Do you believe that evil exists?

[Cyrano]

As a non-believer, I’ve always had a problem with the word “evil” because of its religious implications.

Many so-called “religious” people have no problem pinning the term “evil” on anyone from gays, to communists, to a kid who just discovered masturbation. I guess that "Judge not that ye be not judged" was just an option that could be ignored.

Looking back at the 20th century and the horrific beginning of this century, I realize that I have come to believe in the existence of evil. If genocide isn’t evil, what else would you call it? If torture committed in our name isn’t evil, what else would you call it? If the current political attempt to destroy our democracy isn’t evil, what else would you call it?

In some ways, I still have a problem with the religious overtones of the term “evil.”

I know there are many atheists and agnostics on DU. How do you feel about the term “evil?”

And for those who believe in a higher power, how do you define “evil?”

[KittyWampus]

1. How about substituting the word "Willful Ignorance" for Evil?

[anonymous171]

11. Because it is way more than that.

Evil people are usually very intelligent and very aware of what they are doing.

[KittyWampus]

14. hence the word "willful".

[anonymous171]

22. They still are not ignorant. They know what the consequences of their actions are.

They (the perpetrators of evil) just don't care.

[RaleighNCDUer]

29. Actually, they don't know. They only THINK they know what the

consequences are. You must remember, the deaths of millions was not a consequence, it was a means to an end. The promulgators of the Holocaust THOUGHT they knew what the consequences of it were - that they would eliminate of poison of Jewry from the world and establish a thousand year reich. What they THOUGHT the consequences would be didn't happen - instead, we saw them in the docket, the state of Israel established and a resurgence of Jewish culture. They certainly DO care about consequences - only they thought the consequence would be their own immortalization. They WERE ignorant, because they ignored the evidence of history and deluded themselves as to what the consequences would be.

[tama]

30. Curiosity killed the cat?

To be something else than All-Knowing Eternity (or 'superposition of all without interplay of decoherence') - to be curious, learning, changing, willing, loving - is possible only by Willful Ignorance. Then follows the eternal discussion about degrees and qualities of knowing/gnosis, good/evil etc... :)

[Dorian Gray]

38. But how could you use that phrase

to describe people who command the wholesale slaughter of a people?


I do believe that evil exists in this world, and I do believe that willful ignorance is a huge problem, but I wouldn't substitute the phrase for evil. It may be one symptom or aspect of evil, but it doesn't fully encompass the meaning.

[ThomWV]

2. No

[DURHAM D]

3. Simple: Evil = Republicans nt

[anonymous171]

4. Evil = Treating People like Objects and Objects like People.

That is the only definition that has worked for me.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. I didn't before 2000. Now I'm certain.

Evil is more than the absence of "good". It's the need to harm, control, and consume others whom you choose.

[hlthe2b]

6. Evil lives in the minds of men

--William Shakespeare



I tend to agree

[frebrd]

7. Only in the minds of humans. eom

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

8. To start, I am spiritual and not religious and the only person in my life

I ever called evil was Shrub. Although in all honesty, I think people who do "evil' things are mentally/emotionally broken, either from birth (the bad seed) or through traumatic childhood experiences.

[ProgressOnTheMove]

9. I only ever say it in the sense of badness, if I use it, and bad things and people do exist....

When the right tend to use the word they actually make it impotent as they label on for the most part innocent and good people, which is "evil." Why should phony Christians own the word, when it can be tagged to all their wicked nonsense, and have potency but not used flagrantly.

[NeedleCast]

10. Yes

As a non-believer, I believer that people can still be evil, although it's a word I reserve for a small handful.

[southernyankeebelle]

12. The answer to your question is yes and its called the Republican Party.

[KamaAina]

13. Not only that, I have incontrovertible proof

[Urban Prairie]

17. Beat me to it, lol!!

[Echo In Light]

15. Yes

Existentialist Jean Paul Sartre once recounted a conversation he had with an average American concerning international problems and affairs. The American argued that any dilemma could easily be resolved if men were to simply come together and be "rational." Sartre disagreed, and the conversation became futile; "I believe in the existence of evil," said Sartre, "and he does not."

[Blue-Jay]

16. "evil" - yes. "Evil" - no.

[Cronus Protagonist]

18. Evil is created by people trying to do "good" for their group, sect or country

From killing witches, homosexuals, blacks, minorities, through unneccesary wars, poisoning people and anmilas through pollution, committing genocide and so on - the perpetrators of evil did their works as a method to do good for their own sub-group.

