Evil...

kelly1

I'm wary of starting this thread but anyway I want to ask the question;

Why are humans capable of so much evil?

What is it that makes people capable of killing another human being? Or rape an innocent child and sell the photos on the internet for profit?

I'm not talking about self defense here. I'm talking about the guy who deliberately plans a brutal murder and fantasises about it beforehand. The guy who derives sick pleasure from torturing and killing another human being and still the lust isn't satisfied and he plans his next victim.

What gave rise to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc? What do people here think? Is it genetic, is there some chemical switch that gets flipped? Is there an evil gene?

I don't think so. In the same way that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit and do good, we can also allow evil spirits and the devil influence over us. For this reason, there is no limit to the depths to which we can sink. We can be driven for the forces of evil and lose control of ourselves.

Thoughts?

Tim_Murphy

Noel,
I think if you genuinely want to gain a deeper understanding of human nature you need to put the supernatural goodies and baddies to one side. Unless of course you are just using them as metaphors, which I don’t think you are.

eoin5

The mind is a fascinating machine and it is much more worthwhile assessing its capabilities than pondering some mystical duality.

Beruthiel

kelly1 wrote: »

I
I don't think so. In the same way that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit and do good, we can also allow evil spirits and the devil influence over us.

Bullsh!t.
Psychopath's exist due to the nature of their make up. It has nothing whatsoever to do with 'evil spirits'
Jeez kelly, you just make stuff up as you go along without no proof required.

Why don't you spend some time reading some scientific books on the inner workings of the mind for some actual insight.

CerebralCortex

kelly1 wrote: »

What gave rise to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc? What do people here think? Is it genetic, is there some chemical switch that gets flipped? Is there an evil gene?

I don't think you can scale a serial killer with the likes of Hitler and Stalin etc. Hitler and Stalin were men of faith corrupted by the power of their respective ideologies(religions?). To ask what gave rise to these people you would have to include the RC Church, the Puritan Church in England (Cromwell and all that lark) imho. I'm inclined to follow Ruth on this one.

seamus

Selfishness is ultimately what it all boils down to. People do these things for their own personal gain. It doesn't have to be material gain, it can be emotional, spiritual or religious gain too. It doesn't necessarily have to be thought out or malicious either. A paranoid schizophrenic may beat an innocent person to death on the spur of the moment because they feared for their life.

I think there's far too much in "How can a person possibly do act X" to try dissect it in one post, or even in many posts. Since we are all the sum of our experiences, it is our upbringing which has the largest effect on what we consider to be "OK" and what we don't.

I think in general, we are driven by genetics to be communal animals - to do things which benefit the community. This is especially relevant when you imagine that communities of primitive man would have consisted largely of family or otherwise related people. So to do good by your community served to improve the chances of your genetic proliferation.

But because we are in possession of memory and emotion, this evolutionary push can be overridden (as they so often are) by our own feelings. I don't think there's anything which could be called an "evil gene", or any one chemical "switch" which makes people do bad things.
Certainly, chemical and hormonal imbalances can change people's state of mind to the point where they are unaware of what they are doing. And although some chemical imbalances are potentially gene-linked, it's still not fair to say that all people with these genetic imbalances will do "bad things".

I also don't think that there's necessarily a distinction between a "bad person" and a "good person". That is, bad people don't always do bad things, and good people don't always do good things.

kelly1

Tim_Murphy wrote: »

Noel,
I think if you genuinely want to gain a deeper understanding of human nature you need to put the supernatural goodies and baddies to one side. Unless of course you are just using them as metaphors, which I don’t think you are.

OK, lets leave the supernatural out of it. I'm kinda forced to do that anyway in an A&A forum.

Do you have a natural explanation?

kelly1

Beruthiel wrote: »

Bullsh!t.
Psychopath's exist due to the nature of their make up. It has nothing whatsoever to do with 'evil spirits'
Jeez kelly, you just make stuff up as you go along without no proof required.

Why don't you spend some time reading some scientific books on the inner workings of the mind for some actual insight.

I was hoping for a more mature response to my questions really.

What explanation do you have to offer? Are psychopaths born that way? Is it nurture or nature? Is it just down to brain chemistry?

