WARNING: Actual philosophy!

there is no such thing as good or evil.....only perception

second line

Originally posted by Silicis n Volvo
there is no such thing as good or evil.....only perception

Which is, of course, very handy for rationalization. I steal your wallet, you claim it's bad, I claim it's good, because I'm better off. If I've a gun, or I'm the King, or I otherwise have an unanswerable argument to my claim of "good", tough luck for you, because in the vacuum of your perception, I've defined what "good" is, to both you and me.

There are absolutes, like it or not. In a world without them, no one can claim justice or value to exist.

reply to post by adjensen

The fact that you can say this is good, this is bad, has no relevance to anything. Only you will see the world according to that perception. If you choose to see bad or wrong, only you will suffer.
If we look at the world and see it is ok, we will also be ok. Regardless of what we think, it is as it is.

Originally posted by Itisnowagain
reply to post by adjensen

 

The fact that you can say this is good, this is bad, has no relevance to anything. Only you will see the world according to that perception. If you choose to see bad or wrong, only you will suffer.

If the world consisted of you, and you alone, that would be true. However, it does not, so society itself resolves what is good and what is bad. That may be fluid from society to society, but there is good, there is bad. Otherwise, there is dog eat dog anarchy and there can be no civilization.

As in my case above, you may disagree with what society (or merely someone more powerful than you) claims "good" to be, but that doesn't make it so, except for yourself.

That society or powerful people can arbitrarily define what good and bad will be is a potentially very bad thing, of course, but it is what it is. Mao didn't kill millions in the Cultural Revolution because he thought that it was a bad thing.

Warning, the following meanders a lot through the subject matter.
. . . .
These are all definition dependent ideas.

To say that God either exists or binarily doesn't, depends on how you define 'God'.

There are probably definitions of 'God' that allow either ambiguity or duality where God both exists & doesn't exist, simultaneously.

[tangent question] Is God a personality, an identity?

If you have a thing that is so infinite & all encompassing, it quickly becomes inaccessible, and something that is so detached & remote it is almost meaningless to us, our lives.

Also how would something so all encompassing be/remain coherent & deterministic on any human perceptive scales?

Any God that would be all powerful, would have to be essentially non-interactive & irrelevant to our real & personal lives.

An all powerful God simply won't relate to you.
He [she/it] if it exists at all will be more alien to you than greys are.

To me the whole idea of on the one hand a personal, caring, coddling God who is also all powerful to all infinities just doesn't add up.

It just seems silly, stupid & like just so much self-contradicting nonsense to me.
. . . .

Now evil.
Definitions seem to say evil is either [or both] something immoral or detrimental to our existence.

I feel quite confident that both terms 'morality' & 'evil' are about trumped up spin, inflection & hype than any rational empiric definitions.
They are terms that seem almost designed to spark a loud chord of irrationality [emotions] in our psyches.
Like many identifiable irrational numbers like pi or sqrt(2), we know the abstract [defined] concept of their PROPOSED* existence, but we don't & can't arrive at a precise quantity for them.

Like pornography's definition: "I know it when i see it."
'Morality' & 'evil' are PROPOSED ideas that can never actually be fingered.
Which to me makes them borderline, illegitimate terms for rational & logical discussions & determinations.

Fear would also seem to be an evolution favored irrational, supposition idea[/reflex] itself, so i don't want to totally discount their potential functional worth. But i DO think we have to be scrupulous & careful about inherently irrational & emotive terms.


So we would have to define 'moral'.
Personally i see so much that is called 'moral' used as a pretense of ethics that has no foundation in ethics whatsoever.
Which makes 'morality', in the vast majority of cases, nothing more than the most brazen kind of lie, deception & foil, which by my definition IS unethical [immoral].

Let us even presume we have some kind of code of conduct ['morality' if you will] that is founded in the idea of genuine ethical behavior.
We might presume this is based in some kind of ideas of equity & honesty between people(s) & with some kind of regard for the larger community, however expansively we might choose to define that.

To me, for something to be defined as 'evil', means either an intent to cause harm or deceive or to know that one's actions will cause harm & to do them anyway.

Real, soundly founded ethics say that intent, behavior as well as apparent [observable] behavior must all be consistent. And arrangements between people must be mutually based on this. And this same consideration is extended to the community as a whole.

Then one gets into questions of what is considered expected 'reasonable' forethought &/or knowledge of the average person, with perhaps some categorization dependent on additional expectations for 'experts' or 'professionals'.

To me it almost makes more sense, & gets more directly to any potential relevant points to simply set aside the term & notion of 'evil', altogether.
If you follow ethics then any spin or hype [sensationalism] of 'evil' is inherently excluded.

I suppose where the term 'evil' would crop up is in the event someone is charged with acting unethically. Then there are questions of restitution, punishment &/or consequences & ANOTHER irrational emotive term 'justice'.

But again i would shy away from too many claims of 'justice' because of 'evil' actions, & make it more empiric, that if certain actions or things are done, then there are law prescribed consequences & requirements, & avoid claims of 'moral' [supernatural] rationales for it, & simply make it a means of enabling a healthy, honest clean market where people like & are eager to do business, because they are treated honestly & therefore get as much possible benefit as could be decently expected.

*[ An irrational number is a PROPOSED [speculated?]
[abstract] 'value' that has not & can not be determined with complete precision? i think i kind of like that definition. comments?]

[edit on 12-8-2010 by slank]