Is the construct of good and evil an artifact of intelligence?

[Picaro]

Sometimes evil is good.

Now if you were trying to say that good can come from bad, that is true but we should never rationalize that bad is good.

Killing a child is an evil but, as you've said, sometimes it is the lesser of two evils.

No. I don’t believe I did say that killing a child is the lesser of two evils.

Please address the words I write and I promise to do the same for you. Fair enough?

Did I infer your position incorrectly? I wrote "We also bombed German cities knowing that innocent children would be killed". I think we can all agree that killing innocent children is an evil thing to do and that allowing Naziis to control Europe, N. Africa, etc. would also be an evil. In such a case, killing innocent children maybe the lessor to the two evils.

Keeps the problem that all the mass-murder "you" was doing on Germans in Germany made the war longer and not shorter and had costed much more victims - specially in the Holocaust too. And keeps the problem, that the mad man Hitler and his criminal gang were in general a result of the mad situation of Germany during and after world war 1. I guess without the USA we Germans including Austria-Hungaria and the Osman empire and others had won world war 1. England, France, Russia and their allies had lost. I am not sure in which world we would live in this case today. But I do not have the feeling it would be a worser world, than we see today.

Sorry if I mischaracterized your position. Please clarify.

I fear, you justify with this sentence on reason of a simplifying national identity now murder on children in a similiar way, how the Nazis justified murder on the children of Jews.

]

lol more rubbish. Germany inflicted WW I on itself as well; Hitler was going to be your Saviour, and your ancestors probably voted for him.

 

[zaangalewa]

Now if you were trying to say that good can come from bad, that is true but we should never rationalize that bad is good.

Killing a child is an evil but, as you've said, sometimes it is the lesser of two evils.

No. I don’t believe I did say that killing a child is the lesser of two evils.

Please address the words I write and I promise to do the same for you. Fair enough?

Did I infer your position incorrectly? I wrote "We also bombed German cities knowing that innocent children would be killed". I think we can all agree that killing innocent children is an evil thing to do and that allowing Naziis to control Europe, N. Africa, etc. would also be an evil. In such a case, killing innocent children maybe the lessor to the two evils.

Keeps the problem that all the mass-murder "you" was doing on Germans in Germany made the war longer and not shorter and had costed much more victims - specially in the Holocaust too. And keeps the problem, that the mad man Hitler and his criminal gang were in general a result of the mad situation of Germany during and after world war 1. I guess without the USA we Germans including Austria-Hungaria and the Osman empire and others had won world war 1. England, France, Russia and their allies had lost. I am not sure in which world we would live in this case today. But I do not have the feeling it would be a worser world, than we see today.

Sorry if I mischaracterized your position. Please clarify.

I fear, you justify with this sentence on reason of a simplifying national identity now murder on children in a similiar way, how the Nazis justified murder on the children of Jews.

]

lol more rubbish. Germany inflicted WW I on itself as well;

That's not really true, but if it would be true then it had also nothing to do with anything what I said.

Hitler was going to be your Saviour, and your ancestors probably voted for him.

What a nonsense. In the last free elections in November 1932 Hitler got "only" 37% of all votes. This was specially also a result of the dominance and disaster of the US-American economy. Protest. And the title of Hitler was not "savior" it was "leader". Hitler had nothing to do with the Christian religion. He called himself sometimes a tool of the destiny. Hitler had by the way in 1933 - and also later - worldwide a very good reputation - also in the USA - because he was seen as a strong fascinating man. And anti-Semitism was and is also in the USA very popular. When Hitler made the first racial laws in Germany in 1935 no one in the world protested really loud, because in lots of countries - including the USA - had existed racial laws too.

 

[zaangalewa]

We generally consider killing innocent children to be evil (lets ignore the abortion thing). We also bombed German cities knowing that innocent children would be killed and hailed those that dropped the bombs as heroes.

Yes, cuz good people would just let Nazis do whatever they wanted to without any resistance.

That's nonsense. The problem is a problem of the logic of time. The real problem is that good people are often convinced to be a N. is a good new thing. So some are walking this wrong way - manipulated from a continuous brainwashing stream of more and more weird propaganda. And when you are in the middle of the swamp, then it is difficult to find a good stand.

Actually it's pretty easy for those who have morals

How do you know what's easy for people, who have moral?

and aren't putting so much effort into lawyering their way out of false dilemmas.

