The Universe is a fight between Good and Evil
What if the fundamental entities of the Universe are not matter, or consciousness, but Good and Evil?
Then fundamentally there is no randomness, no laws, no destiny and no death, rather everything that happens is a result of the fight between Good and Evil. What makes things happen is the will of Good and the will of Evil.
What we call the material world would be a manifestation of this fight between Good and Evil, but a very limited picture of everything that goes on.
Evil has plenty of tricks to attempt to win and destroy Good: make us believe that Evil doesn’t exist so that we don’t fight against it, make us believe that he is inevitable no matter what we do, make us believe that the Universe obeys laws that we have no control over and so that we are fundamentally powerless, make us believe in destiny and so that we are powerless to change the future, afflict us with diseases that bring us down, make us pursuit pointless endeavors so that we don’t fight against him in the meantime, pit people against one another through various means so that the Good fights itself instead of Evil, give us fears that prevent us to spread Good through love and actions and that lead to hate, make us believe that we can fight him with hate, separate people who love one another with the illusion of death by making us believe that those who have died have stopped existing, trick us by making us see or hear things that lead us to spread Evil, make us believe that those who want to spread Good and fight Evil are crazy and shouldn’t be listened to or believed, make us believe that all that is Good will eventually disappear and that what we do fundamentally doesn’t matter, make us believe that we can’t be absolutely certain of anything and so that the world could be an illusion and it fundamentally doesn’t matter what we do, make us believe that he is weaker than he is, make us forget that Good exists, trick us into mistaking Good for Evil and Evil for Good, make us believe that everything is relative including Good and Evil.
I have spent decades attempting to understand the universe and existence, and recently I had this epiphany and I find everything makes sense, to me it all fits. Good really exists and Evil really exist, and they manifest in various ways. They manifest through our will and what we believe and what we experience. It is a struggle between the two. Paradise is what will happen if the Good wins. Hell is what will happen if Evil wins. When we die we keep existing in some way. What changes the world is the will of Good and the will of Evil that manifest through us. I have a lot more I want to communicate but I can’t put it into words for now.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
Then fundamentally there is no randomness, no laws, no destiny and no death, rather everything that happens is a result of the fight between Good and Evil. What makes things happen is the will of Good and the will of Evil.
What we call the material world would be a manifestation of this fight between Good and Evil, but a very limited picture of everything that goes on.
Evil has plenty of tricks to attempt to win and destroy Good: make us believe that Evil doesn’t exist so that we don’t fight against it, make us believe that he is inevitable no matter what we do, make us believe that the Universe obeys laws that we have no control over and so that we are fundamentally powerless, make us believe in destiny and so that we are powerless to change the future, afflict us with diseases that bring us down, make us pursuit pointless endeavors so that we don’t fight against him in the meantime, pit people against one another through various means so that the Good fights itself instead of Evil, give us fears that prevent us to spread Good through love and actions and that lead to hate, make us believe that we can fight him with hate, separate people who love one another with the illusion of death by making us believe that those who have died have stopped existing, trick us by making us see or hear things that lead us to spread Evil, make us believe that those who want to spread Good and fight Evil are crazy and shouldn’t be listened to or believed, make us believe that all that is Good will eventually disappear and that what we do fundamentally doesn’t matter, make us believe that we can’t be absolutely certain of anything and so that the world could be an illusion and it fundamentally doesn’t matter what we do, make us believe that he is weaker than he is, make us forget that Good exists, trick us into mistaking Good for Evil and Evil for Good, make us believe that everything is relative including Good and Evil.
I have spent decades attempting to understand the universe and existence, and recently I had this epiphany and I find everything makes sense, to me it all fits. Good really exists and Evil really exist, and they manifest in various ways. They manifest through our will and what we believe and what we experience. It is a struggle between the two. Paradise is what will happen if the Good wins. Hell is what will happen if Evil wins. When we die we keep existing in some way. What changes the world is the will of Good and the will of Evil that manifest through us. I have a lot more I want to communicate but I can’t put it into words for now.
Comments (70)
Good is that which loves, which wants to unite and to create happiness, whereas Evil is that which hates, which wants to separate and to create suffering.
I used to believe that there was no Evil, that some people only committed evil acts because they were mistaken, because they didn’t see things clearly, but I have come to realize that there really is Evil. There really is a powerful force that acts to separate and to create suffering, on purpose. If there wasn’t the world wouldn’t be that way, the efforts of Good would have made the world a much better place a long time ago, but these efforts are not effective because Evil is there to actively counter them.
Where do our desires come from, our beliefs, our experiences? In my view they stem from Good and Evil, they are the ones who create them. We are part Good and part Evil. Out there there are entities that are pure Good and pure Evil, we might call them God and the Devil. Sometimes we can get a glimpse of them.
As to where Good and Evil stem from, in my view they have existed for aeons, and they are what has given rise to what we call the Universe, or the material world, but that material world is only a small part of what’s out there.
In my view there is no randomness, no absolute laws that dictate how things behave, no destiny, rather it is the will of Good and the will of Evil that create change, that create motion. The will of Good works to create and sustain life while the will of Evil works to destroy it.
Quoting tim wood
I only started that way because I realize that what I say can be hard to believe as it is very different from the common paradigms. I know that if someone had said all that to me some years ago I would have rejected it. So the “What if” served as a way to help people entertain what I’m saying instead of rejecting it outright. To me it’s not a “What if”, it’s what I believe, it’s what I have seen.
Quoting tim wood
In my view there really are entities out there beyond our common experiences, I have felt them, and there are reports of other people who have too. I have had the experience that these entities have the power to make us see things, hear things, feel things, believe things. To people who haven’t had this experience it isn’t real. To the people who have it is real.
So when I talk of Good and Evil I am not referring to specific experiences that we have classified as good or evil, I am referring to that which creates our experiences, our beliefs, our desires, they exist apart from these instances because they are not limited to these instances.
I disagree. If Evil wants Evil then Good must make Evil suffer, ergo the Good causes suffering and is therefore Evil by your definition.
You are assuming that Evil suffers. If Evil wants pure suffering, why would it suffer from the lack of it? Evil cannot feel Good or else it wouldn’t be Evil. Evil doesn’t fear, it creates fear. If something doesn’t fear, can it suffer?
