Evil is a misunderstood and overused concept.

,,This is a baseless assertion by my opponent and does not have any weightage. He doesnot show why and how it is a matter of choice he simply asserts so. I should like to inform the voters that this is actually contradictory to his case because he goes on to rest the case of evil largely on "motivation". If motivation is what evil is based on then it simply follows that one with an intentionally evil intent/motivation will have done an evil act. So you see my opponent, when he asserts that evil is a matter of choice self refutes himself. 'Actually, what I meant by motivation was reasoning (which is really the meaning of the term so...redundant). Evil is the breaking of the moral code. Motivation comes in later. I am not asserting it is a matter of choice, I am asserting it ISN'T a matter of choice...I suppose that was a typo in your argument :P I know how it feels. What I was trying to say was: motivation is what derives into evil. If morals are not absolute, neither is evil (I hate how we both have to overuse that word...). Evil is not a matter of choice, it is either a personal motivation or mental illness that drives someone to do something others deem immoral. Here's an example: Murder is immoral. when an adult does it, everyone spits on him and starts despising him. But what if a rabid dog killed a person? Is the dog evil? No, of course not. ,,Forgive them father, for they know not what they do' Luke 23:34 (to quote a famous fraud). My argument was that ,,evil' is not a matter of choice, unless it comes from motivation. If a mad person stabbed a man, is he evil? Motivation is not neccessarily a malevolent intent. As I said, the Batman story...Bruce Wayne wanted to shoot the convict behind the death of his parents. Can you really call him evil? Is it an evil intent? It may be in our view, but not in his or even in someone else's. Nobody just says: ,,I'm going to be evil just to be evil' Even A.H. had a reason, to conquer the world, but in his eye he was doing what was neccessary, what he thought was right, he may have been an immoral monster, but behind every outer shell there is reason. Again, evil is dependant on what we consider moral.,,Once more I see that my opponent has made claims. It is irrelevant even if his claims are correct (which they are not) for as Proposition and as the one giving an argument it is his duty to give arguments supporting his premises. Of arguments I see none. He states that evil is not an absolute concept, however once more if one is to consider his motivation argument later on then one could say than an evil motivation causes an absolutely evil act. This is shown to us by causality, where affect X is caused by cause B, as long as cause B is being fulfilled effect X is guarenteed. As my opponent gives great weightage to motivation then one can easily conclude than an evil motivation makes an action evil. Then my opponent would state that what is in fact an evil motivation? Very simply, I reply that an evil motivation is the motivation that a. negates good, b. is left out by opponent in his further case. I believe my opponent is talking about evil as an act here, quite different from an evil motivation.'As I stated above, no one choses to do an evil act simply out of a desire to do evil, if that is so, they are sociopaths (at least in our opinion). However, this brings us back to another debate topic: morals. You still didn't provide proof that morals are absolute, therefore, evil is dependant on what we consider to be moral. We can't know whether something like childbirth would be immoral if we had a different upbringing. It all depends on upbringing and our beliefs-morals. A sociopath has a different perception of morality in general. Plain out evil is not a motivation, evil is derived FROM the motivation and, depending on the motivation, the act is deemed evil,neutral or good, not simply by the act. Take the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Several hundred thousand lives lost, it was an evil ACT and I do not approve of it, but the motivation was a justified one-to end the war. The categorization of an action as evil/neutral/good depends on the motivation, not as much the action. And as stated above, evil is not a motivation. This serves especially well when talking about morals. Why was the bombing of pearl harbour considered a tragedy? Why was the 9/11 attack considered a tragedy? Why are Hiroshima and Nagasaki barely mentioned and even then, considered to be acts of good? Because of the motivation behind the acts. The 9/11 attack was deemed immoral from the side of the general american public, as was pearl harbour, but through the eyes of the taliban and japanese, it was an act of righteousness (even if you believe the bombing of 9/11 was done by the american government, there is still a motivation behind it that was considered the only solution to getting the united states further involved in the war on terror). No one would perform an evil action simply for the benefit of pure evil. ,,This argument and the sub arguments Benji attached with this are refuting to his case above. Also they make little sense. As my opponent simply mentions force or illness or trauma one could very easily ask why is an act not evil if a healthy, sane minded, man intentionally rapes a 5 year old girl? Until my opponent can answer this question his argument is moot. 'Why would be rape her? There are several reasons that could answer this. If he felt it satisfied his needs, he would have done it, making it an evil act, but with a non-justified motivation behind it. As I said, we usually deem evil acts by motivation. Since we cannot see the man's motivation, we must venture into his mind. In his mind, it might not be a big deal, or he was considering it a ,,small evil for a greater good' (for him, not for us or the girl). He might have just done it out of pleasure, perhaps not even knowing it was wrong. There are millions of possibilities. Every person has a group of inbuilt instincts of different kinds, which are also present one each in every animal. So we can say everyone has many different animal instincts residing inside him. Which instinct grows up fully and which ones are suppressed and left untouched forever are the deciding factor for the actual character of the person.This again depends upon his or her childhood background, surroundings he/she is growing up in, and lastly his family background and social impact. Hence i feel if some persons develops an animal instinct towards sex to a high level and all other defending feelings are not working on him, even if given a free sex he will try to force it. He might want to establish his power, which brings us to the upbringing part of the argument. If he was brought up in a patriarchal enviroment, he would have felt a neccessity to enforce his power on those he deemed weaker. There are MILLIONS of possibilities, however, here I have a beautiful link to a wonderful site on which everything is explained >:)http://www.buzzfeed.com...(If I am correct, there should be a reddit link inside this link, it lists millions of reasons of WHY they raped women, as for why anyone would rape a little girl, same thing, but with pedophiles XD That's the easy explaination anyway. Read some of my reasons, they connect to both groups. Here's a link that refers directly to the little girl topic and is ironically about a five year old girl XD http://www.ndtv.com...)NEVER attempt to point out the opponent's holes in the first round XD That's what refuting is for :P so he can fix the mistakes he made. Also, thank you for loving my name :P Ajab sounds like inspector Japp from Poirot XD that's why I like it even more. -RegardsBenji