Do good and evil exist? What is good and what is evil? I believe they are relative terms that that exist only within the framework of circumstances surrounding them. Nothing is inherently good or inherently evil. I think this is easily proved by asking questions about any given set of circumstance.
For example, is killing good or evil? That is a rather broad question, so we should break it down a little further by determining what it is that we are killing. Is killing an animal good or evil? If you catch a domestic cat and smash its head in with a hammer for no reason, you would probably consider that behavior as evil. What if the cat was full of disease, like rabies, and was running loose around your secluded mountain property and tried to bite your children on several occasions. Perhaps you could get no help from the local authorities to catch the animal. You happen to trap the cat and your hammer is your only tool in hand when the cat tries to bite you. Is it a bad thing you then killed that cat?
What if you killed a deer to feed your family while stranded and lost in the mountains? By not killing the deer, you may be killing your family. By killing the deer, your family lives longer than they would otherwise. So, is killing the deer a bad or evil thing? Would allowing your family to die, when you could kill a deer and save them, be the same as killing the deer? If it’s my family, I think not. And you should remember that making a decision to not do something is still a decision. If you believe you should never kill anything and you refuse to kill the deer, you have made a conscious decision to kill your family. You can’t make the excuse that you didn’t kill your family, they just starved to death, because you had the opportunity to prevent them from starving and chose to allow them to starve.
Is it wrong to kill a human being? Not enough info, right? What if a serial killer had your wife and two children captured in the middle of a suspension bridge and he was slowly chopping the rope that holds up the bridge. You have the means to kill the serial killer, but he is a human being. You may believe you can’t kill a living person, but if you don’t kill the serial killer soon, you allow your wife and two kids to fall into the chasm below and die. If you don’t kill the killer, you will have consciously made the choice to kill your family. You can’t say the serial killer killed them. Yes, he contributed, but the decision to allow him to kill your family was made by you, if you could have stopped it and chose not to take the necessary to save your family.
Good and evil are relative terms that depend on the circumstances at that time. “Well, there must be something that is purely evil,” you say. What then? Can you name a bad thing that is never good no matter what the circumstances might be? I think you can’t because good and evil are merely terms that describe an action or event based on the circumstances at the time it occurred.
KNUS radio host, Dennis Prager, has talked about good and evil and said he thought people were born with both qualities. He gave the example of babies being born with jealousy. I like Dennis Prager, but many of his decisions are based on his Jewish beliefs. Whenever you have God as the premise of a logical formula, you are never guaranteed a valid answer. Why? The existence of God is a theory, not a fact. No one can prove God exists. Therefore, any conclusions based on the premise that God exists may be faulty. I didn’t say they are faulty, but they may be faulty. You can input wrong information into a computer and still get the right answer, although I doubt it happens often.
I thought it was rather silly to say babies are born with a built in jealousy emotion. I believe jealousy is something that is learned behavior. I am certainly not aware of any scientific studies that show jealousy is an instinct. And, I wonder if jealousy is always bad.
If I told you I found out my wife slept with another man and I felt angry and I was jealous of that act, what would you say? Would you say I should not be jealous? Would you say jealousy is a bad thing and I should stop feeling jealous?
What if I told you my wife was sleeping with other men and I was not jealous? Would you consider that normal and a good thing, because to have jealousy is bad?
I digress. Is jealousy an instinct at birth? I think not. Jealousy is a learned behavior. We learn it from our parents and other people we are around when we are children. The first roots of jealousy may become apparent when a parent takes away something of value to them because they are afraid the child may break it. I’m sure you can think of many things that parents do that may root the feelings of jealousy in a child.
Another proof against the theory that jealousy is a born instinct is that I know people who are not jealous. If it’s an emotion we are born with, why don’t they have it? Could it be they were brought up in a way that jealousy never made an impression on them as a quality they needed to have?
Let’s look at it another way. Why are Catholics Catholic? Is it because they were brought up that way? Why are Jews Jewish? Is it because they were brought up that way? Why are people jealous? You can guess my response. Maybe it’s because they were brought up that way. They saw jealousy in their parents, neighbors, friends, and schoolmates. Maybe they were taught jealousy. I think so.
Our emotions are relative to the circumstances surrounding us at any given time. Good and evil are also relative to the circumstances surrounding us at any given time. And yes, the circumstances surrounding us include things like societies beliefs and the laws of the society we live in. Therefore, there is no definitive ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in the world. It’s all based on our perceptions of right and wrong and our perceptions may not always be correct for any given set of circumstance. Think about it.
Eran