The point is you’re talking in absolutes aren’t you? Some hypothetical ‘pure’ form.
Will is that which determines and initiates action, based on what is believed and what is experienced. ‘Good’ manifests when the actions initiated increase awareness, connection and collaboration. ‘Evil’ manifests whenever these actions increase ignorance, isolation and exclusion - and is concealed by further ignorance, isolation and exclusion...
In my view, this ‘evil’ is simply a manifestation of fear: a ‘no’ answer to the opportunities for awareness, connection and collaboration that present themselves with every interaction with the world. Because with each increase in awareness, connection and collaboration comes the painful, humiliating, overwhelming and temporary reality that is our existence. And it can be enough to make anyone but the most courageous run screaming for the hills or simply give up - ignoring, isolating or excluding anything that reveals this suffering in our experience.
Strangely enough, the only way to effectively alleviate the current experiences of pain, humility, loss and lack is to continually increase awareness, connection and collaboration - which then leads us to new experiences of pain, humility, loss and lack...
The trick is to understand the difference between suffering and evil, and to recognise that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ come down to the actions we initiate in every interaction with the world, despite the inevitable experiences of suffering.
I hadn’t asked you before what the opposite of our modality of ethics definition was but it makes so much sense now that I am reading it.
How do you answer people who would say this is incorrect and that there is no good and evil? Is this black and white thinking or just identifying that black and white exist in a colour/morality spectrum?
Separating absolutely everything to good and evil is actually evil, no matter how good the intensions would be.
It would be a metaphor if you didn’t say ‘colour’.
How do you know ‘willful ignorance’ when you see it? You’re displaying ignorance of the difference between ‘metaphor’ and ‘analogy’. Are you Evil? See my point. If not never mind.
We can certainly agree on a societal level about heinous crimes. Even there there are grey areas though - stealing to feed a starving child etc.,.
“Morality is like a colour spectrum” - Simile
“Talking to you about morality is like trying to speak to a brick wall” - Analogy
A, if you’re going to correct someone’s English, learn basic English.
B, This is a philosophy forum that welcomes people at all levels of both philosophy and English. Since it is a philosophy forum the philosophy takes priority and the sign of a poor argument is one that is based purely on English (yknow unless it’s english words in nonsense syntax).
“I agree that black and white thinking should be frowned upon. However, is that the same as saying black and white don’t exist on a morality spectrum? Is there no colour or is there many colours?”
If we take the first question and leave off the part about colours it’s not even an analogy. “Is there no colour or is there many colours” is me implying morality as colour, therefore a metaphor. If you understood the implication you might have realised that I was suggesting that different ethical stances such as Kantian ethics, Virtue theory, divine command theory, utilitarianism, natural law theory etc.. can be viewed as part of our human morality spectrum.
And since we are in a state of scarcity one persons good is another persons evil. It’s the traditional us vs them scenario and what means justify what ends.
So in that sense good and evil are antiquated concepts. Really what we are talking about is a state where survival instincts have been propped up into theories of morality.
Really is the difference between the 2 how survival is attained? How it is gained? How a cushion is built (financial wealth)? How we react to others who are trying to do the same and proactively attack them for the betterment of our own group, country, family, friends.. etc etc.
Pink Floyd: money, so they say, is the root of all evil today. And I need a Lear jet!
Have some humility and learn to admit when you are wrong. Grow up. Also the OP is about Ethics and morals so any talk of ethics and morals IS sticking to the OP.
Also, if good and evil exist, then evil are those who don’t believe in morals and good are those who do. So which one of us does that make evil I wonder.
[quote=Wikipedia]Manichaeism taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness.[6] Through an ongoing process that takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light, whence it came. Its beliefs were based on local Mesopotamian religious movements and Gnosticism.[7][/quote]
Augustine was Manichean before converting to Christianity. And a point that is worth considering is Augustine's post-conversion teaching of 'evil as the privation of the good'. This is the principle that evil has no intrinsic or ultimate reality, that it merely comprises the absence of the good, which is real. So, as illness is the absence of health, and shadow the absence of light, then evil is the privation of the good. So it doesn't see the same kind of stark opposition, even though it can recognise evil as evil.
But I think the problem is, as a practical matter, it would be exceedingly difficult to follow such a path in today's world. This is not to say that your intuition in the issue is mistaken, but there's also the matter of what Buddhists call 'skillful means', meaning ways in which to practically realise the aims of a teaching.
I can't think of two more anthropomorphic words than Good and Evil: these concepts apply to human behavior; I see no evidence of Good or Evil up to anything anywhere else in the cosmos.
To be honest, I’d say they’re probably right - especially if they’re arguing against the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as described by @leo.
There’s a reason why I put ‘evil’ in scare quotes: I don’t believe what we commonly refer to as ‘evil’ is what we think it is.
I don’t agree that the universe is ‘a fight between good and evil’ - they don’t exist as external forces that we either align with or fight against. They’re a verbal convenience that enable us to talk about morality, to structure the value of our behaviour in relation to each other. Like ‘space’, they’re concepts: ideas, not entities. And the more we strive to understand these concepts, the less we need to fight.
In my view, actions of ignorance, isolation and exclusion at the sub-atomic level are responsible for the diversity of the universe - they’re the reason we have the different elements and the different species of plants and animals, the ‘forces of nature’, etc. It is where opportunities for interaction, for increased awareness, connection and collaboration have been met with a negative ‘response’ that distinguishes between, say, a hydrogen and a helium atom. That’s not ‘evil’ as we commonly understand it.
So how did ignorance, isolation and exclusion become this ‘evil’ we need to combat?
When I described ‘the most courageous’, who continue to increase awareness, connection and collaboration, I’m talking about life - and, more specifically, about humanity. This is what we’ve evolved to do best, what we’re physically and mentally built to do - not to survive as such.
But we’re still made up of elements and systems that have their limitations - that ignore, isolate and exclude in their own way, like everything else in the universe. We need to be aware of these limitations, and find ways to connect anyway and to collaborate with these systems and elements where they’re at: to work around and with their resistance.
