Read a portion of this thread and I feel as an 'outsider' I can bring a different perspective to the table. I'm Asatruar which is very different from christianity. I'm a polytheist as opposed to a monotheist and there are certain things that differ between some of our concepts on the balancing and sin and whatnot. What I want to comment on is the whole yin and yang/ balance idea. In my faith there are several forces that help the flow of destiny one of which is called Orlog. It works similarly to Karma to ensure that everything is balanced. Now the idea of evil against good is a purely cultural context. We look at acts of today like the school shooting that took place not too long ago and say that the perpetrater was evil. Now what he did was terrible and I hope that a thousand serpents pluck out his eyes for it but from his perspective or broken mind he wasn't evil. What the Orlog tells us is that the world will be balanced through recompense in some manner everyone will get what they deserve depending on their actions.
Since we're on the topic of evil, I'll throw in my two cents. I believe good and evil does exist; it has to. Rape, murder, torture, and many other things are emotionally appalling and just have to be evil, just as much as love, charity, and encouraging people who have lost everything which mattered to them just has to be good. There was that shooting recently when many children were killed in a school by an attacker with a gun - I just can't see that as neither good nor bad. As a christian, I believe that when adam and eve had sinned (at least 6,000, if not some billion years ago), it had caused a spiritual divorce between us and God, and ever since, we have been children without a parent running amok with confusion and pain at every turn. I think many people do evil because they don't understand, or just don't know any better; the same way a child acts out in being rebellious; since people have lost God as their parent, they have lost their moral role model and have turned to doing "what they want to do, when they want to do it, how they want to do it." It's all about people getting what they want now, saying "I want this" or "I want that", "I want revenge" or "I want more".
Well, yeah. God created a set of rules for everyone to live, which is the Bible. God is perfect, and due to this, his rules for everyone are perfect. Also remember that some of your morals may not match up with God's. If you think that humans made up the concept of morals, then why would we do that?
Please do not tempt me, while God may be perfect the bible clearly is not. I mean, it clearly contains some commands that every sensible person today has to dismiss as either evil or a product of their time. Context is very important in bible studies and morals does actually change with the times, meaning interpretation is needed to understand God's intentions behind the commands. I do not mean to be disrespectful, everyone has right to their own beliefs, I am just sharing what I have learned as a theology student. Just so you know, I am religious myself, but I do not trust the bible as I think it is flawed as I think it was written by humans, who may make mistakes. Edit. I will cover a more detailed description of my beliefs another time as they are complicated and possibly controversial.
What if in actuality, Satan is the good guy in all of this? What if Satan actually saw God's 'laws' as manipulating and fooling humanity into thinking they were puppets? The reason we have free will and freedom as a whole is because, if Christianity is right, is because Satan tricked humanity. And as a result we're thinking and living human beings. There is a difference between existing and living.
Self interest. people don't want their things taken or destroyed, they don't want to be killed either. It would seem that some value their life. The bible says a lot of things, these things were written by man. Sure they said it was the word of god, but if I write down some stuff and claim the same will people believe me? People want protection, so in creating a set of rules to follow and a fake god to upset people try to discourage that behavior.
I am a Christian, but I don't really think that if it's in the Bible, it's automatically right - that's what fundamentalist Christians would say, but not me. For example, the Earth is clearly billions of years old, and evolution clearly took place; when it comes down to it, I take the position of progressive christianity. I think it is realistic to say that the Bible is made up of human accounts and records of our relationship with God, but it is not necessarily THE WORD of God. For me as a Christian, morals are defined by two guidelines - love God, love others, and let your actions flow from that. How do I love someone if I am raping that someone, or kidnapping a family's child and torturing him/her? How could I break in to a couple's house, tie up the husband, and force him to watch as I kill his wife right in front of his eyes? How could I do what Adolf Hitler had accomplished in world war II towards jews and other "deviants" with the concentration camps, and have the capacity to justify myself? My question is, is it more evil to do these things, or to finally cure someone of aids? To give comfort to the poor and oppressed? To help someone who has been through a traumatic experience to find closure and happiness? At the end of the day, why do we as a culture have a phrase which goes "If you don't ________, then you have no soul" if we don't have some sense of morality in us to begin with? Why do we look up to and respect people who "made a difference" when, if good and evil don't exist anyway, their efforts were meaningless in the big picture? If good and evil don't exist, then everything Martin Luther King Jr had done for stopping racial discrimination was pointless. If good and evil do not exist, then this is a video about two groups of people interacting together in a neutral way, and neither of them are doing anything wrong or disturbing at all: [video=youtube;SWvWyYz9ttk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWvWyYz9ttk[/video]
Well fair enough on the bible, but I find it just wonderful how so many people decided what parts of it are truth, false or whatever else. Now as far as what's directed at Sunburn, that has my attention. Good and evil are not real. They are made up by people to attempt to keep other people from doing things that they don't want done. It's self interest. Why don't I want to be killed or have my things stolen. It's because they are mine and I kinda enjoy them sometimes. It's my interest in myself that I want people to be "good". Any action a person takes can be seen as "good" it's all a matter of perspective. I haven't seen Clockwork Orange so I can really comment on their behavior, but I'm sure the Joker could be just as good of an example. He is the sanest person in The Dark Knight, he even follows that special rule "be yourself" Martian luther King Jr, is still self interest, kinda up to a person to decide whether it's pointless. I can think of a few racist that would call it "bad". It all goes back to perspective and self interest. I rabbled,probably, I just typed what came to my head.
