Evil...

kelly1

I'm wary of starting this thread but anyway I want to ask the question;

Why are humans capable of so much evil?

What is it that makes people capable of killing another human being? Or rape an innocent child and sell the photos on the internet for profit?

I'm not talking about self defense here. I'm talking about the guy who deliberately plans a brutal murder and fantasises about it beforehand. The guy who derives sick pleasure from torturing and killing another human being and still the lust isn't satisfied and he plans his next victim.

What gave rise to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc? What do people here think? Is it genetic, is there some chemical switch that gets flipped? Is there an evil gene?

I don't think so. In the same way that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit and do good, we can also allow evil spirits and the devil influence over us. For this reason, there is no limit to the depths to which we can sink. We can be driven for the forces of evil and lose control of ourselves.

Thoughts?

Tim_Murphy

Noel,
I think if you genuinely want to gain a deeper understanding of human nature you need to put the supernatural goodies and baddies to one side. Unless of course you are just using them as metaphors, which I don’t think you are.

eoin5

The mind is a fascinating machine and it is much more worthwhile assessing its capabilities than pondering some mystical duality.

Beruthiel

kelly1 wrote: »

I
I don't think so. In the same way that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit and do good, we can also allow evil spirits and the devil influence over us.

Bullsh!t.
Psychopath's exist due to the nature of their make up. It has nothing whatsoever to do with 'evil spirits'
Jeez kelly, you just make stuff up as you go along without no proof required.

Why don't you spend some time reading some scientific books on the inner workings of the mind for some actual insight.

CerebralCortex

kelly1 wrote: »

What gave rise to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc? What do people here think? Is it genetic, is there some chemical switch that gets flipped? Is there an evil gene?

I don't think you can scale a serial killer with the likes of Hitler and Stalin etc. Hitler and Stalin were men of faith corrupted by the power of their respective ideologies(religions?). To ask what gave rise to these people you would have to include the RC Church, the Puritan Church in England (Cromwell and all that lark) imho. I'm inclined to follow Ruth on this one.

seamus

Selfishness is ultimately what it all boils down to. People do these things for their own personal gain. It doesn't have to be material gain, it can be emotional, spiritual or religious gain too. It doesn't necessarily have to be thought out or malicious either. A paranoid schizophrenic may beat an innocent person to death on the spur of the moment because they feared for their life.

I think there's far too much in "How can a person possibly do act X" to try dissect it in one post, or even in many posts. Since we are all the sum of our experiences, it is our upbringing which has the largest effect on what we consider to be "OK" and what we don't.

I think in general, we are driven by genetics to be communal animals - to do things which benefit the community. This is especially relevant when you imagine that communities of primitive man would have consisted largely of family or otherwise related people. So to do good by your community served to improve the chances of your genetic proliferation.

But because we are in possession of memory and emotion, this evolutionary push can be overridden (as they so often are) by our own feelings. I don't think there's anything which could be called an "evil gene", or any one chemical "switch" which makes people do bad things.
Certainly, chemical and hormonal imbalances can change people's state of mind to the point where they are unaware of what they are doing. And although some chemical imbalances are potentially gene-linked, it's still not fair to say that all people with these genetic imbalances will do "bad things".

I also don't think that there's necessarily a distinction between a "bad person" and a "good person". That is, bad people don't always do bad things, and good people don't always do good things.

kelly1

Tim_Murphy wrote: »

Noel,
I think if you genuinely want to gain a deeper understanding of human nature you need to put the supernatural goodies and baddies to one side. Unless of course you are just using them as metaphors, which I don’t think you are.

OK, lets leave the supernatural out of it. I'm kinda forced to do that anyway in an A&A forum.

Do you have a natural explanation?

kelly1

Beruthiel wrote: »

Bullsh!t.
Psychopath's exist due to the nature of their make up. It has nothing whatsoever to do with 'evil spirits'
Jeez kelly, you just make stuff up as you go along without no proof required.

Why don't you spend some time reading some scientific books on the inner workings of the mind for some actual insight.

I was hoping for a more mature response to my questions really.

What explanation do you have to offer? Are psychopaths born that way? Is it nurture or nature? Is it just down to brain chemistry?

Dave!

kelly1 wrote: »

What explanation do you have to offer? Are psychopaths born that way? Is it nurture or nature? Is it just down to brain chemistry?

Can't people just NOT KNOW?????

How is that for an answer? When you don't enter the realm of the f*cking moronic and supernatural, it's often difficult to answer everything.