Dave!

kelly1 wrote: »

What explanation do you have to offer? Are psychopaths born that way? Is it nurture or nature? Is it just down to brain chemistry?

Can't people just NOT KNOW?????

How is that for an answer? When you don't enter the realm of the f*cking moronic and supernatural, it's often difficult to answer everything.

Is there nothing about the natural world that you can't just say "I/humans don't understand that"?

I'm sure there are valid hypotheses out there for the questions you posed; but regardless, you always imply that, because atheists don't invoke god to answer a question, we must have another answer. That's not always the case. We just strive to find one.

CerebralCortex

DaveMcG wrote: »

Can't people just NOT KNOW?????

How is that for an answer? When you don't enter the realm of the f*cking moronic and supernatural, it's often difficult to answer everything.

Is there nothing about the natural world that you can't just say "I/humans don't understand that"?

I'm sure there are valid hypotheses out there for the questions you posed; but regardless, you always imply that, because atheists don't invoke god to answer a question, we must have another answer. That's not always the case. We just strive to find one.

Template answer Dave.

Zombrex

kelly1 wrote: »

Why are humans capable of so much evil?

Well, physics for a start.

Human bodies are easily damaged, and we possess greater physical strength than we do strength in our protective organs, such as our bones.

So it is quite easy for one human to physically hurt another human being. You can either blame the laws of physics for that, or your god.

kelly1 wrote: »

Is it genetic, is there some chemical switch that gets flipped? Is there an evil gene?

I imagine it is some what genetic, some what environmental.

Some people certainly seem to have certain emotional switches turned off, such as empathy.

But equally the human mind is a curious thing. I can't believe anyone could rationalise something like the Old Testament killings, but apparently posters on the Christian forum can do this very easily.

I don't think they are evil, and I think it is easier to do that when it is just pages in a book, but people do have an instinctive habit of dividing human into "them" and "us" groups, and the "them" group often end up getting the short end of the stick.

From an evolutionary point of view that makes sense, it was more important that humans worked with their own tribe or family, and thought less of other tribes who may be competing for resources with them.

People like Hitler, or books like the Old Testament, succeed in justifying violence and aggression towards other humans by daemonising them as a seperate group.

The Cananites were "wicked and godless", they lived in far way lands and did funny evil things that the God fearing Hebrews wouldn't do. Therefore it was only just that they were destroyed, or at least that is what the Hebrews told themselves.

Hitler and the Nazis (with a little help from long time anti-semetic feeling) convinced the Germans that the Jews were so different to them that they were practically a different species. When the Jews were sent to the camps to be killed it wasn't killing "us", it was killing "them".

This "them" and "us" mentality that seems part of human nature is why groups that try to promote peace between different groups do so by trying to show that it is in fact just "us" (this includes, though some what unsuccessfully, Christianity).

kelly1

CerebralCortex wrote: »

I don't think you can scale a serial killer with the likes of Hitler and Stalin etc. Hitler and Stalin were men of faith corrupted by the power of their respective ideologies(religions?). To ask what gave rise to these people you would have to include the RC Church, the Puritan Church in England (Cromwell and all that lark) imho. I'm inclined to follow Ruth on this one.

That's really twisting it CC. Hitler corrupted and used Christianity to justify his anti-semitism. He didn't practice the Catholic faith.

And wasn't Stalin a closet atheist?

So are you seriously saying that religion has a major part to play in the lives of those who do evil deeds? Are you trying to turn the argument on its head by saying that atheism promotes good and religion evil!?!?

Tim_Murphy

Do you have a natural explanation?

A quick and comprehensive answer that I can have wrapped up in one post?
No, certainly not. It is a complex issue, I don’t think there is a simple answer. In the case of people doing bad or evil things then I think self-justification plays a huge role. People can justify pretty much anything to themselves, and rationalise the most immoral of acts. There are plenty of examples on these forums of people doing just that (justifying genocide in gods name etc). These people are almost certainly not ‘evil’, but the acts they end up justifying are. I’ve linked to this book before but I really can’t recommend it enough: http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208870664&sr=8-1

I’ll try to post more later when I have time.

Dades

Less cussing and SHOUTING, DaveMcG, if you would.

CerebralCortex

kelly1 wrote: »

That's really twisting it CC. Hitler corrupted and used Christianity to justify his anti-semitism. He didn't practice the Catholic faith.

