IS EVIL REAL? OR, LIKE GOD, A HUMAN INVENTION?

[Simon Paynton]

I think it’s necessary to treat each definition separately.

[Davis]

No Jake I don’t think that if a term becomes bothersome it should be dispensed with. You’re making a bad slippery slope argument there. Evil is a term that is so saturated with religious baggage, cultural baggage and covers such a broad range of extremely different behavioural patterns that it is really best to the flames. Good luck finding more than 5 sources which agree on a definition of evil that is at all useful for this conversation.

I agree with unseen upto the point that evil is a cultural construct and that people may not be responsible for some crimes which falls under the enormous umbrella of evil.

Unseen dips into free will, which is as always, a conversation ended. If you go there, then the conversation ought not have begun and any concepts whichsoever about: motivation, responsibility, cruelty, right and wrong, judgement and a hundred other terms are made useless, ending just about all useful conversation on topics like this.” About the only meaningful conversationi we could have is particle physics and prime numbers. And yet…wow…here we are trying to have meaningful conversations about human problems. That is a pretty different matter to trying to dispense with a bloated term where few if any meaningful conclusions can be drawn and focusing on manageable problems…in the hope of, perhaps, one day understanding “evil”…not to mention the fact that evil is rarely used seriously in contemporary psychology and ethics…but mostly left to departments of theology and the problem of evil. Free will is not.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Davis.
• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Davis.

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Evil is TOTALLY a human invention…

 

yes.

 

the answer is yes!

 

Lol

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by ..

[Simon Paynton]

Sad to say, or disillusioningly, I think you’re pretty much right, and the answer is in our hyper-sociability.  It seems that the species who are known to practice spite are those who are most social, and perhaps, being cruel for the sake of it is just one more way of relating to other people.  If we were solitary, we wouldn’t do it.  We might fight for certain reasons, as males fight over females, but not just for the sake of hurting others.  It is interesting to compare the levels of spite within the different primate species, and baboons score very high, with bonobos choosing to settle their problems a more “peaceful” way.

[jakelafort]

Davis, no slippery slope. Not even an incline.

You’re making an argument that would apply as neatly to a great many words. Your distaste for the association with religion is idiosyncratic.  If i were to whitewash language i would choose words like nigger and kike-words that cause pain and have such a dark history.

American law requires mens rea before conviction.  If the prosecution fails to prove the defendant’s requisite state of mind…

 

[Unseen]

Once you start arguing that an argument is going down a slippery slope, that assertion itself starts down a slippery slope. Before you know it, your slipping down a slope toward a horizon with an event horizon looming over it.

[Unseen]

Simon Paynton wrote:

So Unseen, your point seems to be that any human choice is imaginary, and therefore, any human behaviour based on choice has no meaning.

Umm…no. Nothing is imaginary once properly understood and categorized. Of course, we make choices. Confronted with chocolate or vanilla, we choose one or the other. The question is, when you made that choice did you magically generate an exception to the goings on in your brain or did your brain compute the answer and then tell your consciousness what it was? I think the latter makes a lot more sense, don’t you? Or, to quote the singer John Sebatian, “Do you believe in magic?”

[Davis]

Unseen wrote:

Simon Paynton wrote:

So Unseen, your point seems to be that any human choice is imaginary, and therefore, any human behaviour based on choice has no meaning.

Umm…no. Nothing is imaginary once properly understood and categorized. Of course, we make choices. Confronted with chocolate or vanilla, we choose one or the other. The question is, when you made that choice did you magically generate an exception to the goings on in your brain or did your brain compute the answer and then tell your consciousness what it was? I think the latter makes a lot more sense, don’t you? Or, to quote the singer John Sebatian, “Do you believe in magic?”

Thats incredible. You get to eat an entire cake and still have tons of leftovers! If only dealing with two incompatible positions were always this simple!!!

[Simon Paynton]

@unseen – “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?”

– I don’t understand why you would take this position, unless you have defined evil out of existence.  Clearly it exists, we see it every day, unlike God.

