What is evil and is it real?

[Welsh cake]

So when bomber crews during the second world war dropped their weapons

on civilian populations were they being good or evil?

Evil.

My problem is with the constant examples of allowances. ex. I passed out food to the homeless and gave them jobs over the holidays to make some money. According to some, because they were forced to stand in a line and because it wasn't all inclusive, that was evil. I should have fed more people and I should have come to them? I don't see where requiring something for something and giving it out in an orderly fashion is evil or contrary to how the laws of this universe work. From within the confines of this universe and plane of existance, effect requires cause. I don't think the cause of submission is, in and of itself, evil when good or evil is based solely off of intent and perception.

Is the fact that you are unable to help everyone less fortunate than you, make you somehow deplorable? No. I'm talking about good and evil in practical useful terms for the moment, not universal definitions, or moral implications of someone choosing 'the greater good'.

Pains me to state the obvious but we each have limits to what we can achieve with the limited resources to hand and what actions we can perform, regardless of intent (self-serving or self-denying). Your inaction isn't "evil" when you are virtually unable to help people beyond your abilities.

Only if you could have made the difference, if someone needed your assistance, did you refuse, would your inaction be labelled as either "evil", "apathetic" or "selfish".

I attribute the causes of suffering to humankind not God. Power and intellegence assumes attributes of God. perhaps he did all he needed to in the begining and we just don't see the reason or justification, more precisely the end result, of his intent.

But that's a broad assertion since there's famine and disease in our world that does cause a great deal of suffering which, more often than not, isn't directly caused by humankind. Besides, the religious scriptures assert enough times Yahweh is responsible for the majority of human suffering.