Is there nothing about the natural world that you can't just say "I/humans don't understand that"?

I'm sure there are valid hypotheses out there for the questions you posed; but regardless, you always imply that, because atheists don't invoke god to answer a question, we must have another answer. That's not always the case. We just strive to find one.

CerebralCortex

DaveMcG wrote: »

Can't people just NOT KNOW?????

How is that for an answer? When you don't enter the realm of the f*cking moronic and supernatural, it's often difficult to answer everything.

Is there nothing about the natural world that you can't just say "I/humans don't understand that"?

I'm sure there are valid hypotheses out there for the questions you posed; but regardless, you always imply that, because atheists don't invoke god to answer a question, we must have another answer. That's not always the case. We just strive to find one.

Template answer Dave.

Zombrex

kelly1 wrote: »

Why are humans capable of so much evil?

Well, physics for a start.

Human bodies are easily damaged, and we possess greater physical strength than we do strength in our protective organs, such as our bones.

So it is quite easy for one human to physically hurt another human being. You can either blame the laws of physics for that, or your god.

kelly1 wrote: »

Is it genetic, is there some chemical switch that gets flipped? Is there an evil gene?

I imagine it is some what genetic, some what environmental.

Some people certainly seem to have certain emotional switches turned off, such as empathy.

But equally the human mind is a curious thing. I can't believe anyone could rationalise something like the Old Testament killings, but apparently posters on the Christian forum can do this very easily.

I don't think they are evil, and I think it is easier to do that when it is just pages in a book, but people do have an instinctive habit of dividing human into "them" and "us" groups, and the "them" group often end up getting the short end of the stick.

From an evolutionary point of view that makes sense, it was more important that humans worked with their own tribe or family, and thought less of other tribes who may be competing for resources with them.

People like Hitler, or books like the Old Testament, succeed in justifying violence and aggression towards other humans by daemonising them as a seperate group.

The Cananites were "wicked and godless", they lived in far way lands and did funny evil things that the God fearing Hebrews wouldn't do. Therefore it was only just that they were destroyed, or at least that is what the Hebrews told themselves.

Hitler and the Nazis (with a little help from long time anti-semetic feeling) convinced the Germans that the Jews were so different to them that they were practically a different species. When the Jews were sent to the camps to be killed it wasn't killing "us", it was killing "them".

This "them" and "us" mentality that seems part of human nature is why groups that try to promote peace between different groups do so by trying to show that it is in fact just "us" (this includes, though some what unsuccessfully, Christianity).

kelly1

CerebralCortex wrote: »

I don't think you can scale a serial killer with the likes of Hitler and Stalin etc. Hitler and Stalin were men of faith corrupted by the power of their respective ideologies(religions?). To ask what gave rise to these people you would have to include the RC Church, the Puritan Church in England (Cromwell and all that lark) imho. I'm inclined to follow Ruth on this one.

That's really twisting it CC. Hitler corrupted and used Christianity to justify his anti-semitism. He didn't practice the Catholic faith.

And wasn't Stalin a closet atheist?

So are you seriously saying that religion has a major part to play in the lives of those who do evil deeds? Are you trying to turn the argument on its head by saying that atheism promotes good and religion evil!?!?

Tim_Murphy

Do you have a natural explanation?

A quick and comprehensive answer that I can have wrapped up in one post?
No, certainly not. It is a complex issue, I don’t think there is a simple answer. In the case of people doing bad or evil things then I think self-justification plays a huge role. People can justify pretty much anything to themselves, and rationalise the most immoral of acts. There are plenty of examples on these forums of people doing just that (justifying genocide in gods name etc). These people are almost certainly not ‘evil’, but the acts they end up justifying are. I’ve linked to this book before but I really can’t recommend it enough: http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208870664&sr=8-1

I’ll try to post more later when I have time.

Dades

Less cussing and SHOUTING, DaveMcG, if you would.

CerebralCortex

kelly1 wrote: »

That's really twisting it CC. Hitler corrupted and used Christianity to justify his anti-semitism. He didn't practice the Catholic faith.

And wasn't Stalin a closet atheist?

So are you seriously saying that religion has a major part to play in the lives of those who do evil deeds? Are you trying to turn the argument on its head by saying that atheism promotes good and religion evil!?!?

