"Good vs. Evil" "Who would be the winner"? Well let's examine their attributes shall we. Evil without a doubt is the opposite of Good. Now where does evil come from? Sane enough Evil was once good, "do we agree"? Of course we do, Evil was once Good. How can Good come from Evil? It is impossible, that's because Good would have been Evil all along. Thence Good is greater than Evil, so why not believe in God?....
First, I am confused as to why this is in the Plot Creation forum. Second, I'll ask that you never use the word "thence" again. It's kind of tacky and dated. Third, I don't understand why you've used inverted commas all over the place. Semantics aside, belief in God is illogical. I'm an atheist with agnostic tendencies toward the pantheist faith. I believe that God does not exist. That's not knowledge, though, which is why we call it faith. Therefore, my backup plan is that if there is any higher entity or form, then it would be something like that described by pantheism: A doctrine that identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God. As I said, it would be something like that. I do not believe that God can be understood by the common man. Our cognition is brought about by the interaction between chemicals in our brain. Being that God is not physical, he does not have that same interaction in His "brain", and therefore does not experience cognition in the same way as we do. Faith in God, therefore, is illogical because there is nothing that we could learn from God since we would not understand Him. As to the Good and Evil debate, that's highly subjective. I believe in a far more logical idea, that Good is one Alternative, and Evil is another. Therefore, it's all just an Alternative versus the Alternative, and there is no definitive alignment.
Religious aspects aside, there are shades of gray in everyone. While a story can focus on the overall "Good vs. Evil" scenario, it's the gray areas and the conflict itself that make the plot interesting. And it's what makes people want to read the story.
I think that I can safely say that, for the most part, "good" and "evil" are simply matters of perspective. Take, for example, war. Both sides in a war see themselves as in the right and their enemy in the wrong. Sure, you may look back and say "that side was fighting good, the other was totally immoral." But there's the thing, morality changes with time. A few hundred years ago slavery was a part of every-day life, now it's considered one of the worst crimes in humanity. Life isn't clear-cut. It's not as if there is a fence that divides humanity and you're either on one side or the other. Things aren't that simple, unfortunately. This is a discussion better suited to another part of the forum, or maybe another forum entirely. It certainly has little to do with creating beautiful and seamless plot lines...
Yes, morality will change over time, but amorality, being a lack of morals, will not, so that's an easy enough perspective to challenge. As for slavery a British Queen (I unfortunately cannot remember the Queen in particular) a few hundred years ago set it as a law that a people could only be enslaved if they were better off under slavery than in ordinary life. Unfortunately, this meant that the majority of noble families would look at "primitive" tribes with distaste and say that they'd be better off with the British way of life. Then again, that's just the white establishment in general, really. Still, that Queen had the right idea. She just overestimated how nice her subjects were, and they exploited it, forcing white definition onto other cultures in order to show how much better they'd be in white society. A better example would be that Hitler is viewed as evil by the majority of the world, but he did wonders for the German people. He gave them focus, he gave them the Volkswagen. He did a lot for them that was good. Another example would be that people look at the Jews as having been persecuted throughout World War II, and yet it was a Jew (J. Robert Oppenheimer) who designed the atomic bomb. Yet another example would be the persecution of the Islamic people by a majority of Americans (proven in several media; I don't think I need to be too specific) and others in Western society, and yet without the Islamic people, we would not have modern mathematics and society, as it was their society hundreds of years ago (or more) that developed it through the idea of moving forward with God in one hand and Science in the other. As above, Evil is a matter of perspective, and close to every culture is a perpetrator of some crimes. The only crimeless culture I know of (that is a majority, I guess) belongs to the Aboriginals of Australia who are still looked down upon by a large portion of society because they're drunks and drug addicts and so forth. What we (white folk) fail to understand is that we made them what they are today by taking their culture from them. Humanity itself is inherently evil.
Humanity is not inherently evil, humanity is just lazy, and evil acts are far easier to preform than good. It's easier to destroy than build, easier to hate than love, easier to condemn than forgive, etc. Depending, of course, on your definition of "good" and "evil". Is your day-to-day life a constant battle with you "evil" nature? Do you have to suppress an instinct to harm random strangers? I'm probably not making my point very well, as I stopped mid-way through typing this to get some lunch, and now I have no idea what I was going to say... If humanity were inherently evil, we'd spend every moment of every day battling with our primal instincts to "be evil". But we don't. All humanity is guilty of is being overly emotional, and letting the darker emotions rule us because it's just easier that way. There. (Lame finish to a lame post, I guess...)
