What is evil depends on your point of view. Change your point of view and what is evil changes.
Most points of view have rape and murder in the evil circle. Some don't. Once you realize this, you must accept that there is no universal definition of evil or good. It is entirely a man made concept.
As to some of those viewpoints where rape and murder are not evil, one place to find them is in two thousand year old books. Say where stoning people is encouraged. Where killing those who believe different is encouraged. Where offering up virgin daughters to a crowd of men is described as the act of a good man.
Man is quite capable of rationalizing anything, even WMD.
We have a long way to go, and religion is one of the things holding us back from development.

+10

My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.

FZ

I am completely consistent. One day I went to use my car and it was no longer there. I didn't have a credit card so I couldn't rent a car. It turned out a farm worker had taken it so he would have some wheels. Now you tell me, I am a programmer earning far more than a farm worker. Did society gain by providing a farm worker with wheels at the expense of a programmer who would no longer be able to work?? If you think being a thief is a gainful form of employment, you have a strange view of society.

I would argue that society probably gained, given that a farmer has an infinitely more useful role in society than a programmer, and a farmer has a much better use for a car than a programmer, who can quite easily use other methods of transport to get to work or who can perhaps work from home.

And otherwise, the net effect is zero. Society did not gain nor did it lose. Redistribution of wealth is an inherently neutral action and this is a matter of wealth redistribution.

But all that is irrelevant because you said, and I quote: "That is a human trait that serves no useful purpose". Key word; useful purpose. Clearly thievery has a very useful purpose depending on where you stand. The farm worker ended up with a car, so clearly he gained significantly from it. You lost a car, so only in YOUR case is thievery not a useful purpose. And as I said before, to society it really does not matter. Not in this case anyways.

Some people have never been taught right from wrong. Others are mentally defective and don't see anything wrong with harming others. You are arguing that mass murder is acceptable in any case where the murder thinks it's acceptable.

No I am not. There is a vast difference between something being evil and something being acceptable. I would argue that theft is not inherently evil, but I would also argue that it is not acceptable. And thats not even touching worse crimes than theft such as murder or mass murder.

Who ever said Karl Marx came up with anything original. The Pilgrims almost failed their first year because before they got off the ship they signed an agreement that all goods belonged to the community. They saw no reason to work so they entered the first winter with almost no food. They quickly saw the error in their ways and brought back the idea of private property and survived because of it.

Ehm no. The real reason why no one worked was because most people were to sick to work. You know, trans-Atlantic voyages back in the day were pretty deadly affairs, with the majority of the people on those ships dying or getting sick during the voyage. Also, that agreement you are referring to never abolished the idea of private property. It merely stated that the colonists would work together for the common good of the colony, but that still meant that each colonist family got their own house and a plot of land for themselves.

Part of the reason the Roman Empire failed is because Rome became comfortable living off the wealth of the conquered lands. Much of what survives today was built with the wealth of other lands.

Again no, Rome failed because it was overstretched military wise and they were stupid enough to give their enemies training in their ways of warfare. Turns out its a bad idea to train the people that hate you on how to best wage war.

Stick to programming because clearly history is something you don't get.

Your limit of 2500 years is nothing. Moses took the Jews to freedom from Egypt's slavery which was noting more that socialism. Then the Jews went on to conquer other lands and destroy the people who lived there imposing their own form of evil/socialism.

Well first of all, I said moral relativism has roots that go back 2500 years, not socialism and secondly, how exactly is a fictional story (yeah, the Jews were never enslaved by the Egyptians) about a repressed group of people fleeing from slavery and oppression anything like an economic theory which argues for a more equal distribution of wealth? And if socialism is evil, does that mean that people wanting a better paycheck and a bigger say in the way a company and a country operates 'evil'?

What is evil depends on your point of view. Change your point of view and what is evil changes.

Most points of view have rape and murder in the evil circle. Some don't. Once you realize this, you must accept that there is no universal definition of evil or good. It is entirely a man made concept.

You really believe rape is an Intellectual Debating Point?

NO IT ISN'T!

Your answer says that you think murder is open to intellectual debate. That is consistent with a great many of your posts.

IIRC you said you were an atheist, so perhaps you aren't aware of a good man being defined in the book as one who offers up his virgin daughters to a crowd of men. I'm not the one who raised it as a debating point, that happened a couple thousand years ago.

