I know I disagree with you, but that's a complex essay. I need some time to digest it. I will get back to you.

Well this isn't so complex. I think what your are saying it that a new-born baby is a functional psychopath. It has no empathy and cares only about where its next boob-slurp is coming from. Fortunately, it also lacks the physical or intellectual capacity to be dangerous. That is is normal for a new-born baby with a healthy brain.

The terminator computer was a new born baby with arrested development. It had no ability to acquire the sensitivities of a fully developed adult with a fully developed brain. Normal human children make these changes at a remarkable speed. By the time they are 10 yrs old, they will have developed a passionate concern for the little field mouse they captured and is now dying in its cage. (Sociopaths get more enjoyment out of setting them on fire and sticking firecrackers up their bums).

I think that this is a good description of adolecence. A struggle between normal self-centeredness and the sense of empathy that is firmly implanted in his brain. Except that you can appeal to their emotions. That's what child-rearing is all about. For the young psychopath, knowing about empathy is not an issue. He has been taught about it, and he understands what it means, but his brain doesn't have it. He can only practice it like playing a role as an actor. He will do so only if it meets his own selfish interests.


I think that a psychopath knows all about the behaviors of an empathetic person. That's how they often manage to escape attention in their daily lives. My thesis is that it's all an act. The empathetic impulses simply don't exist in their brains.

I'm reminded of an old Twilight Zone from the 60s. A young lady (played by Kathleen Quinlan, yum-yum) happens across a house where the family is terrified of the 12 yr old boy who has somehow developed super-human powers. He imagines grandpa as a frog and bingo! Grandpa turns into a frog. During the early part of the show, we consider the kid to be an evil monster. Kathleen determines to discover what makes him really tick. He has the normal impulses of a healthy 12 yr with a healthy 12 yr old brian. After all, he did turn grandpa back. I realize that this little fable doesn't prove anything. I just thought it might amuse you.

In truth, what I am attempting to define is "evil" when I don't actually believe it exists.

People have a concept of "evil" as "something bad." But evil is not "something."

Evil is a negative because it is simply the absence of Love, which is also what we define as "Good."

Just as darkness is not a "thing." It is the absence of light.

And black is not a color, it is the absence of color.

Turn out the lights and all color is gone. Color is a reflection caused by light.

We use the term "nothing" as if it were something, but nothing does not exist. It is the absence of something.

So it is that evil does not exist, it is the absence of Good or Love.

Therefore, the less one knows of love, the more "evil" they will appear to be.

I can completely accept that. I think we are just approaching the subject from different perspectives.

I think the only true evil is pure amoralistic hedonism without measure. I am talking the ultimate in self indulgence. Even Calligula's evil was very calculated and the people loved his antics. Calligula made the evil senate pay with his egotism and craziness. In a way he was being evil TO evil people. So his evil is not completely amoralistic enough to qualify.

People who intentionally pass out a bad disease, that's pure evil, religious zealots who are out to kill all the infidels, that is pure evil from our stand point but by theirs they are sanctified. I could say the act of survival itself is evil but hey, death is no fun!

I really don't think there is really any such thing as "Pure evil." it is hard to qualify what constitutes Pure Evil per say.

Correction, constitutes "Absolute Evil."

Sorry.

I have to agree.

As I said above, "evil" is a negative and does not actually exist. It is the absence of Love or Good.

Yet we still use the terms, "evil" "nothing" and call "black" a color etc. (I guess for convenience.)

The best example of "pure" evil is the terminator who has no concept of compassion or love and yet is self aware and acts only for self survival.

Again that is a dance with perspective. The Terminator was programmed to perform a mission. A machine cannot feel and in a case of artificial intelligence may not be capable of rationalization but then again what if an AI could? In the case of Terminator, Skynet the machine found a reason to act. It could justify its actions. To achieve peace it had to take out humanity. Humans were chaos incarnate and there would be no peace with humans around in its mind. (This assumption is based on comics and other fandom as well as clips about the making of Terminator. Skynet did not act out of the blue. It acted through an act of deliberate thought.) Without humanity the world would have peace. The malice has to be so complete that it spares nothing in sight to be absolute. Life itself is built on the destruction of other life so that rules out a malicious destruction since there is good in that. It paves the way for new life.

The DC comic book Character Darkseid is indeed evil and control hungry and almost constitutes absolute evil in the fact he wants the Anti Life Equation to control everything. The fact that Superman had an opportunity to kill him and he didn't take it was an act of good but later allows Darkseid to do more damage and likewise an act of good is turned evil in contrast to an act of evil being done for good reasons sparing the Universe of Darkseid's intrigue. It is just hard to actually justify what would constitute absolute evil without perspective getting in the way.

I totally agree. That is why I have said that "bad and good" are a matter of opinion (perspective.)

I think that in most cases and IA or machine cannot feel, but that does not mean it cannot think and rationalize. Pure logic then becomes pure evil from the human perspective, if that machine's logic is to eliminate humans from the earth. Logic without feeling, simply becomes systematic or 'faulty' programing. (Faulty from the perspective of humans.)

