The "Problem" Of Evil

[Tyler]

OK so I'm working on my term paper and unlike the rest of my class who opted for a book review topic I'm going head first into a slippery slope topic: The "problem" of evil. My question is very simple:

Why does evil exist and is it necessary?

I will give my reasoning but I would love for others to reply in the following format:

1) State your religious beliefs (or lack there of)
2) State what you like/don't like about my theory
3) Propose your own idea on the topic.

So, the basic "cliffnote" version of my theory is this. Lets take something like water, you can have hot water, cold water, or "room temp" water -- the only reason we can make these classifications is because in order for water to be hot, we have to know what not-hot water is, and thus we call it cold [or] room temp water. Same goes for cold, the only reason we can identify cold water is because we know what hot water is. Without these distinctions it would simply be known as water no matter if it was boiling or basically frozen. Applying this idea to evil, we know it exists because we know what good is -- without one or the other, the other would be the only way to classify all actions. So, I am argueing that evil is necessary if for no other reason that to be able to stratify the actions of all humans along a continuum where pure evil (in this book's Christian perspective it would be Satan) is on one end, and pure good (God [they say Jesus but they also ascribe to the trinity which I don't so I say God]) is on the other end, with "room temp" being neutral. With this understanding, we gain points of juxtiposition, so that with each evil/good act there is a counterpoint that exists (not necessarily actualized) on the opposite side of the spectrum. The only time this continuum would cease to be necessary, using Christianity's idea of the Kinddom of God, is when the Kingdom is actualized and that even though the existance of evil is technically possible, the free will of humans leads them to chose nothing beyond the neutral side of the spectrum towards evil, thus propogating only good.

That's my best attempt to condense down 17 pages (so far) into one paragraph. But yeah, thoughts?

[agunn1231]

1: I believe in a haigher being, not necessarily god though
2: your point is valid, and very similar to one of the essays I had to write in Philosophy today.
3: I would argue that evil is necessary in order for people to live a "morally" good life. But as you had stated one cannot be known without the other, I agree that people tend to stay on the neutral side, however there are people which choose to live on the more extreme side. If there was no difference between good and evil then we would not be able to punish people who commit severe crimes such as murder or child abuse, this is another reason that evil is necessary, in order to set an example for people of things that are morally "bad".

[Tyler]

[quote name='agunn1231' date='06 August 2010 - 01:11 AM' timestamp='1281071460' post='477902']
1: I believe in a haigher being, not necessarily god though
2: your point is valid, and very similar to one of the essays I had to write in Philosophy today.
3: I would argue that evil is necessary in order for people to live a "morally" good life. But as you had stated one cannot be known without the other, I agree that people tend to stay on the neutral side, however there are people which choose to live on the more extreme side. [b]If there was no difference between good and evil then we would not be able to punish people who commit severe crimes such as murder or child abuse, this is another reason that evil is necessary, in order to set an example for people of things that are morally "bad".[/b]
[/quote]


Creepy. I literally just wrote a section about exactly that point haha. Thanks for the post!

[TheScotsman]

If evil, nor man's ability to freely choose between evil, and good existed, what would separate man from escargot?

[agunn1231]

[quote name='Tyler' date='05 August 2010 - 11:18 PM' timestamp='1281071933' post='477907']
[quote name='agunn1231' date='06 August 2010 - 01:11 AM' timestamp='1281071460' post='477902']
1: I believe in a haigher being, not necessarily god though
2: your point is valid, and very similar to one of the essays I had to write in Philosophy today.
3: I would argue that evil is necessary in order for people to live a "morally" good life. But as you had stated one cannot be known without the other, I agree that people tend to stay on the neutral side, however there are people which choose to live on the more extreme side. [b]If there was no difference between good and evil then we would not be able to punish people who commit severe crimes such as murder or child abuse, this is another reason that evil is necessary, in order to set an example for people of things that are morally "bad".[/b]
[/quote]


Creepy. I literally just wrote a section about exactly that point haha. Thanks for the post!
[/quote]

no problem, it's something I have contemplated often

[porksandwich9113]

1) Atheist. Loud and Proud.

2) It's pretty good actually. Although I do believe man can evolve to an intelligent state where evil is not necessarily without the "kingdom of heaven."


3) I am talking about murder, theft, assault, ect, all being eradicated.
Most of these crimes today are not committed because a person is "evil" per-say. But it is because we live in a system where some people get screwed and others don't.
We just choose to label them as evil people because they are committing something we think is an evil act.

If we lived in a society without scarcity & religion & whatever else we like to label ourselves as - it would solve almost all off the problems.
Could you imagine what could be done if the entire human race was unified in the goal of bettering mankind as a whole?

[antouwan]

1. Roman/Roamin' Catholic

2. so kinda like yin and yang? your assertion seems to be more of one regarding definition rather than anything theological/moral. i'm just not sure i understood it the way you explained it. i know it was extremely abbreviated but i think that really negatively impacted the way i understood (or didn't) it.

3. evil is not necessary. evil is the weakness of man whom abuses his God given ability of free will. evil is corruption. once the Kingdom is realized there will be no more evil and injustice.

-that's the 'party' line if you know what i mean. i subscribe to that line of thought.

