Evil

[MorkandMindy]

EVIL

Rather than gas on about evil in the abstract we could try the Pareto principle and identify a few sources responsible for the majority of the evil in the World and see what can be done about each.

I've suggested a few and await better-informed opinions!!!


CANDIDATE [and my guess about its contribution to evil]

SATAN [a little]
Deaths according to the Bible: God 2.27 million -- Not including the flood, the plagues of Egypt, or various pestilences and famines, etc., Satan: 10 -- Job's Children, which he did with God's direct knowledge and approval (my debt to someone’s posting on CF). If you claim God’s were perfectly valid that still leaves Satan with a minuscule role.

‘SATANIST’ GROUPS [some]
I have heard of Satanist groups in the US and elsewhere, many members are alleged to be rich and powerful members of society, often also respected church members. (Hence the argument that Satan attacks those who are doing the most good?)

But there is no convincing evidence of an actual endorsement from Satan, just secrecy and perverted lust, most likely Satan is more of an excuse.

HUMAN NATURE [less than often claimed]
Research into behaviour of soldiers in past showed that only 2% shoot to kill, 98% deliberately miss. Of the 2%, 1% were socially acceptable psychopaths and 1% were particularly disciplined. This is a waste of bullets, food and everything needed to supply those soldiers, so training was developed to condition soldiers to treat a real conflict more like a target gallery.

ATHEISM [no]
Blame it all on Bertrand Russell?

AGNOSTICISM [no]
Blame it all on Sir Julian Huxley?

COMMUNISM [varies]
Joseph Stalin was paranoid. So was Adolf Hitler. Both had very different economic structures and ideals. The common elements were paranoia and fear.

CRITICISM [yes]
And tearing others down to build yourself up.
This leads to parents telling some of their children that they are substandard. Doesn't happen in polite society but is common more toward the bottom end. Low self-esteem children see no point in working since the results will be substandard anyway. And are disheartened by looking at good jobs because those are for other people. And are afraid to apply for jobs for fear of rejection. There is also a correlation with violence because there isn't much left self worth left in the person. This causes untold harm.

HEDONISM [no]
Hedonists seem to be a harmless bunch. Murders are often justified by the murderer explaining that the victim 'didn't deserve to live'. Morality is sometimes key to killing. I can't see that a self-centred person would do a murder and risk years in prison when there are more fun things to do.

PAGANISM [used to be]
Not a simple point; see POST 4.

SELFISHNESS [yes]
This is a big factor. Not that selfishness makes people kill, but only thinking of yourself results in carelessness and carelessness costs lives - think about others. Unfortunately the alternative to everyone running their own lives is some government or church running our lives. This happened in the dark ages and wasn't a great success.

GREED [yes]
Selfishness part 2. Corporate greed can be dangerous - see POST 2.

RADICAL ISLAM [yes, but]
Radical Muslims make the counter claim: 'you started it', which recent history generally bears out. This point is debated in other threads such as International Politics > 'Pray for Peace in the Middle East' or in Ethics > 'Bad Guys and Good Guys - Christians and Muslims can agree'.

CHRISTIANITY [yes, but]
Not all of Christianity is evil by any means, most parts at least try to do good, but there is a huge amount of evil lurking in several areas. See POST 3.

USA [no]
After slanging off the US something awful I was amazed when the fairly radical Muslim I was chatting with replied that where he would most like to go back to as a holiday was California. He loved the place and the people.

I deduced the USA isn't really the problem in virtually anyone's opinion – it is the oil companies who currently run it that are the problem – see POST 2.

WITCHCRAFT [no]
I seem to recall Christians burnt something like 30,000 alleged witches alive rather than the other way around.

CARELESSNESS, MISTAKES AND PURE CHANCE [yes]
In politics an awful lot gets blamed on error, and it is hard to believe that professional strategists and their multitude of assistants can make those kinds of oversights.

