Talk:Evil/Archive 1

message: I can't believe nobody has changed this page back to what it was. All instances of the word "evil" are replaced with "irish evil" as per this comic
--69.210.150.31 05:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: Hannibal Lecter Reference-
I don't really understand what Hannibal Lecter's admirable qualities have to to with evil here...lots of the most hardcore 
"evil" people in history had SOME "good" qualities (Hitler himself refused to allow his staff to employ killing mousetraps in his employ). That Hannibal has admirable qualities doesn't really have a lot to do with his inherrant 'evil', any more than Hitler's love of animals influenced his.
I removed this reference to Lecter.
:Actually, jesus, thats a retarded argument. Hitler not killing mice doesn't make him unevil nor is killing mice necessarily evil. reudicto ad hitlerium?Thechosenone021 17:15, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Is Evil Relative?

message: I have nothing against "weasel words" when appropriate, but there actually is quite a bit of good research in this area, and there are many universals of human culture and human language; among them a concept of good and evil (and even more specific concepts like formalized marriage).  Margaret Mead may have set back anthropology for decades, but she's been thoroughly debunked now, and we're coming out of the dark and realizing that there is indeed such a thing as "human nature" and it influences all cultures.  I'm all for vague prose when there is a genuine lack of knowledge, but not for the sake of dogmatic relativism. --LDC
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I Love Evil!whole article) because I personally don't believe in good or evil as such; perhaps I'm just a "slippery relativist" but I often notice that what is "evil" for one person is "good" for another (substitute "cursed" or "blessed" if you want).  We do what we do; some things are beneficial to some people and detremental to others and calling them "good" or "evil" is trying to turn a value judgement into an absolute. --Justfred
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Such relativism is a common viewpoint, which is why I mentioned it specifically.  But this is an encyclopedia; our job is to accurately report what the various cultures and individuals believe.  Every culture has a concept of good and evil; some are more absolutist than others, but they all have it.  Whether or not we like that fact is irrelevant.  To say anything else would be bad reporting.  --LDC
:Are you not confusing a concept of "right" and "wrong" with the concept of "good" and "evil".  Right and wrong are human universals.  Concepts of good and evil are arguable.  I know that Australian Aboriginal cultre had no concept of absolte evil until the coming of the Europeans
:217.224.139.132 09:38, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've made the change, not only does malice have a semi-specific legal sense, but there's also a 1993 movie, Malice. --Dante Alighieri 19:31, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Miscellaneous 

message: M. S. Peck in his book "The People of the Lie" has yet another definition for "evil" people.   See   I find this interesting as an exploration of absolute definitions of "evil," rather than the relative definition we so often assume.  Peck proposes that our personalities convert from "bad" to fully "evil" when, first, we cultivate a blindness to our own unwanted character "flaws" and/or "bad" behavior, then second, we develop a mental disorder of subconscious psychological projection where we see imaginary character flaws in others and try to destroy them, yet we ourselves suffer from those exact character flaws.  Evil people see themselves as fighting against a disgusting foe in order to advance "goodness," yet their victims are innocent.  This definition of "evil" would be independant of culture, since the personal characteristics which are denied and then projected could be anything.  It's the denial and the subconscious projection which defines the concept.  Under this definition, Hitler was evil because, rather than subjecting his country and perhaps himself to honest introspection and attempts at self-improvement, he decided that Jewish and other minority groups were the true cause of Germany's troubles.  He saw himself as doing good, yet outside observers saw him as suddenly lashing out at weak victims.  --Wjbeaty 20:15, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
:Peck has a good analysis of institutional evil, that would apply well to USA foreign policy and its attacks on Iraq in the name of stamping out the terrorists of 911.  It is interesting that the war against terrorism completely overlooks the US support of terrorists (eg. Supporting the Muhajiddin and Osama bin Laden in his attacks against the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s and in supporting the Contras against the legal government of the Sandanistas).  The lies and coverup of the contra-arms deal is a classic case of Peck's "evil".
:217.224.139.132 09:48, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yet another evil 