It is when we add to that resistance, when we contribute to the ignorance, isolation and exclusion and even encourage it in others, when we act on this fear and then build on it to conceal it, that we manifest ‘evil’. In the end, it’s just fear - and if we treat it as such, rather than attack it as ‘evil’, then we can work around and with this ignorance, isolation and exclusion in others as well as in ourselves.
The problem is knowing how you can determine what is Evil or Good. Is it possible for an Evil person to do something Good or is it the intention that matters more?
If that's the case, then I've got it all wrong...
:razz:
Quoting leo
Those statements are at extreme odds with the truth.
Quoting leo
They are the motivational forces. It is the individual's decision that empowers those forces to manifest.
Quoting leo
Are you describing life after death? If so, can you show evidence to support this?
Some people have felt/seen God, pure love. Some people have felt/seen the Devil, pure Evil. Indeed these would be absolutes and not relative, they would be the only absolutes. As I mentioned in the OP often good can be mistaken for evil and evil can be mistaken for good, but when Good or Evil are felt they cannot be mistaken, that’s what allows to see them as absolutes. It would be the force of Evil that attempts to convince us that Good and Evil are relative rather than absolutes.
Quoting I like sushi
I see it as misleading to talk of what Evil ‘wants’, earlier I mentioned that Evil ‘hates’ but that’s misleading too, Evil doesn’t feel, Evil acts so as to separate and create suffering, but it doesn’t feel, it doesn’t suffer. Evil is extremely frightening when you really feel it, and Good is extremely beautiful when it is really felt, but most of the time we don’t feel them, and it seems some people never really feel them. However when they are felt we know they really are out there. That’s the only absolutes I have ever experienced.
If Good stops Evil then there would be pure love and unity, there wouldn’t be suffering, there would be the absence of Evil.
Quoting I like sushi
I don’t see a person as inherently Evil, but a person can be used by Evil to destroy Good. I don’t see how Evil could do something Good. But a person used by Evil can find the willpower that stems from the Good in them to counter that Evil and do something Good.
We see life and death in the cosmos (such as that of stars, which power life). We see creation and destruction. Attraction and repulsion. Everywhere.
For starters are Evil and Good similar? Do neither ‘feel’ or ‘want’? If not then they don’t appear to be completely related.
If they can be mistaken for each other how are we to know which is which? I don’t think anecdotal evidence from singular individuals holds up well in a philosophical discussion - interesting, but not really convincing evidence.
Personally I don’t see how anyone can appreciate anything without suffering. If we don’t know how bad things can go then how do we protect against such things? Think of children. They are innocent and vulnerable because of this.
Thanks
I suppose it would be more accurate to say that Good gives love and acts towards unity, whereas Evil gives suffering and acts towards separation.
Quoting I like sushi
Evil is what makes one forget what is Good and what makes one mistake them. But when you feel unconditional love within you you you know what Good is. You can learn to see that fear leads to separation and suffering. You can learn to see what leads to love and what leads to suffering and destruction, and that way you can learn to see the tricks Evil uses to spread.
Quoting I like sushi
What else do we have besides anecdotal evidence from singular individuals? That’s all we have in any philosophical discussion. My anecdotal evidence isn’t convincing to you simply because you haven’t experienced what I have experienced. Just like anecdotal evidence of colors wouldn’t be convincing to someone who has never seen colors. If most people were blind, those who see would be seen by the majority as delusional, or unconvincing. For a great part of my life I didn’t have these experiences and a lot of what goes on didn’t make sense to me, but now it all seems to fall into place.
Quoting I like sushi
Look at it this way: would there be a need for suffering in a world without Evil? A little suffering is helpful to us in this world because it helps us fight Evil. Too much suffering destroys us.
Quoting I like sushi
I believe that in a world without Evil the concepts of left and right and hot and cold wouldn’t make sense, but I don’t see them as characteristics of Evil per se, rather I see them as concepts that result from the fight between Good and Evil. Evil works towards separation while Good works towards unity. A world with a different balance of Good and Evil would have different characteristics.
I see Evil spreading in our world. We are more and more divided. We destroy one another, other species, the environment. We see love as a weakness, suffering as a strength, unsustainable growth that leads to destruction as desirable, profiting at the expense of others as a success. If that Evil keeps spreading that world will turn into a desolate wasteland, almost devoid of love, beauty, life, happiness. At that point the best you can hope is that you won’t be there to see it, but if when you die you don’t really die and keep existing in some way, then there you will experience Evil, for Evil will have spread much more than Good.
Thanks for expressing yourself.
Yes, this behaviour can be destructive, but I wouldn’t call it ‘pure evil’ - I would think that’s a form of absolutism. In my opinion, if our response to ‘pure evil’ is to fight it - to exclude, isolate or ignore it - then we cannot hope to reduce its impact on the world.
Wilful ignorance, apathy and absolutism are examples of fear manifesting as what we would call ‘evil’. Why would one ignore something that should be obvious? Because to acknowledge it is to face information about the world that requires effort, attention or adjustment (ie. energy) on their part in order to integrate it into their reality.
Sometimes what is required is simply to adjust one’s course, to halt momentum or change direction in a way that accomodates the new information. Other times, what we need to change is our whole perception of reality, which can not only be painful and humiliating, but involve a loss of what we value in our current perspective, and remind us of how much information we are still lacking about our world.
In refusing to initiate the required action, we show our fear - and then attempt to conceal it by ignoring, isolating or excluding anything in our world that draws attention to this information. If the information continues to present before us, and we continue to resist, that resistance can lead us to initiate acts of hatred, violence, oppression or despair - and then we are manifesting ‘evil’.
That’s okay, thanks for listening.
I’m just going to clarify something for those who might be interested (you don’t have to reply if you don’t want to), in the view I’m presenting Good and Evil do have a will, otherwise it wouldn’t be coherent for us to have a will, but I disagree that it implies that Evil suffers when Good reduces suffering.
We are used to encounter suffering when we don’t get what we want, but not getting what we want doesn’t imply suffering, for instance Buddhists have realized that it isn’t wanting something that leads to suffering, it is being attached to what we want.
To me there is also a difference between wanting and willing: wanting seems to me to be a state of dissatisfaction from not having something that is desired, whereas willing is acting to reach some purpose. There can be will without suffering.
