Epicurean Paradox

[genkaus]

Have you never encountered an emotion or an instance where words literally couldn't describe your perception? Language is built on semantics and often fails to fully capture the meaning of abstract ideas. I do agree, however, that abstractions are themselves created by the mind.

At that moment, yes. Eventually, no. What you are pointing out here is absence of knowledge regarding the abstraction which corresponds to perceptions or non-existence of such an abstraction. When coming across an unknown perception, either you find an abstraction that corresponds closely or create a new one.

Moreover, I didn't mean that by providing a concrete definition you made it subjective and meaningless; I meant that your definition as it stands is subjective in so much as it begs the interpretation of 'undesired'.

Subtle distinction here. Definition, as it stands, describes evil as a subjective concept. But the definition itself is objective. As an analogy, "delicious" means pleasing to taste, which by its nature makes it subjective. But the concept itself is objectively established. FYI, I personally don't subscribe to that definition either.

Suppose there are things which do exist outside of our consciousness, what them becomes of your statement that the concepts of benevolence and evil don't exist outside of ourselves? Surely they wouldn't be our 'benevolence' or our 'evil', but isn't that what we are addressing in this discussion - the disconnect between our linguistics and their application to entities outside of ourselves?

"Benevolence" and "evil" are conceptual attributes. They do not have any existence outside consciousness, neither do any other conceptual entities. So, if you are talking about their existence outside our consciousness, you are talking about them independent of mind, which is simply nonsensical.

Perhaps I misunderstood the plot line, but it seemed to me as if the creatures came to the aid of the Navi against the humans of their own accord. The energy united them, but it doesn't indicate that it specifically moved the rest of nature to fight against the human invasion. In my interpretation, the deity took no part in the violence, not to stop it, nor to fight for one side of the other. The deity was outside the realms of such violence, which was enacted by the nature (humans, Navi, creatures, etc.) itself.

Evidence 1: Just before the war, Jake went to the sacred tree and talked to the deity, telling her about the barren wasteland of earth, how humans destroy everything and how they would do the same here if she did not help them.

Evidence 2: Animals who'd not shown any cooperative behavior unless directed by pony-tail thingy, are all suddenly and simultaneously lead a coordinated attack against specific target, indicating a conscious and intelligent being.

Evidence 3: Neytiri cries out to Jake that Eywa has heard his prayers.

Evidence 4: Their wiki says so.

Regardless of which one of our interpretations of the plot is correct, we can take my interpretation as simply an example of what a non-acting deity would look like.

In which case, the deity would have been malevolent to allow the destruction of its own people.

This is where we differ, which is fine.

It is not fine if it is at the root of the debate. Unless you can establish why any supposed god would be beyond human concepts of good and evil, the Epicurean paradox would still apply.