Evil comes from people trying to do good while harming others either directly or indirectly.

[anonymous171]

23. So you would say that it does exist? nt

[stray cat]

19. Do you really think no one or no thing, or no action is evil?

[KansDem]

20. I believe it was J. J. Rousseau who said man was essentially good and that evil was a perversion...

I think I read that somewhere during my undergraduate years.

But I believe man is good and from this comes the desire to treat each other with kindness and respect. This is essential in civilized society. But when man encounters perversion, then evil results.

And,in my opinion, such perversion can be caused by the lust and greed for power and wealth. This struggle has been going on for centuries, but we witnessed such during the Bush/Cheney years, certainly.

In religion, "evil" becomes a black and white struggle with "goodness," and this is a determining factor in where you will spend the afterlife. I don't think you need the threat of a hellish "afterlife" to seek out "goodness." In order to maintain civilization, we should avoid "evil."

Now, having said that, if Bush and Cheney are not held accountable for their actions, I wonder where this is all going...

[Iggo]

21. nOPE.

[TransitJohn]

24. "Don't touch it!"

"It's pure, concentrated evil!!"

[tularetom]

25. The word has been so overused as to be meaningless

My wife calls the cats "evildoers" when one of them yaks a hairball on the floor.

[FiveGoodMen]

26. Yes.

I was raised to be religious.

Today, I am nothing of the kind.

But needless cruelty -- killing, infliction of pain, deprivation -- being carried out merely because the opportunity exists deserves an ignominious name.

'Evil' is as good as any.

[CrispyQ]

27. I believe in Pennywise the Dancing Clown, & that IT is evil

& to this day I won't walk near a sewer grate. :evilgrin:

The only evil I really believe in is that which resides in the hearts of men & in today's world, there is plenty to go around!

[RaleighNCDUer]

28. 'Evil' does not exist. Evil actions occur.

There is no thing that can be named 'evil' - there are only actions by people which are willfully destructive of positive existence.

'Evil' is nothing more than a descriptor - it has no substance in and of itself.

[TZ]

34. +1

[dmallind]

31. Evil exists like good exists

It's an abstract noun that is simply an idealized adjective. Unless you are silly enough to believe in Platonic "ideal forms" where every use of the adjective "red" is a reference to an immanent ideal entity of perfect redness then evil is a description converted to an abstraction. Deeds can be evil. People may be, although rarely consistently, but that doesn't mean there is any reason at all to accept the notion that there is some noxious thing, let alone entity, which is properly called "evil".

[tiny elvis]

32. from anglo saxon 'yfel'

yfel, sometimes spelled in different ways, is also the origin of awful
this tells us that yfel sometimes just meant 'very bad' and we can see that meaning intended in some anglo saxon manuscripts
we see english writings of evil befalling persons through the centuries of change in the language
the meaning was simply that something bad happened to them
today people still say 'evil' when they mean 'bad'
evil also means what is in a person's heart or motive
that definition is what you are looking for
in my search for meaning i have found one inseparable element of evil and one condition or state of mind which is evil in practical application
selfishness and evil are the same thing
the less selfish you make yourself, the less evil you are
you cannot relieve yourself of all the evil in you
by my definition, the slightly selfish act of eating is slightly evil
this means that evil is not interchangeable with bad
a tiny bit of evil is essential in all beings
the exceptional condition i mentioned, which is practically evil, is despair
i welcome arguments against my findings, so that i may be moved to elaborate

[TreasonousBastard]

33. I'm not sure what "evil" is, but...

I tend toward the idea of a duality-- "good" makes no sense and is irrelevant unless "evil" exists.

But, does "evil" exist extrinsically on its own throughout the the universe, or is it intrinsic to sentient beings. The Judeo-Christian tradition doesn't answer this clearly, claiming simultaneously that there is an extrinsic devil out there and we are innately evil until "reborn."

At any rate, "evil" seems to have a lot of relativity built into it. Much is made of God allowing Hitler and Stalin to march on with their crimes, to say nothing of natural disasters, but although WE consider them evil and horrific, in the larger sense they are just part of the yin and yang of existence and to whatever a god may be, not much all that special in the order of things where galaxies are known to explode.

