What's your understanding of good and evil?

[Blade]

In my belief evil is harming another living being besides what is nessesary to survive, ie food.
Good is living in harmany with the world around you helping thoes you can.

[ 11-08-2002, 02:27 PM: Message edited by: Blade ]

[Gabrielles blades]

in the case above with the seatbelt:
Intentions are good
the act is bad
so it is evil
It does not matter if this seatbelt might safe the kids life, you are being evil by forcing your acts/opinions upon him. The kid has a right to choose how safely he wants to live his life and should not be interfered with. If you really want your kid to do what you want him to, then you must persaude him to your point of view rather than force your view upon him.

To be completely safe, you have to be dead already. No matter what you do or how you live there will always be a chance for you to die for whatever reason at any given moment. lets say for instance, that that seatbelt was forced to be worn upon the kid, and later that day the car crashes and the rescue people cannot get the kid out of the car in time because the seatbelt was stuck, the car blows up and kids dead because he wore his seatbelt; where as if he were not wearing the belt he might have been flung around the car injuring himself but would have survived because he wouldnt have been stuck.

[K T Ong]

/)eathkiller always has to seize the limelight in some way.

In deciding on issues of moral good and evil, I would say intention is everything. After all, it makes no sense to speak of, say, an accident as something morally evil, since no intention was involved; it wasn't intended by anyone to happen. (Well, maybe you want to say it was intended and brought about by God, a god or a spirit; then we'd have to appraise the scenario afresh.)

And I wouldn't say good and evil are all relative. The acts themselves and their results -- yes (killing might occasionally be good, for example), but the intention behind the acts -- I'd say it's a different matter. And to act with the intention of causing harm to another is evil; to act with the intention of benefitting another is good. Quite commonsensical, really. Nothing relative.

Might elaborate later if there's any response to this. Wonder when dear beloved MagiK decided to change his sex, BTW... [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[NiceWorg]

How can someone say that helping an old woman across the street could be evil? Good and evil are like 12 and 36. They don´t change. Sorry but I have to explain it so numbly because of my english skills. If you think kissing is evil, you could as well stop betraying yourself by claiming it´s evil, because you´re most probably just gone nuts and you should be in line waiting for doctor's appointment...

[Gabriel]

Good and evil are ilrevent. Thay are judgement place upon the action of a person by another. To rebel against a opressive goverment is good in the eyes of the rebel but evil in the eyes of the goverment it attacks. To paraphase Digimon of all things.
Good and Evil are like the shadow of a cloud. I guess it all revent to where your standing.

[ 11-08-2002, 11:10 PM: Message edited by: Gabriel ]

[NiceWorg]

Originally posted by Gabriel: Good and evil are ilrevent. Thay are judgement place upon the action of a person by another. To rebel against a opressive goverment is good in the eyes of the rebel but evil in the eyes of the goverment it attacks. To paraphase Digimon of all things. Good and Evil are like the shadow of a cloud. I guess it all revent to where your standing.

That too depends of the outcome. If the government causes more havoc than good, the one's doing good things are the rebels, whereas the goverment is evil and are only trying to justify their point of view being good, being that it causes evil things to people.

Not the best kind of example.. I also got your point and I can see where your coming from. You (as 3rd person) just can´t claim that if (even worse example) the Lord Of Murder would step on earth and start slaughtering people saying that he is only doing the good thing, forming a new generation of people and rid us from the upcoming end of world..*laughs to himself*.. but it cannot be good. He is insane..

And Im too tired to make sense.. [img]smile.gif[/img] good night everyone!

There is no definer of Good Or Evil other than Purely human thingies,
Since There is an “is and ought” gap,
I.e. I could go out and get a spatula, Use it to spoon the eyes out of defenceless puppies. I could then go and get a chainsaw and chop a multitude of babies in half.
And there is nothing in the world (other than Human constructed systems and humans) to say that this is wrong. I could get away with all that, And Live a long and happy life and then die a peaceful death with no punishment ever, if the circumstances were right.

And In general The Human Morality construct system tend to be not much good,
Since most people are simply too morally flexible.
Thus we have the state, which makes people obey a certain morality system and a tends to thus shape the way we think in terms of good and evil, there are some things, which seem common to most people as being evil i.e. murder.
However it’s often subjective, ex. In many countries, It’s okay (by many people) to treat animals not very well, since There is little legislation against it. And so people don’t count it as evil.

Ultimately Though, I think that at least here in the western world a lot of what we call “good an Evil” is determined by the state through it’s laws and of course society in general.
For example The America government talked of Saddam As being Evil, So now everyone called him evil, Yet when they were supplying weapons to him in the Iran-iraq war, They did not.
So it’s a purely human, and thus a fallible, vulnerable to self-interest and subjective thing is the concept of good and evil and morality in general.

[whacky]

Good and evil are like everything else, two facets separated by neutrality. They are part of you mind and soul, each time yoo move on spiritually or intellectually your capability to do good or evil increases i.e the more evil you are the more good you can be and vice versa. From this we can judge that good and evil are a part of humanity and humans themselves and perhaps worthy of called fundamental concepts like matter and anti-matter, like positivity and negativity ............ the balance of which is provided my something i dont understand at the moment, think on it for a moment and you all will understand what i am trying to point out [img]smile.gif[/img]