It's funny... I wandered into the Philosophy forum intending to start a thread on this subject, but it has already been done for me.
Today, while driving to work, I started thinking about good and evil. A common belief among scientific minds (that believe in such things) is that good and evil are subjective things and if something is good or evil lies somewhere on a continum. That is to say, there are many shades of gray between the two.
Another belief is that good is a positive force, and evil is mearly the absence of that force. For instance, cold is the absence of heat. There is no actual thing called coldness... it is just the concept of something without the real thing called heat. The same is true for light and dark. There is no darkness, there is only the absence of light. Therefore, good is the only real thing, and evil is just wherever there is no good.
This is all fine and well... but how do we really know that good is the "real" force? How can we be sure that evil isn't the only real thing, and what we think of as good is just our own struggle against it? Maybe animals killing each other - doing whatever they have to survive - things we generally think of as evil and try to avoid... maybe that's the only thing that's real. "Evil", or what we call evil, is just the natural state of things, and we're just fighting against it.
Just to tie this thought into the thread:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by analog
I know pure evil exists, because I know it exists inside of me. Its presence is corrected by a greater abundance of pure goodness.
I believe that evil is the desire to do things that harm others or allow others to come to harm.
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The pure evil inside of you does exist. It is all you are without personal intervention. The greater abundance of pure good you speak of, is not an actual thing, but the elimnation of evil within yourself. Putting a spin on your last sentence, evil is the LACK OF desire to do NO harm to other or to NOT allow others to come to harm. Interesting, eh?
The bit about evil being the only real thing was my revelation for the day. I'm not saying I believe it's true, or any of it is true, but I do like to think about these things. That's the whole point of philosophy, right?