No I'm not. But I expected you would think so. Stalin was an atheist but he had unbending faith in soviet Russia. Hitler similarly had faith in the Reich and its master race, I'm not attacking religion I'm attacking faith that isn't questioned. Like how no one(generalisation) questioned the RCC's influence in Ireland in the past and even now. Ask yourself could your faith be just that and nothing more? You say you have communed with good? Could that have been anything else?

Beruthiel

kelly1 wrote: »

I was hoping for a more mature response to my questions really.

I gave you one appropriate to the question.

What explanation do you have to offer? Are psychopaths born that way? Is it nurture or nature? Is it just down to brain chemistry?

Again, if you are actually that interested, I suggest you do some reading and come to your own conclusions.
I've done enough reading to know that the mind is a wonderous thing, one finely balanced in its making.
One example would be, it just needs too much or too little of a particular chemical to throw it off kilter.
As Dave put it, I do not claim to know everything about the human brain, I'm not a brain scientist.
However, I know enough about it to understand that it is complex and any kind of unbalance can case all sorts of problems.
Again, nothing to do with 'evil spirits'

Gegerty

kelly1 wrote: »

I'm wary of starting this thread but anyway I want to ask the question;

Why are humans capable of so much evil?

What is it that makes people capable of killing another human being? Or rape an innocent child and sell the photos on the internet for profit?

I'm not talking about self defense here. I'm talking about the guy who deliberately plans a brutal murder and fantasises about it beforehand. The guy who derives sick pleasure from torturing and killing another human being and still the lust isn't satisfied and he plans his next victim.

What gave rise to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc? What do people here think? Is it genetic, is there some chemical switch that gets flipped? Is there an evil gene?

I don't think so. In the same way that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit and do good, we can also allow evil spirits and the devil influence over us. For this reason, there is no limit to the depths to which we can sink. We can be driven for the forces of evil and lose control of ourselves.

Thoughts?

not all murderers are "evil", whatever evil means. Ordinary people put in extraordinary situations will tend to react with their primal instincts. Now that is just one form of murder, I know there is more to it than that but just thought I should point out that not all murderers fall under the same category as Hitler or Charles Manson.

stereoroid

I recently listened to a CBC podcast called A Murder In The Neighbourhood. Residents of a neighbourhood described how they tried and failed to prevent a murder & suicide, and how they felt afterwards. Pretty harrowing stuff to listen to, but still an interesting insight in to human nature, I thought.

Was that evil? I don't remember any of the interviewees using that word. If they did, could they justify it, in the supernatural sense? I heard no implication that what happened had any supernatural component to it. It wasn't like in the movies, where the lines were clearly drawn, and you chose a side. The neighbours tried to help, but there was a limit to how much they could help, once the gun came out. One lady saved a young kid from being shot - but later wondered whether her actions contributed to the shootings.

I heard no evil there, just sadness and waste. When I look at Rwanda, as I did in the other thread, do I see evil? If I do, it's only in the superficial, poetic sense, but that dissipates when you get down to the complex details of events on the ground. People are quite capable of the worst atrocities, without the need for any supernatural agencies to drive them.

kelly1

The killing of the two Polish men in Drimnagh a while back is a good example of evil. What caused the killer to decide to stab and kill innocent men?

If people can see no reason beyond a chemical imbalance or human nature, I suppose there's no point in continuing the discussion.

Can anyone else explain extreme evil? Evil seems to have the ability to infect large groups of people e.g. the Nazis or Hutu militias in Rwanda. Can this be put down to chemicals or human nature?

Galvasean

Evil... You can have a chemical imbalance in your brain, you can be the victim of a traumatized childhood, maybe karma has given you a bad week and you want payback, maybe you have achieved everything in life and want to explore the 'forbidden fruits' of life or maybe the boogeyman told you to do it.

Lots of things can cause what we call 'evil'. There is no single simple answer.

seamus

kelly1 wrote: »

What caused the killer to decide to stab and kill innocent men?

Anger, perhaps?

Can anyone else explain extreme evil? Evil seems to have the ability to infect large groups of people e.g. the Nazis or Hutu militias in Rwanda. Can this be put down to chemicals or human nature?

"Extreme evil" in this case is subjective. None of these people believed that what they were doing was wrong.

People having been knocking the **** out of each other in large groups for thousands of years, so I would believe that although it's not "human nature", it's certainly some sort of side-effect of our tribal nature. We tend to move in packs and choose pack leaders. Devotion to these leaders tends to be stronger in cases where the population doesn't have the intelligence/ability to challenge the leader, or in cases where the community as a whole has been under some sort of oppressive force.