And wasn't Stalin a closet atheist?

So are you seriously saying that religion has a major part to play in the lives of those who do evil deeds? Are you trying to turn the argument on its head by saying that atheism promotes good and religion evil!?!?

No I'm not. But I expected you would think so. Stalin was an atheist but he had unbending faith in soviet Russia. Hitler similarly had faith in the Reich and its master race, I'm not attacking religion I'm attacking faith that isn't questioned. Like how no one(generalisation) questioned the RCC's influence in Ireland in the past and even now. Ask yourself could your faith be just that and nothing more? You say you have communed with good? Could that have been anything else?

Beruthiel

kelly1 wrote: »

I was hoping for a more mature response to my questions really.

I gave you one appropriate to the question.

What explanation do you have to offer? Are psychopaths born that way? Is it nurture or nature? Is it just down to brain chemistry?

Again, if you are actually that interested, I suggest you do some reading and come to your own conclusions.
I've done enough reading to know that the mind is a wonderous thing, one finely balanced in its making.
One example would be, it just needs too much or too little of a particular chemical to throw it off kilter.
As Dave put it, I do not claim to know everything about the human brain, I'm not a brain scientist.
However, I know enough about it to understand that it is complex and any kind of unbalance can case all sorts of problems.
Again, nothing to do with 'evil spirits'

Gegerty

kelly1 wrote: »

I'm wary of starting this thread but anyway I want to ask the question;

Why are humans capable of so much evil?

What is it that makes people capable of killing another human being? Or rape an innocent child and sell the photos on the internet for profit?

I'm not talking about self defense here. I'm talking about the guy who deliberately plans a brutal murder and fantasises about it beforehand. The guy who derives sick pleasure from torturing and killing another human being and still the lust isn't satisfied and he plans his next victim.

What gave rise to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc? What do people here think? Is it genetic, is there some chemical switch that gets flipped? Is there an evil gene?

I don't think so. In the same way that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit and do good, we can also allow evil spirits and the devil influence over us. For this reason, there is no limit to the depths to which we can sink. We can be driven for the forces of evil and lose control of ourselves.

Thoughts?

not all murderers are "evil", whatever evil means. Ordinary people put in extraordinary situations will tend to react with their primal instincts. Now that is just one form of murder, I know there is more to it than that but just thought I should point out that not all murderers fall under the same category as Hitler or Charles Manson.

stereoroid

I recently listened to a CBC podcast called A Murder In The Neighbourhood. Residents of a neighbourhood described how they tried and failed to prevent a murder & suicide, and how they felt afterwards. Pretty harrowing stuff to listen to, but still an interesting insight in to human nature, I thought.

Was that evil? I don't remember any of the interviewees using that word. If they did, could they justify it, in the supernatural sense? I heard no implication that what happened had any supernatural component to it. It wasn't like in the movies, where the lines were clearly drawn, and you chose a side. The neighbours tried to help, but there was a limit to how much they could help, once the gun came out. One lady saved a young kid from being shot - but later wondered whether her actions contributed to the shootings.

I heard no evil there, just sadness and waste. When I look at Rwanda, as I did in the other thread, do I see evil? If I do, it's only in the superficial, poetic sense, but that dissipates when you get down to the complex details of events on the ground. People are quite capable of the worst atrocities, without the need for any supernatural agencies to drive them.

kelly1

The killing of the two Polish men in Drimnagh a while back is a good example of evil. What caused the killer to decide to stab and kill innocent men?

If people can see no reason beyond a chemical imbalance or human nature, I suppose there's no point in continuing the discussion.

Can anyone else explain extreme evil? Evil seems to have the ability to infect large groups of people e.g. the Nazis or Hutu militias in Rwanda. Can this be put down to chemicals or human nature?

Galvasean

Evil... You can have a chemical imbalance in your brain, you can be the victim of a traumatized childhood, maybe karma has given you a bad week and you want payback, maybe you have achieved everything in life and want to explore the 'forbidden fruits' of life or maybe the boogeyman told you to do it.

Lots of things can cause what we call 'evil'. There is no single simple answer.

seamus

kelly1 wrote: »

What caused the killer to decide to stab and kill innocent men?

Anger, perhaps?

