Etymology of the word " evil "

DamianWarS said:

My point is directed at the OP questioning what "evil" really is and is it indeed the opposite of "good". The main point I was trying to establish was redirecting the OP's "Wikipedia" approach to good/evil concepts to how the bible revels them to be.

My suggestion is that the bible shows us contrasting concretes to show us the difference between the abstracts good/evil where evil always contrasts good, there is no mixture, good triumphs over evil and goodness is God's side. We can see examples like this right from the beginning where the the first thing God calls good is light and it is the first response to a formless void and dark earth. These simple concrete concepts are how the bible reveals to us what good is and evil always contrasts it and I would suggest light/darkness are the most dominate concepts of good/evil in the bible.

IMO focusing on a word study of the english "evil" misses the point and regardless what etymological study reveals that study does not dictate what "evil" is and what it is not. There is always a contrast to goodness and calling that contrast "evil" I don't think is irresponsible and still is a good fit.

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Bob Crowley said:

However evil is not created, but is a void or negation of the good. Blindness is a negation of sight - a natural evil. Greed is a negation of ambition or the desire to achieve.

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DamianWarS said:

Love is also an abstract. Don't be so defensive with this I'm not the one who makes up the rules of english nor am I challenging who God is. Good is an abstract because it cannot be defined with tangibles or physical referents and that's just how it is. This is not a philosophical argument it is rules of language.

But why are we debating about what terms are abstract and what are not? This has nothing to do with the op. Good/evil are contrasted biblically using simple terms that we can experience and understand such as light/dark. My point (regardless what you think is concrete or abstract) is that instead of looking to the English Language to discover what good/evil are we should look to how the bible defines them and study those concepts.

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DrBubbaLove said:

The OP asks a philosophical question, not a semantic labeling of nouns. God is Good. God is also Real. Which means Good is a real thing, so good exists as opposed to what we call evil - which is not a real thing at all and is not something which exists but rather an expression for the relative absence of something real - Good. That is all I meant and never meant to debate labeling/categorizing of nouns. Sorry if I misunderstood.

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