The latter case is certainly how the Nazi regime came to power. They got into power because Germany was in serious trouble following WWI and the sanctions that the league of nations was putting them under. The Nazis united the German underclasses under the banner of German solidarity and protecting their way of life. The "good" as the Germans saw it was protection - looking after themselves and their communities and protecting themselves from the rest of the world.
Can you really say that someone is "evil" if they think they're protecting their family?
The upper echelons of the German government of course were a little more sinister about it, but probably still decided that what they were doing was in the best interests of themselves and their people.

It's very difficult to say that someone is "evil" or that someone was inherently evil, if everything in their fibre told them that what they were doing was the right thing to do. There are no moral absolutes.

humanji

You kind of also have to take into consideration that Evil is subjective. And it implies an attempt to do wrong regardless of the moral implications.

Can you be evil when you believe what you're doing is right? I don't know what was going on in Hitlers head, but what if he felt he was doing a righteous act by wiping out the Jews and by unifying the world? In his eyes he couldn't possibly be evil, but in everyone elses he would be.

See, it all depends on what you view is right and wrong. So, Noel, if God appeared before you tonight and told you to kill all non-Christians, would you do it? Right now, you know that to kill is a sin, but God says what is right and wrong, so if he told you to kill then it must now be good to kill. In fact, to not kill would be a sin and hence evil.

A Christians understanding of good and evil comes from how they themselves interpret the bible. This understanding will change from person to person as they come to different conclusions as to what the bible means to them. Some will live good lives, while some may come to some belief that they have to create a weird cult and kill themselves while wearing a purple shroud.

In a similar way, everyone else gets there understanding of right and wrong from whatever influences their lives the most, be in religion, parents, friends, or social circumstances.

So basically, everyone is different. You'll find few people who do evil specifically to be evil, and it's a safe bet that the majority of these have severe psychological issues and it's nothing to do with being religious or not. And then there's also the fact that some people are just jerks.[/ramble]

Popinjay

humanji wrote: »

And then there's also the fact that some people are just jerks.[/ramble]

QFT


The rest of it was pretty good to. In fact I don't know why I'm even typing this... Everything seems to have been put pretty succinctly so far. Well done everyone, I know it's not over but I'll take my nose out for now unless I can actively contribute.

Have fun.

kelly1

seamus wrote: »

Anger, perhaps?

Yes but also the decision to commit the evil act. It's the decision to do something wrong that's evil.

seamus wrote: »

"Extreme evil" in this case is subjective. None of these people believed that what they were doing was wrong.

You can't be serious? You really think those who commited acts of genocide saw no wrong in their own or others actions?

seamus wrote: »

People having been knocking the **** out of each other in large groups for thousands of years, so I would believe that although it's not "human nature", it's certainly some sort of side-effect of our tribal nature. We tend to move in packs and choose pack leaders. Devotion to these leaders tends to be stronger in cases where the population doesn't have the intelligence/ability to challenge the leader, or in cases where the community as a whole has been under some sort of oppressive force.

Again decision making comes into play.

seamus wrote: »

The latter case is certainly how the Nazi regime came to power. They got into power because Germany was in serious trouble following WWI and the sanctions that the league of nations was putting them under. The Nazis united the German underclasses under the banner of German solidarity and protecting their way of life. The "good" as the Germans saw it was protection - looking after themselves and their communities and protecting themselves from the rest of the world.
Can you really say that someone is "evil" if they think they're protecting their family?

OK there was a strong sense of nationalism and regained pride but they still couldn't justify the extermination of million of Jews.

seamus wrote: »

The upper echelons of the German government of course were a little more sinister about it, but probably still decided that what they were doing was in the best interests of themselves and their people.

Were the Jews a threat?

seamus wrote: »

There are no moral absolutes.

That's where I disagree. The pope calls it moral relativism and is a dangerous belief.

CerebralCortex

kelly1 wrote: »

The pope calls it moral relativism and is a dangerous belief.

Why? Never mind that lad he was in the Hitler youth.

LaVidaLoca

the question is backwards. People often ask "What is human nature?"

Human beings it seems, are neither inately good nor inately evil.

We do know that most human beings do not naturally take pleasure in killing or hurting others - that is usually the domain of psychopaths. Humans have a form of empathy, with combined with their own self-interest enables them to form societies in which (most of the time) they do not do such things.

