Does Evil Truly Exist? 

@Dae Sung That’s your opinion which not many care about

truly...

I have met someone like that. I remember that, from the first moment I saw him, I saw something terribly wrong in him. When I got to know him better, I learned that I was absolutely right. He really was evil. But I don’t regret getting to know him, because he inspired me to be everything I am today. (To stand up against people like him).

Yes describes Peterson perfectly ! : (

I have heard a similar one when I was a kid “Anything worth its value is worth fighting for.”

It's spelled "Cogburn," you pervert

the aptly named Bruce Cockburn

I hold the view that "fighting" itself is part of what makes our pursuits meaningful.

and a variation is “Nothing good comes easy.”

Evil as in people can become evil due to their background, or evil as in there is an actual force, an energy that is evil?

Mmmmh, yes, M Scott Peck, an excellent read. x

Evil obviously does exist on some level of consciousness but ultimately evil can have no 'real' existence. Evil is like darkness. Darkness is obviously real and yet it has no real existence of it own. It only exists in the absence of light, light having real existence. People of the lie is a great example of this. A lie can be told and the effects of that lie can have real existence but the lie is a lie, it is not real.

@@CC-mr5xqhave you ever listened to anything JP or any of the great psychoanalysts said??? We all have the natural capacity for evil. The story of Cain and Abel shows us the first man outside the garden Cain, killed his brother before built a city and founded civilisation. The point is we are not above evil, the serpent is in our hearts. That’s the point of free choice. The Nazis and Soviets chose to act out the evil in their hearts.

that is added to my list now thank you so much! If i can offer one back I really liked Alberts Camus' The Rebel and his The Myth of Sisyphus

I get it. "Virtue" that originates from pride and not love. Sometimes I think the only reason many people want to go to Heaven is to spit on everyone below. I'm going to request that I be buried with an umbrella.

Evil obviously does exist on some level of consciousness but ultimately evil can have no 'real' existence. Evil is like darkness. Darkness is obviously real and yet it has no real existence of it own. It only exists in the absence of light, light having real existence. A lie is a great example of this. A lie can be told and the effects of that lie can have real existence but the lie is a lie, it is not real.

I think it's actually very important to recognize that you are capable of doing really terrible things. There are a lot of people who don't think they could ever be the bad guy. If you don't understand that in yourself, then it's much easier to commit evil acts and think you're doing the right thing.

Stupid definition of evil.

@@TruthDissident Think man. Think! Lol.

As an addict i agree.

So you commented before watching the video?

@@samgruzinskiy that's like you liking your own comments 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Oh yes, lots of backseat drivers in the world, happy to be a passenger while others take on all responsibility and do all the work. I know, I was that person too, but not any more. I thought everyone was the same as me, they're not, some don't want to grow up and take responsibility on, even for themselves. They're more than happy to drive others on to do more. xxx

Nonsense - People who believe in Evil spread Evil ! : (

Jesus could have taken that path too, but He had a purpose to serve. Lucifer said "I will not serve", Jesus came to show it is through serving the world is improved.....and, in the end, the improvement may be in eternity.

@@josephcioppa1943 Your words are nice, but I realy dont understand what your text has to do with my text? :) Show me the connection between them. Are you telling me that I should serve? Well, I would love to but in reality no one cares for any of my help. :D

@@TallisKeeton - did you know some of the schemes of Satan are to isolate individuals? Read CS Lewis - The Screwtape Letters

Sorry, but im with Joseph on this one. Of the requirements you listed, where do you think “peace” comes from? Sadly, tragically, it is almost always fought for and certainly sacrifices are made to both earn it and maintain it. Every November 11th I acknowledge the sacrifices others made to ensure peace for me. Life is like that is so many ways. You can’t just sit back and “smell the roses” and be happy although some of that is healthy. You really need to work (serve) to improve the lot of others. It’s hard sometimes but when you do, no other reward is more enduring. Oh, and you forgot the greatest requirement of all..Love. (Giving and receiving)

