Re: Evil
Evil is hard to pin down. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as evil, I just feel like it is harder to define than I like to thing it is.
I like to think that someone who wants to kill their infant is evil, however if it is a severe mental condition influencing these thoughts ( and actions,) is the person evil or is the condition evil? Or is the person broken? and can they be fixed?
I had a teacher who kept a whole bunch of gerbils, and very occasionally they would have babies, and invariably the babies would all get their little baby heads eaten off by other gerbils. They weren't evil, (I don't think so, they were gerbils, and I am not sure they qualified as rational enough to me to be evil.)They were just gerbils who felt that their habitat did not have the resources to support more gerbils.
A man who drinks to stave off the depression, and drinks too much and goes home and beats his pregnant wife because he can't wrap his mind around what he is doing. Is he evil? was it the drinking that made him act evilly? If he is not drinking, and not beating his wife, is he still evil? Is the booze evil?
What is evil? Where do we draw the line?
I asked a friend what he thought evil was, and his response was, "Intentional cruelty, without remorse." I decided that this was a smart friend, and frankly I liked his answer better than my own piles of questions.
Evil is hard to pin down. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as evil, I just feel like it is harder to define than I like to thing it is.
I like to think that someone who wants to kill their infant is evil, however if it is a severe mental condition influencing these thoughts ( and actions,) is the person evil or is the condition evil? Or is the person broken? and can they be fixed?
I had a teacher who kept a whole bunch of gerbils, and very occasionally they would have babies, and invariably the babies would all get their little baby heads eaten off by other gerbils. They weren't evil, (I don't think so, they were gerbils, and I am not sure they qualified as rational enough to me to be evil.)They were just gerbils who felt that their habitat did not have the resources to support more gerbils.
A man who drinks to stave off the depression, and drinks too much and goes home and beats his pregnant wife because he can't wrap his mind around what he is doing. Is he evil? was it the drinking that made him act evilly? If he is not drinking, and not beating his wife, is he still evil? Is the booze evil?
What is evil? Where do we draw the line?
I asked a friend what he thought evil was, and his response was, "Intentional cruelty, without remorse." I decided that this was a smart friend, and frankly I liked his answer better than my own piles of questions.
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