<font color="#33cc33">Not that I want to be associated witht he political person who used this paraphrased quote but..."I can not always define evil, but I always know it when I see it". [img]smile.gif[/img] </font>

IMO Good and Evil exist as absolute limits of an infinite line. Any action taken can be placed on this line based on its quantitative results.

The people who say Good/Evil are relative are saying that each of us, given the ability to place an action somewhere on this line, will put it in a place depending on our frame of reference... thus we will all "grade" an action differently. This is true, but I also believe that an action will have an absolute placement on this line, irrespective of frames of reference (and thus irrespective of your or my opinion on the matter [img]smile.gif[/img] ).

The people who say that Good/Evil don't exist are saying either :
that the only place an action can fall on the line is at the 50% point. Thus a murder (evil) will be offset by other factors (community coming together, outporing of goodwill to victem's family, etc...) I don't believe this because there have been too many evil actions for which there was no corresponding good to offset (communist purges for instance... tens of millions killed for nothing)
OR, that since we're all just recycled dirt anyway, the murder of one of us is irrelavent. The universe is based on order, and this is perhaps the most chaotic concept imaginable... our existance depends on the fundamental assertion that the above concept is false. If you believe it's true then we might as well not exist... because the state of our existance is irrelevant... whether your dirt in a hole or a living thinking entity (whatever that is). I gues I tend to think that if our optimum configuration were dirt... then we never would have evolved as a species into anything other than dirt. The universe has a plan for us, and who are we to second guess the universe (or God or whoever)

[ 11-08-2002, 10:57 AM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

I'm definitely consequentialist Barry - the end sometimes justifies the means.

Interesting thread by the way!
Well for one I am an atheist. Two, mostly my personal philosophy and the way I live my life day to day is largely Epicurean (ethical hedonism) so I suppose to deconstruct it to a basic level good=pleasure and evil=pain and misery. On a personal level and a global one.

To do good, I would therefore seek to maximise my own pleasure and happiness, thus lessening the total amount of misery in the world, which can only be a good thing. I must stress that this is never at the expense of others, which would cause misery, it is equally important to enhance the lives of others and reduce suffering and unhappiness as a general thing.

But as absolutes, no I don't believe in forces of good and evil. It's about what we can do in the here and now to make our own lives happy and the world a better place.

But if you are a consequentialist then do you reject the idea of any kind of intrinsically "right" action? If you think the merits of the action depend entirely on its consequences then there can be no good or evil at all. Not saying this is a bad thing, just seeing if you agree with my conclusion. And it does seem to fit with the rest of your answer.

Either way, I'm just trying to get a discussion going here...

Hail the evil pumpkins.

...what?

Yes, that's basically what I'm saying. In my post I was trying to fit in with the topic of the poll, but more along the lines of what would be a good end result (pleasure & happiness) or a bad end result (pain & misery), but this is not the same thing as good and evil. The actions you take to achieve those results don't necessarily have any intrisic right or wrong, but of course that doesn't mean you shouldn't be aware of the impact of your actions on yourself or others. The merits of your actions are dependent upon the results they achieve.

I understand. I wasn't saying in the first place that because an action had no intrinsic good (in other words it was taken for its consequences) that it wasn't the right thing to do. How you view yoru classification of actions doesn't change the fact that you take the good ones and avoid the bad ones, or you are supposed to. It just means you define them differently.

And you are right, lets keep this on topic. So lets Smash those evil Pumpkins!

evil is negatively affecting other beings.
good is positively affecting other beings.

whether the evil or good being done is intentional or not really doesnt affect the act being classified as good or evil. If the result is bad but the intentions are good then the act is evil. And if the result is good but the intentions are bad, then the act is still good.

shooting a cow to eat it is evil, so is eating your vegetables. One being is suffering/dieng for you to live. You can try to justify eating your vegetables as being better than eating the cow because the cow is more like us than the plant, but it is still an evil act because you are still killing one being to live. So, in a sense just living is evil (unles your a plant in which case your not eating anyone). *note that not all plants dont eat beings tho, there are evil plants*

[ 11-08-2002, 12:22 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

Ok then, what if you made someone where a seatbelt in a car when they didn't want to? You would be negatively affecting them as you were forcing them to do something against their will. But you are also positively affecting them as the seatbelt could save their life.

You could say the same about forcing someone to quite smoking. Or something like that.