I can't think of anything.

Life is not simple. People are not simple. Motivation is not simple. All these things are really rather gray.

I understand the reason people are always trying to boil life down to the simplicity of a children's book, but you miss a lot of meaningful things for doing so. You miss out on a lot of understanding and honesty and personal growth when you cut away all of the complexity from life.
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Who is "you" ??

Medusa or William or Calamity or me ??
 
Riveroaks said:
Plato struggled with this also.

He came up with his own primitive "proof of God" and justified it that way -- that morality exists and the virtue is its own reward.

In reality, the social contract that Plato came up with independent of his proof of God is what determines whether people should treat each other decently.

In his "Politics" which is a Greek word for "what goes on in the cities" Aristotle concluded that the people are all pretty rotten and will believe anything you tell them if it sounds good. However he independently came up with "Ethics" without any proof of God.
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It is a religious belief, specifically Christian, that people can not be good if they don't know morality, and, at least according to their claims, morality can only come from God, and absolutely no place else.

it is a notion i do not share.

But know this, Jesus himself says there is no one good, that only God is good, and no one else is.
 
Medusa said:
are you one of those who claim there is no good or evil ?
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I do, but I think "good" and "evil" describe the direction an action metaphoricaly moves relative to the observer's ethical conscience. It's all relative.
 
SmokeAndMirrors said:
Let's forget relativism for a minute here, and I'll just let you have the ball and assume there is some kind of objective morality to all things.

Tell me something.

Is the sociopath, with his mangled neurology, baseline emotion of depression, lack of any joy in life, and inability to understand humanity really purely evil when you consider all those things, none of which he can control?

Is the soup kitchen volunteer worker, who only knows what they are doing is good because it feels good to do it, really purely altruistic when they're essentially only doing it to make themselves happy?

Name me one thing in this world that is absolutely good, or absolutely evil, beyond any debate. Because I can't think of anything.

Life is not simple. People are not simple. Motivation is not simple. All these things are really rather gray.

I understand the reason people are always trying to boil life down to the simplicity of a children's book, but you miss a lot of meaningful things for doing so. You miss out on a lot of understanding and honesty and personal growth when you cut away all of the complexity from life.
Click to expand...

Just because no person is absolutely good or absolutely evil doesn't mean that people don't have the capacity to do good or evil things.
 
spreston said:
It would almost seem as if...at this point in history, there is no distinguishing between good and evil. No moral absolutes.
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moral absolutes is not really about morality, it's for control over people and the masses.

And no more than an excuse to hurt people.
 
I believe good and evil are relevant terms. If you could split the world along general moral lines, making a "Good" half and an "Evil" half, and then completely eliminate the "Evil" half, whats left would be split in a similar way and seen as good and evil.
 
absolutely

just look around the world to see events of evil

read up on some of the serial killers that have roamed around just in the last 50 years or so

yes....evil exists

is it evil 100% of the time? that is an entirely different question
 
I thought that good and evil was just a social convention. Let's see if anyone can iluminate me. Please? Who instaured the definition of Good (and Evil)?
 
calamity said:
I was surprised to see that most people buy into the good and evil thing. Apparently we still have a lot of "it's black or white" folks walking the earth.
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Not at all.

Some things really are more simpler than some like to think.

Not everything though.

Some people like to inflate things so they can ride in like a whte knight and solve it, watever it may be, for their own self gratification.
 
Juan.gonzalez said:
I thought that good and evil was just a social convention. Let's see if anyone can iluminate me. Please? Who instaured the definition of Good (and Evil)?
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How about somebody shooting a twelve year old girl with a shotgun slug leaving a two inch hole through her head that you can see through?

how is that NOT evil?

i'm referring to Tookie Williams.

You can find picture of the girl that he shot and it's pretty awful thing.
 
Sociologically as you apply it...not morally. (today's culture isn't moral)
 
spreston said:
Sociologically as you apply it...not morally. (today's culture isn't moral)
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No cultures are moral. No cultures have ever been moral. No cultures will ever be moral.
 
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