[Serious] Good vs Evil

[Smaug]

Culture and situations play heavily into determining good and evil, as does intent. I can imagine a situation where hitting a newborn baby without any special protection as hard as you can with a club is the least-bad choice you can make in your situation. I can't imagine a situation where doing it because it 'feels like fun' is not evil in anyone's book who isn't evil themselves. 'I believe the almighty Lord ordained that I club this baby' is something I can understand, though if I had a pistol I would not hesitate to shoot the fanatic to stop them, I could understand why they felt that they had to do it, and I would think that it was something they didn't want to do but were doing because of the situation they believed they were in (even if they only believed it because of indoctrination), but I can believe that they didn't see themselves as evil they were confused about what was good and what was evil. I could see them realizing that it was a horrific crime and repenting and never in a place where they would do it again. They could never make up for it, but they could legitimately seek redemption. 'I'm a previously functional adult and had this bat and there was this baby, and I wanted to see what would happen' is criminally insane and objectively evil, and that person should never be trusted in public again, unless we come up with a cure for murderous psychopathy.

All of which is by way of saying that I think that although much of morality is cultural and relative and situational; there comes a point where an action is evil, and if it isn't evil by your standards, your standards are wrong.

Even though good and evil are relative there are extremal points on this scale. The scary thing is that a fanatic that clubs babies may be completely genuine about his intentions. Although this may be the case where instincts kick in to leave chance for repenting. It may be so that humans have instinctive reactions against infanticide of their own kind but I don't know for sure.