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Maybe if the West dropped all pretence of being civilised & ignore the Geneva Convention, the enemy might think twice about their treatment of prisoners.

Still a matter of discussion. NOT RAPE!!!

Maybe you would prefer Boko Haram as an example of rape being open to discussion. Or maybe the comfort women of WWII. No matter what you think, others have different views. In some of them, rape is not seen as evil.

This simply shows that you wish to impose your set of morals on each human being on the face of the planet.

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Maybe if the West dropped all pretence of being civilised & ignore the Geneva Convention, the enemy might think twice about their treatment of prisoners.

Think for a moment what you are saying, and you might realize how incredibly stupid it is....

Maybe if the West dropped all pretence of being civilised & ignore the Geneva Convention, the enemy might think twice about their treatment of prisoners.

Think for a moment what you are saying, and you might realize how incredibly stupid it is....

As stupid as wounding two killers of a serviceman on a public street, now getting 3 meals a day & treated like royalty in one of Her Majesty's pleasure hotels & all on the taxpayers £?

Oh dear, upsetting the ECHR brigade am I? T/S!

As stupid as wounding two killers of a serviceman on a public street, now getting 3 meals a day & treated like royalty in one of Her Majesty's pleasure hotels & all on the taxpayers £?

Oh dear, upsetting the ECHR brigade am I? T/S!

I wasn't aware that the British put their royal family in a 3 by 4 concrete cage where they are served crappy food and where their movement is severely restricted. Seriously go spend a week in jail and come back and tell me that you wouldn't mind spending the next few decades of your life locked away in a British prison.

But sure, way to show you are better than those barbarians of ISIS by mistreating prisoners.

As stupid as wounding two killers of a serviceman on a public street, now getting 3 meals a day & treated like royalty in one of Her Majesty's pleasure hotels & all on the taxpayers £?

Oh dear, upsetting the ECHR brigade am I? T/S!

I wasn't aware that the British put their royal family in a 3 by 4 concrete cage where they are served crappy food and where their movement is severely restricted. Seriously go spend a week in jail and come back and tell me that you wouldn't mind spending the next few decades of your life locked away in a British prison.

But sure, way to show you are better than those barbarians of ISIS by mistreating prisoners.

They get better treatment than their victims, NEXT!

To end up in a prison one has broken the laws of society & if serious took away someone else's right to life, so why should that individual get treated better than his victim?

BTW, our prisons are HMP's - Her Majesty's Prisons, but for the last 30 odd years, they've become pleasure hotels.

Surely, you can have done better than that?

I wasn't aware that the British put their royal family in a 3 by 4 concrete cage where they are served crappy food and where their movement is severely restricted.

Prisoners in Britain are being pampered with luxury menus offering five meals a day, with 79 choices of what to eat a week
A saw a program with Gordon Ramsay who was surprised of the prison meal doing a show with prisoner Learning how to Cook.


In Sweden 2014
Left food from home for the elderly - the right food in the parliamentary restaurant.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I wander what the elderly have done to be treated this way.
There food are so crappy that many dont eat it.
Those who live at home (Most of the eldery are) gets a weekly ration of this to be heated in a micro owen.
Tastes nothing. And only 2 meals per day.

Traditionally British prisoners have made do with a bowl of porridge, but now inmates are revolting over the standard of meals served in jail, claiming their apples are too small, their sandwiches are not buttered and the custard is too watery.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9658492/Prisoners-are-revolting-inmates-anger-at-watery-custard.html

They get better treatment than their victims, NEXT!

To end up in a prison one has broken the laws of society & if serious took away someone else's right to life, so why should that individual get treated better than his victim?

BTW, our prisons are HMP's - Her Majesty's Prisons, but for the last 30 odd years, they've become pleasure hotels.

Surely, you can have done better than that?

You are asking why we are not stooping to the level of a murderer? Well isn't that obvious? How would we be any better if we collectively go as low as someone who raped or murdered someone? Just because a criminal doesn't recognize that his victims are human beings that he hurt doesn't mean that we shouldn't recognize that the criminal is also a human being.

