Evil

[Wyrd of Gawd]

God =dog
Devil = lived

[downbeatplumb]

I just love how you atheists deny the concept of Natural Law then turn around and tacitly call on it by calling it programming. Stop trying to hide your moral nihilism.

What is evil changes with the society you happen to be in. Look at ISIS they kill and rape and that is deemed "good" because they live in a society that is to our eyes skewed by fundamentalist religious beliefs. If people stopped outsourcing their morals to religious dogma the world would be a substantially better place.

[robvalue]

It genuinely scares me that some religious people practically admit they would go around maiming small animals and raping pedestrians if they didn't think there was a weird being in the sky watching them and keeping score.

It must really confuse them that atheists generally don't do these things. I think they displace this fact and just assume that they do.

[downbeatplumb]

It genuinely scares me that some religious people practically admit they would go around maiming small animals and raping pedestrians if they didn't think there was a weird being in the sky watching them and keeping score.

It must really confuse them that atheists generally don't do these things. I think they displace this fact and just assume that they do.

I know. I says a lot about their morality that thats how they think. At heart they are evil.

[robvalue]

Indeed. If what they are saying is really true, then for fuck's sake keep on believing in whatever God keeps you on a leash.

The sad thing is, most people who think this are very likely mistaken but have been conditioned to hold that opinion.

Yet, they seem almost proud about it...?

[Mudhammam]

I have to agree with Chad for a change. From what I gather, pretty much everyone who denies the objectivity of morality ends up affirming it one way or another. "From an evolutionary standpoint the survival of the species is more important than the survival of a single individual." Well, no, that's from your standpoint, and the fact that I may disagree doesn't render both of our opinions equally true.

Maybe I could attempt answering the OPs question better if he (or she) defined "evil." In my (current) view, which is probably most closely aligned with ethical naturalism, morality relates to well-being. I wouldn't call myself a consequentialist, however, because I believe that intentions are also an important part of the equation. Well-being relates to all creatures with the capacity to suffer, though the extent to which moral concepts can be said to apply to the individual or the situation is proportionate to the presence of rational agency. As human beings, we all have - barring a severe mental handicap - a minimal capacity of reason. As the power of reasoning entails the ability to survey probable future outcomes as a result of potential actions, we can consider both the ends and the qualitative nature of said ends. This is an attempt at objectivity insofar as reason is objective. As quality, which involves the internal state of the individual as well as the external state of his environment, contains a range of vast differences, good and evil, understood in the very least as theoretical terms, objectively apply, even if our ignorance of certain data, or the way we subjectively experience or interpret it, is open to variation.

[robvalue]

We have to be careful about what "morality" means.

Morality can be the observed behaviour of us as a species and how we interact with each other, or it can be each individual's ideas as about what is and isn't a good idea. We need to be clear on whether we are studying a species, or whether we're talking about an individual's thoughts on morality. These are entirely different, and much of the confusion comes from conflating them I think. Importantly, many people will not adequately be able to explain their own morality, but that doesn't make it any less real or invalidate scientific explanations.

As we're all one species, we're going to have a lot of similarity and the things which have helped us survive are going to be prevalent. So we should fully expect to see a lot of overlap. But we don't have consensus. So there are objective trends to our morality I suppose you could say.

The idea of "an objective morality" though is so ridiculous I don't know where to start. If such a thing existed somehow, it would be entirely pointless, except as an arbitrary scoring method. I think people are simply stunned by the way we generally agree on certain moral principles, and think it must be magic, when there are perfectly valid scientific explanations.

[Mudhammam]

The idea of "an objective morality" though is so ridiculous I don't know where to start. If such a thing existed somehow, it would be entirely pointless. I think people are simply stunned by the way we generally agree on certain moral principles, and think it must be magic, when there are perfectly valid scientific explanations.

Why do you say it's ridiculous, rob? And how could it be pointless? If there is such a thing as objective truth, and I don't mean something like "the sun appears in the sky every day" but something more like, "What appears to me to be the object called the Sun exists in such and such manner irrespective of my conscious apprehension of it," and that as a statement of truth which subsists in some virtual fashion regardless of whether or not there exists intelligent beings to signify it in thought or speech - then why is the idea of objective goodness so revolting? I for one would say that knowledge of what is objectively true is objectively better than ignorance.

[robvalue]

It's not so much revolting as it useless. An exhaustive list of what is moral, immoral or neither is arbitrary. If that is all morality is, then it might as well be blue, red and yellow actions. Morality isn't about truth, it's about judgement. Or at least, it should be.

My definition of personal morality is studying the consequences of actions. If the objective morality tells me that rape is moral, why should I care? What use is that?

People will say rape can't be on the moral list, because it is immoral. But how do we determine it is immoral? Through consequences.

We may be talking about two entirely different uses of the word "morality". To begin with, we can't possibly agree on what is moral until we agree on what is important. For example, if I say human life is not important, we are screwed. How exactly do you determine who is right, objectively? Neither of us are.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Does Evil exist? What is Evil?

Evil is the guy you're pissed at.

Just remember, had Germany won WWII, there would be statues of Hitler all over and the fucking church would have made him a saint because he miraculously made the jews disappear.

And Harry Truman would be remembered as the genocidal maniac who tried to wipe out the Japanese.

Boru