@@bradsmith9189 Of the requirements you listed, where do you think “peace” comes from? I dont think I was speaking about peace in political way. I think it was about peace as in private life :) What was 11th of November? You really need to work (serve) to improve the lot of others. I agree. Its not that I would not like it to do, its others never cared for being helped and improving my ideas or working with me in realising something which can help them or us. I never have problem with giving, its mostly others who got problem with receiving from me. :) Thats why now I m thinking that I would be able to help and to work with only those who want it. :) Giving AND receiving you know. :) As for me, in recent years I m of the opinion that sometimes receiving is also a kind of giving :) Giving chance to others to be of help, to planning, to tutoring, to improving, to being listened to, to express ideas and feelings. Its IMO easy to give, when you were for most of your life raised in such way by parents and grandparents and by school and by examples of your ancestors and your heroes, and your idols. It is the receiving which is in todays (postmodern, narcisistic, egoistic) society the lost art actualy :) And btw I dont like political ideologies - in recent years my idea about political ideologies is that they are created to divide us, as a screen of real politics, to stop us from having mutual goals and needs by manufacturing fake problems to divide the majority. The fewer people rule the world the more political ideologies are created day by day (and forved upon as by "social" medias) to divide the majority for more fighting groups and sub-groups becouse only such way we "working people" and esp. "middle-class" (between "milioners class" and "poverty class" in need of social benefits) are not enough power and are enough canalized into this or that "boxes" to actualy start require something of our true needs from those who rule this poor planet :) Those true needs are IMO only 3 : - peace (no to manufacturing and spending bilions on wars by military-industrial complex) - honest work for honest money, with ability to safe for old age or for your kids, - safety of kids - in school and on the streets. And IMO as of today - though it can be changing I guess - the only area where I honestly can think that I can SERVE and with honor, and that I want to serve for the honor of my ancestors, for 6 generations before me who'd served in 2 world wars and 3 national insurections - is the kind of intelectual and ideological war between... lets say it that way... light and dark side of force. :) I can serve in "culture war" against those who deem that the cathegory of truth must be abandoned. I dont think so, becouse I deem that this cathegory is most important for any kind of DEVELOPMENT, including technology, and culture, and law, and ethics. I can serve in that thing which people call "cultural war". As far as I can see it its the war in which we got two sides. One side is mine - the protectors of cultures. Of being based in written sources, of literature, of mythologies. Of that which is a sedimentation growing with centuries. Be it high culture or popculture, be it western culture or tribal cultures. All kinds of cultures who are equipped with any kind of DEEP roots are in MORTAL danger now. Those cultures will be at first used to politics and if not enough useful they will be erased from our memory. Those who are not able to tell chronologicaly about the changes in architecture and literature and philosophy from the last 3 000 of years are the first tools and victims of the builders of "idiocracy". Those builders of idiocracy want to dominate us and use us, or eventualy eradicate all of that which is not at its roots a part of politics. Politics wanting to rule culture is like a tail who wags the dog ! Those builders of idiocracy are - corporations - who want to devour and to use as tool every possible particle, every small relict of independent cultures. By independent I mean independent from big-buissness and independent from politics, and - political ideologies - who are going hand in hand with corpos, or maybe are installed in corpos to be spread on the world via their copo-medias. I was educated in law/forensics/history of law. But never got job in this area. I try to understand what media show us from the area of politics, though I know that its difficult for me becouse there is not much to see, most things are actualy secret, (IMO its not much above 20% of events what we actualy see in TV) and I dont have much schooling in this matter, though I can bring together bits and pieces and speculating about it using methods of thinking from legal study. I dont know much about economy/money so my understanding is about some basics from school only. Thats why I cannot be of much use in that area. :) But I in recent years I read more and understand more about cultures and popculture, becouse of my education and my non-profesional interests. So in that area I can SERVE.

Hell is just the worst way to experience the presence of the Love of God.

Take a look on RU-vid, “Justification and the mere Christianity movement” 23.42mins.

To follow this point up though... Jordan Peterson has a line that a good man must be capable of evil, yet control it. So then a good man might not necessarily have to believe in good and evil. If forsaking a belief in good and evil opens you up to committing evil acts, and yet for your own reasons independent of general morals, you decide against the acts generally conceived of as evil, then that's Jordan Peterson's definition of a good man. I would guess it goes back to the eye of the beholder, or letting another man sing thy praises. You aren't really good just because you believe you are good, you're good if other people see your actions and asses you as good. So you can be amoral and still good, so long as self-interest keeps you in line with the conventional morality of those around you. Although you will probably be scary because people will see what you're capable of written in your eyes.

the Bible says "be angry, but do not sin", and also do not let the sun go down on your anger"......Jesus flipped the tables of the money changers.......righteous anger is real, and not evil

@@josephcioppa1943 "Be angry and do not sin" is referring to judgment. In other words see evil but do not judge evil. Also, Jesus never got angry when He flipped those tables. Read that scripture again and tell me where it says anger.