Another reason why doing that is because aside from giving some cheap, but short lived gratification to society, debasing ourselves to the criminals level serves no other purpose and in the long run is a completely pointless exercise. Sure, brutally torturing some murderer might give the grieving families a moment of satisfaction, but in the end it changes nothing for them. Their loved one is still dead. Of course, at the same time you create another family trauma, namely the family of the guy you ended up torturing. Secondly, provided that the criminal survives your petty sadistic power fantasy, you end up sending a traumatized, broken and perhaps even angry person back into the world. He has gained nothing, and he is very likely to commit another crime soon after. Systems that are humane and focus on rehabilitation have infinitely more positive long term outcomes than systems that primarily focus on punishment. Just compare the recidivism rates of the United States with those of Norway. The Norwegian prison system takes troubled people and tries to help them become good functional people again. Its part of the solution The American system breaks them for good and is part of the problem more than anything else.

And let me put this here as well. The people the US sent to Guantanamo bay may not all have been ideological enemies of the United States, but you can be sure that after they come out, they will be either deeply distrustful or downright hostile towards the US for the rest of their lives. Your point that brutality deters crime? No, at best it doesn't do anything, at worst it causes more of it.


Criminals are locked away and loose their freedom. So they get a decent meal three times a day, for the most part they are locked in a cage and they have no freedom. Do you even comprehend what that means? Do you understand how its like to have literally NO control over any aspect of your life anymore? To be completely dominated by a faceless system? Are you honestly stupid enough to think that a decent meal and a nice bed make a decade long prison sentence a pleasant experience?

Well then, I suggest you kill someone and go to one of HMP's and get in one some of that tax payer funded culinary ecstasy .

They get better treatment than their victims, NEXT!

To end up in a prison one has broken the laws of society & if serious took away someone else's right to life, so why should that individual get treated better than his victim?

BTW, our prisons are HMP's - Her Majesty's Prisons, but for the last 30 odd years, they've become pleasure hotels.

Surely, you can have done better than that?

You are asking why we are not stooping to the level of a murderer? Well isn't that obvious? How would we be any better if we collectively go as low as someone who raped or murdered someone? Just because a criminal doesn't recognize that his victims are human beings that he hurt doesn't mean that we shouldn't recognize that the criminal is also a human being.

Another reason why doing that is because aside from giving some cheap, but short lived gratification to society, debasing ourselves to the criminals level serves no other purpose and in the long run is a completely pointless exercise. Sure, brutally torturing some murderer might give the grieving families a moment of satisfaction, but in the end it changes nothing for them. Their loved one is still dead. Of course, at the same time you create another family trauma, namely the family of the guy you ended up torturing. Secondly, provided that the criminal survives your petty sadistic power fantasy, you end up sending a traumatized, broken and perhaps even angry person back into the world. He has gained nothing, and he is very likely to commit another crime soon after. Systems that are humane and focus on rehabilitation have infinitely more positive long term outcomes than systems that primarily focus on punishment. Just compare the recidivism rates of the United States with those of Norway. The Norwegian prison system takes troubled people and tries to help them become good functional people again. Its part of the solution The American system breaks them for good and is part of the problem more than anything else.

And let me put this here as well. The people the US sent to Guantanamo bay may not all have been ideological enemies of the United States, but you can be sure that after they come out, they will be either deeply distrustful or downright hostile towards the US for the rest of their lives. Your point that brutality deters crime? No, at best it doesn't do anything, at worst it causes more of it.


Criminals are locked away and loose their freedom. So they get a decent meal three times a day, for the most part they are locked in a cage and they have no freedom. Do you even comprehend what that means? Do you understand how its like to have literally NO control over any aspect of your life anymore? To be completely dominated by a faceless system? Are you honestly stupid enough to think that a decent meal and a nice bed make a decade long prison sentence a pleasant experience?

Well then, I suggest you kill someone and go to one of HMP's and get in one some of that tax payer funded culinary ecstasy .

Already did that in a "nice place" called Northern Ireland. Fortunately for me, I got paid £300 a week...

...What an Irishman's dream. Also spent 30 days in a military prison, after seven days, I swore never again, I still had to do the other 23 days. It's time we stopped kissing the asses of criminals & thought of the victims. Too many BHL's like you in the system. Get your head out of books & get some in, then come back after you served at least 6 years. You might have a different outlook, however with your mindset, I very much doubt it.