message: As an intellectual excercise I was impressed with the person who came up with a somewhat scientific definition of evil, however.... I see no relationship between science and the idea of evil, at all. 
My proposal is to remove it... I'll let this sit for awhile and see if anyone has any comments on it, before acting.
Sethie 06:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the request.  I gave it an overhaul and changed the header name to one more appropriate.  I hope it is ok for now; if not let me know and will make more amendments.  Adios:--Wavesmikey 22:43, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

text: I did most of it off the top of my head; yet I did base a lot of it off of Elizabeth Dole Porteus' 1987 book "My Twentieth Century Philosophy" New York: Carlton Press, Inc.  She is not a scientist per se but she is a thermodynamic philosopher of human life.  In her book, she makes connection between the second law of thermodynamics, the law of "entropy", and mechanisms of human life, as: love, life, war, children, school, evil, happiness, unhappiness, etc.  We can also source thermodynamic researcher Lawrence Chin's online book "A Thermodynamic Interpretation of History" ch 7 ["Power, the Second Law of Thermodynamics and The Problem of Evil"]:
http://www.geocities.com/therapeuter/originofevil.html?20058
And we can source the following article which discusses evil, entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/evil3/5.html
Also, read the wiki-entropy page, the part about disorder and chaos.  [P.S. I am a chemical engineer and use the term evil.] Hit my user page if you have more questions:--Wavesmikey 04:11, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed removal of scientific definition

message: The hacker jargon paragraph seems to be directly cut-and-pasted from Eric S. Raymond's "New Hacker's Dictionary" without credit. Anyone with an account agree?
:Yes, I agree; if you know about this topic, I would give it a clean, up so to make it easier to read for those who don't follow hacker jargon.  Thanks:--Wavesmikey 22:46, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: proposed removal of hacker jargon

message: This is a good article, but there are a couple of things that I think need to be said.  In particular, the idea that good cannot exist without evil is controversial. Rick Norwood 15:43, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That is one point of view.  There are others.  Some, for example, would say that evil can only destroy, and only good can create.  If, of course, you take the concept of Evil as something that breaks the rules of society, then your view is correct.  Whenever there are rules, they will be rule breakers.  On the other hand, if evil is hurting someone, there is no logical reason why people have to hurt each other. Rick Norwood 00:14, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two meanings of evil.  Can good exist without evil? 

message: in "Is evil universal?"
: For this reason, some philosophers (e.g. Bernard Gert) maintain that not preventing evil is more important than promoting good in formulating moral rules and in conduct.
This is incoherent. Can someone who knows the primary source rephrase it?
Julian Morrison 17:23, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incoherent 

message: I think the article needs an entry on: necessary evil . -- Zondor 14:20, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Why don't you write one? Rick Norwood 16:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Necessary Evil

message: A troubling interpretation of of a verse from Is 45:7 is raised here.
"I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things."(Douay Rheims)
"7: I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the LORD, who do all these things."(RSV)
In this context "evil" is not evil as of sin, but rather woe, or hardships. Any inference that this is saying God is the "author of Evil" would not be a mainstream understanding of this verse. I have left the verse in for the moment, awaiting others to comment.
Cialovesyou 02:53, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A Calvinist accepts that God, being all powerful, created evil as well as good, as the verse from Isaah confirms.  Since Adam lacked free will, the fall was predetermined, as are all actions by men, good and evil alike.  "God is the author of all things." Rick Norwood 19:42, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I know Calvin agreed with Augustine, as did all theologians of note between them, that evil is the privation of good.  FWIW, this view stemmed from a Christian modification of Neo-platonism that held that the substance of created things proceeded from the substance of God.  As a Calvinist, one certainly say that God causes the privation, or absence, of good.  To say that he causes evil only leads to other people, who do not have this same view of evil, misunderstanding you catastrophically. Dr parsley 17:16, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Is God the author of evil?