Finally, and I know this won’t count as evidence to you but it is evidence to me and it might be evidence to some, the Evil I have experienced cannot suffer, it is the source of suffering itself. Even the worse psychopaths and serial killers have a little bit of Good in them, but Evil is not like them, it has none.
Quoting Serving Zion
I say there is no randomness in the sense everything that happens happens for a reason, as it was willed by Good or Evil.
I say there are no laws again in the sense that things do not happen because they follow laws that are written somehow into the fabric of the Universe, rather the combined effect of the will of Good and Evil give rise to some apparent regularities that we describe through laws. I agree that laws are ideas, what I’m saying is that the Universe doesn’t behave the way it does because of these laws.
I agree also that one can manufacture destiny though will, again what I was saying is that there is no destiny set in stone that is inevitable no matter what we do if everything is the result of will.
And I agree that we observe what we call death, what I meant again is that the combined effect of the will of Good and Evil leads to that apparence of death, to the separation of a being from other beings. But if all there is is Good and Evil, then that being was part Good and part Evil, so he doesn’t simply disappear the moment he dies, he keeps existing in some way, he doesn’t suddenly turn into a heap of dead matter that disintegrates, rather his will dissolves into his surroundings and retains an indirect influence on everything else.
Quoting Serving Zion
It’s simply a logical consequence in this model, everything is connected, if fundamentally everything is will then it wouldn’t make sense that this will suddenly disappears into nothingness.
As to the validity of this model, it is to me the one that fits everything. I would have never got to this model if I had never had experiences of universal love, of everything being connected and of evil entities, and to me since I’ve had these experiences it is more than a model, it’s reality.
However even without having had these experiences one can entertain it and see how it fits what they experience.
To me other models do not work as well, for instance materialism cannot explain how it is that experience can arise from matter, or why the laws of the universe are what they are and not something else. Other models usually involve an arbitrary distinction between reality and imagination/hallucination but here there is no such distinction needed. Models that involve only a God have a hard time explaining why there is so much evil. Models that involve no will underlying the universe have a hard time explaining how some things appear so finely tuned. There is a whole lot more I want to communicate but it is hard to convey with words.
So you perceive the death of a star as evil? Or the big bang, or a black hold? I can't agree with that. I see evil as a strictly human action. Although sometimes I'm not sure whether cats are being evil when they toy with their prey....
My philosophy is similar to Wayfarer's thoughts on evil. Also I'm sure you're familiar with Taoism, where you cannot have one without the other, like rain and sunshine.
On Evil:
"To understand the Taoist notion of good and evil, it is important to distinguish between the "concept" of evil versus the "reality" of evil.
As a concept, Taoists do not hold the position of good against evil; rather they see the interdependence of all dualities. So when one labels something as a good, one automatically creates evil. That is, all concepts necessarily are based on one aspect vs. another; if a concept were to have only one aspect, it would be nonsensical. "
Read more at https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/taoism/what-do-taoists-believe.aspx#Z8Rsay3Tmiwp6rOL.99
Also, as Existential Psychologist Maslow said in an interview prior to his death:
PT: In our society, we see all behavior as a demon we can vanquish and banish, don't we? And yet good people do evil things.
Maslow: Most people are nice people. Evil is caused by ignorance, thoughtlessness, fear, or even the desire for popularity with one's gang. We can cure many such causes of evil. Science is progressing, and I feel hope that psychology can solve many of these problems. I think that a good part of evil behavior bears on the behavior of the normal.
PT: How will you approach the study of evil?
Maslow: If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you're just one more deluded Pollyanna. The thing is to try to understand and realize how it's possible for people who are capable of being angels, heroes, or saints to be bastards and killers. Sometimes, poor and miserable people are hopeless. Many revenge themselves upon life for what society has done to them. They enjoy hurting.
PT: Your study of evil will have to be subjective, won't it? How can we measure evil in the laboratory?
Maslow: All the goals of objectivity, repeatability, and preplanned experimentation are things we have to move toward. The more reliable you make knowledge, the better it is. If the salvation of man comes out of the advancement of knowledge--taken in the best sense--then these goals are part of the strategy of knowledge.
I don't see the person as possessing good and evil, but good and evil possessing the person according to God's judgment of that person, in response a) primarily, the reward for their decisions, b) secondarily, the right of good treatment for those whom God is working justice, by those who are not His possessions (as above).
Therefore, whether a person is of good or of evil in their spirit, changes from moment to moment, and whether their heart and philosophy tend to yield toward one or the other, is a result of the influence of the words (concepts conveyed) by good and evil over time, and resentments / detachments.
IOW, "heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool" and "as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways".
Quoting leo
It seems to me you would have to agree that it is speculative and theoretical only. Would you agree?
("For the living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing.
They have no further reward,
even the memory of them is forgotten.
6 Their love, their hatred, and their zeal
have already perished;
never again will they have a share
in anything that is done under the sun." Ecclesiastes 9:5-6).
Quoting leo
Make sure to include the caveat "individual" wills, because my will is not her will and neither is hers his, or that's. So new wills come into the world through new life, but those wills pass out of the world through death. There are eternal wills too, as you know, of good and evil, of God and the sons of God (John 8:34-36), etc (eg Matthew 25:41).
Serving Zion...Might be time to put down the "good book" and and put yourself in order with how things work out--
the Tao.
When you are a child you are nourished and protected, existence is centered around you. From that point it is a process adapting to your environment and the perspective shifts from you to your surroundings. As you age your ability to adapt can't keep up with the changing world, and you become fearful of the future as your environment appears to become less and less survivable. "The world is going to hell" attitude is a perspective as ancient as man.
Lets face it, the farther you look back in human history the lesser quality of life and the greater suffering you find.
Good and evil can't be absolutes, they will always be a matter of perspective. You can make a valid point by sayin good is that which benefits you and those within your circle, and that evil is that which disrupts you and those within your circle. Or that good and evil are measures, not entities: We call the absence of light "darkness" and give it an entity, but darkness is nothing but the absence of light in the same sense that evil is the absence of good.
Animals act by programmed instinct, as humans we perceive ourselves able to raise above our animal impulses and are expected to exercise our humanity through free will, and do that which benefits the group in the long term as opposed to what benefits us individually and immediately. We call that good. When we fail to raise above our basic animal instincts, we call that evil.
