Good and Evil Are Nonexistent.

[great_bay]

I am good and evil. However, at the same time, I am not good and evil.

 

[Thalassa]

A child has a long way to go before their brain is full grown. In fact the brain is not fully grown until we are about 22 years of age.

And Jesus did lots of silly things:

he believed physical and mental illness were caused by demons, so he cast out demons;

he believed the world was coming to an end in his own lifetime or that of his followers, and told us to take no thought for tomorrow;

and although he lived in a Judaic culture based on marriage, he never married and lived at home with his parents;

and his death at the hands of the Romans was used to persecute Jews for 2,000 years. Jews were called Christ killers, culminating in their holocaust.

I was agnostic and spiritual for a large portion of my young adult life and my Christian beliefs are well thought out and secure, so your rambling about the holocaust, and calling Jesus "silly" isn't going to change anything, so you might as well stop.

 

[Yuurei]

I (mostly) agree with the TS.

People created the idea of good/evil. So on a natural, cosmic sense, no, there is no such thing as good or evil. Everything just sort of...is.

Humans can behave in a manner that could be considered evil but these traits are very specific to us. The universe does not care or even notice.

 

[thepink-cloakedninja]

But this gets to the philosophical question of "What is Truth?", which has no answer. The fact that two people will have a different answer means there is no answer. It also makes it really convenient for people like me who say there is no Truth

Is that a true statement? xD

 

[anticlimatic]

Good and Evil don't exist for things to happen, things happen therefore good and evil exist.
Random insidious forces coalesce to make something terrible happen; or a series of fortunate events makes something miraculous happen.
Really they're the same thing, God and the Devil. Special names for the personified forces behind rare and statistically unlikely events which significantly alter a moment with relative good or bad effects. It's a real phenomenon, bound to the laws of probability, so it's probably a good thing to keep in mind.

 

[Typh0n]

[MENTION=6877]Thalassa[/MENTION]

I didn't want to turn this thread into an arguement about economics and politics, mainly because I mostly want to chill on those types of discussions. Also, this is a philosophy thread, I don't want to clog it up with arguements about markets. This isn't a cop-out, but you actually raise some good points (except about me reading the bible more...), also I am not a Christian just so you know.

 

[Galaxy Gazer]

I guess we all have our own idea of good vs. evil, which sort of makes their definitions meaningless. Mine is compassion vs. sadism. Someone else's might be purity vs. debauchery, or lawfulness vs. unlawfulness.

However, this point won't stop me from pushing for what I feel is right. In fact, it won't stop anyone, and why should it?

 

[Lord Lavender]

Hey there are like many flavours of good and evil as you can tell by looking a D and D. You can have your good seasoned with Law, chaos or just plain good. same with neturally and evil. Good and evil are creations of humans to label natural behaviours and processes that most animals would just know as instint. A male lion will kill all the cubs once they take over the pride but this is not evil but instinct. I wonder if the same applies for humans as well as even though we are supposed to be beyond all that we are still animals and follow natural laws. The universe is lawful neutral due to all the processes and rules that it follows such as light following the speed limit constantly, gravity always being in protion, all the formulas out there detailing the universes guidelines. This makes me think of Adam and Eve as the tale while most would think of being good vs evil was law vs chaos as eating an apple because a snake told you isn't like evil and God was a massive Lawful netural teetering on lawful evil jerk for kicking them out and punishing humanity for it all.

I can say for sure the Universe has some Lawful neutral red tape people in charge of thing as it does seem despite all the chaos there are consistencies in stuff like atoms being the same everywhere and light being a good boy and sticking to a predefined speed limit plus the over fondness for spheres which may represent their desire for larger testicles with the big stars. That's why fem Nazis don't like our solar system as it has a large white testicle which represents their subconscious hatred for white hetrosexual males.

 

[Cellmold]

There are few opportunities to test the development of morality & ethics in a vacuum that is away from cultural, religious, parential, social peers etc.... influences.

This is the kind of notion that tries to be defined outside of the relationships in which it actually exists. There is no good or evil in the same way that we can say there is no happiness or unhappiness, only states of emotion that seem (to us) personally truthful by definition of a (also personally defined) appropriate context.
The Sorites paradox of a heap of grain is a good demonstration of what this attempts to achieve. Like the heap with it's ever diminishing grains, at what point does an action become good or evil from the influence of an emotion (or lack thereof)?

Of course it's vague, the heap can be a heap all the way down, or (perhaps more importantly) it can be an example of the limitations of pure abstraction removed from the living relations of a moving world.
Now this isn't as simple as merely stating an ultimate descartian subjective position; that there might be no objective truth does not make all truths the same value of truth. To the pragmatic an act that can be demonstrated to only bring harm without (non-superficial) benefit to either the enacter or the wider social groupings that person is part of, could be considered one definition of evil.

To an altruist an act that brings only pleasure for the individual could be an evil. To a person observing a strict religious tenet, a violation of that tenet would possibly be seen as an evil. And vice versa of a reversal for good.

This eventually comes back to the state of the moving world again. The world in which we exist in relation to, not apart from. And where questions of morality become daily and constant.

