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Do you believe there is such thing as evil?

ZNP-TBA

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Just post your thoughts. What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word 'evil?' What's your thinking process and conclusions regarding the word?
 

Dyslexxie

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If anyone met my grandmother they'd know what evil really meant. I'm sort of kidding, but in all seriousness, in my view humans are self-serving, but will be conscious of others and will be helpful as long as it doesn't conflict with their own personal goals. I don't think anyone is truly intentionally malicious, and acts of cruelty and violence occur out of selfishness. That isn't to say we aren't absolute fuckheads - we are, we just justify our own shitty nature with faulty reasoning.
 

gromit

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Yes I do.

Evil is what causes people to intentionally harm others for their own amusement or pleasure.
 

Rasofy

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Yes, but it's a relative and culturally-dependent concept tho

I quickly associated it with sadism fwiw
 

Bilateral Entry

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Dictionary sez that evil is 'profoundly immoral and malevolent'. I suppose the idea of evil can be valid either with or without a spiritual component. Your question is too broad. Virtually everyone has a sense of morals (whether they follow them or not), and a profound lack of morality would be considered evil.
 

1487610420

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CVQbeaTUwAAyV9Z.png
 

Zangetshumody

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knowledge of evil, is the only so called 'evil' (it is not evil itself even)

Also: error and evil is not the same.

Error is a mistake with your awareness.

Therefore error serves error only.

the above loop-regression is the death.

Death is not evil, its just an error.
 

Tellenbach

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Evil is self-entitlement acted upon by people usually lacking in impulse control. Evil people are basically animals driven and motivated by their desires.
 

Mole

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The Banality of Evil

Just post your thoughts. What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word 'evil?' What's your thinking process and conclusions regarding the word?

We started by believing that God was the source of good and the Devil was the source of evil. Then we started to believe God was the personification of good, and the Devil was the personification of evil. But then we started to believe in the psyche rather than God and the Devil, and we started to believe the psyche was good and and it was the external abuse of psyche that caused evil.

But it has become obvious that the source of evil is not the psyche but large social institutions. This puts us in a bind as we are dependent on our social institutions, and we are inclined to defend them at a visceral level without evidence or reason.

We identify with our social institutions and experience critique of our social institutions as a criticism of ourselves.

Our irrational and immoral defence of our social institutions is existential - we conflate our own existence with the existence of our social institutions.

So we are now inclined to think that evil arises from our dependence on our social institutions. Evil raises due to our conformity to our environment - and so evil is banal. Banality is the hallmark of evil and it surrounds us every day.

No longer does Satan say he would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven, rather we say, we go along to get along.
 

GIjade

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Yes I do.

Evil is what causes people to intentionally harm others for their own amusement or pleasure.

I agree. But there are also people who are psychopaths and sociopaths who fit that definition, and those people have something wrong with their brains, lack a conscience, etc. They were born that way. So, if they are mentally ill, and they have no control over their actions because they lack something somewhere that makes them unable to feel, are they considered evil. In other words, if there is a physical cause for that type of behavior, is that evil or is it a disease/disorder, or both.
 

gromit

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I agree. But there are also people who are psychopaths and sociopaths who fit that definition, and those people have something wrong with their brains, lack a conscience, etc. They were born that way. So, if they are mentally ill, and they have no control over their actions because they lack something somewhere that makes them unable to feel, are they considered evil. In other words, if there is a physical cause for that type of behavior, is that evil or is it a disease/disorder, or both.

I would say both.
 

Chrysanthe

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No, but it should still be assumed it exists for the sake of human progress.

What is perceived as evil originates as something completely accidental and a fault of the unpredictability of the universe. I can't see anyone being responsible for their own wrongdoings for this reason :p But I still do it for the sake of preserving a humanistic society.
 

Mole

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Yes, we now have a measure of evil. We know that the closest we have come to absolute evil was the holocaust.

The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) gave us peace between nations at the cost of non-interference in the internal affairs of a nation. Except now we can interfere if the nation is committing genocide.

We know what evil is. We have tasted it. We say, never again, and imperfectly, we try to keep our promise.

And interestingly, the touchstone of evil remains anti-semitism.
 

Kullervo

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I believe there are objectively evil actions that one can take. But I don't believe that people are innately evil, as hatred never exists purely for hatred's sake.
 
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