However, when human beings are not themselves seeing the benefits of that society (street crime), or when that society breaks down in some way (civil war) , or when human beings are told that murder or genocide is neccessary to bring about a future transcendant good (Soviet Russia, Islamic suicide bombers) , they can become capable of the most awful things.

The genocide in Rwanda for example, did not come out of nowhere, it came out of hundreds of years of emnity between Hutu and Tutsi. The Hutus massacred the Tutsi in the way they did because they had been led to beleive that the Tutsi were just about to do the same to them. Plus, in a mostly illiterate society, they could be convinced that the Tutsi were "devils" and "cockroaches" far more easily than could be done to educated people.

As far as the word "evil" is concerned you have to discriminate between the secular and the religious meaning of the word. To a secular person evil is merely a word that means "very bad". To a religious person "evil" almost conotates an actual thing, like a substance, that proceeds from "the Devil" and is the cause of all bad things.

It is precisley that kind of stone-age thinking that leads to things like genocide being possible: Tell a bewildered population that a certain ethnic group is evil, the cause of all problems, immoral, sexually dangerous to your wife and children, or 'like animals' in some way, and slaughtering them becomes far easier.

So is religion the root of all evil? No, far from it. It's the cause of some evil. But the kind of minds that are capable of beleiving in childish ideas like "the Devil", or "Pure Evil" are the kind of minds that tend to cause really, really bad things to happen.

seamus

kelly1 wrote: »

Yes but also the decision to commit the evil act. It's the decision to do something wrong that's evil.

Yes, but perhaps his ability to make rational decisions was curtailed. If someone makes a decision in the heat of the moment that they wouldn't usually make, are they still evil?

You can't be serious? You really think those who commited acts of genocide saw no wrong in their own or others actions?

By and large. People can do things which contravene their own moral code, but to continually and blatantly do it indicates to me that it doesn't contravene their personal moral code, therefore they saw no wrong in their actions.

Were the Jews a threat?

They believed the jews were a threat. That's sufficient.

That's where I disagree. The pope calls it moral relativism and is a dangerous belief.

I find moral absolutism to be far more dangerous as it doesn't provide room for questions.

LaVidaLoca

There are no moral absolutes.

That's where I disagree. The pope calls it moral relativism and is a dangerous

No. You're quite wrong, thats the opposite of the truth. When people are engaged in really nasty mass killings/executions etc they are always 100% convinced that what they are doing is right.

If you as religious beleiver for example are 100% convinced that abortion is murder, then it makes perfect sense to bomb an abortion clinic and kill the doctors performing the murders. It is usually people that are 100% convinced of their rightness that kill the most people: Stalin, Pol Pot, The Spanish Inquistition, Suicide bombers and so on. None of these guys are moral relativists.

Moral Relativism is a philosophy we all agree with whether we know it or not, because the world is not a theoretical place. Do you beleive in Murder? "No", you would say. What if you walked in to the kitchen to see a burglar about to murder you wife, would you shoot him? If you answer "Yes" you're a moral relativist: Morals depend on the situation.

Moral absolutism simply leads to evil behaviour like the Church's muderous ban on condom usage in AIDS ridden africa.

MrPudding

kelly1 wrote: »

So are you seriously saying that religion has a major part to play in the lives of those who do evil deeds? Are you trying to turn the argument on its head by saying that atheism promotes good and religion evil!?!?

Religion plays a pretty major part in the lives of the priests that rapes children, but that is not to say that it is the cause of what they do.

As other have said, I think the terrible and vicious acts that humans seems so inclined to carry out on each other need no supernatural answer.

In the nature / nurture debate I am firmly in the middle. I think it is a little of both. A certain genetic make up in a certain environment has the potential to create a person that just does not work like "normal" people. Perhaps if that genetic make up found itself in a different environment, or if that environment had a different set of genes for work with the results would have been different.

I think it is simply a case that some people are predisposed to, under certain circumstances, act in a way that we, as "normal" members of society think is wrong. For example, under extreme provocation or simply with a bit of drink onboard.

I think there is also a section of humanity that, due to their particular genetic makeup and the environment they were brought up in simply see no wrong in the action they take.

MrP

eoin5

I think its important to seperate a good and evil spiritual argument and the understanding of the human brain.

As far as the spiritual agrument goes I do think that there might be manevolant and good forces at work in the world on some frequency or plane that we dont know a lot about yet. I think the Satanists have it right, we need both light and dark for our world to work.

Tim_Murphy

You can't be serious? You really think those who commited acts of genocide saw no wrong in their own or others actions?