Already did that in a "nice place" called Northern Ireland. Fortunately for me, I got paid £300 a week...

...What an Irishman's dream. Also spent 30 days in a military prison, after seven days, I swore never again, I still had to do the other 23 days. It's time we stopped kissing the asses of criminals & thought of the victims. Too many BHL's like you in the system. Get your head out of books & get some in, then come back after you served at least 6 years. You might have a different outlook, however with your mindset, I very much doubt it.

So you would argue the world have been done a service if the military had tortured you to death while you were in military prison...

And why should we think even more about the victims? What good does that serve society?

Already did that in a "nice place" called Northern Ireland. Fortunately for me, I got paid £300 a week...

...What an Irishman's dream. Also spent 30 days in a military prison, after seven days, I swore never again, I still had to do the other 23 days. It's time we stopped kissing the asses of criminals & thought of the victims. Too many BHL's like you in the system. Get your head out of books & get some in, then come back after you served at least 6 years. You might have a different outlook, however with your mindset, I very much doubt it.

So you would argue the world have been done a service if the military had tortured you to death while you were in military prison...

I broke the rules. In other words, for breaking those rules, it would have been T/S for me. Tough I know, but I knew the rules going in.

I broke the rules. In other words, for breaking those rules, it would have been T/S for me. Tough I know, but I knew the rules going in.

So you feel that by ignoring the rules the government and society gained the right to declare you genetic garbage and an utter waste of space and resources, best slowly and excruciatingly destroyed until your remains fit your status as garbage more exactly.

Well if you do, you got some serious issues to work through. I suggest seeing a doctor or something.

I broke the rules. In other words, for breaking those rules, it would have been T/S for me. Tough I know, but I knew the rules going in.

So you feel that by ignoring the rules the government and society gained the right to declare you genetic garbage and an utter waste of space and resources, best slowly and excruciatingly destroyed until your remains fit your status as garbage more exactly.

Well if you do, you got some serious issues to work through. I suggest seeing a doctor or something.

I suggest you visit victims families & preach to them. I wonder how long you will remain standing?

BTW: -

Tell one & all, JUST why does the EU have NATO? Is it to play tiddlywinks with their ammo? Or Russian Roulette with their aircraft? Or will they break out their bibles looking for answers to stop the killing?

I broke the rules. In other words, for breaking those rules, it would have been T/S for me. Tough I know, but I knew the rules going in.

So you feel that by ignoring the rules the government and society gained the right to declare you genetic garbage and an utter waste of space and resources, best slowly and excruciatingly destroyed until your remains fit your status as garbage more exactly.

Well if you do, you got some serious issues to work through. I suggest seeing a doctor or something.

I suggest you visit victims families & preach to them. I wonder how long you will remain standing?

BTW: -

Tell one & all, JUST why does the EU have NATO? Is it to play tiddlywinks with their ammo? Or Russian Roulette with their aircraft? Or will they break out their bibles looking for answers to stop the killing?

NOPE to all those questions. Its so they can impose economic sanctions on a country who could care less about santcions.
I sure hope that the EU has been stockpiling gas supplies for this winter. I sure dont see the Russians caving in. They will cut off their own nose just to spite all of the EU.
And just because they are conscripts and not payed often dose NOT lessen them as a combat force. Hitler found that out the hard way.

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[/quote]

Old James

While it wouldn't eliminate all of our problems, the majority of our major problems would be eliminated if we could eliminate evil. That is a human trait that serves no useful purpose and causes much harm.

In the same vein as "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", Evil, to a large degree, is in the eye of the beholder.

Just where do you start and where do you stop in the elimination process ?

T.A.

The concept of evil is pretty simple. It is defined by the 10 commandments but if you want a simple definition, evil is to harm another for personal gain. While evil is defined by christianity, other religions have the same concept. It's a socialistic idea to think evil is relative because it isn't. Now many people in history who were evil didn't consider themselves evil. We have seen examples in Germany, Russia, China and many other countries where I am sure the leaders thought they were doing the best thing they could for their country but killing millions of innocence people just to get them out of the way can't be called anything other than evil.

Enjoy Heaven and your 72 Virgins. :)

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Capitalize on this good fortune, one word can bring you round ... changes.