Satan is actually a real being. He is NOT just a symbol. Don't be fooled.

@@pdxnikki1 I've never seen the devil. But I have been tempted to do evil many times. But the temptation always came from real things. Never an evil fallen angel. So I have no evidence of the existence of the devil. How can you persuade me the devil really exists apart from metaphor?

"We are all tempted" - if temptation is not supernatural, we are tempted by what? And, even if the temptation is not supernatural, then where did the initial patterns of thought arise from?

@@josephcioppa1943 Desire. Let's say you were 10 lbs overweight. (just a hypothetical, of course.) And a co-worker brings in a dozen doughnuts. We are tempted to eat them, in spite of the fact that in the long-term, these will harm our health. Or, an old high-school flame is in town the same week as your wife is out of town. She calls you up... Or, you are in a store, and you really want something expensive, but lack the money. The clerk turns around, and you could pocket it. All three of these are immoral actions. Temptation comes from desire, and desire is in our nature. Hunger is a desire that keeps us from starving. Lust is a desire that keeps human beings reproducing. They are natural. You can say that God put these instincts in us if you like. I prefer to think of The Creator as the process of evolution with natural selection. But in EITHER case, the devil is a metaphor for temptation to do something that feels good in the short run, but hurts you and others in the long run.

@@freesk8 - and yet, Satanists live by the expression, "do as you will"......

so, where are your personifications of good on earth who live today or lived recently on earth?

I'm not your guy friend

"I'm not your guy, buddy!"

@Dae Sung i'm loosing the battle between good and evil, evils is taking over

No it's not.

Then I think I need it explained to me better. I don't buy the idea that good and evil are symmetric and that good is perfectly balanced by evil. What is the point then if that's true

@@ethanjensen7967 there is no way to define or understand a concept without intrinsically defining and delineating the anthitesis, or opposite, of that concept. You can't have good without evil because by definition they're anthitetical to one another, it'd be like trying to define what "hot" means without also implying that such a thing as "cold" exists. It's baked within the definition, and this is baked within the concept of definition en large. Good and evil are pretty much entirely subjective concepts, therefore in order for them to have meaning we need to assign to them a set of definitions which exclude all other non pertaining definitions from the set that describes them. Therefore all definitions that make up the concept of good, inherently define what the opposite of good is, by being excluded from that alternative set

@@marcogianesello6083 I understand your argument, but I don't think good is one of those things that works that way. I don't think they're symmetric opposites. What your argument suggests is that every attempt at making the world better is futile because reducing evil waters down the other goodness in the world because there's less evil to compare it to.

@@ethanjensen7967 no, what I'm saying is that the existance of one concept implies the necessary existance of the other, nothing of what I said relates to the state of the world or the prevalence of good things or events vs bad things or events. Obviously perspective changes depending on our understanding of the definition, so in a world that works better than ours the definitions will differ. That's inevitable in the same way that your definition of hot and cold weather changes depending on what you're accostumed to.

No, evil means immoral. So what you've described is just your private definition. Immoral means an act violates someone's morality. Obviously that depends on what their morality is (beheading apostates is evil to me, but a particular Muslim might consider it good, for example). It's hard to prove something is evil because nobody has evidence of objective morality. So nobody has a basis for calling anything objectively evil: it's always just whether or not some act violates an individual's morals. Unlike morality itself, _consequences_ are real. So that's why morality is still a critical topic, despite being subjective, because some consequences are dramatically worse than others and so we really should care about what acts we treat as good vs. evil. Personally I'm most fond of the moral goal of _overall well-being._ Once that subjective goal is picked, then in the case of well-being you can objectively measure it by measuring health, wealth, etc. By approaching things this way, you typically end up with a much more accurate and nuanced stance towards various topics (like instead of just weirdly being negative of all SJW stuff, admitting that some policy changes have objectively raised overall well-being, while others haven't had an impact, and some have _worsened_ well-being).