People will justify their actions in any number of ways. If you look at any conflict throughout history you won’t find too many examples of a war where one side put their hand up and said ‘ya, we’re the bad guys in this one’, people justify their position, they justify their actions. People generally view themselves as moral, so they justify their actions as being moral. You don’t go from peace to mass genocide in one move, it happens in a step by step process. It would be comforting to think that all those who commit such acts are simply evil, but it is really just a childlike view to take. Throughout history ‘normal’ people have ended up doing immoral, evil, things. The Catholic church has a huge amount of examples of people doing truly evil things on a grand scale. No doubt many people involved were just bad b%$tards but most probably weren’t. Good people can eventually be led down a path to beating children in their care, taking children from single mothers or burning heretics. This does not happen in one step, but in lots of little steps, each one justified as being righteous or necessary.

kelly1

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

If you as religious beleiver for example are 100% convinced that abortion is murder, then it makes perfect sense to bomb an abortion clinic and kill the doctors performing the murders. It is usually people that are 100% convinced of their rightness that kill the most people: Stalin, Pol Pot, The Spanish Inquistition, Suicide bombers and so on. None of these guys are moral relativists.

I'm 100% opposed to abortion but I don't think that murdering an abortionist is right.

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

Moral Relativism is a philosophy we all agree with whether we know it or not, because the world is not a theoretical place. Do you beleive in Murder? "No", you would say. What if you walked in to the kitchen to see a burglar about to murder you wife, would you shoot him? If you answer "Yes" you're a moral relativist: Morals depend on the situation.

I see your point but I still think there are absolutes. e.g. Adultery is wrong, paedophilia is wrong etc.

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

Moral absolutism simply leads to evil behaviour like the Church's muderous ban on condom usage in AIDS ridden africa.

The Church can't enforce a ban can they? People are free to ignore their teachings/rules, aren't they? The Church also recommends abstinence and faithfulness to one's spouse.

stereoroid

kelly1 wrote: »

You can't be serious? You really think those who commited acts of genocide saw no wrong in their own or others actions?

If we think that, it's because that's what those perpetrating the genocide actually said. We have no need to make any of this stuff up. I have a suspicion (i.e. opinion) that part of the reason for the slow response, by the West to both the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide, was something like: "no freaking way! That has to be an exaggeration! People are better than that, surely we're past such Stone Age tribalism?" It wasn't exaggeration, was it?

Kinda makes it had to not be a cynic about human nature. Are we somehow better? If Dr. Milgram's experiments are any guide... we're not. It doesn't even take religion, but religion certainly fuels the fires, as it did in Salem. :mad:

Dades

kelly1 wrote: »

I see your point but I still think there are absolutes. e.g. Adultery is wrong, paedophilia is wrong etc.

In Spain the age of consent is 13, which would constitute pedophilia in any other European country. So even something as "absolute" as that doesn't appear to be.

CerebralCortex

kelly1 wrote: »

....The Church can't enforce a ban can they? People are free to ignore their teachings/rules, aren't they? The Church also recommends abstinence and faithfulness to one's spouse....

Sometimes its possible in Africa that two married people one with hiv and one without well have intercourse without protection just down to what the church says so even the church has problems with morals and moral consistency.

Tigger

kelly1 wrote: »

I see your point but I still think there are absolutes. e.g. Adultery is wrong, paedophilia is wrong etc.

one of those is an absolute the otrher isn'ty

i'll give you a clue

bible people all over the world:

What is adultery? Technically there are differences in the original Biblical language as there is in the English between adultery and fornication, but as used in this brief study, adultery is illicit sexual intercourse between married or unmarried persons

which do you thisnk

Ruskie4Rent

I agree with most of the people here. Alot of 'evil' acts occur when the people doing them are able to to justify them with some sort of twisted rationality.
It is often the case, with atrocities, that the people commiting them are guided by some sort of devotion to an ideology/nation or, of course, religion.

In other cases, the people engaging in 'evil' acts, may be just ****ed up. This could be due to some psychological trauma in their past, but TBH I'm not well enough imformed to be able to comment on psychology.
It is an interesting topic, though, and i intend to do some reading on it. I would suggest kelly1 to do the same if he is genuinly looking a satisfying answer, instead of using his ignorance to try and challenge other people's beliefs.

kelly1

seamus wrote: »

Yes, but perhaps his ability to make rational decisions was curtailed. If someone makes a decision in the heat of the moment that they wouldn't usually make, are they still evil?

