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How do we know we are not evil?


zep73

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A normal person will always try to do the right thing. Their compass is most often their upbringing, their ideology and their conscience.

History, however, has numerous accounts of well-meaning evil doers. So how can we be sure we are good?

Or rather, how can we be sure we are not evil?

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It is one of those things were there are no easy answers, but I guess one approach could be: Are you causing direct harm to others through your actions?

Of course that's just one of the most basic, simplified (and kinda myopic) ways to approach that question. That's before we go into concepts such as: Are you "evil" if you allow evil things to happen without actively doing something against it? Are you already evil if you buy chocolate because you're supporting the terrible cocoa bean industry? If ending another person's life is evil are you evil if you kill an insane murderer before they can claim more victims? 

I do not completely agree with moral relativism, but it is a very complex topic. 

Edit: I'd also say that at least a portion of history's "well-meaning evil doers" were quite aware of the fact that their actions were amoral and merely used rhetoric about some "greater good" to blond people into agreeing with them. 

Edited by Orphalesion
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25 minutes ago, sci-nerd said:

A normal person will always try to do the right thing. Their compass is most often their upbringing, their ideology and their conscience.

History, however, has numerous accounts of well-meaning evil doers. So how can we be sure we are good?

Or rather, how can we be sure we are not evil?

We have to start by asking ourselves what is good and evil?

There is the philosophical approach with a variety of different stances. For instance if you were a time traveller would it be good or evil to murder Hitler before he came to power? If you said good then you just justified murder as morally good.

If 10 people needed organ transplants and one person could meet all of their needs would it be wrong to kill the one person to harvest their organs? Is saving 10 people more important than killing 1? If you said do it then you just justified murder as morally good.

And then what about Christianity or other religions? If God exists and as described then how many of us are living a life at odds with God? How many of us live by societies moral standards instead of the creators?

After thinking long and hard about it I reached the conclusion that what is good and evil is just a matter of opinion. Where problems arise is when the mass population disagrees with the persons moral choices.

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I'm evil as ****, and I don't really give a ****. :yes:

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15 minutes ago, Orphalesion said:

I do not completely agree with moral relativism, but it is a very complex topic.

13 minutes ago, RabidMongoose said:

After thinking long and hard about it I reached the conclusion that what is good and evil is just a matter of opinion. Where problems arise is when the mass population disagrees with the persons moral choices.

My personal opinion is that it is a highly subjective thing. You can't legislate it. It depends on each situation (and the history leading to it).

Let's say a country makes a law of forbidding religious clothes that hide the face. The law is made to protect women from being forced to wear it.
But then some women who likes to wear it, and it makes them feel better and happier, refuse to obey that law.
They then go out into the streets, and after a while well-meaning people start to harass them. Asking them to take it off. It get's out of hand, and suddenly the clothes are torn off. The women are humiliated. They broke the law just by wearing some clothes, and ended up being assaulted on the streets.

Are the people trying to tear off the illegal clothes evil?

I believe they are. They regarded the law higher than the individual, in a harmless situation.

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Bit of both id say. Join the dark side of the force Luke.

Edited by Impedancer
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Good and evil are subjective. Same for right and wrong. The hero is always someone's villain, and the villain is someone's hero.

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6 minutes ago, Piney said:

I'm evil as ****, and I don't really give a ****. :yes:

Which one of the **** is buck, and which one is sh!t?

If you switch them it still sounds cool! :yes:

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More thought provoking when considered on a collective scale... I’ve often wondered if we were a virus or cancer.

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9 minutes ago, Wes83 said:

More thought provoking when considered on a collective scale... I’ve often wondered if we were a virus or cancer.

I'd say we as a species are a cancer. While our language and forms of communication are viral. 

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11 minutes ago, Wes83 said:

More thought provoking when considered on a collective scale... I’ve often wondered if we were a virus or cancer.

1 minute ago, XenoFish said:

I'd say we as a species are a cancer. While our language and forms of communication are viral. 