Can anyone else explain extreme evil? Evil seems to have the ability to infect large groups of people e.g. the Nazis or Hutu militias in Rwanda. Can this be put down to chemicals or human nature?

"Extreme evil" in this case is subjective. None of these people believed that what they were doing was wrong.

People having been knocking the **** out of each other in large groups for thousands of years, so I would believe that although it's not "human nature", it's certainly some sort of side-effect of our tribal nature. We tend to move in packs and choose pack leaders. Devotion to these leaders tends to be stronger in cases where the population doesn't have the intelligence/ability to challenge the leader, or in cases where the community as a whole has been under some sort of oppressive force.

The latter case is certainly how the Nazi regime came to power. They got into power because Germany was in serious trouble following WWI and the sanctions that the league of nations was putting them under. The Nazis united the German underclasses under the banner of German solidarity and protecting their way of life. The "good" as the Germans saw it was protection - looking after themselves and their communities and protecting themselves from the rest of the world.
Can you really say that someone is "evil" if they think they're protecting their family?
The upper echelons of the German government of course were a little more sinister about it, but probably still decided that what they were doing was in the best interests of themselves and their people.

It's very difficult to say that someone is "evil" or that someone was inherently evil, if everything in their fibre told them that what they were doing was the right thing to do. There are no moral absolutes.

humanji

You kind of also have to take into consideration that Evil is subjective. And it implies an attempt to do wrong regardless of the moral implications.

Can you be evil when you believe what you're doing is right? I don't know what was going on in Hitlers head, but what if he felt he was doing a righteous act by wiping out the Jews and by unifying the world? In his eyes he couldn't possibly be evil, but in everyone elses he would be.

See, it all depends on what you view is right and wrong. So, Noel, if God appeared before you tonight and told you to kill all non-Christians, would you do it? Right now, you know that to kill is a sin, but God says what is right and wrong, so if he told you to kill then it must now be good to kill. In fact, to not kill would be a sin and hence evil.

A Christians understanding of good and evil comes from how they themselves interpret the bible. This understanding will change from person to person as they come to different conclusions as to what the bible means to them. Some will live good lives, while some may come to some belief that they have to create a weird cult and kill themselves while wearing a purple shroud.

In a similar way, everyone else gets there understanding of right and wrong from whatever influences their lives the most, be in religion, parents, friends, or social circumstances.

So basically, everyone is different. You'll find few people who do evil specifically to be evil, and it's a safe bet that the majority of these have severe psychological issues and it's nothing to do with being religious or not. And then there's also the fact that some people are just jerks.[/ramble]

Popinjay

humanji wrote: »

And then there's also the fact that some people are just jerks.[/ramble]

QFT


The rest of it was pretty good to. In fact I don't know why I'm even typing this... Everything seems to have been put pretty succinctly so far. Well done everyone, I know it's not over but I'll take my nose out for now unless I can actively contribute.

Have fun.

kelly1

seamus wrote: »

Anger, perhaps?

Yes but also the decision to commit the evil act. It's the decision to do something wrong that's evil.

seamus wrote: »

"Extreme evil" in this case is subjective. None of these people believed that what they were doing was wrong.

You can't be serious? You really think those who commited acts of genocide saw no wrong in their own or others actions?

seamus wrote: »

People having been knocking the **** out of each other in large groups for thousands of years, so I would believe that although it's not "human nature", it's certainly some sort of side-effect of our tribal nature. We tend to move in packs and choose pack leaders. Devotion to these leaders tends to be stronger in cases where the population doesn't have the intelligence/ability to challenge the leader, or in cases where the community as a whole has been under some sort of oppressive force.

Again decision making comes into play.

seamus wrote: »

The latter case is certainly how the Nazi regime came to power. They got into power because Germany was in serious trouble following WWI and the sanctions that the league of nations was putting them under. The Nazis united the German underclasses under the banner of German solidarity and protecting their way of life. The "good" as the Germans saw it was protection - looking after themselves and their communities and protecting themselves from the rest of the world.
Can you really say that someone is "evil" if they think they're protecting their family?

OK there was a strong sense of nationalism and regained pride but they still couldn't justify the extermination of million of Jews.

seamus wrote: »

The upper echelons of the German government of course were a little more sinister about it, but probably still decided that what they were doing was in the best interests of themselves and their people.