Baby zebra's must be killed to feed the baby lions. What one party experiences as bad (or in humanity's case as 'evil') is exerienced as positive by another party. There are many ways to look at the world. It could be a stage, a playground, or an arena. But it's not static, and it is definitely not bound to a static set of morals and values. The different human cultures may hold some vaguely similar values, but these too are subject to constant change and transformation, much like everything in the universe.
Not to judge or offend, but I found it interesting that you had spent three paragraphs defining your position that good and evil do not exist, only to contradict yourself with this statement. What was shown in the video is a depiction of the world in the sense of gang rape. If good and evil do not exist, then neither does shame - therefore, the culprits of gang rape should not feel ashamed at all for what they did to that couple, according to your position; they were just exerting the fact that they are further along the road in terms of natural selection. There is no good, or evil - everything is moral. If we decide to base everything on what is constructive or destructive - on what works, versus what doesn't - then what does that mean? What world does that create? [video=youtube;DvSaDS7M4f8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvSaDS7M4f8[/video] "If they'd rather die, then they'd better do it - and decrease the surplus population!" And to answer your question, why would anyone do that? Because they can.
> I didn't mean any offense to you personally with the statement I had made - I was only critiquing the reality which you seemed to be implying. For there to be no "good" or "evil", one can only logically conclude that, since neither exist, morals are relative; and if morals are relative, then they must be constructed in order to exist; therefore, they cannot exist on their own, and are non-existant. I admit that I had assumed more about your position then I had the information necessary to do so, and for that I am at fault, but one has to admit that for good and evil not to exist, morals as a whole must not exist on their own to begin with. >I want to say that, in some cases, there are absolute truths, and in others, there are relative truths - and more importantly, everyone believes in absolute truths. If someone disagrees with me, then they believe that it is an absolute truth that I am wrong - and in doing so has committed the fallacy of contradictory premises. That aside, I completely agree with your comparison of shame and guilt, and I feel that it was "right on target" so to speak. However in the long run, knowing the psychological reasons for feeling shame does not prove that good and evil do not exist. I admit my fault in intertwining an appeal to pathos with my argument in order to prove the existence of good and evil and that emotions do not warrant the existence of right and wrong, but one must also agree that knowing everything intellectually, even to the smallest molecule, cannot prove to us that good and evil absolutely do not exist. Emotions, morals, and intellect are each separate entities in their own right. I can know why I killed someone, and why I feel ashamed of killing someone, but that is not a valid argument on my part to warrant the fact that my killing of someone else was neither right nor wrong. >Once again, I admit fault in using oversimplification in order to drive my point. Yes, psychological factors would most likely have been in play; maybe one of the gang members did not appreciate the act they were committing but participated anyway for acceptance; maybe they each had psychological impairments to understanding socially acceptable behavior; maybe one of them had an abusive father and is now re-enacting the things his father had done in the cycle of violence. I doubt either of them woke up in the morning ten years previously to this and said "I'm going to be a gang rapist!" because not only is that ridiculous, it makes no logical sense. I apologize if I came across as ignorant - that is a mindset which I very much want to avoid and is the reason why I had recently adopted progressive christianity as a worldview over the traditional, fundamentalist christianity worldview in the first place. I don't want to be the cause of any serious conflict here, although I am seeing that serious conflict is where this conversation is headed. I don't want to fight - I just want to state my opinion that I just can't see a world without morals. I remember how I would lash out at my younger sister some years ago, and that some of the scars between us as siblings are still there. I just can't find it in myself to say that the things I said were neither right nor wrong. You have your views and I have mine, and my views are most likely biased because I am coming from my point of view alone, but lets just return to the original subject of this thread and let this go.
I admit I was getting a little aggressive on my part as well. If there's anything people need in the world today, comfort and healing is definitely it. You deserve a medal, good sir.
If you ask everyone in the world what is good and what is evil, you'll get 7 billion different answers. Since the opinions all vary, there's no real concrete definition, and morals are only valid for the individual who holds to them. Every person has different morals, and since it's so varied, there can't really be a right set. Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk 2
That was actually one of the best posts on this I have ever seen. I agree with you wholeheartedly! <3
I'd imagine the actual figure of those answers to be around ~3-4 billion. A lot of people have the same general mindset as to what is good and what is evil. The basics, with no circumstances causing said things. Murder, theft, kidnapping, etc. Most people will agree that this is 'bad' or 'evil'. Giving to the poor and stuff like that is what people will consider 'good', even if you are just doing it to gain recognition instead of actually caring about the people you're giving money to. Morality and Good and Evil will forever be subjective terms. We just know that, to ourselves, there is good and bad, and it's up to us to decide what we allow and what we don't. Most people agree on the basics, which is why laws and regulations exist. Nobody wants to lose money or time or life. If everyone had the same moral code, there would be no need for laws. It'd be a perfect society. Laws try to combine morality with procedure. Some work, some don't. Some are created to subjugate the masses and limit freedoms, which is completely different. I find these laws to be 'evil' and I oppose them because I find them so. Any law created from a faith is a flawed one if it is discriminatory towards a group of people, or the people as a whole. There is no need for a Pope or Shariah Law. We just want one because we look to them to tell us what our morals are and what we should do. Whether this is being manipulated, or just us being weak, or both, I don't know. But we have no need for either.
The Bible defines what is evil, the Qur'an defines what is evil, Buddha defines what is evil, the Torah defines what is evil, George Bush defines what is evil, Adolf Hitler defines what is evil. Und so weiter.
Good and evil are utterly meaningless terms that vary from society to society. You don't need to look to some ancient religious text to know the difference between right and wrong. What were you raised to believe? Am I doing the right thing? Does this feel right? These are the things you must ask yourself to determine whether you are behaving appropriately. Obey the law, and let your conscience be your guide, this is, in my opinion, objective morality.