​@@tonygoodkind7858 Not true. Evil is not equal to immoral action but unethical action and that means my definition of evil is not wrong, when the term "unethical action" includes that definition. Groups may define different standards for what they consider "good" or "evil" but that doesn't make things "good" or "evil". This decision is eventually made by individuals themselves (even if they act as part of a group) and they may deviate from what the group might have set as their standard. Ethics action are not something random. In fact it is quite the opposite. This is because the root of ethics is the same for anything that lives and feels: The capacity for suffering. As Confucius once said and Aristotle before him (albeit way more elaborate than what a simple quote can cover) : "Don't do to others what you don't want done to you". In the end any ethics always come back to this simple principle. Going by this principle, unethical action would be anything that someone would do to others, what that person wouldn't want done to themselves, which would come down to anything that would hurt them, that is done without necessity (for either side) and willingness (from the receiving side). Therefore my definition does indeed describe unethical behavior. But you good sir are, from what you've described yourself, a moral relativist. Therefore what you do, is just look at the outcome and not the means, which is exactly, what is at the root of the horrors from the last century. And while I agree that there is nothing that is objectively good (which is not the same as moral), the same is not true for unethical actions, since you can always put yourself into the shoes of another person. Of course that does not provide a valid measure for "good" things, because people value things differently. However, as I've mentioned before, suffering is universal, which means it is something that you can indeed measure. There is of course a lot of grey between "good" actions and unethical actions but if you do something to hurt someone without there being any necessity on neither side or willingness on the receiving side, then that is objectively evil.

@@DelaronZarath I do agree I was wrong to call your definition wrong. Mostly I took some extra time to realize that morality is principles of good/bad _behavior,_ which does imply intent is always involved. (And I probably wasn't clear enough last post, but it was the intent part of your definition I was previously (but not anymore) calling wrong.) Putting ourselves in the shoes of other people doesn't mean things are objectively evil. It's just that doing that is a great strategy if we're interested in crafting the best-possible subjective morality. (With "best" mostly just referring to _maximizing well-being for as many sentient beings as possible._ ) Perhaps you're already aware of the Veil of Ignorance (which is basically just a fancier way of saying we should form morality based on putting ourselves in others' shoes). Basically I find people dismiss moral relativism because they find it unappealing (and sure, I'd absolutely agree that some magical objective morality might make reality a nicer place to be; it's a comfortable lie). Yet the reason they find it unappealing always comes back to consequences. _And that's why it's such a shallow critique of moral relativism,_ because when a moral relativist forms their beliefs about morals _holistically_ (considering BOTH that morals are subjective and that consequences are real), the end result in that we form morals which try to maximize the well-being of everyone. And there definitely wasn't a case for maximizing well-being by doing those horrible historic things ( _the very fact that they're horrific_ proves they weren't maximal well-being, if that makes sense)

Sure and maybe the Book of Leprechaunism says _anti-leprechauns_ caused it. But why distract off topic to books that say a lot of weird stuff when we could instead discuss reality?

Always feels weird that people need to lie about morality. Morality is principles of right/wrong behavior. _Because nobody has evidence of one single objective moral value (the smallest component of a morality), we don't know objective morality exists._ Instead, we have subjective morals, which are either instincts from evolution or learned from life experience (culture, parents, etc). Our laws are imposed as societal morals. That's why if you're in the US beheading apostates isn't legal, but in some Muslim countries it is. The collective morals of these groups vary by culture. That doesn't mean morality isn't a critical topic. It's critical because _consequences are real._ So another thing evolution gave us is the ability to reason, and imagine a world with or without concentration camps, and most of us understand that the one _without_ concentration camps sure sounds like a better reality to live in. It just feels weird to me that people subconsciously decide to outright lie about morality (to take their subjective morality and call it "objective" as an attempt to enforce it more). That's just not necessary: just present the logical reason why a thing should or shouldn't be allowed, and if the evidence makes the case, then that's where things stand. Almost everyone is willing to sign up with _overall well-being_ being the goal of morality, and so we can measure well-being in a variety of ways to know whether an act should/shouldn't be allowed. So concentration camps? Hugely negative impact to well-being. Allowing gay marriage? Slightly positive impact to well-being with no real downside. It's straightforward stuff, and I feel like the only reason people don't sign up for it is they really haven't _thought_ about morality enough (and that's the huge downside of lying about morality; people are trained to just do what they're told, and so you end up with individuals who think slavery is okay because the Bible doesn't forbid it, in fact it provides _rules_ for how to own slaves.. so it's kinda dangerous when people just blindly follow a predefined morality without questioning or demanding reasonable evidence.)

How do you know it’s a “he” ?

Satan is not real.