Do you believe there is such thing as evil?

[Kanye69]

So laws are just a means to coerce people into doing what you want.

Into doing what society wants. Is that not how we all view the legal system?
-Kanye69

 

[Beorn]

Into doing what society wants. Is that not how we all view the legal system?
-Kanye69

No. Not at all.
I don't think people should go to jail based on collective preferences.

 

[Kanye69]

No. Not at all. I don't think people should go to jail based on collective preferences.

Then what is the legal system? By the way, personally, I only believe that people should go to jail if they're hurting others very badly. I don't even like the idea of jail, though.
-Kanye69

 

[The Cat]

I believe there's such a thing as evil. I've got a mirror; and a reflection same as everyone else.

 

[Beorn]

Then what is the legal system?

Order and justice.
Both inherently good things.

By the way, personally, I only believe that people should go to jail if they're hurting others very badly.

Why does that distinction matter?
You're just pretending.

 

[Lark]

Order and justice.
Both inherently good things.



Why does that distinction matter?
You're just pretending.

What if they arent? Its not like anything they've said so far is that surprising, it all seems like the stock and trade of post-modern moral relativists who're unlikely to think that hard about it all anyway.

Order and justice are inherently good things because they respect categorical imperatives, like the right to self determination and avoiding harm, if all that is too shaking and Kantian, Nietzsche's secondary foe after Christianity, then there's always virtue ethics.

Its always the Nietzsche. I dont know what the craic is, proper philosophers dont make good youtubes or something.

 

[Poki]

Firstly I want to thank @lightsun for giving me your opinion. I truly appreciate it, because it gives me a new sight to my philosophy. The neutrality, or the reasonability and diplomacy, you showed in your post, is remarkable. Being extremely interested in this topic, I went through the whole thread, reading each post. The following ones have tingled my curiosity and my interest, so I would like to give my opinion to them. Desire is what keeps us alive. Without desire, there's no motivation. What I think repugnant are humans without an ounce of ambition. It simply disgusts me. But those are my personal feelings, and they are not absolute. And what I think you meant was sexually driven desires, like those of rapists. In this case I absolutely agree with you. Yes. But not completely. What I'm about to write can be seen as extremely controversial and disrespectful towards Jews, so I have to precise first that there's no excuse for the Holocaust, and a totally disapprove what has been committed by the Nazis during WW2. However, Hitler did a lot of economic improvement for Germany. He could be seen as the Hero who saw himself becoming the villain. Don't forget that he was a nominee to for a Nobel peace prize. But he used too many morally wrong ways to reach it to be considered a hero. I will be honest with you. I don't like you. Or at least I don't like your beliefs. Don't see this as hostility, it's not. I just don't approve what you are saying. "I think, therefore I am." If our thoughts shape our identity, and I dislike your thoughts, then I dislike you. I think you an example of the humans I mentioned in my previous post. Could you say straight in the face of a mother, that the one who raped and killed her child, the one who destroyed everything she had in an obscene and atrocious manner, was himself the victim of an entity taken right out of a book, an entity whose existence isn't even proven? I sincerely hope that I am misinterpreting your words. I find your thoughts interesting, and if I would know you in real life, I would gladly invite you for the best beer I know, at a local brewery. I would love to know what could possibly persuade you to think the way you do. I don't understand why a lot of people think that capitalism is bad. What can possibly make someone believe that capitalism is bad. There's not a single economical system that works better than capitalism. Where were you during history class? It's a thematic too complex to debate about in this thread. I think I will do some researches. So cute. Again, I don't understand your beliefs. And even your thinking process. You say that Jesus casted out demons, then you say it wasn't demons but "germs, lesions, or genetics cause physical or mental illness.". After this, you wrote that the reason the Vatican approves exorcism, and then, out of nowhere you claim that we still have evil beings. Are there still evil beings because Jesus casted out demons and the Vatican still authorizes it? But in this case why were you talking about germs, lesions, or genetics cause physical or mental illness? I'm really confused because I don't really understand what you wanted to say. Anyways, like I wrote for @AphroditeGoneAwry, I dislike believers who don't assume their responsibilities. But due to the fact that I don't understand what you are trying to say, I won't judge you too much.

Just because some acts were good doesnt mean others werent evil. I mean the Devil was an Angel.

One person doesnt ever represent pure evil

 

[rav3n]

Evil is the biblical name for ASPD and sociopathy in general.

 

[notmyapples]

So laws are just a means to coerce people into doing what you want.

You are confusing independent personal convictions with cause and effect. Even if you are someone who thinks murder is okay, you still need to face the reality that making murder legal would effectively tear society apart. Murder is illegal because if it wasn't then nothing that we operate modern society on would reliably function any longer, not because murder is bad even though it is. Laws and ethics can and often do co-exist, but simply because something is ethical doesn't mean it'd make a smart law, same goes the other way. Murder has been illegal since the days of public execution and long before because in any thriving civilization there needs to be a sense of order and hierarchy, irrelevant to morality. If making murder legal would somehow improve society on a massive scale rather than throw everything into a state of chaos then I assure you that it already would be.

 

[Kanye69]

Order and justice. Both inherently good things. Why does that distinction matter? You're just pretending.

How do you know that anything is inherently good?

This distinction matters because this is how I feel, hence this is my subjective moral view. If you are hurting others for no good reason, you are taking away their liberty for no good reason. In my view, we should all be guaranteed our liberty at the very least.
-Kanye69

 

[Coriolis]

Order and justice.
Both inherently good things.

Justice, perhaps, but depends on what the order is, and what it comes at the expense of.

Our legal system really is just a bunch of collective preferences. That "collective preference" manifests in how our legislators vote on our behalf. If most of us feel that being gay is immoral, they will pass laws making homosexuality a crime. If we think better of that and decide it is OK for gays even to marry, they will pass laws allowing that. The fact that lawmaking entities and their constituencies the world over share some basic preferences (e.g. it is bad to murder or to steal) doesn't make them any less preferences.

 

[Betty Blue]

I believe in it as single acts/experiences to an extent. I do not believe that there is a heaven and hell, good and evil in a biblical sense. But with those being open to interpretation they can be explained in different ways. I would generally not define a person as evil, though there are some which would really test this and possibly be exceptions to the rule.

I also believe that there are bad energies, in a combination of hippie magic and scientific sense. The 'hippie woo' has been massively underestimated and undermined. As we advance in science we will find new ways to test and understand these things. Think post apolocolyptic land. As a matter of survival people may turn on each other and a new 'evil' can take over, this is a negative energy, possibly born out of a necessity for survival and trauma. But it spreads like a bad energy or virus. It may have existed in isolated patches but can become the norm fairly easily.

Also what we in the western world may find abhorrently immoral may not be considered such in other parts of the world. For example fgm or child marriage. Many may consider those things evil. So to some extent it is opinion based too.

Sometimes i think a darkness can descend. And it can shift moods between thousands/millions of people very rapidly, think jfk assassination or England (for the uk'er) loosing the world cup semi final. Yes it's psychological but it does happen and so much can change as a result of this. Before the semi final yesterday I was thinking of the long ranging effects of England winning the world cup. In the immediate aftermath there would be a huge raise in mood, which would like boost productivity, lower costs to the nhs and various other things. Further along we may have a baby boom-which in turn would increase our population. I wonder how much England loosing the semi finals will decrease our potential population growth.