What is an "evil person"

[scorpia]

Or a specific type of non-believer, if you don't mind me.

So question is as the title suggests, what in your view, is an evil person? Or, if you "don't believe in evil", what kind of person would you deem, say untrustworthy?

[olivergringold]

Evil is intentionally interfering with another human being's liberty, barring said human's capacity to appreciate said liberty. For instance, unplugging the food tube from Terri Shaivo is not evil. Starving a prisoner of war to death is.

[Ashlady]

Jose said:
You have painted all of us who are not of your faith as evil, because we don't accept "god's truths;" we accept "truths" from other sources. Many of our truths are the same as yours because they are human nature, developed over millenia of natural selection. But some of our truths are different from yours, and you have labeled them "un-truths and lies." I do not call your beliefs or your reasoning "lies." I do not call them "un-truths" because, to you, they seem true. But, I do argue that labeling others' understanding as "lies" is not particularly friendly.

You are speaking as a person who does not believe in absolutes thus there are no absolute truth.
I believe there is absolute truth and it is of Creator God, outside of this truth you are in a lie.....This is what I've learned in studying the Bible.

There are absolutes and after my investigation of the Bible I came to the belief that the Bible is the Inspired word of our Creator God.

You believe what you will, As you have the right to say I am wrong I would hope that I be given the same freedom of speech.

You mention Christians killing people because others would not believe what they do, yet you neglect to mention how many Christians have been killed for their faith by none-believers.

Ash

[olivergringold]

You are speaking as a person who does not believe in absolutes thus there are no absolute truth.
I believe there is absolute truth and it is of Creator God, outside of this truth you are in a lie.....This is what I've learned in studying the Bible.

There are absolutes and after my investigation of the Bible I came to the belief that the Bible is the Inspired word of our Creator God.

I believe in plenty of absolutes. The Bible, for instance, is absolutely false. Historically, Judaism began as a Sumerian religion with many gods, or paths, to a combined, singular gnosis called El (not entirely unlike Hinduism). El, the vindictive chap, could be appeased only by obeying certain civil laws. The tale of Sampson's immense strength is an example of the glorification of this lifestyle for the sake of El. Hebrew prophecy spoke of a Messiah who would one day come to redeem the followers of the Lord who, by then, had a name-change to Yahweh. Thus all those who had sought gnosis in El would arise from Sheol, the land of the dead, and party until the end of eternity.

Around 50CE a gent calling himself Paul claimed to have found this Messiah: A half-man half-spirit whose embodiment was called Christ. Now, instead of going to Sheol when they died, people who denied The Christ were banished to a fiery hell, and those who achieved gnosis through him were rewarded in the afterlife. Paul never mentioned any of the events of the life of the supposed Jesus of Nazareth, excepting the betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection: All of which took place in a spiritual realm that lay in between Heaven and Earth.

Pagans didn't like this judgmental philosophy particularly well, hence their habit of feeding Christians to lions, and Christianity, as a sect of Judaism, spent a good deal of time being persecuted. All the while, however, the promise of eternal Salvation grew attention to the followers of Christ, and myths began about a flesh-and-blood Jesus. Some time after 70CE (probably a very significant period of time) these myths began to manifest themselves in the form of the Gospels. It's no surprise then, given that so many converts to Christianity were pagan, that Jesus' life story includes 19 out of the 22 Epic Conventions shared by pagan gods and heroes, and that references to eras and stars in Biblical text have striking similarities with components of the zodiac.

Eventually the papers of Paul, founder of Christianity, found themselves in contention with a new, Orthodox Church which preached that Jesus was a flesh and blood human being. Later, at Nicea, which gospels were to stay and go was decided, and the gospels themselves were given names. Gnostic gospels and dead sea scrolls were banished from Christian curriculum, and the original Christian message of Paul was lost for over a thousand years. Today, plenty of folks, such as yourself, masquerade as Christians when, in reality, you have no idea what your religion truly meant or where it really came from. Want to be an "absolute" Christian? Throw out your Bible and read Paul's papers.

You believe what you will, As you have the right to say I am wrong I would hope that I be given the same freedom of speech.

I doubt that I will change what you believe. If you continue to be wrong, however, I will be more than happy to continue correcting you.

You mention Christians killing people because others would not believe what they do, yet you neglect to mention how many Christians have been killed for their faith by none-believers.

While many Christians have died at the hands of non-Christians, it's more often the case that they believe in a different God rather than no God at all. Indeed, whenever a non-theist engages in mass-murder it is, without exception, for personal gain or political leverage. While the religious are not alone in their blood-thirst, nobody throughout the entirety of human history has ever killed in the name of an absence of belief.

[Greatest I Am]

evil - is anything resulting from human action which is not in the order of the Creator God. It also is not in agreement with God's revelation the Bible. It can be intentional or unintentionally opposed to God. It is the first step in the process of it's end result, sin.
sin - is the dis-ordered state of a person by his own will, which can be the fault of his parents and\or himself. It is based on the reality of an order of truth and perfection from a creator and failure to be in that order.

This definition could not have been possible before the bible was written, since it depends upon the bible for its definition. Yet, there were prior societies in which good and evil existed, and in which they were recognized as good and evil. Clearly, goodness and evilness stand outside the bible. They also are clearly recognized among animals, though what is good for a certain animal species may seem evil to us. Wherever seen, good is that which helps others. Evil is that which does harm to others, though it is often the case that harm to some in order to help many more is not evil.

Greatest I Am has put it well. There must be a victim for an act to be evil.

Thanks for the kudos.
Be careful though in agreeing with me you tend to place yourself in a precarious position in terms of respect from fellow posters.

Regards
DL

[twobitsmedia]

Or a specific type of non-believer, if you don't mind me.