Neither. One can not exist without the other. Besides, good and evil are just words made by men to justify our actions and believes. And again, one can't exist without the other. We can't have day without night, happiness without sorrow, health without sickness. It's quite simple: If you have never been sad, how do you know when you are happy, and not just content? Um... no? Where the hell (heehee) did that come from? Evil was once good? Or do you mean the fall of Lucifer? If you know your Bible history, you would know that Lucifer and all his followers were sent to Gehenna to be punished. It was later altered from "Gehenna" to "Hell" (based on the norse underworld Helheim, ruled by the goddess Hel), and Lucifer became the Devil and ruled Hell. You do know the Bible was rewritten many, many times over a few centuries? That's a known fact. No, Good and Evil are one and the same. It's just words. If I were to kill you in cold blood, it would make me evil, right? So what if someone found out three years later than you had raped my three year old daughter, so all I did was get revenge? Would I still be evil? Do the means justify the end? In some cases, yes. What then if someone found out later that you were mentally challenged and didn't know what you were doing? So the whole raping my daughter-part weren't really your fault. You didn't know what you were doing and couldn't be held responsible for your actions. Where did that come from? As a little trivia, here's something to think about: Christianity is based on the Old and New Testament in the Bible, right? Judeism is based on the Old Testament from the same Bible. And Islam? It's... (drum roll)... also based on the same Bible, starting with Mohammed. Heck, they even accept Jesus as a prophet. But if the Bible is the Word of God, what does that make of all three of those religions? Wouldn't they be one and the same?
Ah, WriterDude just reminded me of something I wanted to say. Is that not redemption, the very principle on which modern Christianity is based? And by saying redemption is impossible, then are you not going against everything the New Testament supposedly stands for?
So... yeah. It makes all three of them terrible. But as I said earlier, at least Islam helped give us modern maths and science to help us continue being a horrible species.
Fixed. It is not built into our nature to be rapists, murderers, or crack dealers. Rewards and punishment are what shape who we are - it differs for every society. For example, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - Americans went into a panic and looted for basic needs. Aftermath of Japan Disasters - Japanese people waited patiently for hours for the most basic of needs. No looting. Of course, we could continue this debate for years as psychologists have, or we could agree that we all are saying the same thing - the society we create causes our problems.
@biblesponge Biblical concepts of good and evil are meaningless, IMO. Let's take the Euthyphro Dilemma for instance: "Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?" In the 1st case, morality (good/evil) is independant of god. Thus, god is a mere middleman who hands down a moral law greater than himself, and is in no way an arbiter of morality. In the 2nd case - things are only morally good because god says so - morality is completely and utterly arbitrary and meaningless. If god said tomorrow that murder and rape is right and good, it absolutely would be. Which is to say nothing is actually intrinsically good - only merely what god decided was good. Anyhow, I think you should reword your statement, like, alot if you intend to be persuasive. I'm assuming that what's you're trying to do. But the false dichotomy of good and evil, followed immediately by the non-sequitar of: "why not believe in god?" is very... unpersuasive. As cowardly an argument as it is, I recommend you study Pascal's Wager if "why not believe?" is the conclusion you're reaching for. I don't know many people in this day and age who accept your premise that good and evil are objective and polar opposites. The ones who do are generally religious, go figure. My point being, if you intend to sway opinions, you should target the mentality of your audience - which is to say, speaking through the prism of religious thought may not be a good idea. Your point may be lost in translation on people who don't percieve as you do. If that makes sense. Let's assume I accept your premise of good and evil being opposites, of evil coming from good but not vice versa, etc. What does that have to do with god? Let alone, the christian/abrahamic one, or belief in him? As if it's voluntary. That totally came out of left field, although I kind of expected it somehow... Try harder. I mean that constructively. You have the better part of 2 millenia of christian apologetics to draw on - ya know, standing on the shoulders of giants and all. Shouldn't be all that hard to refine your arguments. Also, wrong section. Again. If you'd like to debate one-on-one, PM me. Maybe we'll change one or the other's mind.
