what exactly are good and evil?

ONEinsanePHReaK

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To those how belive in religon your rules are set by your founder taechings, but I know there are many who are there own religon.
What determins good and evil for you?
Is it what makes your life easyist in your eyes?
Im not talking about leagle and lilleage correct or incorrect. Talking about good and evil?
In your eyes what defines them.
 

CSmrw

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To those how belive in religon your rules are set by your founder taechings, but I know there are many who are there own religon.
What determins good and evil for you?
Is it what makes your life easyist in your eyes?
Im not talking about leagle and lilleage correct or incorrect. Talking about good and evil?
In your eyes what defines them.

Good and Evil are just words that describe actions or conditions. They are not things themselves.
 
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quatona

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To those how belive in religon your rules are set by your founder taechings, but I know there are many who are there own religon.
What determins good and evil for you?
Is it what makes your life easyist in your eyes?
Im not talking about leagle and lilleage correct or incorrect. Talking about good and evil?
In your eyes what defines them.
Firstly a kind request: Could you please run your posts through a spell checker? English is not my first language and I find it hard to decipher your posts (I guess, though, that it´s easier for native speakers).

Good and evil, as I understand it, used to be adjectives that signified that which we like and that which we disapprove of, and their meaning could vary wildly, depending on the context. Now there is a strange phenomenon: There seems to be a desire to make nouns out of adjectives and verbs, a desire to look at that which is actually an attribute of a thing or which is a process appear as a thing itself, an object out there. I have never really understood this desire. This habit, imo, sucks the life out of everything.
As for me, I use those words merely to signify my preferences and dislikes, and I use "bad" as the counterpart of "good". I cannot really relate to the term "evil". Unlike "good" and "bad", which I can use for my purposes, I seem to have no use for this word. It seems to be designed to judge persons and insinuate their minds and motives, something I personally don´t care for much.
 
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Konkurrent

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Firstly a kind request: Could you please run your posts through a spell checker? English is not my first language and I find it hard to decipher your posts (I guess, though, that it´s easier for native speakers).

Not by much.
 
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mnbvcxz87

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To oneinsanefreak in truthism there are good or bad actions, or things that have happened or happen but they are not necessary concepts. They are only temporary and in terms of good or bad people, there is no such thing. Everyone has equal morality in them, what they do (if bad) is a result of their corruption. But they are themselves not bad.

Ps good and bad are quite loose terms.
 
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Eudaimonist

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What determins good and evil for you?

The requirements of human life set the standard. What nourishes life is the good, and what threatens it is the evil. What helps one to grow (to flourish as a rational human being) is good for oneself, and what stunts one's life is evil for oneself. The idea of flourishing is captured in a rough way in the Army advertising slogan "be all that you can be". Of course, the Army is appealing to the desire to be the best that one can be.

It is my nature -- what I am -- that determines good and evil for me.

Is it what makes your life easyist in your eyes?

No, it is what makes life challenging in reality. There is no growth without challenge, and life is generous at providing challenges. Sometimes too generous.

Ponder this image for a while. Think of the meaning of the phrase "diamond in the rough".

selfmademan170x226%20Carlyle.jpg



eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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Eudaimonist

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So, from the information I have gathered on and off CF, most(not all) people see the terms good and evil as forms of manipulation.

I personally both agree and disagree. People can use morality to manipulate, but morality can also be non-manipulative if it is an honest appraisal of cause and effect in reality.


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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quatona

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I am sorry if the following statement is incorrect.
So, from the information I have gathered on and off CF, most(not all) people see the terms good and evil as forms of manipulation.
Please tell me if you agree or disagree with this statement.
I don´t even seem to understand what this statement means, in the first place. What do you mean by manipulation in this context? In the broadest sense every interaction is manipulation, after all.
If however you are thinking of something planful, intentional or even disingeneous, then, yes moral standards are manipulative when being used for that purpose, and they aren´t if they aren´t.
 
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elman

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To those how belive in religon your rules are set by your founder taechings, but I know there are many who are there own religon.
What determins good and evil for you?
Is it what makes your life easyist in your eyes?
Im not talking about leagle and lilleage correct or incorrect. Talking about good and evil?
In your eyes what defines them.

Good is to be loving to your neighbor. Evil is to harm your neighbor.
 
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V

very_irreverand_Bill

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I prefer to look at things through the lenses of "harmful" and "Not harmful", "practical" and "impractical", "fair"/"unfair", ect, rather than "good" and "evil".

However, if to use the man-made terms "good" and "evil"; my personal view is that nature and reason determines the answer. Humans are at a certain stage of evolution, we are factually social species, we survive best by co-operating. Therefore, given the very social and intellectually advanced animals we are, I believe that good and evil are determined sociatally best by what is 'harmful" and "not harmful" to the individual; as a rule of nature, the individuals own liberty is best secured via the fcat that he/she is a social anaimal and part of a social species, again co-operaion is important, to best secure the individual liberties-the individual needs to logically notice that he/she is surrounded by many other "individuals" whom also want individual liberty mazimized for themsleves. As a social species, each individual best can enjoy life and have maximized liberty by respecting the indiivdual libertie sof every other individual; therefore, the individual human animal will eventually reason out that how the treat others is how others will treat them therefore the individual learns to eaither leave others be{if that individual is highly a loner} or that individual leanrs to treat others with the same dignities and helps that he/she would want for themselves.
Eventually, though this starts as a ethics born of "neccesity', because of the emotional part sof the human animals brain-real sympathy develops, compassion, respect, caring, and love feelings.

Therefore, the law sof the land are best deternimedby this; what mazimizes individual liberties w/out impeding on other individuals liberties,

On the personal level. lesser important things for the individual that do not affect others, the morality for those contexts and things is based out of "personal tastes", again keepong in mind the natural laws I mentioned-the individual does as they will, without harming individuals, as they wold not wish to be unjustly harmed themselves and they protect themselves against it by wearing the social vestments of collective ethics.

That is how so-called "good' and 'evil" are best defined.

Those human animals that don't intuituvely realize this as human ana=imals, are defective; some can be repaired via beeing taught{or 'informed'}, others can't. Breaking from this usually result sin either absurd moral absolutes based on mythologies{which usually end up in some portionof the human specie sbeing opresed and mistreated by the morally superior ones and their myths}, or in individuals whom are anaimls with defective conciences, whom go out of their way to harm, and end up eventually paying the piper{if their socal place on society is minimal; if they are an elite-they sometimes get away with it-unfortunately}

In Reason:
Irrev.Bill
 
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justanobserver

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Good is to be loving to your neighbor. Evil is to harm your neighbor.

for some, that might be but my view is:

Good is to be loving to your neighbor. better is to be harmful to your neighbor that does evil things.

of course, what is deemed "evil" to one might not be to others.

then theres that old saying "do unto others then run real fast."
 
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