 

What is it with all that humanity bashing? Nature made us! We are a part of it!
If anyone should feel bad about our existence, it should be nature itself! Not us!

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Good people do bad things sometimes. 

Bad people do good things sometimes. 

People gonna people. 

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3 minutes ago, sci-nerd said:

What is it with all that humanity bashing? Nature made us! We are a part of it!
If anyone should feel bad about our existence, it should be nature itself! Not us!

We are a destructive organism on this planet. A screw up of evolution. Humanity needs to go extinct. There is nothing about us worth saving.

Edited by XenoFish
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1 minute ago, XenoFish said:

We are a destructive organism on this planet. A screw up of evolution. Humanity needs to go extinct. There is nothing about us worth saving.

And yet, we are the only known observers, the universe has, to justify its existence.

Progress demands sacrifice!

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Just now, sci-nerd said:

And yet, we are the only known observers, the universe has, to justify its existence.

Progress demands sacrifice!

Our extinction would be perfect.

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2 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Our extinction would be perfect.

If you got a "kill humanity" button, would you push it?

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3 minutes ago, sci-nerd said:

If you got a "kill humanity" button, would you push it?

Yes. And I'd make sure it was at the right evolutionary point where we because who we are as a species. Just skip that point. Knocking all of it out. If we could evolve as a social creature I might change my mind. But that probably will never happen. Hell, I doubt I'd even have to hit that button. We keep going on this path of ours, we'll do it ourselves.

Edited by XenoFish
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17 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Yes. And I'd make sure it was at the right evolutionary point where we because who we are as a species. Just skip that point. Knocking all of it out. If we could evolve as a social creature I might change my mind. But that probably will never happen. Hell, I doubt I'd even have to hit that button. We keep going on this path of ours, we'll do it ourselves.

So genocide is a morally approved option "for the higher good"?

That certainly makes you a runner up for being evil. And proud of it.

That makes me wonder if the right reason to commit mass murder, justifies it?

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1 hour ago, sci-nerd said:

Which one of the **** is buck, and which one is sh!t?

 

They're interchangeable. :)

I'm the Jesus hating, out of wedlock ****ing, unbaptised, yellowed eyed scion of Satan and cold blooded killer...... :yes:

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3 minutes ago, sci-nerd said:

So genocide is a morally approved option "for the higher good"?

That certainly makes you a runner up for being evil. And proud of it.

That makes me wonder if the right reason to commit mass murder, justifies it?

Higher good? No. If we actually balanced ourselves with nature and quit needlessly destroying it. I wouldn't care. However, we are destructive. We take and do not return. As a species we are still tribal. If we somehow got past that, maybe things would get better. But we thrive on conflict and destruction. Do you think about the 99.9% of the germs you kill when you clean something? Does a virus think about the person it infects? 

Evil is subjective. You see it as evil. I've had to face enough of humanities ugliness. Can you imagine a world without wars? Without pollution? A world where the trees grow and the fish have clean water? Where nature has balanced itself. Do you honestly think humanity is important? Is it because you think you are important? The human conscious is a highly overrated birth defect. We're less than an animal and we've built better tools to kill with. 

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8 minutes ago, Piney said:

They're interchangeable. :)

I'm the Jesus hating, out of wedlock ****ing, unbaptised, yellowed eyed scion of Satan and cold blooded killer...... :yes:

I'm apparently a genocidal madman. 

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43 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

I'm apparently a genocidal madman. 

Nothing wrong with that as longer as your not racist about it. :yes:

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35 minutes ago, Piney said:

Nothing wrong with that as longer as your not racist about it. :yes:

Death isn't bias. 

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4 hours ago, sci-nerd said:

A normal person will always try to do the right thing

define normal...

edit to add=== ok, i'll go with it:

i would like to hear what folk would class as an evil act

Edited by Dejarma
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1 hour ago, Piney said:

Nothing wrong with that as longer as your not racist about it. :yes:

An equal opportunity, non-biased grim reaper?  :w00t:  

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