I can see that there are a number of different situations we would describe as “evil”.  In the video provided by @Robert, the dying [presumably] Vietnamese soldier who begs for aid from the American, and then shoots him when it is offered, commits a shocking moral violation, in the midst of extreme need, that must be described as evil.  Perhaps it is just a reflection of the “evil” of the situation.  So, this is an example in addition to “cruelty for its own sake”.

[Unseen]

Simon Paynton wrote:

@unseen – “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?” – I don’t understand why you would take this position, unless you have defined evil out of existence. Clearly it exists, we see it every day, unlike God. I can see that there are a number of different situations we would describe as “evil”. In the video provided by @robert, the dying [presumably] Vietnamese soldier who begs for aid from the American, and then shoots him when it is offered, commits a shocking moral violation, in the midst of extreme need, that must be described as evil. Perhaps it is just a reflection of the “evil” of the situation. So, this is an example in addition to “cruelty for its own sake”.

Umm… No. The idea that evil is something eternal and independent of human ideation is untenable. Like Beauty (the capitalization intentional) Evil is subject to fashion. Just as at one time women wore dresses with bussels to make them look like they had an incredibly gigantic ass, what is Evil varies from place to place and time to time. Like bussels, what is Evil is a matter of fashion with no eternality to it. In 500, years people may look back on our time and see much of what we prefer and take for granted today as entirely Evil.

I assume I don’t have to list all the things done in the past, considered right and proper at the time, that we consider Evil today.

 

[Simon Paynton]

Again, it depends how you define evil, and each definition will be a different case.  If we define it as spite, then spite is real, and the process of labelling it “evil” as a conceptual category of situation is uniquely human.  But at least baboons can be very spiteful, so humans are not the only species that show this behaviour.

[Simon Paynton]

Rock’n’roll has been described as evil, and surely because it was called “animalistic”.  But both rock’n’roll and the conceptual label of “animalistic” are uniquely human.

[Davis]

Unseen wrote:

I assume I don’t have to list all the things done in the past, considered right and proper at the time, that we consider Evil today.

Indeed. Unseen has pointed out something we overlooked. Not only is “evil” conceptually questionable (all over the place really), but what actions in particular are considered obviously evil (or seems universally considered evil)…are also shifting and rarely permanent. Even things like murder, rape, torture, enslavement…may not be considered evil by an overwealming majority of the population of a civilised country (the death penalty in the US, virtually enslaved fruit-pickers in Canada, date-rape in Italy, interrigation tecniques of suspected terrorists in the UK.

Send the concept of evil to the flames. For so many reasons.

[Unseen]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Again, it depends how you define evil, and each definition will be a different case. If we define it as spite, then spite is real, and the process of labelling it “evil” as a conceptual category of situation is uniquely human. But at least baboons can be very spiteful, so humans are not the only species that show this behaviour.

But don’t you see that the evil that’s subject to various definitions isn’t the Evil-with-a-capital-E to which I was referring, and which doesn’t seem to exist.

[jakelafort]

Unseen, you sort of contradict yourself in the introduction when you say religion pretends we are special and then you in essence say we are special cuz other animals don’t judge (we do) -an idea without evidence and i disagree with that idea.

This convo is kinda silly.  We have to distinguish between evil that is associated with supernatural which is undeniably a human invention-a construct and would be better jettisoned in the trash heap of bad ideas and evil as an expression of a person or culture’s idea of the most vicious and malevolent behavior.

The former is fake.  The latter is real and whether we use evil or unga bunga to express how aghast we are at the act every dialect or language will have some way to say …holy fuckin shit do you believe anybody can be so ….

Languages evolve and words have multiple-meanings,  ambiguities and connotations  which  give writers and orators the flexibility to be poignant, pointed or evasive.  It is a beautiful thing.  None of the aforementioned is a good reason to scrap a word.  I am good with evil in its proper context even though it will mean different things to different people and in different eras.  To strip the idea of evil in all of its amorphous elasticity is to strip a bit of what it is to be human with emotions and foibles and all…

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