Good and Evil

[robvalue]

Dahrling: Sure I agree, violence is never something I would associate with good except for when absolutely necessary such as self defence. That's an example of when a generally evil act could become a good one, it's down to context. This could even stretch so far as to having to go to war to defend yourself. I hate war, but I can see it having justifications.

Regarding things that are no longer living, I don't personally see the problem there. If we are fairly sure something has no sentience, then it cannot suffer. Of course our actions may upset beings that are sentient, for example stamping on a corpse of someone from their family. But you could make a case for leaving them in peace, sure.

I think good and evil are pretty obvious to most well balanced people who haven't been indoctrinated into a certain narrow way of thinking. Even then, the internal moral compass can sometimes win out. People tend to agree, at least on the severe ends of things. And violence is generally seen to be evil, of course.

I just don't feel comfortable in saying that something is definitively good or evil because without someone to judge, it's arbitrary. But of course, there's always someone to judge, including the person doing the acts. I'm my own harshest critic when it comes to morality. What can be said however is whether the being performing an act believes what they are doing is good or evil.