otseng wrote:
Danmark wrote: You may be confusing appearance of normality with normality.
That reminds me of Dawkins saying nature only has the appearance of design, but is not actually designed.
Yes, the face of 'evil' is often bland, almost always "ordinary."
This is my main thesis. One may call it the "appearance of evil" or just "evil", but it is the ordinary person that commits evil.
Sociopaths are made, not born.
I'm not too concerned with the cause of evil of humans in this thread. I'm sure that's a long rabbit trail. But, I'll say it's most likely a combination of many factors that makes people prone to commit evil.
Danmark wrote:
You appear to be ignoring the fact they were coerced. Coerced by other 'ordinary people.'
Well, the same thing can be said with everyone in the Nazi party. Yet, that excuse did not hold up in court. They were still responsible for their own actions, even if they were coerced to follow orders.
Only a very small percentage of Nazis were tried, only 12 sentenced to death. Leaders involved in the planning and execution of the atrocities were the focus. I'm sure you see a distinction between a starving Jewish prisoner, tortured, facing certain death providing coerced assistance and a Nazi leader who initiated the murders.
Yes, I agree with Dawkins. Many things have a false appearance, particularly when looked at thru the lens of ideological or religious bias.
I am very much interested in the causes of evil and violence. I agree with you that ultimately we are each responsible for our own actions. But it is thought that there may be a genetic component to psychopathology.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... ial-killer
Is one fully responsible if they have a genetic defect that is a substantial part of the 'evil' decisions? Combine a genetic predisposition with a horrendous, tortured childhood. Can one truly hold that person as responsible as someone raised in a fine Christian home and Christian community by loving, healthy parents?
In preparation for death penalty cases I've handled, I have reviewed the histories of people executed, as well as my anecdotal, personal observations of clients charged with horrific acts. There are exceptions, but many of these people were horribly mistreated as children, forced to watch sex acts, beaten, told it was their fault when beaten. I reviewed one case where the child was raised in a mental institution, because his mother was incarcerated for 'criminal insanity.'
Stanley Milgram's unethical experiment 'measured the willingness of study participants, men from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner." These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.
The experiment found, unexpectedly, that a very high proportion of subjects would fully obey the instructions, albeit reluctantly.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Perhaps we are more like sheep that we want to admit. Abraham was ordered to murder his son and, succumbing to authority he was willing. Was Abraham evil? Or is the authority [god] who ordered him to kill more responsible?