And in the lived world good and evil are simultaneously true and untrue, so we have to take the information as it arises and understand the contexts (past, present & future) in which it resides.

The absolutism that tries to define objectively the states of good/evil is the trap that leads us into the hall of mirrors, where we stop asking and we stop questioning and if we are in there too long we eventually forget where the door was and spend our time living out reflections of the world, rather than living in it.

 

[Thalassa]

[MENTION=6877]Thalassa[/MENTION]

I didn't want to turn this thread into an arguement about economics and politics, mainly because I mostly want to chill on those types of discussions. Also, this is a philosophy thread, I don't want to clog it up with arguements about markets. This isn't a cop-out, but you actually raise some good points (except about me reading the bible more...), also I am not a Christian just so you know.

OK thanks, I'm sorry, you had "as above so below" as your tag line so I assumed that you were Christian, maybe even Catholic, I'm actually kind of mystified by it now. ..

 

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

OK thanks, I'm sorry, you had "as above so below" as your tag line so I assumed that you were Christian, maybe even Catholic, I'm actually kind of mystified by it now. ..

It's an occult thing. Hermeticism - Wikipedia

Good and evil

Hermes explains in Book 9 of the Corpus Hermeticum that nous (reason and knowledge) brings forth either good or evil, depending upon whether one receives one's perceptions from God or from demons. God brings forth good, but demons bring forth evil. Among the evils brought forth by demons are: "adultery, murder, violence to one's father, sacrilege, ungodliness, strangling, suicide from a cliff and all such other demonic actions."[48]

This provides evidence that Hermeticism includes a sense of morality. However, the word "good" is used very strictly. It is restricted to references to God.[49] It is only God (in the sense of the nous, not in the sense of the All) who is completely free of evil. Men are prevented from being good because man, having a body, is consumed by his physical nature, and is ignorant of the Supreme Good.[50]

A focus upon the material life is said to be the only thing that offends God:

As processions passing in the road cannot achieve anything themselves yet still obstruct others, so these men merely process through the universe, led by the pleasures of the body.[51]

One must create, one must do something positive in one's life, because God is a generative power. Not creating anything leaves a person "sterile" (i.e., unable to accomplish anything).[52]

 

[citizen cane]

I wonder how many bong hits the OP did before making this thread. Enough that they posted and promptly forgot about it, as seen by their absence...

 

[Forever]

Dear OP,

I'm good not being spontaneously murdered,

kthxbai.

In the most sincere way possible,
Forever

 

[Galaxy Gazer]

Hey there are like many flavours of good and evil as you can tell by looking a D and D. You can have your good seasoned with Law, chaos or just plain good. same with neturally and evil. Good and evil are creations of humans to label natural behaviours and processes that most animals would just know as instint. A male lion will kill all the cubs once they take over the pride but this is not evil but instinct. I wonder if the same applies for humans as well as even though we are supposed to be beyond all that we are still animals and follow natural laws. The universe is lawful neutral due to all the processes and rules that it follows such as light following the speed limit constantly, gravity always being in protion, all the formulas out there detailing the universes guidelines. This makes me think of Adam and Eve as the tale while most would think of being good vs evil was law vs chaos as eating an apple because a snake told you isn't like evil and God was a massive Lawful netural teetering on lawful evil jerk for kicking them out and punishing humanity for it all.

I can say for sure the Universe has some Lawful neutral red tape people in charge of thing as it does seem despite all the chaos there are consistencies in stuff like atoms being the same everywhere and light being a good boy and sticking to a predefined speed limit plus the over fondness for spheres which may represent their desire for larger testicles with the big stars. That's why fem Nazis don't like our solar system as it has a large white testicle which represents their subconscious hatred for white hetrosexual males.

Wait, what? What does feminism have to do with race or sexual orientation? I think you meant 'SJWs'

 

[Lord Lavender]

Wait, what? What does feminism have to do with race or sexual orientation? I think you meant 'SJWs'

I meant SJWs as a whole

 

[Galaxy Gazer]

I meant SJWs as a whole

Well then you should have said that

 

[Lord Lavender]

Well then you should have said that

Hey lawful netural enforcer of social roles where do you stand on this D and D business.

 

[Typh0n]

OK thanks, I'm sorry, you had "as above so below" as your tag line so I assumed that you were Christian, maybe even Catholic, I'm actually kind of mystified by it now. ..

Oh ok, no, as [MENTION=21203]Grand Admiral Crunch[/MENTION] pointed out, the saying "as above, so below" is related to Hermeticism...

Here is a good intro on the subject - a better one than I can give, since I am new to the subject myself.

 

[Galaxy Gazer]

Hey lawful netural enforcer of social roles where do you stand on this D and D business.

Me? I'm really more "true neutral," honestly. Although I do give off a lawful vibe on the internet because I dislike trolling that's just my Fi, looking out for my fellow sensitive snowflakes.
I like the complex idea of good/evil in the alignment chart (especially the 5e version) but I also think the lines between good, neutral, and evil are too defined. What is "good" to one person may be "evil" to another.

 

[Poki]

...and what is the universal truth?

Reality...now the question is...whats reality