message: The above old 7(Poetic and Promt..) has been removed because it violates the policy of: Wikipedia: No Original Research of which the prime author(myself) was ignorant in thinking that this was some sort of free-style chat room.  All apologies.
--Scroll1 21:44, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A Removal

message: "For the French philosopher Michel Henry, God is the invisible Life that never stops to generate us and to give us to ourselves in its pathetic self-revelation. God is Love because Love itself in an infinite love is Life. By consequence life is good in itself. The evil corresponds to all what denies or attacks life, it finds its origin in death which is the negation of life. This death is an inner and spiritual death which is the separation with God, and which consists simply in not loving, in living selfishly as if God didn't exist, as if he was not our Father of us all and as if we were not all its beloved Sons, as if we were not all Brothers generated by a same Life. The evil peaks in the violence of hatred that is at the origin of all the crimes, of all the wars and of all the genocides. But the evil is also the common origin of all those blind processes and of all those false abstractions that lead so many people to misery and exclusion."
I don't think the person who wrote this said what he intended to say.  Can anyone fix it, or should it be discarded.  There are many paragraphs in this article that seem to have been put there more or less at random. Rick Norwood 20:51, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another proposed removal 

message: Someone should get a picture of evil. Lapinmies 18:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Mexican President Vincente Fox doesn't count, Lapinmies.  Please don't do that again.  Powers 20:10, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs pictures 

message: I am sick and tired of Chabad trying to represent the beliefs of the entire Jewish people. They represent one sect, ultra orthodox or lubavitcher sect, of the Jewish people. They are the largest group devoted to spreading the word of Judaism, but it is very important to make the distinction on Wikipedia because its beliefs, and the beliefs of many other Jews do not align. --Cocopuffberman 23:18, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links:Chabad good and evil 

message: Brothels, etc?
144.132.1.37 08:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Religions in general seem to attract people who like to boss other people around, and in particular to tell other people what kinds of sex they may or may not have.  Add to those conservatives the large number of liberals who think that women should be "protected" by being forbidden to sell their bodies, and you have a lot of people who think prostitution is evil.  It is still universally practiced, however.  There is no such thing as bad advertising. Rick Norwood 14:01, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is prostitution Immoral? 

message: It seems that their should be a definition of evil listed outside of those stated by religion. Certain humanists imbrace a notion of good and evil, perhaps that should be listed on this page?--69.205.162.73 19:20, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Humanist concept of evil 

message: As others have more carefully remarked, the idea that there is no human nature is bankrupt. Out of that human nature arise a number of reactions to the world in which we evolved and are evolving, including a wide variety of reactions to real forms of threat to our personal safety.
People struggle with defining and applying the term 'evil' because it is a definite category of experienced reality with definite and characteristic consequences for everyone, but it is never reified. As per J. Campbell in Chapter 1 of his book Primitive Mythology, consider the greyling moth. Males actively persue and mate with females, showing preference for darker females. When exposed to a mockup of a female that is darker than anything that occurs in nature, they persue it in preference to any real female. What Campbell describes as a "supernormal sign stimulus." Hence things arise from nature that are indeed never reified. Evil, like a pure black female greyling moth, does not itself occur in nature, but it is definitely real for organisms with nervous systems organized the way ours are. The idea of evil is a spontaneously recurring idea with all human beings for this reason-- an impossibly superlative form of threat in existence.
Evil goes on to assume other characteristics, again not because of any concretely real thing we can point to in nature (e.g., subterranean anti-deities), but rather because of the way our minds work. As organisms we absorb and respond to a far larger collection of stimuli than make it into what we oversimplify when we speak of 'consciousness.' The remainder, we also oversimplify (though probably pragmatically), as the 'unconscious' after the ideas of Freud and Jung. Since the normal development of a person's different faculties is usually lopsided-- e.g., some people are more incisive than charming, some more charming than incisive-- some parts of every personality remain underdeveloped, primitive, and unconscious. Just as teh conscious personality commands the various strengths an individual has developed, the relatively primitive aspects are constellated as a sort of unconscious anti-personality, which Jung called the 'shadow.' The shadow is in evidence quite often-- embarassing slips of the tongue, black moods, and most of all when we project our weaknesses and faults onto others to avoid recognizing them as parts of ourselves. The intuition that there is an alien but intimate "other" constantly sabatoging the self, develops out of this common condition of consciousness, and serves in particular as a model for intentional evil, rather than 'natural evil,' aka accident (to which the term evil is misapplied).
The amalgam of these two influences generates a very compelling intuition of Evil, which applies only metaphorically to things which in fact are only: irreverent, irreligious, illegal, harmful, sadistic, sociopathic, unfortunate, catastrophic, and/or spooky (since none of these, individually or together, constitute evil). But in this looser sense, it applies properly to anything that meets both the follwing criteria:
1. extremely threatening (excludes the inevitable and the unforeseeable), and 
2. something from which the subject markedly seeks to be distanced (projection).
Anybody interested in this topic would find the following books extremely fruitful, IMO: Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell, The Blank Slate, Stephen Pinker, Meeting the Shadow, Zweig and Abrams.
This is an interesting discussion and useful I think, but again it comes at the topic from one point of view, like a lot of the article.  It needs something a bit more like a survey of all attempts to define it. --157.161.173.24 07:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evil, defined, its reality 