The only way to reason with pure logic is logically.

You cannot appeal to the emotions of a machine for sympathy or mercy. If you cannot talk your way out of being terminated with logic your only recourse is to destroy the machine without malice, just like unplugging something.



I think that was meant to show the difference between "good and evil." In truth, it was not an act of good, it was an act of stupidity or a lack of understanding that to show mercy to a "machine" with no feeling is a futile and fatal mistake.

This is why in many wars where humans are trained to kill other humans without mercy they are told and convinced that their enemy is "evil" and not worthy of mercy.

To give one very good example is the story from the Bible where God supposedly tells Joshua that the people of Jericho are "evil" and must be killed without mercy. How else can human beings justify slaughtering men, women and children? This has happened over and over in wars throughout history. Each side is convinced they are doing "good" by killing "evil."

I am attempting to define this thing people call "evil" as the absence of Love. Only an intelligent self aware machine operating on pure logic and its self survival programing qualifies. From the human perspective, there is no reason to spare the life of such a monster. To do so is tantamount to joining its cause against humans. Therefore I would say that Superman was being a traitor to humanity by not destroying Darkseid. He was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. What did he think Darkseid would do? Reform? Not likely.

Your logic is faulty.

One can lack love or empathy and still not be evil.

A soldier can lack empathy for his enemy and not be evil.

Black is not the absence of white it is an essence onto itself.

A black letter on a white page is surrounded by white but it is still black. Black is absorption white is reflection.

Color exists without light we just can't see it.

Lay a red cloth on the floor. Turn out the lights. Is the cloth still red?

I agree. I don't actually believe in evil. Have you read the entire thread?

(As I said above, "evil" is a negative and does not actually exist. It is the absence of Love or Good. )




Black is the absence of COLOR. It reflects NO LIGHT.



I know, I am an artist. Black absorbs all the different colors of white light and reflects nothing.

Yes, we call it "black." But that does not make it a "color."



There is no way to actually tell if the cloth is still red unless you turn on the light. At the moment, in the darkness, it is not red. It may only be considered "red" if I remember that it was red the last time I saw it.

Bring a person into the dark room and ask them what color is the cloth on the floor. They will not be able to tell you.

It is your logic that is flawed. The color of the cloth depends on the light and it also depends on the color of the light shining on it. Shine green light on the cloth and the cloth will appear brown.

It is only under normal light that the cloth appears red.

Evil, as someone already stated, is a relative perception. Your topic of being "Absolute Evil" can only be absolute in it's truest sense if there is a standard of good by which it absolutely fails or is in absolute opposition towards. In which case, you can only have an "Absolute Evil" if there is an "Absolute Good." The only absolutely good being is God because He is the only one that is perfect. Anything that lacks a bit of good is no longer absolutely good because absolute quite literally means to be perfect.

It's better to look at good and evil as mutually exclusive concepts--that good is the opposite of evil and evil is the opposite of good. You might think of them most accurately as being defined by the absence of eachother. In other words, good is the absence of evil and evil is the absence of good. So again, an "Absolute Evil" would be a perfect evil, or an evil that is evil in total and entirely lacks good. That being said, by defining what an absolute evil is you automatically define what an absolute good is because an absolute evil would have to be in mutually exclusive contrast to absolute good. Any evil that had some measure of good in it would no longer be perfect evil, but it would be diluted with good and would no longer by absolutely evil. The same holds true for an absolute, or perfect, good: a good that consisted of no evil whatsoever would be a perfect good, an absolute good.

Good and evil are the antithesis of one another, there really is no other way of defining them in relation to eachother. That being said, how do you know what is good and what is evil? If they are defined as the opposites of one another then you could easily say that if "a" is evil then the opposite of "a" is good, but at what point do you start to say something is good or evil in the first place?

Most people would say that it's up to each person to decide what is good or evil for themselves, or they'll say that good and evil are not moral codes but are calculated weights of what yields the most benefit and what yeilds the most harm. However, the more you begin to try and define what is good or evil as a starting place you get more and more relative as people can never really agree with what is right or wrong and what is the most beneficial or the most harmful. Basically, in order to define good and evil at all you need to start with an objective measurement outside of the realm of humans--you need something imparted to humanity that is immovable and finite so that it is not subject to change. That's just a basic necessity for a measurement or a rule. In order to measure what is good or evil you need an objective, absolute standard.