The acts of a "evil" human, such as a psychopath opening fire on a crowd or a dictator exploiting his people, you can't remove the responsibility of the individual's act by blaming it on evil.
Strange, how?
I said it is a strange thing to say because it doesn't contain enough information to understand what you mean by saying it, and it is said in a way that assumes it carries the implied meaning you wish for it to carry. That assumption of reader inference is a strong device when people have a history that is useful for it, but you are a person I don't remember having spoken with before, so it is strange that you have omitted all the necessary context for me, as a stranger, to understand what you want me to understand.
So, I'd like an explanation so I can know how I should respond. Thank you.
Not necessarily. Culture is constantly fluid. One thing we can know for sure, is that vacuum cleaners and chemical technology have (potentially) contributed the greatest advances in environmental health, by reducing presence of toxic dusts and molds in homes. On the other hand, the pollutants from vehicular transport exposes us to harmful dusts and fumes that probably life would suffer less if the clock was rolled back. And that's besides mentioning the more obvious sufferings that polution has brought to the world, the extinctions from humans pillaging the environment, mass murders, riots, man-made diseases, nuclear fallouts, indoctrinations, forced medications, politicians disregard for justice, judges revelling in their wickedness, social disdain for holiness, beggars lying for drugs, cities imprisoning homeless to prepare for sports events, radicals chopping heads off in the name of God, laws making pregnancy an alternative to working and marriage, etc.
No, the world is in a bad way, like never before, and on a global scale, and in the whole world, with the whole world aware of these things, nobody has stopped it, and the ones who would stop it if they had power, are not drawing interest from those who have the power.. in fact to the contrary they are seen as enemies because of the natural indignation that the truth is, the powers are afraid of standing in proximity to them, for fear of how they might measure up to the stature of their name in light of the truth.
Ah we have to disagree then.
If you feel that living today is worse than in an epoch when it is commonplace for an enemy to march into your home and kill your family or take them into slavery, when it was normal for disease or famine to kill a significant portion of your offspring and neighbors. To constantly fear the unknown, or worse yet, the complete lack of empathy from those who ruled and exploited the land you lived on.
I think you overestimate the "goodness" and "decency" of folks of them old days.
But worse yet, you underestimate the goodness of the common man of today. Although it is the scandalously wicked and the atrocious acts that make the headlines, most of us are hard working, we educate and nourish our children, and we look forward to a better day. We have faith in the new generations to negotiate through the flaws of past generations.
Your characterization is unfair and does NOT represent an accurate picture of today's humanity.
If you're scrounging the bottom of the barrel, that is exactly what you will find. There is PLENTY of good also to be found if that was what you were looking for.
To describe what goes on within, look outward. A political landscape adrift in a sea of unknowns. So it is outward, so it is within. The self is a raging war deep within, with many internal and external agents.
This thread is another symptom of the paucity of philosophical content on this forum.
If you say so.
Quoting staticphoton
Yes, that is my life, precisely!
Quoting staticphoton
That is fair to say, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there weren't days past where folks were decent and relatively good. It also does not negate what I have said (read again, carefully).
Quoting staticphoton
It is only a reflection of my experiences and knowledge, especially in context of a world that keeps burying itself into wrongness by opposing the true things I say. What your experience is, is different from mine. Where the real distinction is found, is not in the value of optimism as you have proposed, but real justice, that I am warning has failed to hold back the tide of evil that is rushing over the minds of the people.
My real complaint is that the bad keeps getting in the way of the good, and there is no power against it because justice is woefully absent.
That being, I understand your perspective.
Quoting Serving Zion
Justice is a worthy ideal to fight for, yet my point only being that although an epoch of justice for all might lay in a far future, I cannot think of a time in history when (in proportion with the number of humans living on the planet) the justice situation was better. As you step back in time it progressively diminishes, all the way to the point where it completely disappears with the early homo sapiens.
Good and bad are relative terms... after all the bad is gone, the meaning of good would only last as long as our memories of the bad that once was.
This "battle between good and evil", the light that emanates from a star to fill the darkness around it, the forces that attract from one place to another... that is what sets the universe in motion, and without that motion reality would not exist.
I appreciate your input, but I really don't think that is the best measurement. Any injustice is too much for me to be satisfied, but what we have in the present age is destruction and harm on scales that the world has never seen, that indeed would have seemed impossible before the industrial revolution .. so the responsibility upon justice, and thereby the gravity of it's failure, contributes to the measurement of my complaint and desire for better days.
Quoting staticphoton
I don't accept that view, because as I have said, it depends upon culture and culture is constantly fluid. When I look at the records in the Old Testament of the bible, there are fluctuations of periods of righteousness and wickedness, where my complaint of the present is rooted in a knowledge that the world's knowledge of righteousness has seen better days. And, righteousness is paramount in justice, because those who exercise power in the name of justice are tasked to discern and judge right from wrong - but how can a judge who is not righteous, possibly discern righteousness? Of course their skepticism is weighted and biased to automatically presume that every person has wicked intentions just as they do, and thus comes the declaration of moral depravity "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is". You might see in the very words of official judgements in courts of law, judges gloating about how clever they are at evading possible recourse as they declare how they have managed to present the law in favour of their chosen party. It truly is a sickening reality.
Quoting staticphoton
But there would be no cause for complaint about any bad, so therefore it can only be said to be good.
It is a twisted logic that says bad is necessary for good. I don't buy it. As you know as well as I do, by removing all bad, only good remains, and even within the realm of all that is good, there is ample provision for creativity.
Quoting staticphoton
I think you have gone too far with that metaphor. For instance, light does not fill darkness, it travels through it. Only when the light encounters an object that it cannot penetrate, does it become known in the darkness.
I do understand what you are trying to achieve with the metaphor - that the relationship between gravitational bodies demonstrates "potential difference" (an electrical expression), where in terms of spirituality and life, it is the potential difference between people that provides for creativity. That is valid logic to follow, but I just caution against following the argument that says evil is necessary for good to be appreciated, because it only gives support to the idea that evil is somehow a thing to be appreciated. As soon as someone takes an axiomatic approach like that, they have yielded themselves to arguing for the sake of the argument rather than assessing the reality for what is true and right.