message: I removed this comment:
 Love spelled backwards, evol, sound phonetically similar to evil.
It was inserted at the very beginning of the article, and doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the subject at hand.  The person who inserted it doesn't have any other contributions that I can see, and this page is a vandalism-magnet these days.
Septegram 17:32, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal 

message: Sadly, terrorism is not evil by all definitions.  Read the Old Testament, for example, where terrorism in the name of God is considered good.  I think terrorism is evil, but to claim that everyone thinks that is naive. Rick Norwood 12:32, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please give a cite to the Old Testamaent location.  While not definitive the term "evil terrorist" finds over 78,000 hits on Google.  The search string +evil +terrorism results in over 22 million hits. Just because the Old Testament says something is good does not make it so, actually it just proves that most evil is done in the name of God(s).  Fortunately, most good is also done in the name of God(s).  --- Skapur 14:07, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

text: It's worth mentioning that the meaning and associations of the word 'terrorism' have changed significantly in the last 5 years. Were members of the Fenians, or even the IRA, 'evil'? - Coil00 15:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If what they did was meant to inspire terror amongst innocent people, then YES they were terrorists --- Skapur 14:53, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They were obviously terrorists. My question however, is 'were they evil'. - Coil00 15:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Killing innocent first borns is an evil act, no matter who performs it! --- Skapur 14:53, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terrorism is not evil by "all" definitions. 

message: This article itself is evil, especially the "See also" section. What a load of speculative garbage! Mike Dillon 17:54, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have looked at the "See also" section, and I agree it had several questionable entries. I have removed the links to Axis of Evil and Evil empire because these are already covered by the link to Political usages of the term evil (which also explains them slightly, though that stub could use much improvement). I have removed the list entry "Evil (A musician based out of the Twin Cities, Mn.)" because it wasn't a link to another Wikipedia article, as is customary for the "See also" section. I also removed the link to "Jade Duke" because a) the article does not exist, and more importantly, b) a Google search for Jade Duke turns up nothing on the first page that suggests any relationship to evil. The links to Erich Heller and Glenn Danzig don't appear to be especially relevant to me. Many philosophers have written about evil, and many musicians have sung about evil; what makes these two so special? I think these links should also be removed, but I've left them in there for now because maybe I'm just not seeing an obvious relevance. The other links I've left alone, as I feel they are relevant to the topic.Paul Armstrong 07:01, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meta evil 

message: The tone of this article isn't right, espesially the naming of sections. Shall I tag the article as inappropriate? --¿¡Exir Kamalabadi?!Join Esperanza! 23:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tone