Good and evil

[seekeroftruth]

How much of our choosing good over evil has to do with threat of punishment? How much because of a natural repugnance for evil?


I'm thinking it has to do with how we react to our surroundings. If one perceives evil, one might choose to go completely against it and fight for good.

[duszek]

One question is how to recognize what is good and what is evil.
What appears to be good can turn out to be evil and vice versa.
"Fair is foul and foul is fair" tells us a poet.

Reason helps us to discover some internal contradiction which confuses the mind and clear thinking.

"Voluntary submission" to God or to something else. Is it at all possible ?
If you submit you do something against your will. And you cannot do something voluntarily and against your will at the same time.
So the whole concept of submission is bad and cannot come from God.
God Himself did not ask for submission from Adam and Eve, but respected their free choice of finding out the difference between good and evil.
God wanted people either to follow his voice freely and not to follow at all. Following reluctently or contre coeur or grudgingly is not good.

[Aetixintro]

It's about moral character! You don't need the threat of punishment to choose good. You do it out of the inherent benefits, like a fluent and happy society where people thrive and make the world better.

However, if it's a point to make it clear, there is no direct, opposite explanation. To bend/give way for the evil/bad/ethically devious can never be justified ethically. You have no ethical alternative than to suffer it and have the respect for choosing to do so. Thus, hopefully, your suffering will be revered by your contemporaries and the future, very honourably, some will say!

Cheers!

[cyberstone]

How much of our choosing good over evil has to do with threat of punishment? How much because of a natural repugnance for evil?

I don't think there is a natural repugnance for evil. Individuals have different repugnances and different desires. Babies and children are the most selfish creatures I've seen. If they weren't cute, they'd all get their butts kicked more often than they already do.

This is a two step question though. First, define the "good" act. Second, choose to do it, or do it's opposite. Unless the "good" is an objective thing that applies to all choosers, then what's the real point of labeling something "good" or "evil"?

If we assume there is an objective "good" and "evil" (even whether we know it or not), the threat of punishment probably has more to do with building habits, or defining a conscience, or building a repugnance for evil. Once the habits/conscience are in place, once one becomes an adult, choosing to do good might then be based not on threats, but on a belief that the good is a valuable thing worth contributing to, or participating in, or building.

But you said "how much" is based on threat of punishment - I'd say more than half. We are all little kids basically, running around trying to get away with having a party while mommy and daddy are away. Threat of punishment keeps us in line more than anything else.

[Chessmaster]

The majority of human actions are certainly governed by man made laws, (the threat of punishment).

all men and all animals are motivated on just 3 things: hunger, thirst, and the sexual impulse.

When we think of "evil", we think of a man satisfying one of these needs inseparable from life itself. Say if I murder, rob, or rape somebody, it was at bottom either for 1 of the 3 necessities stated above.

If it was for money, that is the same, for money is the abstract of any desires we may have, but all necessitate on the above 3 vital requirements.

"Good" is foreign to reality and inner nature. Since any individual life only exists so long as it gobbles up other life/matter.

Thus "good" and "evil" only have meaning between human life, who has satisfied the 3 basic necessities of life. But as is obvious, both good and evil is invalid as a true concept. Reality is neither. Or if it is one, it is what we would call evil. But only because our faculty of reason has enabled us to see what an evil world this is. But that is reality and cannot be changed for the simple reason that one being exists only by destroying and consuming another.

Stop eating (or in other words, stop performing "evil" by killing and consuming another life form), and you will cease to exist.

[jetsetjason]

Beyond Good and Evil (German: Jenseits von Gut und Böse; subtitled "Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future" (German: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft)) is a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1886.

It takes up and expands on the ideas of his previous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but approached from a more critical, polemical direction.

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting Christian premises in their consideration of morality. The work moves into the realm "beyond good and evil" in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favour of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual.

[HexHammer]

How much of our choosing good over evil has to do with threat of punishment? How much because of a natural repugnance for evil?


I'm thinking it has to do with how we react to our surroundings. If one perceives evil, one might choose to go completely against it and fight for good.

Intelligent people does not divide things into only 2 catagories.

If you read up on lawsuits and other such matters, there are suprisingly few cases where good and evil are clear, where people gets frauded and tricked into doing bad things.

Many things are very counterintuitive.

People who donate money and goods to 3rd world countries are doing evil and tell me why, if you can't you will not comprehend things on a higher level.

[msi4mahesh]

i think one must learn how to be good and spread it. most of the people do Evil because they enjoy it or they do not have a choice. one way or the other they make a living out of it.
and if everyone in this world is good evil would not exist at all. therefore we never know what is good either. i think its ones duty to motivate others how to understand good from evil. below is an article which gives an insight to Good vs Evil. read it and share your comments about it

http://www.worldtransformation.com/good-vs-evil/