The Problem of Evil - Can It Be Solved?

reply to post by PhantomLimb

Yet aNOTHER vote for the neccessity of evil!

Originally posted by bismos
without evil there is no good. with out order nothing exists. without chaos nothing evolves. you cant have one without the other. yin and yang

So the good cannot be experienced or enjoyed unless it is good relative to evil? Does that not mean then that, at least to a degree, evil justifies the good?

I don't know.... ?

How much death and destruction then, is "good" death and destruction? How much is needed for us to enjoy ourselves..?

Here is what I read in the Tao Te Ching that I think compliments evil as necessity:

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.

Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other;
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow one another.

Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease,
Creating, yet not possessing,
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.


Personally I think one of the keys points you can derive from this passage is the duality of nature.

I think this is also a good point which I was shown during a lecture in Psychology class. The teacher showed us studies of psychologists keeping track of people's emotions and the end result of the study was that on average people were neutral in emotions meaning for every extreme period of happiness there was an contrasting experience of negative emotion.

What do you all think?

I do not believe that evil is a yang to yin's goodness.

And again I ask, how much is needed then?

Why does everyone INSIST on being an apologist for evil, when the thing itself is nothing but an absurdity without a base or foundation, nothing but an ignorance and a sickness in the mind and heart of man?

Our defence of evil to me, is as absurd as the thing itself.

Are people who do evil, helping the rest of us? Is it helpful?

Let's not be silly and really think this thing through first.

What I hear many if not most saying is - it's no problem at all, it's ok, even beneficial and much needed, keep it up all ye who do evil.

That's absurd!

In order to solve a problem, you would have first have to identify the problem.

So, evil is identified. But evil is only a word. What constitutes evil? How would one define evil? By what yardstick?Are thoughts that goes beyond that yardstick evil or actions that goes beyond that yardstick evil or both?

What is good anyway? From where did we learnt what is good or bad?

Unfortunately, there is no clear evidences even by science on the origins of man. Some believe that we descended from apes.If so, than a question mark comes forth, how do monkeys know the difference between good and bad? Through suffering and pain perhaps, such as fooling around on trees, falling down to the ground hurting themselves, and would never fool around again? Yet I still see monkeys fooling around even today.

Some believe in the Bible, that the knowledge of good and bad came from our Creator. He was our Teacher to our earliest ancestors. Some may call those earliest years a dictatorship, but then, what were we then but mere infants. Would we call our parents dictators?

We watch how our parents would sacrifice even their lives, if we children were bullied, and how they would anger and demand justice to be served on bullies who had harmed us. Are our parents 'killers'. 'murderers', condone 'slavery' or whatever stupid terms one can think of to justify one's own stupidity for not realising the neccessities that our parents had to perform to ensure for our growth and evolution?

I can go on, but the point is, we mankind had to learn and start somewhere. Without our parents teachings, we would have been monkeys swinging from trees to trees. And that's what our atheist brothers and sisters would had done, if those teachings had not been incalcated during their formative years by their 'Dictator' parents. Needs no convoluted greek philosphies for such simple comprehensions :-P :-P

I do not believe evil is yin and yang. But Lau Tsu seems to/
Great analysis TruthSeeker.

I believe evil is created out of perception and intention. When an action has good intentions, people may still perceive it as evil.... but is it still evil?

The source of evil? Well just like every single thing in our REALITY, it is a CREATION! and typically we learn of this creation early in our lives, through punishment, bullying, tv etc.

Also we can think that evil is a part of our most basic instincts (say a kid playing with his favorite toy doesnt want to share and when another kid wants it they fight).

To put this in the most basic perspective, I believe there are 2 levels to humanity (just trying to be simplistic), there is the level that is just one big orgasm of sensation (5senses, neurons firing etc.) and there is the human spirit (the true being, (free will etc)). It is up to the "human spirit" to understand the life forces that are true and the present which is false.

I was in a Catholic High School (which is such lulz cause it is exactly like a jail with uniforms and such) and the religious education we were given on Catholicism failed to go in depth on issues like these to understand who we really are and what constitutes true reality. It also failed to teach any other religion too (kind off topic), even though there is a whole course I had to take on world religions.
I think if religion was taught more based on who we are I think more people would be enlightened of this information and less inclined to act in negative ways. Also there should be a class in all schools on WHO WE ARE and TRUE REALITY and other topics (not good at specifics but you guys know all).

