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What Is Good And What Is Evil? - Page 6

Name: Jane

Comments: Some of us were 'in tribes' less than a century ago. Were they 'little more than animals'? Is it fair to say that they didn't have religion? I don't think so. Back to what good and evil actually are - At their most basic level, which is perhaps where we should have started, they surely are mere states of mind the human mind is capable of.

Evil What Good What

This is deep. I think people just develop their own ideas of what good and evil is depending on their needs its like a cultural thing.

What Is Good And What Is Evil? Health & Special Psychology

Yes Jane I would tend to agree that good and evil are states of the mind. But you have to remember the mind is our most powerful tool or weapon. With it we can do the worse or the best that man kind has to offer.

Page 6 Evil What Good What

Yes good and evil are states of mind but without religion the mind reverts to animosity, not knowing which is which.

Evil What Good What

I do not think that if you take away religion that the mind will revert back to animosity at all. I think we will still know the difference as to what is right and good to that with is wrong or evil.

What Is Good And What Is Evil?

Your mind won't because you have been influenced by religion. If your kids are brought up outside of religion they'll become more like an animal than you are and there kids worse than their parents until they are conformists to society and are only influenced by what the society dictates of them. Also our current government is\was based on religious principals. You might not think that what is happening to our society is bad but that's only from your perspective. What is good and bad is laid out in religious texts all over the world and our government is getting farther and farther away from that.

What Good What Evil - Page 6

I am more comfortable with concepts of Good or Evil that are outside and independent of God or a higher power. I hold that concepts of Good and Evil are as eternal as God, and it only makes "God" the ultimate tyrant if it is only his whim that determines what the Good and the Evil is. I believe eternal laws determine what is Good and what is Evil,(that these truths are self evident) and that if there is a "God" , then he is God because he chooses to follow the ultimate Good, thus making him "God" and not following another path.

My view boils down to one question.

Is God good because he is God, or is he God because he is Good?

I lean more toward the Latter, in that he is the ultimate power (If he exists, and I believe he does) because he acts a certain way that allows him to have dominion over all things. If he were to start acting in an Evil manner, then he would cease to be God.

What Good What Evil Psychology Special & Health - Page 6

Name: Bob

Comments: To Jane:

Apologies for the delay in replying I've been too busy to visit here for a while.

To answer your question. Yes, Egyptians viewed murder as evil. In fact unless there is a rationale behind the deliberate taking of a life- be it "punishment" or "sacrifice"- most ancient and current societies believed and believe it to be wrong. And I think we can all share that belief.

I was listening to a radio show about this kind of thing last week. The discussion centered around the idea that in most cases most human beings-regardless of culture-tend towards the same view of morality at what you might call the most basic level.

The classic examples are thought experiments like:

You see a train coming and see that it will soon crash into something on the line. Its going very fast and there is no way it will be able to stop on time. You can save all the lives on the train simply be pulling a lever to switch the tracks which will allow the train to continue without hitting the obstruction. However, there is a man trapped in the line the train will go down. He will die if you pull the lever. You have one or two seconds to decide. Do you kill one man or many people?

Generally people say: pull the lever.

But if you flip the story slightly and say that you are viewing the speeding train from a bridge and the only way to save them is to throw the overweight man standing beside you on to the track (he is so heavy he'll stop the train; throwing yourself isn't an option because you are not) would you throw him?

The general answer is: no.

The difference seems to be that the man trapped on the rails is there by sheer chance and there is nothing you can actively do to save him. However, it would take an active decision for you to throw the man off the bridge and it is the active participation in killing another which causes the stomach to turn.

Now, the view of the radio show was that most of this could be put down to evolutionary principles. We adopt a moral code within society because doing so means that our society is likely to survive and, more importantly, we as individuals are more likely to survive within it. If it is morally wrong to kill, then it means I can't kill you BUT it also means you can't kill me.

As to the differences between societies in moral codes this can only be out down to how different societies develop over time. Even a distance of a few miles geographically can mark a huge change. For example, I live in Britain where the idea of eating horse meat is uncomfortable to say the least. Go over to France and its perfectly fine.

To take Jane's point about the ancient Greeks, though, we can see the massive difference time can make too in terms of sexual morality. Both the Greeks and the Spartans were warrior races. The period of male youth tended to last till a man was 30. He would spend most of his time with other young men and be taught the skills of war and would of course put them into practice. A boy of thirteen would be taught these skills by a man in his twenties and he would develop a relationship with him that included sex. Today we call that child abuse but it made perfect sense to the Greeks and Spartans.

So we can see that although we may share some fundamentals in terms of morality (remember western moral philosophy began in Ancient Greece) society does shape us in different ways too.

Even today you only need to look at the difference between the West and Middle East to see that.

And just one final point. Although there has been much talk about the positives that religion can bring to morals and indeed some believe it is the foundation of them-it is also possible for religious ideas to have a negative bearing.

In his book The God Delusion he cites an experiment where Israeli children were given a text to read and asked to consider the actions therin in terms of morality. He took a Biblical story ( sorry can't remember which one!) where the Israelites attacked a fellow ancient people, slaughtering men, women and children and laying waste to their lands. However, the story was moved, and was set in ancient China but with the exact same actions. The children were appalled by the chinese saying they were callous and immoral. However, when given the actual Biblical text to read they could come up with a whole array of rationales that made it "okay."

So religion can be helpful to morality but I suspect it can also make good people do "bad things" too.