The act is evil. To say whether the person is evil is another question. I think getting angry in the first place and losing control of our anger involves a decision to do so. Anger can and should be controled.

seamus wrote: »

By and large. People can do things which contravene their own moral code, but to continually and blatantly do it indicates to me that it doesn't contravene their personal moral code, therefore they saw no wrong in their actions.

But how does one get to the point of believing the murder and rape are OK? I think this would have to involve supressing the conscience.

seamus wrote: »

They believed the jews were a threat. That's sufficient.
I find moral absolutism to be far more dangerous as it doesn't provide room for questions.

I'm going to steer clear of the moral absolutism because it's not the point of this thread and it's a complete can of worms!

MrB

kelly1 wrote:

I see your point but I still think there are absolutes. e.g. Adultery is wrong, paedophilia is wrong etc.

I would not agree with you that Adultery is always wrong, I can think of situations where it is not, for example if your partner is a violent sack of crap.
Paedophilia is always wrong alright but not because of some absolute dictate handed down from above. It is wrong because of the damage both physically and emotionally it does to children!

kelly1

Tim_Murphy wrote: »

People will justify their actions in any number of ways. If you look at any conflict throughout history you won’t find too many examples of a war where one side put their hand up and said ‘ya, we’re the bad guys in this one’, people justify their position, they justify their actions. People generally view themselves as moral, so they justify their actions as being moral. You don’t go from peace to mass genocide in one move, it happens in a step by step process. It would be comforting to think that all those who commit such acts are simply evil, but it is really just a childlike view to take. Throughout history ‘normal’ people have ended up doing immoral, evil, things. The Catholic church has a huge amount of examples of people doing truly evil things on a grand scale. No doubt many people involved were just bad b%$tards but most probably weren’t. Good people can eventually be led down a path to beating children in their care, taking children from single mothers or burning heretics. This does not happen in one step, but in lots of little steps, each one justified as being righteous or necessary.

Personally I think people justify evil as a way of suppressing their conscience. People go to huge lengths to hide the evil they do. If they felt justified, would they need to hide it? Does someone rape a woman and then tell their friends, "oh yeah I raped her because she was dressed like a slut. So my conscience is clean"? Not likely.

Galvasean

kelly1 wrote: »

Personally I think people justify evil as a way of suppressing their conscience. People go to huge lengths to hide the evil they do. If they felt justified, would they need to hide it? Does someone rape a woman and then tell their friends, "oh yeah I raped her because she was dressed like a slut. So my conscience is clean"? Not likely.

They hide it for fear of punishment. Who knows, maybe said sicko would boast to his sicko cohorts if he knew there was no law against it or punishment to be had. I know that sounds bleak, but some people are really twisted.

I know certain people* who find date rape to be 'not a big deal', citing excuses such as, "She shouldn't have drank so much anyway". Truth be told they probably do know its wrong, but are also aware that such a crime is easy to get away with.

* I make it my business not to associate for the record.

Tigger

Dades wrote: »

In Spain the age of consent is 13, which would constitute pedophilia in any other European country. So even something as "absolute" as that doesn't appear to be.

there is a difference between stat rape and peadophillia
thirteen is low tho

seamus

kelly1 wrote: »

Personally I think people justify evil as a way of suppressing their conscience. People go to huge lengths to hide the evil they do. If they felt justified, would they need to hide it? Does someone rape a woman and then tell their friends, "oh yeah I raped her because she was dressed like a slut. So my conscience is clean"? Not likely.

Because wider social morals exist. There's a difference between what society thinks is right and what we personally think is OK. And we recognise the difference. Our own personal morals are more important to us than society's morals, except where society makes laws to punish those who break society's code. There are tonnes of things that we would all do in our daily lives which we feel are OK, but which we would never admit to it public.
For example, there are people who justify not paying for public transport - we've seen it here on boards, "Ah sure they make enough money", and "I pay for it in taxes, I'm not paying for it again". They personally feel that it's OK to do, but would still never admit it in wider society.

In addition, even when something is against someone's moral code, they can come up with reasons to justify it to themselves. If someone else doesn't know about your mistakes, you don't need to justify it. So long as you're satisfied within yourself, then what else do you need? So it's very plausible that someone who forced themselves on a woman thought to themselves afterwards, "oh yeah I raped her because she was dressed like a slut. So my conscience is clean".

kelly1

stereoroid wrote: »

If we think that, it's because that's what those perpetrating the genocide actually said. We have no need to make any of this stuff up. I have a suspicion (i.e. opinion) that part of the reason for the slow response, by the West to both the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide, was something like: "no freaking way! That has to be an exaggeration! People are better than that, surely we're past such Stone Age tribalism?" It wasn't exaggeration, was it?

