is there a difference between bad and evil?
 

this is a question that my friend who is a philosophy instructor asked me. After thinking about it, I decided that there is. My response was earthquakes are bad; murder is evil. Basically, anything that we consider negative that is not in our control is bad, and anything that was purposely done by humans was evil. It made sense to me.

What are your thoughts?

another question that'll throw in here: if there is a difference between bad and evil then

bad is to evil as good is to ???

I've always wondered this one.

yeah i agree with you. Just adding a little something extra though, i think the difference is that bad and evil both may cause horrfic things (as you illustrated) although it depends on the nature or intent on any actions. Like manslaughter is bad and murder evil. If there is intent on destruction or causing harm to anything then it is evil. Otherwise bad. Its sorta similar to the idea of control, in that you're controlling or deciding your intent or purpose on whatever actions you're taking. People with a bad nautre/intent are evil, though anyone can do bad things.

i guess thats what you're kinda saying anyways.

i guess bad is to evil as good is to nice
maybe?

Well someone's evil could be someone's else's good?

I haven't entirely thought this out yet, but I want to sort terms like this into 'ethical' and 'religious' terms. (And I also want a better name for the third category than religious.) 'Bad' should be an ethical term, when applied to human behavior. An action is bad if it goes against the Kantian categorical imperative. An action is 'nice' which follows the Kantian imperative (or, depending on the mood I'm in, the formulations of R. M. Hare, but I doubt people here are familiar with him). 'Good' and 'evil', on the other hand, are religious terms, where by 'religious' I mean the union of the aesthetic and the ethical. Please don't ask me to explain further what I mean, though, I'm really not sure. Read Kierkegaard for some background on what I mean by the categories.

On the other hand, Nietzsche used the terms (in Geneaology of Morals) to describe the difference between slave morality and the will of the strong. The strong use 'good' and 'bad' to describe what they happen to like or not like, while the weak use the terms 'good' and 'evil' to enforce their own conceptions of morality onto other people.

I think that evil is the repetative doing of bad things. Therefore, evil would be the superlative form of bad. Now the superlative form of good would complete the analogy.

How about commendable, or even deistic :)

Little Kids are Bad...Hitler was evil <---- there is definately a difference.

Nicely said, Jaelin.

as i think more about the analogy, I'm beginning to wonder if we even have a word that completes it. We basically make words on what is needed in our world, but is there such a thing in real life as the superlative form of good? Some of the other words make sense, but i just don't see a "nice, commendable, or deistic" hero to face the evil villain. In most literature, the hero has no adjective in front of his name that describes how good he is while the villain almost always has evil. But then maybe good just has both levels in one.

if this is so, maybe we should just make up a word that completes it...

Bad is the opposite of good and the perception of it varies from person to person.

Evil . . . . is obviously bad as well (and so also varies in perception from person to person) but ALSO implies that person is not entirely responsible for their own actions and 'possesses' evil forces, hence the pseudo religious connotations etc.

Summary - Bad is just an adjective . . . evil is usually thought of as a 'force'.

bad is like not planned, evil is. sorta but u get the idea.
evil is much worse and specifically to do harm, while bad might just be what happends

My own feeling is that a bad person can be forgiven while an evil person is beyond redemption. Redemption and forgiveness is a big part of morality, especially Christian morality. Society is obliged to put effort into reconciling with the bad person, bringing them back into the fold. We are meant to hold this view because redemption is good for society.

Nevertheless, people do things that are so truly bad, society sees no way they could be forgiven. For these acts we feel that something spiritual, immense and intagible was at work and we call this evil because it's the only way we can comprehend that another person did what they did.

I don't like using the word 'evil' carelessly because I don't thing it helps society. If we call merely bad people evil we are, in a way, giving up on them and this will do us no good in the long run.

My two dogs are bad. My two cats are evil. I know the difference, by God.

Killing is bad, and it is wrong. There should be a new word for killing, such as badong. Yes - killing is badong. From this moment, I will stand for the opposite of killing: gnodab.

~Kung Pow

The word we are looking for is gnodab! That is the opposite of evil.

Mayhaps the question would be easier to answer if two different words for good were given. Good can be used to describe a baseball game or a saint and those are totally different things. I think it would be much better to ponder the difference between good and bad vs right and wrong because then we're separating the feeling words from the moral words.

Something can feel good while being morally wrong, like having an affair or bitchslapping an obnoxious kid who neve shuts up to death. Likewise, something can feel bad while being morally right. There is definitelly a difference between feelings and actual morallity.

How about this.
I say that in order for evil to exist there must be intent or will behind it ie. it's not a "natural" occurance.

Evil therefore must be commited by a concious <sp?> (oooh big words!) entity though this doesn't necessarily mean human level intelligence, whereas bad just happens.

Oh, and our Cocker Spaniel is most definately evil. Oh, but he hides it well! Untill the moment is right...

Im gonna go with something I heard in an episode of the X-men cartoon about 5 years ago... "Evil is the nessesity for which we judge the actions of good" oe something like that, anyway Beast said it so it must be true and deep, right?? :)

evil is enjoying what's bad

Short and sweet: you can be bad without knowing, but you have to put effort into being evil.