But us nobodies don’t have those resources and an awful lot of things that may look deliberate are accidental. People do the stupidest things.

BAD REASONING, JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS, SECOND GUESSING [yes]
Remember Romeo and Juliet. Remember all those Thomas Hardy novels. Bad timing, mistakes.
Second guessing (I divorced you because I was sure you were going to divorce me first and I didn’t think I could cope with rejection again). Remember, car accidents far outnumber murders, most offenses are not deliberate.

 

[MorkandMindy]

CORPORATE GREED - THE OIL COMPANIES

Missing from our history books:
Who sponsors our young history researchers? The Rockerfeller, Carnegie and Ford foundations have a big role. And oil companies are notable by their absence from our history books. That is why recent history is not coherent. I remember Hitler got his oil from Spain. But Spain has very little oil, so where did Hitler get his oil (I’m excluding synoil). And try to explain the Vietnam War without mentioning the oil.

The mental block goes personal:
Despite it's key role in wealth, petroleum sources receive little attention in the media. Britain for example was fairly poor until 1970, but hardly anyone connects the arrival of North Sea oil with the sudden increase in wealth. Everyone ELSE gets rich from oil: Texans, Middle Easterners, but no, we always get rich by our own hard work.

The US has sufficient oil for a very long time but most of it is expensive to get out (oil shale). To make a profit the oil companies need to get it from the cheapest sources: the Balkans, Middle East, Vietnam, Venezuela and a few other places. This is a key factor in the huge upsurge in wars in the past hundred years, particularly in those areas.

 

[MorkandMindy]

CHRISTIANITY
This depends on the sources you get your history from. The Vatican has a heap of ancient manuscripts praising Christianity and documenting martyrs. But it is worth remembering that people back then were just as capable of making up things as now.

Anecdotes from letters give a totally different story.

As soon as the Athanasian Christians had grown sufficiently we killed or converted the pagans (390AD or so) and then fought the Arian Christians who outnumbered us and during that the Roman Empire was invaded and destroyed.

But the church survived. The church of Rome was in dispute over doctrine with the other bishops and Crusade 4 sacked Constantinople, weren't the Crusades supposed to be against the Muslims? Constantinople was left with little territory and too poor to repair the walls adequately which was crucial in the inability to stop the Muslim attack. Previously the Arian Christians further South were better treated by the Muslims than by the church and were happy to defect and did not stop the Muslim advance.

1100 to 1550 there's burning other Christians alive for heinous crimes including accepting transubstantiation when they should believe in consubstantiation and such, and in the later part mainly for allegations of witchcraft. And then the Enlightenment takes over and eventually the hold of the Church weakened too much to do any more killing.

The Church also reformed from within, the teachings of Thomas Aquinas spread and in time the Church gained the human concern it has today.

 

[MorkandMindy]

PAGANISM
Modern paganism is a religion much like most church religions but it celebrates nature. Overall it is fragmented into umpteen groups just like Protestant Christianity, each claiming to be more true in some way than the others. I've looked at one pagan forum and found the same struggles to live the pagan faith and fight anger and selfishness as I recall among Christians.

I wouldn't class paganism as a threat anymore.

My guess is part of the development of Paganism was as the beginnings of agricultural science.

Time of year - Stonehenge and other means of seeing where the sun rises and therefore the time of year and all that stuff about stars and constellations.

Rain - Sacrifices including human were also used to bring rain (Aztecs and their reliance on corn (maize) comes to mind). Shepherds are less critically affected by rain patterns.

Planting and Sacrifice - unfortunately the connection between 'a seed must die first' was transferred to humans, and people were killed on the basis of this logic.

There was a long transition in the OT to get away from human sacrifice (helped by being mainly shepherds rather than farmers; recall Cain and Abel) and transition to moralistic and nationalistic Judaism. Jewish nationalism threw off the Greek Empire in the Maccabean rebellion and very nearly threw off the Roman Empire also. (if gospel Christianity hadn't taken lots of converts they might have succeeded in 67-70 AD). You can’t attain this level of military success when everyone sacrifices their first born.