To this I say that God, both as defined in the Christian Bible, by the early Church fathers, and by Theologians and Philosophers through the ages is the absolute standard of good that is objective and unchanging in His perfect goodness. He is the "Absolute Good" by which we may define good and evil. "Goodness" then, or that which makes something good, is how closely it aligns with the perfect, objective rightness of God. Evil, then is anything that does not align with the rightness of God, or to put it more accurately, evil is anything that is opposite of God, that is opposed to God's rightness, or that is lacking God's rightness. To speak directly to your original forum post, "Absolute Evil" would be that which lacks God entirely, or that which God is entirely absent from. The reason why I believe you connected a robot that lacked morality and feeling and followed it's programming to destroy as being absolutely evil is because God imparted a measure of His perfect goodness into each human to create, to build up, and to flourish with life and joy. Destruction is the antithesis of our created purpose and is therefore instantly insidious and instantly evil. As well, God imparted a moral code onto each human being at the point of Creation that reflected His perfect goodness so that we would live in right standing with God and be morally good creatures. Then we chose to sin in contrast to God's goodness and we fell, but still we were created with the "image of God," part of which includes a moral code.

It is therefore evil to destroy, which is contrast to the goodness of God's character that builds up, creates, protects, and preserves and it is still more evil to destroy without any purpose or moral code, for then we are not only witnessing an act against the goodness of God but an act in abject dereliction of the moral code that God created us with and is defined by the goodness of God's character. That is why I think you believe an unfeeling, entirely destructive piece of machinery could be considered "Absolute Evil." It's not just that destruction rubs the wrong way against the morality we were all created with as human beings, but that the villian in "Terminator" completely disregards any sense of a moral order with it's lack of personal feelings or emotions. It simply destroys as a cold, calculated function as a response to a measure of programming.

Consider it this way, when a child tells his or her mother that he or she refuses to clean their room then there is a measure of disobediance and a measure of "evil" in opposition to the "good" that the mother is asking the child to do. But it is altogether more disruptive, disobedient, and "evil" when the child completely ignores their mother's bidding and goes about their day oblivious to any sense of clean.

To translate this to the broader idea of good and evil, it is an evil of one manner to live in opposition to the goodness of God, but it is entirely a deeper evil to live as if no sense of right and wrong existed, and therefore, no God by which to give a standard of right and wrong.

If god is 'all things'...

God would have to be also evil.

Else 'all things' would not contain evil...

and 'evil' could not exist.

If you say that good is the absence of evil, then you have to define evil. Evil can't be defined except in relation to what we consider to be good.

It would be like saying that light is the absence of darkness. That can't make any sense unless you define darkness as a thing. Darkness is not a thing. Light is.

Just as "nothing" is NO THING. There is no such thing as nothing. It does not exist. It is the same with "evil." Evil does not actually exist, it is merely the absence of all things. Things are "something" and things are "Good."

So it would be correct to say that evil is the absence of good because good = something. If Good = God, then evil is the absence of God. God = light and good and something. God = Life. Evil is the absence of light, good, something and life.

Something = Good
Nothing = evil which is defined as the absence of good.

It boils down to this:

TO BE OR NOT TO BE, THAT IS THE QUESTION.

The above is a good example when you define God as "Good" and "Good" as Life. The above is a good example when you define God as "something."

Something has existence. We call it God. It is good.

Nothing is nothing. It does not exist. That is perfect evil.

Therefore, anything that destroys life (which is God) can be construed as being "evil" in its efforts to destroy "something" it is destroying that which exists. That which exists is to be considered Good because the existence of anything, no matter how ugly is a good thing, and it is better than non existence.

These concepts have been distilled into religious concepts and the term "God" (existence and life) has been through an anthropomorphizing process rendering it more human-like.



A good example. I believe that "evil" is non emotional. It is anything that destroys that which is.

Good people do bad things all the time, it's human nature to try and survive and protect yourself. Sometimes misinterpreting a situation can lead to a person defending themselves for the wrong reason and can be displayed as an "evil" act without cause. Evil people are usually possessed by evil spirits that take over their mind...or have a chemical imbalance in their brain. Ie: schizophrenia

is it evil when a lion eats a donkey? they are following a program, which is neither good or evil...either you win or lose, just like any other fight to survive. to me, evil does not exist, it is just a perception of what people think is good or bad. a lot of people thought hitler was evil, but a lot of people also believed in him at the same time...

God is not all things, nor can He do all things. He is not something that contradicts His nature and He cannot act in a way that contradicts Himself. God is all that is good and is the standard, the measure by which all things are weighed to determine if they are good or evil.

I was saying that you have no other way of looking at good and evil in relation to eachother than the antithesis of one another. It's far more appropriate to start with God as the absolute moral good and define anything else or anything that contradicts Him as evil, but I tried to work towards the conclusion that God is the absolute standard of good, rather than start with the presupposition that He is. More appropriately, God is the definition of good and anything else is evil. God, not as a substance, but His character and nature. How closely our character aligns with the nature of God will determine the level of "goodness."

Your way of looking at good and evil in terms of things and a lack of things is not coherent because you can certainly have evil things and good can take the form of nothing.

Nothing is absolute, anything can be changed.

Jeannie bean- are you currently enrolled in a quantums class, because your speeches look Copy and pasted, and you continue to revert back to the color spectrum in every thread....is this knowledge you actually know and verify or is this something you bring home each week from class.