another problem of evil

[Advocate]

Somewhere, sometime, someone was born just in time be covered in lava. Mysterious ways indeed.

[Gary Childress]

Well, according to IC the newly born infant either deserved it or benefitted from it. God only does things according to a benevolent "plan".

[alan1000]

Just goes to show, dunnit?

[Sculptor]

Just goes to show, dunnit?

Yeah!!
.... erm.. show what?

[Sculptor]

IN the time it has taken me to look at and respond to this thread 10 children has died from lack of clean water.

[Walker]

The problem with evil is its heteropalindrome which stalls the tragedy that sorrows Sculptor.

[Walker]

Well, according to IC the newly born infant either deserved it or benefitted from it. God only does things according to a benevolent "plan".

Gary, no one gives a hoot in hell what you think about IC.

What is another problem of evil according to Gary, Gary.

[Gary Childress]

Well, according to IC the newly born infant either deserved it or benefitted from it. God only does things according to a benevolent "plan".

Gary, no one gives a hoot in hell what you think about IC.

What is another problem of evil according to Gary, Gary.

The biggest problem of evil is that it exists. I guess the next question is whether everything has a "right" to or "ought" to exist. Or should only the good exist, abolishing evil? Something to ponder, I suppose--unless "good" and "evil" are capable of 'peacefully' co-existing? Perhaps "good" and "evil" are nothing more than labels for two otherwise morally undifferentiable sides? But if one wins, the other loses.

So I ask you, swami Walker: what is more worthy of standing for; the existence of all (including evil) or the triumph of "good"? And why?

[promethean75]

really tho there's no such thing as 'evil', gary. the closest approximation to it would be something understood and modeled in a biological/evolutionary sense. a certain type of animal and how it survives, is the question. take the model evolutionary biologists use to describe species types and their survival strategies: https://biology.stackexchange.com/quest ... ategy#2023

in this model u have a community of three types of animals. grudgers, suckers and cheats. now if anything at all can be called 'evil' it would be the cheats, which function like parasites in the community. the human equivalent of this parasite would be the capitalist. the grudgers would be the working class and the suckers would be the working classes that identify as conservatives (conservatism is the foundation of the survival strategy of the parasite class).

Take care to note that a community of cheats could not produce an ESS. It's logically impossible. This means that in order to survive they need suckers, and without suckers they would die off. Or go to jail in trump's case. Notice how this creature is still grifting even now.

[promethean75]

oh wait what i said might be confusing as u read that the cheat strategy can be an ESS (provided enough suckers exist). the difference between birds and humans is that humans can anticipate the existence of a cheat, can identify it in advance before it gets cheated. as such, it wouldn't matter if for every sucker that wuz cheated, there's another sucker around the corner ready to help the cheat. in a human community the cheat (capitalist) would be 'marked' and therefore avoided.

[Harbal]

We all use the word, "evil", but I have no idea what we mean by it.

[Gary Childress]

We all use the word, "evil", but I have no idea what we mean by it.

Ultimately, there are a lot of ways humans can behave. In some cases, different ways may conflict. So for example, someone who strictly adheres in "for better or worse, until death do you part" who loses their mate who maybe doesn't believe that and runs off with someone who makes them happier in the moment, would think that the mate who ran off is evil for breaking that vow at marriage. The mate who ran off, might think the more 'devoted' mate 'unhealthy' (kind of our contemporary term for 'evil') for trying to cling to a relationship that was going sour. Things that were once considered 'evil' because they were counterproductive or perhaps harmful are now considered less so. Take the famous "protestant work ethic," the notion that there is no such thing as working too hard or being too productive. Sometimes work is wasteful and unneeded and just wears a person out, wasting precious resources on things that don't need to be done and often ends up simply benefitting those who own the business or something. So the protestant work ethic loses traction under those circumstances.

Also, look at the "7 deadly sins" of the Catholic church. These were routes to evil, the highest evil of all, the kind that would lead you to hell no less. Yet, none of those sins seem to directly involve what we now consider the highest forms of evil, murder, genocide, rape, etc. Perhaps those 'evils' were rightfully restricted in other times when they were indeed stepping stones to everything bad that can happen, poverty, hunger, illness, and death. But they are not direct acts of deprivation, killing, or dying. They are acts that under the right conditions (sometimes simply moderation) can be perfectly healthy and normal under different material conditions for people and society.

It seems to me that culture can be a very weird thing. In a sense, it's an amalgamation of rules and beliefs that justify or consolidate other rules or beliefs that transform, even leading to the proliferation of more rules and beliefs. In the end, I think what is called 'evil' is ultimately unwanted death. That was the greatest imaginable evil once upon a time. In days before modern medicine, eating certain types of food or engaging in certain types of behavior put a person at a much greater risk of death than other things. So those things that led to death were deemed 'evil'.