 

[elman]

PAGANISM
Modern paganism is a religion much like most church religions but it celebrates nature. Overall it is fragmented into umpteen groups just like Protestant Christianity, each claiming to be more true in some way than the others. I've looked at one pagan forum and found the same struggles to live the pagan faith and fight anger and selfishness as I recall among Christians.

I wouldn't class paganism as a threat anymore.

My guess is part of the development of Paganism was as the beginnings of agricultural science.

Time of year - Stonehenge and other means of seeing where the sun rises and therefore the time of year and all that stuff about stars and constellations.

Rain - Sacrifices including human were also used to bring rain (Aztecs and their reliance on corn (maize) comes to mind). Shepherds are less critically affected by rain patterns.

Planting and Sacrifice - unfortunately the connection between 'a seed must die first' was transferred to humans, and people were killed on the basis of this logic.

There was a long transition in the OT to get away from human sacrifice (helped by being mainly shepherds rather than farmers; recall Cain and Abel) and transition to moralistic and nationalistic Judaism. Jewish nationalism threw off the Greek Empire in the Maccabean rebellion and very nearly threw off the Roman Empire also. (if gospel Christianity hadn't taken lots of converts they might have succeeded in 67-70 AD). You can’t attain this level of military success when everyone sacrifices their first born.

If we define evil as being unloving, there is only one source of evil. Mankind.

 

[MorkandMindy]

If we define evil as being unloving, there is only one source of evil. Mankind.

I see I should have said 'categories' of evil rather than sources, because as you have, in my opinion, precisely identified the source, um, that leaves my original aim of eliminating the source of evil as eliminating the human race.

That would leave absolutely nobody posting on Christian Forums.

I really wish I'd said 'categories'.

 

[elman]

I see I should have said 'categories' of evil rather than sources, because as you have, in my opinion, precisely identified the source, um, that leaves my original aim of eliminating the source of evil as eliminating the human race.

That would leave absolutely nobody posting on Christian Forums.

I really wish I'd said 'categories'.

Yes if we elimanated mankind we would elimanate all evil and all righteousness or goodness on this planet.

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

Yes if we elimanated mankind we would elimanate all evil and all righteousness or goodness on this planet.

Thats implying universal good and evil, which isnt true.

 

[elman]

Thats implying universal good and evil, which isnt true.

What do you mean by universal good and evil and how do you know it is not true?

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

What do you mean by universal good and evil and how do you know it is not true?

Universal right and wrong, good and bad, that all agree on because we are all programmed to think it is good and bad. Which isnt true. Set right, and set wrong that if you go anywhere in the world someone will agree just as the same as the other billions that it is wrong, which isnt the case.

 

[DailyBlessings]

How does all this relate to the Pareto principle? I admit I only know the Pareto principle from the way it is used in economics- 20 percent of the work generates 80 percent of the advantage of it, so in analysis one identifies the key influencing factors by a quantitative analysis of their outcomes. I can see how you might try to adapt this to the question of evil, by identifying the key categories of behavior that tend to create "evil" actions, which you have not defined. But I don't see how it has anything to do with your rubric (most of which you seem to have come up with the figures and categories for off the top of your head). You seem to be using multiple standards for what constitutes evil, incidentally, and where you are consistent is in a seemingly quasi-utilitarian belief that the greater quantity of death is caused by a given set of behaviors, the more evil they are. Is this correct?

 

[MorkandMindy]

I picked deaths as an objective measure for evil, I would be interested in any other objective measure of evil you propose.

We use what is essentially the Pareto Principle frequently in everyday life. We look both ways before crossing the road but fail to check for indications of an incipient lightning strike which could also happen out in the open.

