Does Evil exist?

[sin_is_fun]

Man is a selfish animal.So whatever harms his selfinterest he calls it as evil.But in practice nobody can live a life which doesnt harm others.

I think evil is our perception of an act.A person who does evil,does the act in his self interest.To attain that self interest he harms others.But this is practically done by everybody.The harmed person labels the selfish person as evil monger.But is being selfish evil?

Can we define evil?Or is it just a perception of the harmed person?

[The Happy Humanist]

Basing my response to the reasonings in my first post-if the consumption is based soely on survival, as we all must consume another life form to survive (with exception of water, minerals, etc), then the answer is no.

But you pose a different aspect-the vegetarian lifestyle would eliminate the killing and consumption of another animal. But aren't plants considered life forms? Wouldnt a vegetarian, then, be still killing another life form in order to survive?

If you are a vegetarian you kill and eat a plant.

If you are a non-vegetarian, you kill a plant feed it to a cow and eat it.Thus you kill two lives instead of one.

which is better?

Wrong, but understandable: The looting of clothing and food going on in New Orleans.

Evil (as in human wickedness): Looting of guns, and shooting them at rescue workers.

EVIL (as in God's failure to prevent bad things): Hurricane Katrina.

[Dilettante]

sin_is_fun wrote:

Man is a selfish animal.So whatever harms his selfinterest he calls it as evil.But in practice nobody can live a life which doesnt harm others.

You may be oversimplifying man's nature, which includes altruistic as well as selfish drives. I don't see why it would be impossible to live a life without doing unjustified harm other people (sometimes it is inevitable, such as when it is a matter of self-defense).

I think evil is our perception of an act.A person who does evil,does the act in his self interest.To attain that self interest he harms others.But this is practically done by everybody.The harmed person labels the selfish person as evil monger.But is being selfish evil?

Not all harm is the same. Stepping on someone's toe is not the same as killing them. I think we all know (moral imbeciles excepted) when we have done something wrong. We recognize certain situations when we wouldn't want to be on the receiving end.

Natural evil comes in different magnitudes, from migraines to hurricanes and beyond. So does moral evil: from rudeness to torture and genocide.

[Dilettante]

sin_is_fun wrote:

If you are a vegetarian you kill and eat a plant.

If you are a non-vegetarian, you kill a plant feed it to a cow and eat it.Thus you kill two lives instead of one.

which is better?

If you are a non-vegetarian small farmer you kill a very small number of plants and cows. Compared with a huge vegetarian food industrialist who owns many factories and exports her products to half the world, which is better? By that logic, the meat-eating small farmer is less evil.

[Arya]

Interesting question.

I believe that you can definitely do something wrong, and you can do something evil-but they both do not have to be the same. In other words, a person can do something wrong, like stealing money for reasons other than base survival, but I do not consider that to be evil.

Let's consider the "bum" scenario; if he/she had to steal either money or food in order to survive, I would not consider that to be wrong or evil. I would consider that actions taken in order to ensure that being's survival.

Different scenario; let's take the same bum who happens to have enough food or money for the time being. That person steals something that they do not need for base survival-they just took an item because they wanted it. I would consider that to be wrong.

Final scenario; let's say the same bum killed his/her neighbor, not for their food (survival concept again), but because this bum wanted his/her neighbors "spot" or "squat". The murder was committed purely out of greed or the selfish desire to aquire something material that the bum otherwise could not get. But that bum definitely could have existed without it and did not need to take a life for it- then I would consider that action to be evil.

I can definitely see your point. However, things are rarely that simple.

Lets say I'm a bum. No money, no food, none of the things I need to survive. I see a fellow bum who is in the same situation with some food (given to him by some charitable soul) he needs to survive, so I steal it from him. Now what? Before, I stole from a person who can afford to have his sandwich stolen, but this time, I stole from a person who can't afford to lose his sandwich.

Did I do something wrong this time? In my view, if someone steals anything from me, its wrong, wether they need it for survival or any other reason.

Yes, my answer and reasonings were very simple and basic. Now for a more complicated scenario, for I agree there are situations that rarely are as simple.

The scenario of stealing food, if I understood correctly, is still on the basis of your (the bums) basic survival-yes? And if that is correct, then your stealing the only food source (the sandwich) from someone else who needed it to survive, I would consider it to be wrong.

The difference from the "basic survival" which I considered neither to be wrong or evil in a past post to this scenario is that by stealing the food source from another being, you have endangered that other being by your actions. You have also taken something that was not offered to you, and it was not yours to take. Your actions were premeditated, and you took the item knowing full well that the other bum really needed to eat also. I do consider that wrong for now your actions had a direct negative consequence on another, even though this is still a "survival" scenario.

[lifeisboring]

Man is a selfish animal.So whatever harms his selfinterest he calls it as evil.But in practice nobody can live a life which doesnt harm others.

I think evil is our perception of an act.A person who does evil,does the act in his self interest.To attain that self interest he harms others.But this is practically done by everybody.The harmed person labels the selfish person as evil monger.But is being selfish evil?

Can we define evil?Or is it just a perception of the harmed person?

I love this question. First of all, there's no evil. That's only man's opinion on it. If I killed a man, it could be evil. But from my point of view, he was murdering other people, so it could be the right thing to do.

So, actually, even if everyone in the world says something is evil, you can't say it's a fact.