Unfortunately, when I attended a couple of Christian programs and churches for a while in my search for the truth of God and religion, I encountered many things that just weren't very rational to me. There are leftover artifacts from the past that seem to me to do little more than impede happiness. For example, masturbation is still considered 'evil' by the Christian church. While it's true that masturbation can reach excessive or unhealthy levels in a person who becomes addicted to it, it otherwise causes little if any harm, perhaps it's even useful when done in moderation. Back in the days when the Christian church was formed, overpopulation wasn't a problem on anyone's mind yet. In fact, increasing population was seen as largely unproblematic, there was land to give to newborn citizens when they matured, it meant more warriors for the armies, more field hands, etc. Nobody had any inkling of global climate change. Today we have automation to produce where there is a lack of workers and war is being seen more and more as a dirty, unnecessary business.

Indeed, war itself is the new 'evil', abortion, OTOH, is seen more as a way of curbing overpopulation and it is believed largely by science and personal experience that aborting a fetus causes no true harm to something that doesn't appear to be conscious and aware--something that is probably little more than a bundle of instinctive nerve reactions at that point.

But the Christian church still clings to old ways and old values. Continuing to do something that is no longer productive, perhaps even counter-productive, for no other reason than it's "tradition," is probably as much a mark of insanity as trying something over and over that doesn't seem to be working. Sometimes there are grounds for faith and sometimes faith will be the death of you if you keep pounding away counter to evidence to the contrary.

Granted, "conservatism" is supposed to be the "conservation" of the past, a sense of taking things slow and rational as things change. There's not too much wrong with that. Sudden change can send things into chaos and cause more damage than good. But in the end, no one wants to just keep things the way they were forever. There's a reason why people invent things, to make life better and to overcome past challenges. Yes, some of the stuff we invent can be used toward 'evil' (read unhealthy or destructive) purposes (for example: is building things that can better accomplish the task of destroying life, really "progress") but overall, the sciences ought to be here to help us flourish and thrive, not help us destroy ourselves.

The world needs to make changes. We seem to be facing serious problems like environmental collapse and destruction at the hands of our own technological advances. There is also a sense that we need to get off this planet if we don't want our own species' life span to be deterministically tied to the life, stability, and hospitableness of our planet or eventually our solar system's sun.

It seems to me that a question becomes, how fast do we need to progress in order to beat the clock on those things? How long will our planet be habitable, how long will our sun last? Maybe we have a long time ahead of us to accomplish those things or maybe we don't. Many Christians seem to lack answers to those things because, at the time the bible was written, there was little if any possibility of imagining that we could travel away from Earth into outer space (aside from going to "heaven" when we die).

In short, Christianity is just not serving our society well any longer, in my opinion. It's become too restrictive where technology has opened up new possibilities. Until I see reason to believe differently, that's my impression. We need a new 'religion' as it were.

[Agent Smith]

"C'mere boy!" Tom shouted. The little man child hurried towards Tom, lurched and then stood at attention, he was nervous. "Tom why did you call the boy?" Harry asked. "He looks a bit green," Tom replied. "Aah! That's typical," Dick was stooping down to pick up a chocolate wrapper. "Are ya ok, boyo!?" Tom was concerned. "I'm ... I'm fine sir, it's just ..." the boy went when he was interrupted by an "Off you go!" from Tom.

From a window that looked out into the children's park, Sherlock Holmes had a very good view of the trio. "Watson, what do you make of these 3 specimens out there, talking to the boy?" queried Sherlock. "Well, one's probably a nurse or a doctor," said Watson. "Superb Watson, superb! And the chocolate wrapper? Isn't it odd that there should one and only one and at this time of the day?"

[Walker]

Somewhere, sometime, someone was born just in time be covered in lava. Mysterious ways indeed.

Evil is a problem to most everyone's personage when evil effects one's self, because for most everyone the concept of self is the numero uno concept to die for, and if the self-concept allows, to die bravely.

Those who don't die in order to remain consistant with their self-concept shall be born to a new self-concept.

For example, The Master of the Universe who breaks under torture will have a new self-concept.


He may fold under questioning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL9rSwrsMHw

[Iwannaplato]

We all use the word, "evil", but I have no idea what we mean by it.

In this context anything that shouldn't have been allowed to happen if kindness reigned.

In general, however, yeah, the definition seems to vary. From like very bad people or actions or attitudes - with bad being another vague cultural term - to an actually distinct ontological force or even creature or alliance that goes against The Good or God, perversely and knowingly not merely out of ignorance.