I say that in absence of evil, all people being individuals with individual strengths, interests and experiences, together are no less able to create than if evil is to exist. I say this because creativity itself is an expression of love, which is antithetical to evil. IOW, evil is, in truth, the force that destroys. In absence of evil, therefore, is potential for everlasting life - and it's interesting when you dig into the meaning of the text in Genesis 3:24, to find out what it means to have Cherubim and a sword of fire guarding the way to the tree of life. Only because Adam had guilt, could the flaming sword sear his conscience, and only because he had fallen, could he not stand in judgement of the one who would rob him of his access to life.
I cannot pretend to convince you to believe otherwise, as your faith has to be uncompromising to function.
But the meaning of goodness is acquired in the "movement" from bad to good. Good is what happens when men rise above adversity in times of difficulty... "the worse of times bring the best in men" was not stated without precedent. Creativity is what happens when men strive to overcome hardship, difficulty and need are the engine that moves ideas and imagination.
And although it is true that justice has seen fluctuations through time, the trend from the beginning to now has moved towards improvement. You reject that but that is how I see it.
I'm going to step down from the discussion at this point, as neither of us is ready to concede, but I wish you my best.
So before our conversation is over, I see that I haven't clearly shown you the difference between evil and bad. I say this because what you are speaking about comes from a view of the world that does not see the spiritual forces of evil and good that are behind human actions.
When you use the example of hardship, difficulty and need as being bad things that are a driving factor for creativity, and the overcoming of that bad is good: that is acceptable, logical and true in my view, but it doesn't quite reach to address the message of what this thread is about: that (cosmic) evil creates bad, and (cosmic) good is at war with it for life's sake.
Everything I have said about justifying evil, has not been said in context of the bad that you have spoken of, and that I have found acceptable. It has been spoken of in context of the cosmic forces of good and evil that vie for dominance in the mind. And that is an important difference to understand.
I have said that if the world gave no place for cosmic evil in the mind, then all that remains is good, and there is still ample creativity in that setting. Further to that, I said that (cosmic) good is the only reason creativity exists, and that (cosmic) evil is only a destructive force.
While I speak hypothetically of a perfect world in which every mind has learned to not give evil a hold over it, in that world where the spiritual environment is only good, there is still opportunity for hardship, difficulty and need (IOW: bad can still exist in the absence of evil). This is made possible in my use of language because "bad" is a description of a thing that desire would prefer to change.
To give an example: a child gets a new toy and instantly breaks it. It is bad because the toy is broken, and therefore it needs to be fixed before it can be good again. But did evil inspire the child to break the toy? No, in fact it was creativity that caused it. So bad things do not always come from the manifestation of evil spirits. On the other hand, an evil spirit might create bad, such as for example siblings play and one begins to be offended that the other will not share, so in the absence of the (cosmic) good subduing it (consider Genesis 1:28), rage eventuates and he breaks his sister's toy. So evil does certainly cause bad to happen.
So in terms of conflict, I observe the spiritual reality as cosmic struggle - where the mind is the battleground. Each mind must decide whether it will think in the way of (cosmic) good or (cosmic) evil, that is to say that either the mind will choose to think in the mode of love or in the mode of sin. In my vocabulary, according to my understanding, sin is the cosmic adversary of all living things. I say it is cosmic because it can only manifest into the physical realm through the mind having yielded itself to the spirit that ensnared it by the lure of sin.
St. James wrote that we are tempted by our desires to do things that cut us off from righteousness, and then when we choose to go that way, it gives birth to sin. Then when sin has grown to maturity, it brings forth death. This is describing cosmic death, of course. There are many examples of people who develop their sinfulness well beyond maturity, and their body endures to old age. So the cosmic death that Christian philosophy speaks about, is an utter detachment from reality and truth.
When a person begins to do sin, they are hesitant, and their heart races, but then they become comfortable with it. Then their attitude toward it is so adjusted that their worldview is actually so disjointed from reality, that they say things that aren't true and they are blind to their hypocrisy. They are cut off from life spiritually, because they do not see reality in truth.
It is the cosmic evil that has the intention to corrupt our thinking and lure us into sin so that we become enslaved by sin to do the actions belonging to evil - as opposed to the cosmic force of good that works to bring our mind to an opportunity to break free from the power that sin has, so that by resisting the desire to do sin, we think according to the truth and increase in understanding of the truth.
So the spirit that operates within us is the result of our decision to do good or evil (to do what is right according to the truth, or to do sinful desires, requiring distortion of facts to evade conviction). That is the difference described in 1 John 2:9-10 for example, where the darkness conceals things whereas the light makes all things visible. We who are living without sin, actually have nothing to hide! .. and you can see a stark contrast between us and them with a very simple test. They are afraid of having their conversations recorded because their heart is wicked and they instinctively fear being exposed.
So, to bring it back into focus, consider who Jesus was, in Christian philosophy: the one who had no sin. Since He is without sin, we say that He was a pure expression of cosmic good, there was no expression of cosmic evil through Him. Yet, someone once asked the question of how his father Joseph would respond when He, as a carpenter, broke His first piece of timber. It is purely speculative, of course, to suggest that Jesus might have over-salted his food while learning to cook as a teenager, or that He might have coloured outside the lines as a four year old learning to draw. We don't have explicit information that He did make such natural mistakes, but it is a safe assumption because such things are natural for a human who is learning, and they can be said to be bad things, but not necessarily evil - the spirit in which they are done, and the spirit of the parent who would punish or forgive, that is where cosmic good and evil should be recognised as distinct from the carnal judgements we make - whether a thing is good as it is, or whether it is so bad that it should be changed into good, evil behaves such as in order to destroy, whereas love behaves so as to build-up.
If you think that evil minds, evil spirits, or even the devil himself, are devoid of creativity... you need to look again.
When a man is confronted with a fork in the road he makes a decision based on many things such as desires, capacity to evaluate consequences, tolerance to risk, moral adherence, etc.
I don't believe that cosmic evil and good forces are wrestling for control of the joystick of his mind, I believe that man is fully responsible for his actions. Anything that could be interpreted as good or evil comes from within.
I seriously doubt that "...But the evil spirit made me do it..." will be a valid excuse on judgment day.
I do appreciate your post, as it is well intentioned.