It can be hard to separate truth from propaganda so this could be part of the reason for the slow reaction. There is also the fear of damaging our own interests. e.g. don't upset them because they buy arms from us.

stereoroid wrote: »

Kinda makes it had to not be a cynic about human nature. Are we somehow better? If Dr. Milgram's experiments are any guide... we're not

How many people here despair for the future of the human race when they see the violence/corruption/greed that goes on around the world? I don't see things getting any better. We're supposed to be evolving but it's certainly not happening at a moral level.

To be honest I'm not seeing much here concern about the state of human nature (sorry if I've missed it). What do we do about it? Accept that we're seriously flawed and live with it? Build more jails?

Tigger

kelly1 wrote: »

To be honest I'm not seeing much here concern about the state of human nature (sorry if I've missed it). What do we do about it? Accept that we're seriously flawed and live with it? Build more jails?

its better than believing in an interventionist god

there is no one else to fix the world and rember evolution isn't about better its about getting laid and making it possaible for your kids to get laid

the fact is that better educated more enlightened people have less children shows the skewing of the survival of the fittest section of natural selection

Galvasean

Tigger wrote: »

there is no one else to fix the world and remember evolution isn't about better its about getting laid and making it possible for your kids to get laid

I have read many books in my time but have never come across an analogy which puts the world in such perspective. :cool:

CerebralCortex

kelly1 wrote: »

....To be honest I'm not seeing much here concern about the state of human nature (sorry if I've missed it). What do we do about it? Accept that we're seriously flawed and live with it? Build more jails?

In fairness I think your seeing the state of the world in a negative light and use it to convince yourself that the world needs religion to fix it (which it certainly does not need). I suggest you read this.

LaVidaLoca

You've admitted to that when it comes to some things you are a moral relativist.

But then you say there are somethings which are absolute. You are either a moral relativist or you aren't, there's no two ways about it. You are a moral relativist. Welcome to the 21st century! Sit down, relax, have a drink! Remember that just becuase you're a moral relativist doesnt mean you cant beleive something to be bad. It merely means that with most things you decide whether the thing is bad on the basis of the context it is in, you know , like modern educated people do. You're still free to be anti-abortion, for example, because that's a position that can be argued for rationally. But you might have to give up some 1st century beleifs about eating meat on a Friday.

The Church can't enforce a ban can they? People are free to ignore their teachings/rules, aren't they? The Church also recommends abstinence and faithfulness to one's spouse.

Of course they cant, but they have power over the hearts and minds of millions of people, most of whom are poor and illiterate. Remember the sort of power the Church used to have in Ireland?

The reason preaching against condom use is wrong, is because, sex being the most basic of human impulses, whether you preach against it or not, people are going to do it anyway. The Catholic Church's attitude to this is simply to put their hands over their ears and pretend this isnt true.

Its analogous to heroin use: Of course we must preach against heroin use, but we must also make clean needles available to those who do use it. This is simply common sense. It's abandoning common sense and getting your morals from a book written in the late Bronze Age, that leads to ridiculous morality such as "Its a sin to put a peice of rubber on your penis."


It is sort of like Prohibition Era America: Fundamentalist Christians tried to make alcohol illegal, cause their morally absolute beliefs told them it was. The chaos of organised crime and profiteering that followed, led the US congress to roll back the law. The consequences of making it illegal to do something that people are going to continue to do anyway, was worse than the consequences of just admitting that human beings have failings.

The consequences of pretending that prefectly normal human impulses are bad is about the same.

Latchy

We do live in a less caring world in the sense of human care atention and kindness. Twenty thirty years ago our hospitals were full of just that ,caring kind and more attentive nurses who with their hands on aproach and care made a big difference in a patients recovery .You cant put a price on that kind of human care.That's not to say we dont have many of the same nurses in our hospitals today ,we do but they are tied up with so much paperwork and bureaucracy of one kind or another that they dont have time anymore to sit and listen .To many it's just a job to help pay the mortgage

Tigger

Galvasean wrote: »

I have read many books in my time but have never come across an analogy which puts the world in such perspective. :cool:

books won't get you laid you know

Latchy

But looks will