(May 4, 2015 at 3:06 am)EvidenceVersusFaith Wrote: Good is about kindness and alleviating suffering. Evil is about harmful sadism, cruelty and causing needless suffering.
Very different. Can't really torture someone to death and admit you are doing it for purely sadistic reasons and then redefine that to mean good. If that's a point of view you must be too illiterate to read the dictionary definitions. The words good and evil actually have meanings that in the real world relate to the values and well being of people.
If morality pertains to the values and well being of people, then should it not pertain to every other living being as well? In fact, one could make the case that formerly living things also enjoy the right to, at minimum, be left alone . For example, one could argue that the organic beings who decomposition formed fossil fuels have the right not to be burned by combustion motors.
Another point: sadism and torture have been sources of enjoyment for a small but significant minority of people since time immemorial. Therefore to be restricted from causing pain and suffering is, for such deviant people, a source of pain and suffering How could one solve such a conundrum? Would morality then be what suits the interests of the majority of living beings? But then morality would have a very unhuman, perhaps even antihuman flavour. A morality restricted to reducing the pain and suffering of the majority of humans only would, on the other hand, discriminate against and exclude other life forms. So the question of morality's conceptual clarity is one open for debate, I should think.
