Is there such a thing as evil?

No one had to teach you or any other kid how to lie to get out of trouble when you are younger. I am sure that we can all agree that, if indeed you beleive evil does exist, lying is evil for the reason that it means you have to cover up something so obviously you have done something you do not stand for strong enough to support of justify it, or something along those lines. We went to 'nam because of a president's lie... That was wrong...

Also, it is the reason why communism, at least in its current form, has very much difficulty working. For example I beleive it was Jamestown (but it could have been another settlement), that started out communist but it turned out only a few people where working but everyone was bennefitting. So like, almost everyone was too lazy to work. Laziness is an evil, you have to admit. You are leeching off of everyone else's labor when you haven't given anything yourself. That goes against the philosophy of communism "From each according to ability and to each according to need".

Don't interpret that as me being anti-socialism or anti-communism. I think that the way communism is formed currently presents a problem of dealing with people's laziness, but I beleive it could be tweeked in ways to become completely effective. But that is another topic...

Anyway, I guess taht is as close as I can come to proving it without taking a child and isolate it and see how the child lives and such, as Quest Techie said. But then, how could you tell evils, because they wouldn't be reacting with others...

Oh another one. Couldn't fear be considered an evil? Because, it like does nothing but hold us back from our full potential (recognizing a differance between common sense and fear...). But we aren't taught how to fear, because we are afraid before we can even be told WHAT to fear of anything like that...

 

prove it....

 

The word "Evil" is a bitch to define, don't even try it.

 

Its not a great proof, but isolation is used as a form of punishment. If punishment is negative, and isolation is a form of punishment then wouldn't it follow that isolation is a negative force and not neutral.

Thats my logic, quest_techie. There are holes in my arguement that you could exploit as there are holes in your arguement. We're both trying to prove the unprovable.

 

smoking cigarettes in excess is used as a punishment, some would say it was wonderful....

 

Fear and evil do not go hand in hand. However if you split fear into two catagories: rational fear and irrational fear. Irrational fears are evil and they do hold back potential. But rational fears are not evil. If anything they are good. Rational fears protect. If you are on the very edge of a towering cliff, it is likely that you may have some fear. This fear is rational and is good because it keeps you from stepping foward and plunging to your death. Rational fears are beneficial. Irrational fears are detrimental.

 

Yeah, good points... I guess there wouldn't be a 100% way to prove the neutralism, negative, or positive of isolation.
My beleifs are based on my faith, but even in that, almost no one agrees WHAT is evil... Like there are several fundementalist Christians out there who beleive that Rock music is from the devil, communism is evil, and a bunch of other beleifs that I readilly dismiss as pure crap. So I guess what one beleives as evil is a matter of personal beleif and conviction, and that no person knows the 100% full truth... That is what seeking truth is all about! Recognizing, that you do not, nor will you ever have all the right answers to every question and issue, but that you have to keep an open mind that others may be right in at least a small way. Not that they ARE right, but there is a possibility. Maybe everyone knows some truth, but no one knows all truth, that is why we keep open minded and seeking. If we stop seeking and stop searching, and close our minds to anyone else's ideas except our own we become the same thing that starts wars and hate, and basically spit on everything that the hippies in the 60's to present have stood for, went to jail for, and even died for!

 

all punishment is relative. even isolation used as a punishment is relative. Someone may have a fear of crowds and embrace isolation.

But going back to our first disagreement, if you isolate a child. He will interpret it as a negative force. He will wonder why he is alone. What did he do to deserve isolation. He thinks he must've done something bad in order for the naturally social animal, the human, to be isolated. Its punishment in his eyes. And if you expect the worst out of someone, the worst is usually what you'll get.

Im truly very sorry if im not conveying my point accurately. Its midnight here and im falling asleep on my keyboard.

 

RIGHT ON MAN!!!

Absolute truth is unobtainable. The pursuit of absolute truth is the goal of humanity. This goal is unobtainable, but the act of trying and getting as close as we possibly can to the unobtainable is what I define as knowledge.

 

I find the liberals to be just as corrupt as reps.

 

Yeah, I was meaning irrational fear or at least a rational fear being controlled irrationally, in the case of some phobias. It is rational to be afraid of a venomous spider, but irrational to be aracnaphobic. I was leaning rational fears moreso on the common sense side, but I guess that wouldnt always hold true for a lot of examples that could be brought up...

So I will rephrase that to irrational fears. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

I find any extreme, fundamentalist group to tend to be corrupt.

 

evil is delusion and hope.........


people become greedy because they hold a delusion that they will be able to achieve something through it....... they "hope" they will lead a better life



hope is the root of all evil.....

 

but hope for a "better life" is the motivation to want more money, if one never had a wish for a better life then one would never think to improve ones position thus mitigating greed

the greeks sorta got it.... hope came out of pandoras box with all the worlds other sorrows, but they claimed on some level it was a good thing...

but perhaps, perhaps this wish to improve, this dream for a better tomorrow, causes all this evil


hitler had a hope for a new tomorrow, a delusion where he was more powerful and the jews were gone.....





not saying all hope is bad, but it has a tendency to be a complicating factor.....

 

and this "all hope is good thing" we need to scrap that idea before we can move forward too far as a society......

 

If only philosophers were kings and kings were philosophers.

 

plato had some errors too though......

 

Perhaps Hope is neutral, it depends on how you use it. Like a lot of other stuff... Just a thought.

 

betcha if someone went out and studied it that its balance would be negative in a big way......

 

Plato is annoying. I find I disagree with most everything he had to say.