For good people to do bad things...

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

My point that it is surely bad people who would do this and not good.

I understand and disagree completely.


The whole point is that essentially good people can and do commit bad acts;

EG The brutalised wife who kills her brutal husband. The frazzled mother who shakes her baby to death.
The soldier who obeys the order to shoot an innocent civilian,lest he be shot.


Two broad and graphic examples; the bad behaviour of many good (atheist) people during the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism


The sincere savagery of literally MILLIONS of essentially good young (atheist) ) kids during Mao's Cultural Revolution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution


In my life,the majority of people I've met are essentially good. I can think of perhaps two people I've ever met I thought were bad people. Completely good people are also rare in my experience.

I'd be interested in a [humanist] formula which works out at what point a good person becomes a bad person. Are there varying degrees of badness? How does one decide? Easy to point at extremes, such as Hitler or Stalin,but what about those in the middle on on the edges? Does a good man become a bad man for saying nothing against evil,or by simply going into denial?

Speaking of Hitler,to see how essentially good (religious and non religious) people can do bad things,I recommend [the controversial]: "Hitler's Willing Executioners; Ordinary Germans And The Holocaust" (Daniel Jonah Goldhagen)