Ever seen the world in black and white? One thing is good, another is evil.
One may make absolute differentiations between things, and believe them until they are faced with a paradox. Religion, ideologies, law, science, may all put things into absolute perspective. You can determine all nazis to be evil people, and you can determine all Final Fantasy fans to be good. Yet you are faced with a paradox when you come across a final fantasy-loving nazi. You have to either change your view or bend the rules one way or another...

The law, however, is absolute and objective, unless it is tampered with by direct human influence. Someone either breaks the law, or they don't. It is up to the human judge and jury to decide guilt and punishment. The law is open to misinterpretation, but when interpreted objectively, it is absolute... you get the idea. You can't logically say that something is not a crime, when it clearly is.

We don't know if the universe is objective yet. The purpose of science is to objectively find out the absolute laws that govern everything.

You can be objective if you are specific. "What I apparently percieved with my senses was ......"

"The law clearly states, in accordance with .... that X is a crime, and the evidence suggests that suspect Y has committed it .... ."


I'm not really sure what I was thinking when I started this topic, but I wouldn't want this to go to waste.

I've never seen things as black and white or good and evil. (Despite my username =P)

The problem I see with such terms is that they're all very subjective. Their definitions change person to person, making the terms practically meaningless. What's good in one person's views is evil in another's, and vice versa, making both "good" and "evil" practically meaningless.

Let's take Majic Dirt's example of Hitler. (Disclaimer: I do NOT at all approve of anything Hitler did.)

Hitler is viewed by most people to be evil. He killed thousands of people in unthinkable ways. But do you think Hitler would have done what he did if he thought it was evil?

No.

He thought he was doing the good, right, just thing to do. He thought he was a saviour of arians. In turn, the Jewish thought they were doing what was good by following their religion.

Two very different views, but both parties involved believed they were the "good" in the matter.

And that is why I don't really deem anything as "good" or "evil". I prefer the terms "harmful" and "beneficial", and I use them as related to my views and thoughts.

You got at something I was trying to hit on with my post in an underlying way - law is nothing to me. Not that I break laws (Not many at least, but I'm not going to go into that.) But in my view most laws are, well....rubbish. Most of them.

Here, let's take your theif. Most people who would do something like that aren't very smart. (I'm not saying all theives are stupid, just petty ones like our example theif.) People who aren't very smart generally don't think or care too much about people that they aren't close to. So, in his mind, he knows what he's doing is evil, but he believes it to be serving the greater good (his car). Therefore, in his mind, he's doing good. And who's to say my opinion of good trumps his? (Plus, I shouldn't have been stupid enough to get stolen from in the first place.) And no, he shouldn't be punished by the state. He was good enough to get away with it, he ought to be able to keep it.

Thanks for bringing up the point though - I love talking about stuff like this.

"Good" and "Evil" are terms that are used loosely. Too loosely. Hitler, for example. He probably did things that he knew were evil (Killing people, for one), but those actions served his good. Thus, he assumed that those actions would be cancelled out in terms of evil. Therefore, we cannot say that people are good or evil, only actions. We can also say that goals are good or evil if we can prove it. However, we cannot say that Hitler had an evil goal, as we cannot prove it. We can't even prove that his goal was World/Europe domination, we can only assume that. However, goals can be influenced by others. Therefore, a man that steals money to feed his family is performing an evil action toward a good goal, and a man that gets a job to fuel his drug problem is performing a is performing a good action (making money circulate, etc.) towards an evil goal. So Good and Evil situations are subjective, but in their situations are sometimes objective. End of my contribution.

Getting a little touchy, aren't we? You didn't have to say it so roughly. Makes it sound like you're being mean to me, and that's not "good". =P


And no, I'd take care of it myself. And yes, they would probably be thinking about serving their idea of "good".
In the case of a child, parents would take care of it themselves.