Do you believe in good and evil?

[Lucanus]

The USA is a society in decline suffering from rampant fornication

I really don't get what you religious types have about consenting adults fucking each other. Their *fucking* bodies, their *fucking* business.

I don't really get what you mean by "Earth worship", either.

[Anomalocaris]

...who demand that all people in all historical periods act like perfectly civilized 21st century Americans.

The USA is a society in decline suffering from rampant fornication, materialism, celebrity idolization, and Earth worship. We are hardly a model civilization.

Yes indeed, none of those could come close to redeeming America from the fact that even in the 21st century it is still a barbarian society in which christians run so amok that a few even felt free to make themselves even more obnoxious than you.

[Cyberman]

The USA is a society in decline suffering from rampant fornication, materialism, celebrity idolization, and Earth worship. We are hardly a model civilization.

I rather think the economic policies connected with maintaining several wars simultaneously, against world opinion, and concomitant paranoid security probably has more to do with any decline. Drop in a few cubes of extremely shortsighted slashing of your research and manufacturing base at the educational level to appease the superstitious lobby, add some corporate unaccountability then stir briskly and find cover before the explosion.

But by all means let's blame the wickedness of the general unwashed. Damn the masses and their rampant fornication (I hate it when they get more fun than I do), materialism (which as we all know has never been synonymous with anything American), celebrity idolisation (again, a foreign concept to any society), and Earth worshipping (how dare anyone want to clean up the thing we're all standing on and make sure it's still around for our descendants).

[Whateverist]

I'd say evil, like cold, is the absence of something rather than something distinctive in itself.

[Chad32]

I'd say evil, like cold, is the absence of something rather than something distinctive in itself.

Absence of empathy, I suppose.

[Anomalocaris]

I would say evil is nothing more than a empirical cultural term used to lump behavior that appears to us to be motivated by the desire to harm us and which we are unwilling to excuse. In fact we often label as evil that which could very well be good for the majority but bad for us individually or for our small in group("socialism is evil"), The term Evil is therefore more often an opportunistically used, culturally loaded blundgeon with demonstrable utility in trying to beat down interests opposed to our own.

Neither the actual use of the term, nor the motivation behind its use, is by any means consistent, nor is there really any independent characteristic, separate from our immediate perception, that would unify all things we label as evil. So evil has no independent existence other than in our choices in labels.

[KentuckySkeptic224]

The question is too vague. Believe in... means what here? Define good and evil

By believe in I mean accept. And as to your statement to define good and evil, you actually bring up a good point that I should have been more specific in what I meant. Genuinely, I can't define what good and evil means because different people, even other atheists, have different definitions as to what these two terms mean. I guess what I'm saying is, "Do you believe in good and evil in the way that it has been taught to YOU personally?"

[The Grand Nudger]

I'd say evil, like cold, is the absence of something rather than something distinctive in itself.

I don't know Whatevs. I'm twirling a pencil. "Good" is absent (in fact, pretty much everything is absent).....so, does that mean that twirling a pencil is evil?

[Alex K]

...who demand that all people in all historical periods act like perfectly civilized 21st century Americans.

The USA is a society in decline suffering from rampant fornication, materialism, celebrity idolization, and Earth worship. We are hardly a model civilization.

Really, Chad. You look at the problems of the US of A and what sticks out to you is effing fornication and earth worship? Come on, priorities! I first thought you were joking...

[The Grand Nudger]

LOL, I wish fornication -did- stand out. We're still puritans. We aint gettin it better or more often than our parents were. Sad but true. Maybe someone should turn off their TV - that shits fantasy.....?