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by PhantomLimb

 

Yet aNOTHER vote for the neccessity of evil!

edit on 12-1-2011 by NewAgeMan because: (no reason given)

What is your problem? Do you not know how to face reality? You can't have one without the other. Otherwise it is meaningless! What is life without the happiness of friends and the cold realities of death? If there were not bad, we would not appreciate good. Face it, your new age beliefs will get you nowhere! You're the proverbial ostrich with it's head in the sand. You're afraid to face the reality that you cannot make good the only thing in existence. To do so would be to rob people of their free will. Which is evil.

Did you read that carefully? Did you see where I went with that? If everyone is good, then it is evil! It's a paradox. If everyone is good and no one can be bad, then that is the ultimate evil! The most dangerous individuals are the ones who want to make the world a better place.

Originally posted by NewAgeMan

Originally posted by bismos
without evil there is no good. with out order nothing exists. without chaos nothing evolves. you cant have one without the other. yin and yang

So the good cannot be experienced or enjoyed unless it is good relative to evil? Does that not mean then that, at least to a degree, evil justifies the good?

I don't know.... ?

How much death and destruction then, is "good" death and destruction? How much is needed for us to enjoy ourselves..?

edit on 12-1-2011 by NewAgeMan because: damn typo!

I don't even know what you think to be evil. Is it people who don't think like you? Is it Christians, Muslims, bankers, drug dealers, the POTUS, your neighbor, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Yahweh, God, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Salvador Dali, Ghandi?

All these people are thought to be evil by one group or another. Which are evil and which are not? Tell me which are good? It's subjective. I think that is the point you're missing. Read some philosophy like Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and others. Expand your naive beliefs a little bit ffs.

reply to post by PhantomLimb


Your posts on this page are written in a really bad way but still hidden with your points you do make a good point!

If you read the past post in this topic you will see we are not talking about evil subjectively but evil as a whole. To point the finger at a certain group in this thread would be irrelevant to the goal of the thread.

But upon further inspection if you look at every single perceived source of evil (a source that "you" define as evil) it is from your perceptive making it indeed

Essentially evil is decided by the viewers values and everyone has different values.
Example: A old foreign preacher lady on the bus was giving out prayer cards and people would take them and throw them to the ground while I said simply "No thank you." In her perspective this was evil and she said I would go to hell.

Not everyone would agree that I was performing an evil act.

But can we judge an act or an individual as a whole as evil in an unbiased way?

It is really tough to say.

I will try to find some of those philosophy readings you suggested

Originally posted by PhantomLimb

Originally posted by NewAgeMan

Originally posted by bismos
without evil there is no good. with out order nothing exists. without chaos nothing evolves. you cant have one without the other. yin and yang

So the good cannot be experienced or enjoyed unless it is good relative to evil? Does that not mean then that, at least to a degree, evil justifies the good?

I don't know.... ?

How much death and destruction then, is "good" death and destruction? How much is needed for us to enjoy ourselves..?

edit on 12-1-2011 by NewAgeMan because: damn typo!

I don't even know what you think to be evil. Is it people who don't think like you? Is it Christians, Muslims, bankers, drug dealers, the POTUS, your neighbor, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Yahweh, God, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Salvador Dali, Ghandi?

It's Salvador Dali.

It's absurd, that's my point.

Without foundation. Baseless ie: hell as no bottom.

We did it, it's a human problem.

Therefore, the solution, is a human solution, nothing supernatural, but perhaps, on the other side of evil, in laughter and love, it just might be sublime, even surreal (so I take that back Salvador, it wasn't you after all!).

reply to post by ThisIsMyName


I would agree with you, to a point, but at some point I think that the victims of evil, might disagree, and at some level, we've all been victimized by it, and so long as there are people who are suffering, as a result of being victimized by evil, we cannot truly have absolute peace within ourselves, and yet paradoxically, the solution can only arise from within, in the form of a love capable of altogether transcending it, we all know, that love that's been missing from the world, we must be that, in order to bring about the needed transformation, individually, and collectively, so as strange as this might sound, we all need to take it on, provided that our capacity for suffering is in accordance with our capacity for love. To the degree that we can do this, by praying for our enemy and those who may persecute us for the sake of righteousness (what's right and true, and therefore loving) - evil may then be transmuted or absorbed by us, taking on the role of the man of sorrows, as well as the man of joy where it may be said that the more that suffering carves into our being, the more joy we might contain (Gibran, "The Prophet").

Only then might authentic humor as prior freedom arise even from within the midst of the worst indignity.

And so I say it's important, as we are able, to proclaim the end of evil and then become the very solution to the problem of evil. There is no other way that is reasonable, since every time we point our finger, there's always some damn fool at the end of it!