Walker wrote: ↑Mon Dec 10, 2018 12:37 pm
-1- wrote: ↑Mon Dec 10, 2018 10:46 am
Walker wrote: ↑Sun Dec 09, 2018 10:47 pm
There is lots of evidence that evil does exist in the world.
I completely disagree.
Evil is a result of a relationship. Evil is not an entity. It is part of religious doctrine that evil is an entity, but it is a false proposition, even by the same standards that religions use. In other words, when you think it true, religions, Christianity in particular, fail in a number of ways when they show that evil is an entity.
That said, sadness and negative emotions can't be eradicated. They are also defense mechanisms against the feeling of loss, and therefore they are an evolutionary advantage. Sometimes negative emotions are the results of mutations or of parasitic disease, or of injury. You can't do much about that, either. Not in the present stage of human knowledge.
Was Hitler evil?
Or, given your definition that excludes entities, did Hitler commit or order evil acts?
-1-, I agree about evil not being an entity. But I disagree that feeling "sadness" (a psychological pain) at losing something that one loved is evolutionarily advantageous. How is psychological pain that is associated with losing something/someone that is loved advantageous? Unless neurobiology proves me wrong, I think that "sadness" is a lack of feeling good, rather than an actual emotion itself. Not feeling good, contrasted with feeling good, feels not good. But the psychological pain involved comes from a wish that reality was different than it is. This wish for reality to be instantaneously/magically better is the source of psychological suffering and has no advantage. The desire to make things better is real and causes not pain but motivation.
Walker, I accept that Hitler was not evil but that his actions/orders were. His orders should never have been carried out. Evil is that which brings into non-existence that which is good. The action of murder is such an example. So, yes, he committed evil actions.
But was he motivated by an evil essence or by good values? He was not schizophrenic, there were no hallucinated devils whispering to him to commit these evil actions. So is it possible that he decided to take these actions even though he only had good values to motivate him? Yes.
He was not motivated by evil, for evil is a false essence. He was motivated by valuable things, such as a desire to defeat evil. It was flawed logic (to think that Jews were evil) and flawed ethics (to think that murder could be justified) that allowed him to think that what he was doing was justified. Just as one reflects one, the perception of one group causing harm leads to the inclination to perpetrate harm on that group. Hitler believed in evil and the belief in evil leads one to commit actions to eliminate evil. The only true way to eliminate evil is by eliminating the belief in its essence; to destroy evil, one must refrain from thinking that someone is evil. Rather, we would think that someone acts from a supposition of its being his duty.
Evil was his enemy; ispo facto, he was attempting to do good and create harmony for his group.
The problem was in his lack of consciousness expansion, having refrained from seeing all individual humans are part of his group.