A complex empty phrase

Good people

Good people?

aren't required to stand and do nothing to stop evil;

Do they? How do you know? Where from comes this idea? Mr. Satanas?

just because evil people will hide behind good people

"Evil" and "holy" is the pair of words. The other pair of words is "bad" and "good". Who is holy is not always only good. And I never saw that for example evil Islamists (=bad, godless people, who misrespect the belief in god and misrespect the life of other human beings in most evil ways too) - hide themselves behind good people. They just simple murder, who shares not their opinions. It's easy to murder enemies and to declare everyone else to be an enemy.

and get them harmed and killed doesn't make those people who aren't standing by but actively eradicating evil guilty of some 'lesser evil'; the blame lies entirely on the evil people and their actions that created the situations. 'Swamps' present no moral ambiguity or confusion to those with genuine principles.

Your little confusion in the beginning of your speech grew now to a bigger confusion. Try this way:

"Lass die Liebe in deinem Herzen wurzeln,
und es kann nur Gutes daraus hervorgehen."
Augustinus

Nobody is interested in what cranks

cranks="Spinner" - got it.

like you think, nor is anybody but tards

Tards = retards = mental retards = "geistig Zurückgebliebene". Got this too.

going to feel guilty about all the Germans your hero Hitler got killed.

Hitler did do suicide. And I find it fascinating, how your scheme of thoughts fits perfectly to the scheme of thoughts of the Nazis.

You'll just have to cry over that by yourself. The History Forum has some scum who hold frequent Pity Parties for the Japanese and their losses in WW II; maybe they will let you into their treehouse.

 

[alang1216]

Sometimes evil is good.

Now if you were trying to say that good can come from bad, that is true but we should never rationalize that bad is good.

Killing a child is an evil but, as you've said, sometimes it is the lesser of two evils.

No. I don’t believe I did say that killing a child is the lesser of two evils.

Please address the words I write and I promise to do the same for you. Fair enough?

Did I infer your position incorrectly? I wrote "We also bombed German cities knowing that innocent children would be killed". I think we can all agree that killing innocent children is an evil thing to do and that allowing Naziis to control Europe, N. Africa, etc. would also be an evil. In such a case, killing innocent children maybe the lessor to the two evils.

Sorry if I mischaracterized your position. Please clarify.

Yes, in that context killing anyone during war may be the lesser of two evils. But it isn’t good as you inferred when you said sometimes evil is good. The worst mistake we can make is rationalizing that evil is good and justified.

Men don’t turn evil over night. It is a gradual process where good gets eroded a little at a time by rationalizing doing wrong is right.

Semantics. I don't believe in absolute good or absolute evil so when I say something is 'good' I only mean that it is better than the alternative.

 

[alang1216]

No need, man just redefines evil. Do you know an evil that can't be redefined as good by some culture?

Can you provide an example of what you are discussing?

We generally consider killing innocent children to be evil (lets ignore the abortion thing). We also bombed German cities knowing that innocent children would be killed and hailed those that dropped the bombs as heroes.

Yes, cuz good people would just let Nazis do whatever they wanted to without any resistance.

That's nonsense. The problem is a problem of the logic of time. The real problem is that good people are often convinced to be a N. is a good new thing. So some are walking this wrong way - manipulated from a continuous brainwashing stream of more and more weird propaganda. And when you are in the middle of the swamp, then it is difficult to find a good stand.

Actually it's pretty easy for those who have morals and aren't putting so much effort into lawyering their way out of false dilemmas. Good people aren't required to stand and do nothing to stop evil; just because evil people will hide behind good people and get them harmed and killed doesn't make those people who aren't standing by but actively eradicating evil guilty of some 'lesser evil'; the blame lies entirely on the evil people and their actions that created the situations. 'Swamps' present no moral ambiguity or confusion to those with genuine principles.

Nice to hear from someone with such moral clarity. Alas those are the people to tend to precipitate the worst actions of mankind. Area bombing German cities may seem clear to you but we did much the same in Vietnam. Did that swamp present any moral ambiguity or confusion to your genuine principles?

Thankfully there are people who see the world not as black and white but in shades of grey. Those are the people who wrote the Geneva convention to govern the actions of people with no moral ambiguity and genuine principles. I think Pol Pot was an excellent example of such a person.

 

[ding]

Now if you were trying to say that good can come from bad, that is true but we should never rationalize that bad is good.

Killing a child is an evil but, as you've said, sometimes it is the lesser of two evils.

No. I don’t believe I did say that killing a child is the lesser of two evils.

Please address the words I write and I promise to do the same for you. Fair enough?

Did I infer your position incorrectly? I wrote "We also bombed German cities knowing that innocent children would be killed". I think we can all agree that killing innocent children is an evil thing to do and that allowing Naziis to control Europe, N. Africa, etc. would also be an evil. In such a case, killing innocent children maybe the lessor to the two evils.

Sorry if I mischaracterized your position. Please clarify.

Yes, in that context killing anyone during war may be the lesser of two evils. But it isn’t good as you inferred when you said sometimes evil is good. The worst mistake we can make is rationalizing that evil is good and justified.

Men don’t turn evil over night. It is a gradual process where good gets eroded a little at a time by rationalizing doing wrong is right.

