Joe Guy wrote:Adolph Hitler is a good example of evil. You don't need to practice religion or even have knowledge of any religion in order to understand that he committed evil acts and was an evil person.
Killing another person, unless in self defense, is evil. Genocide is evil. Enslaving people is evil. Religious people might define evil as immoral or unethical but there is no need to have a religious reference to understand what evil means.
It might be difficult for some people schooled in religion to not associate evil with the concept of the devil or something done against their god's will but it's not so difficult for someone who is an atheist or non-religious person.
This is the crux of the matter..... you have not defined "evil" in any way whatsoever. You have instead described
acts that YOU believe are evil and claim that because most people would agree with you (including me) then those acts are indeed evil. But the perpetrators of both vast and minor (if there is such a thing) crimes against humanity of course do NOT think that what they did is/was evil - nor do/did a substantial number of their supporters.
Your definition becomes that anything that YOU disagree with may be evil. Or if you agree with it, it MAY be good. And anything I disagree with MAY be evil and if I agree with it, well it MAY be good. For either of us, it might be neutral morally speaking - but of course you and I must decide what that is.
But by what standard do you and I decided something is evil, good, neutral? Do you and I talk about it and agree to each other's definitions? What if we disagree?
Suppose I were to say that abortion is evil. And you say it is not. Maybe you think it's good or neutral. What (actually) is it? (Let's not argue ABOUT abortion - it's just an example of an act which good people may have different views on. There are many such). What I'd like all you "good" atheists and fence-wobblers to admit, is that absent an external moral standard, all "rights" and "wrongs" are subjective, not objective. That judgements (unless from a supreme being) are always arbitrarily human.
(And .... I was watching an old QI the other day and that lovable woofter Stephen Fry informed us all that scientific research has shown that in any argument or discussion, whether FTF or on the internet, eventually the comparison to Adolf HItler will be made by one party and at that point their argument becomes bankrupt. Apparently it's the mark of a loss)
The truth (or a truth if I use atheistic standards) is that many people (including homicidal dictators) do not WANT there to be an objective standard of moral truth (good, evil, neutral) because their freedom to determine that their own acts are good, evil or neutral is thereby impaired. If there is an objective (external)(eternal)(universal) standard, then
we have to measure up to
it - the standard does not have to measure up to us. But we don't like that idea - it means what I do may be evil after all, even though I prefer to call it my freedom to do what I want. But of course I still do know for certain that what that other guy is doing IS evil because
I wouldn't do that.
You can throw examples of what you consider evil acts at me all day long - I'll probably agree with all or most. But you have not offered any standard to differentiate good from evil - only described your beliefs, all or most of which I would share. But you can also (I bet my bottom dollar) describe to me things you think are good or neutral and we will disagree completely on many of them. rubato of course says flatly "all religion is evil" whereas we know that all scientists are paragons of virtue - and I'll disagree with both notions. I would agree that all humans are evil (inlcuding myself) and that no number of "good" acts makes any difference to that.
Crackpot has the right of it. Absent God (the God of Jesus Christ and the Bible, which is His Word), good and evil are merely concepts subject to majority rule (as in humanism, atheism and Islam to name but a trio) - and in some cases, minority rule. In fact, the concepts increasingly lose meaning the less a person believes and understands that there ARE moral absolutes, some of which they do not like and therefore reject. Nothing must get in the way of
me being the judge of all things - not any God other than myself.
Meade
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts
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