Well, it's more than just the society we live in that shapes us, more like every moment of our lives, every choice we've ever made, every emotion we've ever felt, every kebab we've ever eaten, and so on. But yeah, it's really a pointless to debate this. I say we order a pizza and discuss something far more meaningful like, say, "how not to cook sausages". Boy do I have some badly cooked sausage stories...
Why do we always have to have a winner? Perhaps in the absence of a fight the world would be a safer and calmer place? More importantly, why label these extremes as good and evil at all? Are they not simply perceptions of the outermost limits of an individual's moral compass.
A generalization, I made there. Society encompasses everyone, everyone influences you. The media influences you, but society influences media. People makes the kebabs you are so fond off, but society influences these people. And so on. In short, by the transitive property, society influences you. 1 - Everyone has an ego; everyone wants to be acknowledged as BETTER. 2 - No, we'd still be passive cavemen living short lives and living in panic, struggling to satisfy our physiological needs. Change comes through people making radical assertions and standing up to the opposition. 3 - I agree with this one.
Perhaps. It wasn't very nice of Christians to go on crusades to the Holy Land and slaughter everything in sigh, and it wasn't very nice of them to run around and torture people to death just because someone said they were a witch. Hitler, Saddam Idi Amin, Kim Jong-Il and so on are/were horrible people, but all of them combined are still weaklings compared to the number of people who have died in the name of God. The number of people who haved died in the name of Allah isn't exactly much less, though. So yeah, religion makes us a horrible species. But then again, what about all the people who has found comfort and salvation through religion? What about all the homeless shelters run by Christian organizations? What about the Salvation Army? What about all the Islamic charitable organizations like Islamic Relief and Muslim Aid? Are they bad too? Far from it. They all work very hard to make the world a better place by helping people. The point is religion isn't good or bad at all. It's what you do with it that's good or bad. One man's terrorism is another man's fight for freedom.
Society is an evil construct. I demand we return to nature. There's an old Salvation Army church being sold. I won't say where. There's a mosque across the road from it. They want to buy the church to use as a Sunday School building for the young children. It won't get sold to them (this, I have on good authority) because they're Muslim. I like volunteering for the Salvation Army. I love it, in fact, and I love the people I work with. They're all good people. But this one act (or lackthereof) - not selling the church to other good, honest Australians - negates all the good works of the Salvation Army to date, so far as I'm concerned.
And this is exactly what's wrong with the world on so many levels. The SA are Christians, so of course they don't want to sell their church to another religion. The Muslims wouldn't have sold a mosque to Christians either for the same reason. But how can you say that little act negates all the good work the SA has done to date? Do you mean just in your neighborhood or world wide? They have been doing great stuff for centuries, but once they do one little act you don't agree with, all the hard work was for nothing?
So much for my pizza plan... What, as in cave-living, stick-wielding, hairy savages with only floating leaves to hide our genitalia? I think I'll pass on that social devolution, thanks. No need to go so ape over things... Come on people, lighten up. Have some pineapple pizza. (I'd offer you some apple crumble, but I just ate the last of it)
So you agree society is evil. Thank you. And nah, forget nature, I prefer to look were the answer lies. What taught those animals to do these things? They were taught by their parents in order to survive. What made cannabis evolve into a 'drug-dealing' plant? Survival. For humans, we created society in order to make things easier to survive. I could argue that the instinct to survive is evil. In other words, animalism is evil. Therefore, I am agreeing with you.
This is the second thread I've seen Biblesponge start that really had nothing to do with writing or the area of the forum he posted it in. Really, I think he is just a troll and you guys are feeding him.
Agreed. Notice how he has only this one single post, and has never bothered to respond to any offensive messages? As for the discussion of Good vs. Evil, this is entirely out of place, since there has been NO reference whatsoever to a plot of any kind. If anyone cares to discuss this, then PLEASE put it under some other forum.
We may be part of an evil attempt to find out how much good there is out there! This may simply be a way of brainstorming G&E for him. Would be polite for him to chip in and engage though. Nuff said, I'm off the menu