Semantics. I don't believe in absolute good or absolute evil so when I say something is 'good' I only mean that it is better than the alternative.

I don’t believe in evil per se. it’s not extant. It only exists as the absence of good.

You say you don’t believe in absolute good but I bet if I listen to you quarrel over something could show you that you do. I’ll be on the lookout for that opportunity.

So good is just an opinion, huh?

 

[alang1216]

So good is just an opinion, huh?

Good is relative, it is what the culture says is good. Honor killings may be considered a good in some cultures but not in others.

 

[ding]

So good is just an opinion, huh?

Good is relative, it is what the culture says is good. Honor killings may be considered a good in some cultures but not in others.

So if a culture said a man could take any woman he wanted it would be good?

 

[Picaro]

Killing a child is an evil but, as you've said, sometimes it is the lesser of two evils.

No. I don’t believe I did say that killing a child is the lesser of two evils.

Please address the words I write and I promise to do the same for you. Fair enough?

Did I infer your position incorrectly? I wrote "We also bombed German cities knowing that innocent children would be killed". I think we can all agree that killing innocent children is an evil thing to do and that allowing Naziis to control Europe, N. Africa, etc. would also be an evil. In such a case, killing innocent children maybe the lessor to the two evils.

Keeps the problem that all the mass-murder "you" was doing on Germans in Germany made the war longer and not shorter and had costed much more victims - specially in the Holocaust too. And keeps the problem, that the mad man Hitler and his criminal gang were in general a result of the mad situation of Germany during and after world war 1. I guess without the USA we Germans including Austria-Hungaria and the Osman empire and others had won world war 1. England, France, Russia and their allies had lost. I am not sure in which world we would live in this case today. But I do not have the feeling it would be a worser world, than we see today.

Sorry if I mischaracterized your position. Please clarify.

I fear, you justify with this sentence on reason of a simplifying national identity now murder on children in a similiar way, how the Nazis justified murder on the children of Jews.

]

lol more rubbish. Germany inflicted WW I on itself as well;

That's not really true, but if it would be true then it had also nothing to do with anything what I said.

Of course it does; as we've seen, you're just going to go on and babble endlessly throwing in all kinds of spam, now you're babbling about 'Viet Nam', for some reason, as if Ho and the Reds were also 'just poor hapless innocent victims of Da Evul Amurikins', typical rubbish from commie scum and neo-nazi racists trying to fake moral equivalencies as if they have some, like you are trying to do.

Hitler was going to be your Saviour, and your ancestors probably voted for him.

What a nonsense. In the last free elections in November 1932 Hitler got "only" 37% of all votes.

In a 3 way race, enough t get many seats in your govt., and his popularity went through the roof the next few years, and with your ancestors cheering no doubt; he's much like Nixon in that he won the elections, you couldn't find anybody who admitted they voted for him. lol

This was specially also a result of the dominance and disaster of the US-American economy.

lol your own leaders tanked your economy, and did so on purpose, trashed their own currency and then demanded France and England take your worthless paper to pay off the indemnities you owed. That was over a decade before the Great Depression, dumbass. I guess that vaunted German education system is just another load of PR bullshit, at least re the schools you attended.

Protest. And the title of Hitler was not "savior" it was "leader". Hitler had nothing to do with the Christian religion. He called himself sometimes a tool of the destiny. Hitler had by the way in 1933 - and also later - worldwide a very good reputation - also in the USA - because he was seen as a strong fascinating man. And anti-Semitism was and is also in the USA very popular. When Hitler made the first racial laws in Germany in 1935 no one in the world protested really loud, because in lots of countries - including the USA - had existed racial laws too.

lol more rubbish; nobody in the USA, except UN-assimilated German Nazis, ever called for mass murdering anybody for any reason. You're just pulling stupid Euro-Trash propaganda out of your ass, as usual.

 

[zaangalewa]

...
lol more rubbish; nobody in the USA, except UN-assimilated German Nazis, ever called for mass murdering anybody for any reason. You're just pulling stupid Euro-Trash propaganda out of your ass, as usual.

"You" mass murdered Red Indians for example. You killed their nutritional basis, the buffalos, you infected them, you displaced them and so on and so on ... And the way how you bombed down Germany showed very clear that it was the intention of the US military and their allies to kill every German cultural heritage (specially romantic middle age towns and cities, because it was very easy to burn them down) and to kill as many Germans as well as to destroy as many buildings and cities as possible.

 

[alang1216]

So good is just an opinion, huh?

Good is relative, it is what the culture says is good. Honor killings may be considered a good in some cultures but not in others.

So if a culture said a man could take any woman he wanted it would be good?

I don't know of any such culture but if there ever was one, the majority of people in that culture would believe it was the way things are supposed to be. Was slavery a 'good' thing? The South went to war to preserve it.