[mustafabey]

There is no evil. evil is the eye of the beholder, to wit: what's evil for one is good for another. Or what was once evil is now good. We can thank Zoroaster for all this dualism. His concept is far different from yin and yang. Yin and Yang are part of the same whole, dark and light, male, female, good, evil etc. no separation. Zoroastrianism gives evil over to power equal to god, thus the eternal battle. When the Jews entered the Babylonian captivity they acquired these ideas from Persian religion and it has since spread to christian and Islamic thought. What's evil? Was Hitler evil? From a western point of view he was. Is America evil? From a third world point of view she is. Depends where your sitting when you look at evil. Evil today is so much apart of the political world of spin.
Reagan's evil empire, Bush's axis of evil. Now Obama or Limbaugh is evil take your choice. Ultimate evil doesn't exist. Just as ultimate good doesn't exist. Its all just infinite potentiality over infinite combinations of space and time(and a few more dimensions we haven't discovered. Take humanity out of the equation. we are only a small cog in the machinery of creation, not the arbiters of destiny. No good, no evil, no god,no devil, just Love

[Barnaby]

[quote name='mustafabey' date='06 August 2010 - 02:17 PM' timestamp='1281118668' post='477985']
There is no evil. evil is the eye of the beholder, to wit: what's evil for one is good for another. Or what was once evil is now good. We can thank Zoroaster for all this dualism. His concept is far different from yin and yang. Yin and Yang are part of the same whole, dark and light, male, female, good, evil etc. no separation. Zoroastrianism gives evil over to power equal to god, thus the eternal battle. When the Jews entered the Babylonian captivity they acquired these ideas from Persian religion and it has since spread to christian and Islamic thought. What's evil? Was Hitler evil? From a western point of view he was. Is America evil? From a third world point of view she is. Depends where your sitting when you look at evil. Evil today is so much apart of the political world of spin.
Reagan's evil empire, Bush's axis of evil. Now Obama or Limbaugh is evil take your choice. Ultimate evil doesn't exist. Just as ultimate good doesn't exist. Its all just infinite potentiality over infinite combinations of space and time(and a few more dimensions we haven't discovered. Take humanity out of the equation. we are only a small cog in the machinery of creation, not the arbiters of destiny. No good, no evil, no god,no devil, just Love
[/quote]

quoted for truth..

Its all a matter of perspective. The act of killing is not evil unto itself. If it was, then God is evil, for there are countless tales in the bible where he was killed. You have to look at the intent and purpose behind something, before you can label things. But, that aside, the notion of good and evil in itself, are a man made concept at best.

The problem I have with most of this kind of talk, is that we are clever critters. We hate the unknown, chaos, etc. We do not function mentally unless we are able to sort, label, categorize, have patterns, etc. Our sheer need to explain EVERYTHING has given way to us coming up with the most fool hearty ideas. We don't say animals are evil in their doings. They are just animals, doing their thing. Yet they show ALL the same "evil" traits as us. Greed, deceit, murder, rape, the list goes on and on. But, in the animal kingdom, this is all nothing more than the will to survive and propagate. The same is true for us. But, because we have "intelligence" we have to label this, and try and categorize it, and structure it. We simply can't just accept that we are animals, that need to eat, live, and have offspring (or atleast try). Our higher thinking has to make it out that there is so much more than this, but is there really? You start taking away our basic needs, and we'll see how "evolved" we are from the animals. We have the luxury to sit back and make up all this fanciful stuff to try and separate us, but we're not that different really. We just think we are.

Animals know their place, and live in harmony with their surroundings. We do not. We are simply insane. Is it truly a blessing to have "intelligence"?

Damn aliens for genetically altering our chromosomes back in the day. Why couldn't they just leave us alone? Edited August 7, 2010 by Barnaby

[kyleSD]

1) Agnostic

2) I think you're right in some ways about evil being needed to define good, but that doesn't seem to answer your question completely. Would it still exist without good? I believe definitely yes. There were a few philosophers, namely Hobbes, who believed that people were inherently evil. He thought that if we were reverted to an animalistic or primitive state, before the contrains of society and morality people would behave selfishly and be inherently evil. Sorry, tangent, all I was trying to say is that I think it's good to have something to measure evil with but that I also believe it would exist anyways, and that you could see it and instinctively know it was different. Much like knowing hot water is different from tepid water by seeing the steam (going back to your analogy), you don't have to touch it or anything but recognize a difference through another mean of observation.

[mustafabey]

Barnaby said: "Animals know their place, and live in harmony with their surroundings. We do not. We are simply insane. Is it truly a blessing to have "intelligence"? " The problem is, sometime during our evolution,maybe 40 50 thousand years ago at least, we began to discover art, symbolism, religion etc. Animals don't have those problems because they see themselves as a part of Whole. We, in order to observe and think had to split the cranial functions in two. The observer and the observed. Deer for instance don't see in color, but that doesn't mean red doesn't exist.Or does it? See it takes two to tango here. This is probably the beginning of the dualism that gave us good and evil.Perhaps we should blame paleolithic man rather that Zoroaster. The origins of conceptual thought? We gave up our Unity with the Whole for conceptual thought.
Regarding Tyler's theory, it is also connected to this observed and observer dualism. I think therefore i am, I think therefore I am not god. We gave that up, being part of the whole with god, however we choose to define him.
Regarding my religion, I don't claim one. I am influenced by Sufism and Daoism. And on the simple side of those.
al Hallaj said" Ana al Haqq" and they killed him for it( I am Truth) Lao Tze said " Spring comes and the grass grows by itself"

[Yasseah]

Evil isn't real, it's just a label people put on things in regards to our own affairs- a figment of our imagination.