IS EVIL REAL? OR, LIKE GOD, A HUMAN INVENTION?
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Unseen 5 years, 11 months ago.
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The proper antonym of ‘good’ is ‘bad’. The term ‘evil’ is a giving up of the possibility to make the ‘bad’ become less so, or even good. It’s populism can most probably be linked to religion or group thinking. There is no real antonym to ‘evil’ I don’t believe in ‘evil’, I think it’s a perjurative term.
You need to tell the lexicographers that “good” isn’t the antonym of “evil.” They also list “virtuous” and “beneficial.” Take your pick.
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This reply was modified 6 years ago by Unseen.
Humans are primates. An animal. Religion pretends that we are a special animal, endowed by our creator as a soul and the gift or curse of knowing good and evil and having to male the right choices. However, animals don’t judge each other creatures as good or evil as species OR individuals. Are we somehow qualitatively different from squirrels, amoebae, porpoises, or elephants? But isn’t Evil a sort of thing just like God that people invented? Not real, but just something we think (or hope) is real, just as we think goodness is real?
If evil isn’t a human invention (as a concept), then wouldn’t you be forced to say that evil exists on its own and would still operate in the world had every other creature evolved save humans? Is a male lion evil for killing off the cubs fathered by another male? Are lampreys or tapeworms evil?
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This reply was modified 6 years ago by Unseen.
Evil on other hand describes deliberate harm and intentional cruelty to a shocking degree.
Unfortunately it is not that simple. Unseen is right in two ways. First, Evil is a terribly terribly vague term and it does not objectively describe a certain kind of human behaviour but instead many overlapping patterns of human behaviour, rooted in culturally based judgement and endlessly inconsistent interpretations. In one definition it is “pointless cruelty” in another it is “systemaically and habitually objectifying and degrading multiple people (often a group of people)” and then there is the “mass sociopathy or individual psychopathy”. Definitions of evil are so differing and widespread, it is a term that should go the way of the dustheap, to the flames. It is also a term so deeply rooted in religion, especially for us, monotheism…that it carries with it a kind of Jewish/Christian baggage that makes it difficult not to see evil as some kind of force or even anthropomorphised character of its own. For all these reasons, evil is a human construct and we would be far better off to consider each of these differing patterns of behaviour more objectively, and hopefully separately.
Studying “mass sociopathy” for example…the ability for a group of otherwise praiseworthy individuals turning on a group of other people, objectifying them and showing no empathy/sympathy for their suffering…is currently being studied in multidisciplinary reasearch and has yielded a LOT of useful information. If we dispense with the concept of EVIL here, we actually shed a lot of baggage, not see evil as some force that can spread or exist in some diabolical sphere of its own…but instead how through group social dynamics under certain common conditions we are highly suseptible to increasing sociopathy and psychopathy. The concept of evil gets in the way, muddies things and even helps religion extend its confusing and useless hand into the fray.
Or we can study the individual, how one person who is a psychopath and/or sociopath can be outwardly charming and able to manipulate others around them while inwardly showing not the slightest care for others, calculatingly achieving their own goals, often the sustained suffering of others. This is yet another pattern of human behaviour that is sufficiently different to the earlier pattern (group think) that it really should be considered apart from it, that is, not all grouped together into one concept of Evil. They are two quite different patterns of behaviour, with different origins and a very different path towards inflicting suffering and trying to counter and or end it.
Add to this many other patterns of human behaviour and the term evil become some bloated useless term that only brings confusion and a lack of useful information. Evil should be left to Christians and their pointless useless search for the “problem of Evil”. A non-problem in my humble opinion. The question of evil, the ridiculous persuit of chritians trying to square a circle…explain how horrid suffering can exist in a world with an all good and all loving creator. This is where the term Evil should stay. This is why evil is just a human construct.
Secondly, Unseen is right in the other sense. Those who suffer a certain kind of mental problems (lumped into term evil), who are extreme sociopaths and psychopaths suffer specific mental problems which can be identified in the brain, and through counciling and possibly medication, hopefuly be cured (even a little). To what extent that perrson is responsible for their unthinkable crimes, is still hard to tell, but psychologists and analytical philosophers of psychology are leaning towards a “lack of responsibility” in the same light as, those who suffer from temporary insanity or PTSD committing crimes completely inconsistent with their normal behaviour done under extreme conditions.
As for a group of people, say during the French revolution when a group of people beheaded thousands whether they were guilty or not, it is much more difficult to say if they are responsible with what happened during mass hysteria. The fact that others, under the same conditions did not commit unspeakable crimes, suggests that people are at the very least, partially responsible for the cruelty and harm they inflict. It still needs to be studied more.
Hopefully without the concept of evil getting in the way.
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This reply was modified 5 years, 12 months ago by
Davis.
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This reply was modified 6 years ago by
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