Well, I guess people in the past called some people and deeds evil, but today we try to understand the source of the problem and thus avoid it. Like, Charles Whitman shot all those people because he had a brain tumor. Or Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK because he had a terrible childhood and thus had mental diseases.
So if we explain their evil deeds are they still evil or "just" ill?
Then there are societal evil deeds where for example JFK ordered Agent Orange to be thrown - was he evil? He didn't seem evil but he did evil things.
Or the great evil that we all do - pollution. We are killing ourselves and our descendants with evil deeds that could be curbed if we were more reasonable or should I say "more good". So does this mean that we are all evil?
Maybe it all means that notions of evil and good are too simplistic and that the world is more complicated.
But we still use the term evil when something is an immediate threat and there is no time and means to understand that evil - like let's say Putin right now.
So if we explain their evil deeds are they still evil or "just" ill?
Then there are societal evil deeds where for example JFK ordered Agent Orange to be thrown - was he evil? He didn't seem evil but he did evil things.
Or the great evil that we all do - pollution. We are killing ourselves and our descendants with evil deeds that could be curbed if we were more reasonable or should I say "more good". So does this mean that we are all evil?
Maybe it all means that notions of evil and good are too simplistic and that the world is more complicated.
But we still use the term evil when something is an immediate threat and there is no time and means to understand that evil - like let's say Putin right now.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