But you must admit, its dogmatic content forces it into the realm of preaching and not discussion.
Well, yes ok, but that is different from what I have said though, so it really does show that we aren't going to achieve much good by continued discussion.
What you said here is a bit like the statement that Jesus said "when the devil lies, he speaks his native language because he is a liar and the father of it" - which means to say that even though the devil can say things that are true, it isn't said for the purpose of telling the truth.
Just as evil can be creative, it isn't creativity for the purpose of creating ("the thief comes for nothing other than to steal, kill and destroy").
Quoting staticphoton
Yes, both sides are aware of that. It is the subject's ignorance of the mechanism of his decision, that puts him at risk of making poor decisions. Why does he make a poor decision?
Quoting staticphoton
Yep, it's just as I mentioned, axiomatic. That's why you won't enter the path into knowledge of the cosmic struggle, to understand why people become demonically possessed, agents of deceit.
Quoting staticphoton
Well, you can only think so if you don't agree that sin takes the mind captive into slavery, but it is obvious that people do get stitched up in denial of truth, lying, and being unable to express themselves freely because of sin.
The bible tells of a time before sin, when surely man was responsible for his own actions. But ever since sin has been here, it has been an adversary to us (Genesis 4:7), and the tragedy of life is that we, mortals, are born with zero experience and wisdom regarding sin, while sin has thousands of years of experience of finding corruption in every single person that has ever lived.
Quoting staticphoton
No, it probably won't because the next question will be "why did you believe what he said but not what I said?", and because God has wisdom, he will have ensured that you won't be able to say that you didn't have a chance to listen. So it is wise to think about those things early and see whether we can't receive His judgement sooner (John 3:17-21, Ecclesiastes 9:4-5).
And there is no argument for it - just
Quoting leo
That's what counts as quality philosophical thinking now?
Consider:
Quoting leo
So here Leo bases good and evil on happiness and suffering. He's actually a hedonist.
So party on.
And add @Serving Zion, who replaces inquiry with Biblical quotation.
This thread ought be removed.
That is not the purpose of my having given reference to material for further consideration.
Seems that 'God' allows this cosmic evil and/or the Devil, which allowance can't be approved and thus prevents the following of 'God'.
It's cunning, how it appeals to our desire to blame a higher authority - because that is a natural human response. In order to be a valid complaint, one has to prove that the authority has been sinful to allow the evil - because without sin, evil does not exist. A bad thing in absence of sin is only bad because of a mistake or mishap - and then it is not an injustice, it is only sad.
When you look at examples individually, however, it is clear that the human choice is what empowers evil. If our faith and knowledge has been made perfect, we would be consistently choosing to empower God instead of evil, and that is precisely why the cosmic war goes on. Where on Earth, this day, is the person who has such a perfect knowledge and faith? Why? (iow, is it truly God's fault or humans' fault).
.. So when you say that God allows the cosmic evil, it is only partially true, because the human is expressing his preference to follow the lure of the cosmic evil when he chooses that which appeals to his desires instead of the wisdom of God.
Ultimately, we have to acknowledge that no human is born with desires that empower sin, but rather it is through the exploitation of those enslaved by sin in the world, that children are led and pressured to assimilate.
Do you see how children are shielded from the knowledge of evil at a young age, and as age advances, the world invites them to participate? This happens because ultimately, the sinful world is sick: it suffers from a cognitive dissonance wherein it admires the innocence of children but it also is convicted by their conscience in light of that innocence that it is eager to shape the children into it's sinful form.
So, really, it is because the whole world is of the propensity to do sin, that evil is allowed within it.
As the 'Designer' of our world, its creatures, and their nature, 'God' bears the full responsibility, whether intended, or not intended—as mistake or mishap. The blame is not shirkable.
Quoting Serving Zion
'God' as the originator places inherent evil in human nature and so allows it and tolerates its subsequent expression. We, for example, as the Allies in World War II, stand against evil and therefore also against its source as 'God' plus 'His' further not ever doing anything about it. So, that's bad enough as evil but we had to ourselves rise to stop it, which was additional suffering.
Quoting Serving Zion
The human nature provided by 'God's planning, thinking, design, and implementation of course expresses 'God's' recipe in its far ranging spectrum from good to evil, which is no surprise and thus not just a partial allowance by 'God', leaving no excuses.
Quoting Serving Zion
Human nature indeed can swerve to sin and did and thus that is indeed inherent and known.
Quoting Serving Zion
The propensity is indeed part and parcel of 'His' Design from the get-go, as I have shown. If, even further, 'God' permits a 'Devil' to have the power to add to add to the built-in propensity, then that is an additional offense toward which we again easily outthink 'God' and therefore go even more against 'God's' world in which evil can try to flourish via the created human nature made capable of such in the first place.
It is thus not likely that 'God' exists, as per the above and for other reasons:
I can give 'God's existence a doubtful but still generous 'maybe', but for the religious to teach or preach it as if it were truth is intellectual dishonesty, especially as indoctrinating to the young or the unsuspecting. Further, 'He' is not a good role model, for more reasons, such as breaking of 'His' own recommended Commandment in the Great Flood, and is thus not followable. It is also curious that the foundational Biblical Genesis is the polar opposite of what's been found, dooming th emotion of divine inspiration.
side note: A poem I'm working on:
Evil’s on Earth again, in World War II:
If ‘God’ allows it, we stand against Him;
If human nature, we stand against it—
It’s up to the Allies to kill Evil!
The Enterprise, due into Pearl Harbor
On December 6th, 1941,
Is delayed by storms, and sneaks in on the 8th,
The sinking Arizona still burning.
She refuels and restocks in seven hours,
Amid the destruction of the Battleships,
Halsley noting, “The Japanese language
Will one day be spoken only in Hell!”
Yamamoto now feels free to conquer
The Pacific islands and Australia,
Not realizing he’d made what would come to be
His worst foe: the Gray Ghost—the Enterprise.
She’d be reported sunk by Japan four times,
But she’d e’er return from the grave to haunt.
The Navy would switch to her carrier base,
With Yorktown, Hornet, Lexington, and Saratoga.
There is no such thing as a "fundamental entity of the Universe", humans can't accept the fact that existence, the Universe, everything and nothing, are only cases of improbability and chance. There isn't a higher purpose for our existence and/or of the Universe.