[Deep13]

35. Evil just means bad, except it usually applies to ...

...deliberate actions rather than say accidents, negligence or natural occurances. It does not require any divine intervention to exist.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

36. I think that evil is a term that carries so much baggage

that it is not useful or precise. The use of words is very important in how we think about ideas. A word must be as well suited to the task at hand as it possibly can be; words are our servants, not our masters. Precise meaning is what makes a word truly helpful. I think that its use automatically brings any critical analysis of an issue to an end. It's "evil," and that's that. This often occurs in areas where more discussion would be helpful.

I do agree that we need a very strong word to label the gross moral wrongness of things like torture, genocide, and wars of aggression. But I'm not sure that "evil" is the best word to use.

[LAGC]

37. Axis of evil?

Clearly the term is used whenever someone wants to demonize some group or individual.

I'd say "true evil" (in regards to criminal acts) is a learned/taught set of behaviors, nothing that is necessarily inherently part of human nature.

[moobu2]

39. The feeling that some particular act is evil or not is purely subjective.

One persons evil is another person thinking they're doing God's will.

[AlecBGreen]

40. yes it exists

kind of :)

Light exists. It is a 'real' thing. Darkness does not exist, but rather it is an absence of light. So darkness is not a 'thing' but rather a 'state of being without light.'

Heat exists. It is energy. Cold does not exist. Again, cold is just a term that refers to something 'being in a state of lacking heat.'

As a Christian, I think that good exists. Something is 'good' if it conforms to God's will. The Earth, nature, & non-human life on Earth is all 'good' because, lacking the ability to choose otherwise, it conforms to God's will. Evil is uniquely human because (as far as we know) we are the only sentient life capable of choosing to act in ways that at odds with God's will.

From Genesis: And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.... "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. ... The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Thats how I see it.

[darkstar3]

41. That's a pretty scary way of looking at it, actually.

According to your view, anyone who goes against the will of God, or acts "in ways that at odds with God's will," is evil.

It's pretty clear from the Bible that God wants us to believe in him and worship him. I do neither. Ergo, by your definition, I personally am evil.

This doesn't even get into the fact that throughout history people have changed their minds about what really constitutes God's true will. Do you have the ultimate translation? Do you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what God's true will really is?

All of these questions, though, are secondary to this, in my opinion: What do you believe should be done with evildoers? Since you have defined evildoers in such a way, you obviously believe that there are many evildoers in the world, so how do you think you should act toward them or with respect to them?

[iris27]

45. Well, four days later you're not likely to get an answer, but let me just say

that the whole "cold is the absence of heat/evil is the absence of good" is the Christian apologists' way of excusing God from culpability as an omnipotent being in a world where there is evil. It's not thought through much further than that.

I once, as a very brainwashed 19-year-old, stood in front of my Crit Thinking class and explained, without any hint of irony, that God puts us through all manner of torments (Job, Joseph, etc.), but that this is always good because it is His will.

[darkstar3]

46. but that this is always good because it is His will...

Somehow I missed that particular aspect of the "good is defined as God's will" issue...

Yeesh!

[RagAss]

48. Everything is "God's Will"....everything in the mainfestation.

The kind act of feeding a hungry child .... as well as the earthquake that crushes a room full of children.
You can't pick and chose...if he created it...it's all his.

[kwassa]

42. I don't see a religious connotation to evil.

Evil is simply one end of the human behavioral spectrum.

It is within all our capacities as humans to be evil.

Evil simply describes that behavior. I've met evil persons in my life, and by that I mean those whose primary function was to strongly act as a foe to the well-being of others. Some of these evil persons had real power, and others didn't.

History is replete with those with absolute power that caused massive damage to their fellow human beings. Those persons are evil.

[saltpoint]

43. 'Evil' is one of those words that histrionic dogmatists like to capitalize

and then warn the populace about.

It is the terminology of an inquisitor, who uses it to negatively characterize a perceived enemy.

I don't believe it is a tangible substance or force or entity.

"I tell you friends, you got trouble with a capital 'T' and that rhymes with 'P' and that stands for pool!"

[Vidar]

44. Definitely.

[struggle4progress]

47. I regard moral issues as typically concerning our treatment of other conscious beings and so

regard them as having a natural objective quality. We seem only to be aware of other consciousness through material mediation, so respecting other consciousness has material implications, but I find the ontological status of consciousness unresolved and so entertain the possibility that there are non-material issues involved beyond the material issues

As people use the term religion in various ways, and as I do not know what the term means to you, I cannot make much sense of your assertion about the religious overtones of the term “evil”