The concept of good and evil should ideally be abandoned in order to create a more just world

I will take a moment to state that it is brave, although unwise, for Con to admit that his opening argument was flawed and retract it in the way that he has. I won't take advantage of that fact, but he should beware that in the future others will mercilessly rip him to shreds for such a statement as they will see it as a sign that his arguments were not sufficiently thought through, although I personally congratulate his willingness to take a different approach.Onto the debate, Con summarises my argument, but he summarises it incorrectly. My point was not that good and evil cannot derive from religion, society, or individual formula because all of those things contradict each other. My point was that good and evil are concepts which derive their meaning from religion, society and individual formula and their origin being such means, and has always meant, that they are incapable of creating a just world because of the reasons I have formerly stated.Con states that societies differ on what is just and what is unjust, but this is untrue. Just is defined as: 'guided by truth, reason, justice, and fairness' as I stated earlier. [1] Therefore, what is just must be fair. What society believes is just and unjust has nothing to do with it. If Tom has 12 cookies, I may believe that it's fair that Tom gives me all his cookies because I got out of bed this morning to go to work when I didn't want to. Therefore I should get all of Tom's cookies as a reward for that. I can think that that is fair, but that doesn't make it fair. Equally, a society can think something is just, but that doesn't make them right that it is. Con's rebuttal hinges on his belief that 'good and evil' and 'justice' are the same things.The reality of the situation is, however, that the way society defines 'good' and 'evil' does not represent what Con is claiming. In some places, whatever God says is good is good. However, just because God says that we shouldn't educate women, that does not make it 'fair' or 'just' to not educate women. Others have suggested that something can be considered 'good' because it creates more happiness than unhappiness. If you had twelve slaves serving twelve families of four, you would then have to consider that to be 'good' as it is creating 48 happy individuals at the cost of 12 unhappy ones, thus producing a net benefit of happy individuals. That would still not, however, be fair, or just, to the slaves.The people who, Con states, would call abortion unjust whilst calling it evil, would call it evil because it is going against God, and unjust because it is ending the life of an unborn child which is arguably not fair. That does not mean that they are using evil and unjust as two of the same thing. They are using two adjectives to describe it in two different ways for two different reasons.Con states that justice would be abused by governments just as what is 'good' and 'evil' has been abused, but this could not be a problem under the system I stated earlier where we replace old moral codes which allow for the abuse of minorities with laws which aim to be increasingly just and are decided not by the government but by philosophers whose job it would be to think about laws to make things more just and can constantly update those laws. They would be a separate entity from the government and only they would be able to create or adjust laws. A government cannot abuse a system they have no part in. In this way the concept of justice is not flawed in the same way as good and evil as Con suggests.Con quotes me on a statement I made earlier that 'perhaps we should judge what is good and evil based on its actual benefit or detriment to society.' etc. This quote is made out of context and was simply me suggesting an alternative way that morality can be viewed (one of many, which again makes it different from justice which can only be defined as 'fair') and then showing how it is equally as flawed as basing morality on religion. The fact that I made this statement does not in any way imply that I do not want to give up good and evil, simply that I was considering different moral systems and how they all fail in creating a world that would be anywhere near as just as the system of Just Laws which I showcased earlier.Con asserts that if we replace the old ideas of good and evil with the system of Just Laws people would still do things that are selfish and a detriment to society as they will not care if you call them unjust, just as they did not care if you called them evil. The main problem with Con's statement here is that, as I have mentioned before, the system of Just Laws would be different to a system of morality in that morality consists of moral guidelines which are not always legally enforced (such as abortion, which is often seen as evil but not illegal). A system of Just Laws, however, would be legally enforced and, as they would be more fair than a system of laws based upon morality, more people would agree with them and would follow them because they are would not be restrictive in a way which is designed to please a God, but in a way that is designed to please the people and give them access to a just life. Therefore Con's argument that people would just ignore the system of Just Laws as they ignore morality does not stand to reason.I have sufficiently refuted Con's assertion that a system of Just laws could be used by governments to control their people and refuted that 'good and evil' and 'just' are the same thing (as good and evil can be defined in a variety of different ways, none of which are required to be fair, for example, when a God dictates that a woman must not be educated, whereas what is 'just' must also be 'fair').Con's comment on what the 'good' and 'just' thing to do if presented with two people starving to death on an island would be is irrelevant as the point of my statement was that that did not happen and something we could consider to be unjust (to the person who was overwhelmed, murdered and then cannibalized) must be considered to be good in the system of net benefit to net detriment (known as utilitarianism).In cons conclusion he again states that good and evil and justice are the same thing, which I have already refuted, and that ideas of good and evil and justice have been around for the same time which is possible but irrelevant as just because they have been around for the same amount of time does not mean that they are one in the same or that we should not replace good and evil with what is just. As I have shown, replacing good and evil with a system of Just Laws in the way that I have described earlier would inevitably do away with the unfortunate results of the 'good and evil' system like the forbadeance of the education of women as justice must support equality and therefore women would be educated on the same par as men as a legal requirement, but in the eyes of a God's view of what is 'good,' that has obviously not been the case and the lack of education of women has been to society's detriment and made it more unjust.Sources:[1] http://www.dictionary.com...[2] http://www.christianitytoday.com...