I hear evil mentioned a lot in a sort of arm waving sort of way and thought it would be useful to get the top ten categories or sources of evil and focus on those. It is true I haven't gotten much further than arm waving myself, that's why I posted this thread; I think it is important and want as many varied ideas as possible.

 

[DailyBlessings]

I picked deaths as an objective measure for evil, I would be interested in any other objective measure of evil you propose.

We use what is essentially the Pareto Principle frequently in everyday life. We look both ways before crossing the road but fail to check for indications of an incipient lightning strike which could also happen out in the open.

I hear evil mentioned a lot in a sort of arm waving sort of way and thought it would be useful to get the top ten categories or sources of evil and focus on those. It is true I haven't gotten much further than arm waving myself, that's why I posted this thread; I think it is important and want as many varied ideas as possible.

I don't see death as evil in the first place- nor do I think that evil could be quantified in any meaningful way. Evil is experiential.

 

[elman]

I picked deaths as an objective measure for evil, I would be interested in any other objective measure of evil you propose.

We use what is essentially the Pareto Principle frequently in everyday life. We look both ways before crossing the road but fail to check for indications of an incipient lightning strike which could also happen out in the open.

I hear evil mentioned a lot in a sort of arm waving sort of way and thought it would be useful to get the top ten categories or sources of evil and focus on those. It is true I haven't gotten much further than arm waving myself, that's why I posted this thread; I think it is important and want as many varied ideas as possible.

I don't think death is evil. I think death is the consequences of evil and the destiny of evil people, but one cannot spend much time in the nursing homes and not realize that death is sometimes a blessing.

 

[elman]

Universal right and wrong, good and bad, that all agree on because we are all programmed to think it is good and bad. Which isnt true. Set right, and set wrong that if you go anywhere in the world someone will agree just as the same as the other billions that it is wrong, which isnt the case.

While you are correct to an extent on the details you can go to just about any culture and find they would think torturing babies for the joy of hearing them scream would be bad. Everyone throughout history knew and agreed basically on what actions are loving and what actions are not loving.

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

While you are correct to an extent on the details you can go to just about any culture and find they would think torturing babies for the joy of hearing them scream would be bad. Everyone throughout history knew and agreed basically on what actions are loving and what actions are not loving.

No they havent.

 

[elman]

No they havent.

Yes they have and I gave an example of how they have.

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

Yes they have and I gave an example of how they have.

I know....your statement isnt correct on its perception. With no universal right and wrong we can apply what we wish to any situation or ethical morality that we may subject ourselves to. It is a firm possiblity though that since we were given no universal right and wrong we created a right and wrong based on the fact to enhance happiness and minimize pain. That statement though does not always apply. To a good majority of humanity it consists itself as apart of but past that it has no basis.

 

[elman]

I know....your statement isnt correct on its perception. With no universal right and wrong we can apply what we wish to any situation or ethical morality that we may subject ourselves to. It is a firm possiblity though that since we were given no universal right and wrong we created a right and wrong based on the fact to enhance happiness and minimize pain. That statement though does not always apply. To a good majority of humanity it consists itself as apart of but past that it has no basis.

You are saying that some cultures think it is alright to torture babies to enjoy their screaming--which cultures are that? Making a statment such as there is no universal right and wrong does not make the statment true.

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

You are saying that some cultures think it is alright to torture babies to enjoy their screaming--which cultures are that? Making a statment such as there is no universal right and wrong does not make the statment true.

Sure it does, leaving a baby on a cliff to die in china are found to fit moral persona's in certain communities. Waiting for the baby to come out after birth then stick a needle in its head to nuetralize its brain function isnt exactly moral to us, but it still happens does it not? Hitler found it alright to kill 6 million jews, 5 million russians, 2 million poles, and a million other unwanted peoples, and somehow his entire reich did not challenge him. Tutsi's were murdered by the thousands every day in Rwanda and yet no summit was held in the united nations to aid their suffering.