 

[ding]

So good is just an opinion, huh?

Good is relative, it is what the culture says is good. Honor killings may be considered a good in some cultures but not in others.

So if a culture said a man could take any woman he wanted it would be good?

I don't know of any such culture but if there ever was one, the majority of people in that culture would believe it was the way things are supposed to be. Was slavery a 'good' thing? The South went to war to preserve it.

You are making my point for me. No, forced slavery was never a good thing. Man doesn't get to decide what is good or bad. Standards exist independent of man.

So just to be clear, if the majority of a culture believed that a man could take any woman he wanted, you would define that as good in your world view?

 

[alang1216]

You are making my point for me. No, forced slavery was never a good thing. Man doesn't get to decide what is good or bad. Standards exist independent of man.

So just to be clear, if the majority of a culture believed that a man could take any woman he wanted, you would define that as good in your world view?

My point is that man DOES get to decide what is good or bad. Standards DO NOT exist independent of man.

Moot point since I don't get to inflict my view of good on other cultures.

 

[ding]

You are making my point for me. No, forced slavery was never a good thing. Man doesn't get to decide what is good or bad. Standards exist independent of man.

So just to be clear, if the majority of a culture believed that a man could take any woman he wanted, you would define that as good in your world view?

My point is that man DOES get to decide what is good or bad. Standards DO NOT exist independent of man.

Moot point since I don't get to inflict my view of good on other cultures.

Wrong on both counts.

Consequences determine right and wrong and you absolutely do believe you get to inflict your views because you believe right and wrong can be anything man wants it to be and you are man.

 

[alang1216]

Consequences determine right and wrong and you absolutely do believe you get to inflict your views because you believe right and wrong can be anything man wants it to be and you are man.

Got an example of such consequences?

I get to judge other cultures by my values but that is different. I oppose slavery but I don't think the founding fathers or America were evil because some practiced slavery. Only that it was an unfortunate legacy and they could have done better.

 

[ding]

Consequences determine right and wrong and you absolutely do believe you get to inflict your views because you believe right and wrong can be anything man wants it to be and you are man.

Got an example of such consequences?

I get to judge other cultures by my values but that is different. I oppose slavery but I don't think the founding fathers or America were evil because some practiced slavery. Only that it was an unfortunate legacy and they could have done better.

Sure. Cheat on your spouse. See what happens.

 

[alang1216]

Consequences determine right and wrong and you absolutely do believe you get to inflict your views because you believe right and wrong can be anything man wants it to be and you are man.

Got an example of such consequences?

I get to judge other cultures by my values but that is different. I oppose slavery but I don't think the founding fathers or America were evil because some practiced slavery. Only that it was an unfortunate legacy and they could have done better.

Sure. Cheat on your spouse. See what happens.

You assume we're not polyamorous. We're not, but in such a relationship good behavior is different so "cheating" means something quite different.

 

[RodISHI]

Do you believe the construct of good and evil to be an artifact of intelligence?

What do you think?

I have zero doubt that the concept of good and evil is a human construct and is an artifact of intelligence. That any intelligent being would be hardwired for morality because morality is logical. That this phenomenon is written into the laws of nature so to speak because it is innate to intelligence.

In this thought process where does the spirit come in?

You have a natural instinct in carnal flesh of all living things (even within the animal kingdom), no? And then you have the spirit within the living that have been given life from the spirit which has the capability to grow and manifest into the carnal beings. The intelligence of one is different than that of the other and one is not always aware that the other even exist.

 

[RodISHI]

Do you believe the construct of good and evil to be an artifact of intelligence?

No. Good is what helps all and every life.

And it is logical that good helps all and every life. So as intelligence increases what was instinctual becomes more conscious. So much so that man constructs the concept of good and evil that no other animal possesses.

I disagree that no other animal can possess consciousness (a heaven sent spirit within) to know what is good and evil or be able to distinguish what is good or bad without prior (carnal) instruction.

 

[ding]

Consequences determine right and wrong and you absolutely do believe you get to inflict your views because you believe right and wrong can be anything man wants it to be and you are man.

Got an example of such consequences?

I get to judge other cultures by my values but that is different. I oppose slavery but I don't think the founding fathers or America were evil because some practiced slavery. Only that it was an unfortunate legacy and they could have done better.

Sure. Cheat on your spouse. See what happens.

You assume we're not polyamorous. We're not, but in such a relationship good behavior is different so "cheating" means something quite different.

Also not good but yes.

No, cheating is a betrayal. So see the betrayal any way you want. It’s still the same answer. Betrayal is not a good behavior. It will lead to predictable consequences. You can’t just pretend that betrayal is good. It’s not up too man to decide. It’s intrinsic to human nature.