Hedonism is about pleasure and pain. Pleasure is not the same as happiness, pain is not the same as suffering, they are unmistakable, if you’re conflating them then maybe you haven’t really felt happiness and suffering. Happiness is not a high degree of pleasure, an extremely intense sexual orgasm is not necessarily accompanied with happiness. Suffering is not a high degree of pain, an extremely intense pain is not necessarily accompanied with suffering.
So I’ll return your comment to you:
Quoting Banno
Also, you seem to have hate for the ideas I am presenting, to the point that you want to censor them:
Quoting Banno
The desire for censorship stems from hate and/or fear, it is the desire to prevent people from expressing ideas or prevent people from hearing them, to hinder communication between people, it is the desire to separate. Maybe with some introspection you would come to realize that the distinction between good and evil I am referring to is more profound than it currently appears to you.
It is interesting to read the story of how Augustine converted to Christianity:
Is it more coherent to see the issuance of a decree of death for thousands of people as the absence of good or as the existence of evil? The issuance of such a decree is a willful act, that leads to suffering and death, it is hard to see it as a mere absence of good.
It is interesting also to see how Manichaeans were persecuted and slaughtered globally, even by Buddhists:
So many people who claim that evil doesn’t really exist, that there is only good (or its absence) and then go on to commit these atrocities. Calling evil the “absence of good” doesn’t make it any less evil, on the contrary it is a way to pretend it doesn’t exist, so that it can spread more easily.
I’m not sure that we do see that. I’m not sure if what we witness is the end, or death, of a star, or the birth of something. Using those as evidence of good and evil doesn’t help your argument.
I can’t think of anything outside of a human context that I could call evil, or good. I know there has been evidence, supposedly, of an ape “murdering” another ape. But I don’t know if it was murder, I don’t know what the ape was thinking.
Nor am I even sure, going along with your posts, that good is necessarily the opposite of evil. That seems a little too simplistic to me.
Let’s forget about good and evil for a moment and just talk about unity and separation. I think you can agree that there are forces within us and within the universe that work to unite while other forces work to separate. And I think you can agree that unity is the opposite of separation (or division, disunity).
There are forces that attempt to unite ideas, beliefs, things, people, beings, while other forces attempt to separate them.
We find increased unity in beauty, in people helping each other, caring about one another, agreeing with each other, while we find increased separation in people fighting one another, seeing the other as inferior or superior, in disagreements.
Moving towards unity makes us feel love, happiness, compassion, while moving towards separation makes us feel fear, suffering, hate.
Physicists look for a theory of everything because they attempt to unite ideas, to reach a unified understanding, some force pushes them in that direction, you could see that force as their will, or their faith that such unity is possible.
However the world we observe cannot be described as total unity, a theory of everything in physics will not be able to see everything as unified, it is not possible to explain the existence of separation if fundamentally everything is unity. Put in another way, the world we see cannot be explained only in terms of attractive forces or repulsive forces, there has to be both: if there were only attractive forces all matter would shrink to zero volume, while if there were only repulsive forces everything would move towards an equilibrium where everything is separated and there would be nothing holding matter together. So a theory of everything in physics will necessarily have to see both attraction and repulsion as fundamental, it won’t be able to see everything as unified, attraction and repulsion cannot be unified, they are opposite.
But this does not imply that existence necessarily requires both attraction and repulsion. The existence of matter requires both, matter has a degree of separation, but it could be that spirits have no such separation. And that could be the spiritual feeling of universal love and unity and connectedness that some people have experienced, that complete unity is not to be found in the material world but it can exist beyond that world. While on the opposite side there could be universal fear and separation.
I made another thread yesterday that apparently has been deleted, it explored ideas in that direction and I think it made important observations, even if we could feel uneasy about some of them, but feeling uneasy about an idea doesn’t imply it is false. For instance killing leads to separation of a being from their loved ones, many people would agree that killing is evil, and we do that all the time in order to eat, or rather we let others do it for us so that we don’t have to face the bare reality of it. We attempt to cope with it in various ways, either by seeing other animals and plants as lesser beings (which is separating them from us), or by saying that it is okay to kill in order to eat (which implies a constant separation between beings competing with one another, and doesn’t consider that we could survive in this material world by eating much less). That’s something that most people refuse to look at.
They say that existence necessarily has suffering, necessarily requires competition and separation, because they assume that existence ends with the death of the material body. They don’t have faith in unity, they see death as the ultimate separation, and so they do all they can to avoid that imagined separation, by creating more separation. But it is fear in all its forms, including fear of separation, that causes separation.
Quoting leo
So what is this ’evil’ that wants to separate? Can you name it?
Quoting leo
What are these forces?
Edit: and what is ‘hate’?
Quoting Brett
I mentioned some of them in the post above, it’s important to read the whole of it.
Love, compassion, understanding, attractive forces are forces that work towards unity. Fear, indifference, hate, repulsive forces are forces that work towards separation.
In the post above I said moving towards unity makes us feel love and compassion, but love and compassion also move us towards unity, through love and compassion we spread love and compassion, which work towards unity, while on the other hand through fear and indifference we spread fear and indifference, which work towards separation.
I believe that eventually in physics we will come to a unified theory that will see two fundamental forces: one attractive and one repulsive. But physics only focuses on a part of existence, mostly on visual motion and not on feelings, so the attractive and repulsive forces it describes are only a part of the story, they aren’t the only attractive or repulsive forces. Love, compassion, understanding, ... are other attractive forces that work towards unity, while fear, indifference, hate, ... are other repulsive forces that work towards separation.
So where’s the good and evil? Why mention good and evil?
Good is that which we usually associate with love, compassion, understanding, unity. Evil is that which we usually associate with fear, indifference, hate, separation.
Indeed they are not separate, they are just another name for the same thing, good is not a separate entity from the will that spreads it, and evil is not a separate entity from the will that spreads it.
I might have said in the past that Evil is an entity separate from us but if I did I was wrong, when we spread it we are it. Through our will we decide whether to spread good or evil, whether to work towards unity or separation. The fight between good and evil plays out within every one of us.
I don’t really think this adds up to much. In the end all you’re saying is that we should be good and loving, not hateful and indifferent.