So question is as the title suggests, what in your view, is an evil person? Or, if you "don't believe in evil", what kind of person would you deem, say untrustworthy?

If every man is guilty and no man is without sin, according to the Bible, every man is evil. I think that levels the field across the board.

[Jose]

You are speaking as a person who does not believe in absolutes thus there are no absolute truth.
I believe there is absolute truth and it is of Creator God, outside of this truth you are in a lie.....This is what I've learned in studying the Bible.

There are absolutes and after my investigation of the Bible I came to the belief that the Bible is the Inspired word of our Creator God.

Are there absolutes? I suspect that there are, but not where human behavior is concerned. Too much of it depends upon genetic factors, in building and wiring the brain, and in creating our basic instincts that we call "human nature." Anything genetic has variation; it can't help it. This starts to sound like a silly answer, I suppose, but let's go one step further, to the genetically-inherited trait, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." If we were to be really geeky about this, and make a graph showing how strong this instinct is in people, we would not get absolutes. We would not get two groups, one with the instinct strong, one with the instinct absent. We would get a bell curve, with a whole range of strengths of this trait.

The purpose of religion is to provide us with a code of behavior that reinforces "good" behaviors, and that provides dis-incentives for "bad" behaviors. What's "good" and "bad" tend to be the same across religions, but the rules of the religion vary widely. There are many ways of enforcing "good" and punishing "bad." I would say that the fundamental reason that such rules are needed, and that religions have a codified set of rules against disruptive behaviors is because of the bell-shaped curve I mention above. Not everyone is born with the best instincts, so there must be rules to encourage people to behave.

Where the concept of absolutes comes in is, apparently, in the set of rules that have evolved into Christianity. God says X is good, Y is bad, and there's no in-between. Well, in most cases, it's true that X is good and Y is bad, and we can all agree. But, the Christian rules add things to the bad list that are not necessarily bad. They also do what other religions do, and add to the "bad" list the simple fact of not being a member of the faith.

I suspect it's these last two points that cause the problems. With a diverse population like the US has, there are guaranteed to be many people who accept behaviors that the Chrisitian god has said are bad. This tends to lead to strife. If we're lucky, it leads to discussion, and hopefully a peaceful resolution--such as in these forums.

You believe what you will, As you have the right to say I am wrong I would hope that I be given the same freedom of speech.

Absolutely! I may disagree with your conclusion that I'm a dork, but I'll fight side-by-side with you to defend your right to say it. In my view, we're all friends here, and though we may have different viewpoints, we're all hoping to learn from each other.

You mention Christians killing people because others would not believe what they do, yet you neglect to mention how many Christians have been killed for their faith by none-believers.

I did not mention them explicitly, no. But I think I implied that Christians are targets of sectarian violence just as others are. My point, really, is not to rant against Christianity, but to note the historical fact that religious belief can sometimes lead to doing things that we would all, I think, call "evil." Killing people we don't know, just because they're different, falls into my definition of an "evil" act.

Now, I don't think that there are any religions that specifically call for such acts. In most cases, the social good of religions is prevalent. Unfortunately, there are extremists in most religions, who have chosen to look at their holy book in one particular way, and who claim that their god compels them to act. This gives us Christians who drive through my town and shoot people because they look like foreigners, or people who blow up federal buildings in Oklahoma City, or who beat up gays and hang 'em on a fence to die. It gives us Muslims who fly airplanes into buildings, or who blow themselves up in the midst of Muslims of a different sect, or who kill Christians just because they are Christians. It gives us Buddhists who rampage through the monastery of a different Buddhist sect, killing as many as they can. And all the while that they do these things, they honestly believe they are in the right, and have the moral high ground.

I suppose that the reason I entered this conversation with you is that your views are so strongly Christian...which is something I don't understand. Just as the subtitle of the thread refers to trying to understand non-believers' concept of "morality," I'm still trying to wrap my mind around believers' belief. I was raised by non-believers. My dad grew up in Salt Lake City in a Christian but non-Mormon family. In the teens and 20s of the last century, this must have been very weird. Even now, Salt Lake has strong social exclusion of non-Mormons; a century ago, it must have been pretty extreme. Hence, my grandfather developed the motto, "never expose children to religion until they're old enough to know better." Thus, at the young age when the human mind is like a sponge, and we absorb the ground rules of life from our parents and others, I did not absorb Christianity. Until I went to college, I knew only one person who went to church, and ironically, he's the one who later realized he's gay. I won't speculate on cause-and-effect relationships.

This said, I find that my typical mode of action is what would be called that of a "good Christian." I have no compulsion to do the things that god says not to do. But I recognize this as an inborn sense of what's right, not as commandments from a god I don't know, and am quite skeptical about. On the other hand, I know quite a bit of the data that argue very strongly for a genetic basis for "moral" behavior. I understand the arguments for evolutionary selection that has made these behaviors a part of "human nature." Most of the people I know and work with have a similar understanding, though some are Christian, and some are of other religions.

This makes for odd conversations in forums like this. When asked why I don't go around raping and killing, the answer is "I don't feel like it." This is unsatisfying to one who believes that the appropriate answer is "god says not to." As you see from what I've said above, explaining why I "don't feel like it" requires going into genetics and evolution, which is often anathema to those I'm chatting with. Oddly, though, the genetic-evolutionary explanation actually ties religion and evolution together, and makes religion stronger--the opposite of the traditional Christian anti-evolution viewpoint.

[Jose]

Be careful though in agreeing with me you tend to place yourself in a precarious position in terms of respect from fellow posters.

It goes both ways. It may damage your credibility to have me agree with you.

Moderator Intervention: No One-Liners!

ooops. sorry.