Were the Jews a threat?

seamus wrote: »

There are no moral absolutes.

That's where I disagree. The pope calls it moral relativism and is a dangerous belief.

CerebralCortex

kelly1 wrote: »

The pope calls it moral relativism and is a dangerous belief.

Why? Never mind that lad he was in the Hitler youth.

LaVidaLoca

the question is backwards. People often ask "What is human nature?"

Human beings it seems, are neither inately good nor inately evil.

We do know that most human beings do not naturally take pleasure in killing or hurting others - that is usually the domain of psychopaths. Humans have a form of empathy, with combined with their own self-interest enables them to form societies in which (most of the time) they do not do such things.

However, when human beings are not themselves seeing the benefits of that society (street crime), or when that society breaks down in some way (civil war) , or when human beings are told that murder or genocide is neccessary to bring about a future transcendant good (Soviet Russia, Islamic suicide bombers) , they can become capable of the most awful things.

The genocide in Rwanda for example, did not come out of nowhere, it came out of hundreds of years of emnity between Hutu and Tutsi. The Hutus massacred the Tutsi in the way they did because they had been led to beleive that the Tutsi were just about to do the same to them. Plus, in a mostly illiterate society, they could be convinced that the Tutsi were "devils" and "cockroaches" far more easily than could be done to educated people.

As far as the word "evil" is concerned you have to discriminate between the secular and the religious meaning of the word. To a secular person evil is merely a word that means "very bad". To a religious person "evil" almost conotates an actual thing, like a substance, that proceeds from "the Devil" and is the cause of all bad things.

It is precisley that kind of stone-age thinking that leads to things like genocide being possible: Tell a bewildered population that a certain ethnic group is evil, the cause of all problems, immoral, sexually dangerous to your wife and children, or 'like animals' in some way, and slaughtering them becomes far easier.

So is religion the root of all evil? No, far from it. It's the cause of some evil. But the kind of minds that are capable of beleiving in childish ideas like "the Devil", or "Pure Evil" are the kind of minds that tend to cause really, really bad things to happen.

seamus

kelly1 wrote: »

Yes but also the decision to commit the evil act. It's the decision to do something wrong that's evil.

Yes, but perhaps his ability to make rational decisions was curtailed. If someone makes a decision in the heat of the moment that they wouldn't usually make, are they still evil?

You can't be serious? You really think those who commited acts of genocide saw no wrong in their own or others actions?

By and large. People can do things which contravene their own moral code, but to continually and blatantly do it indicates to me that it doesn't contravene their personal moral code, therefore they saw no wrong in their actions.

Were the Jews a threat?

They believed the jews were a threat. That's sufficient.

That's where I disagree. The pope calls it moral relativism and is a dangerous belief.

I find moral absolutism to be far more dangerous as it doesn't provide room for questions.

LaVidaLoca

There are no moral absolutes.

That's where I disagree. The pope calls it moral relativism and is a dangerous

No. You're quite wrong, thats the opposite of the truth. When people are engaged in really nasty mass killings/executions etc they are always 100% convinced that what they are doing is right.

If you as religious beleiver for example are 100% convinced that abortion is murder, then it makes perfect sense to bomb an abortion clinic and kill the doctors performing the murders. It is usually people that are 100% convinced of their rightness that kill the most people: Stalin, Pol Pot, The Spanish Inquistition, Suicide bombers and so on. None of these guys are moral relativists.

Moral Relativism is a philosophy we all agree with whether we know it or not, because the world is not a theoretical place. Do you beleive in Murder? "No", you would say. What if you walked in to the kitchen to see a burglar about to murder you wife, would you shoot him? If you answer "Yes" you're a moral relativist: Morals depend on the situation.

Moral absolutism simply leads to evil behaviour like the Church's muderous ban on condom usage in AIDS ridden africa.

MrPudding

kelly1 wrote: »

So are you seriously saying that religion has a major part to play in the lives of those who do evil deeds? Are you trying to turn the argument on its head by saying that atheism promotes good and religion evil!?!?

Religion plays a pretty major part in the lives of the priests that rapes children, but that is not to say that it is the cause of what they do.

As other have said, I think the terrible and vicious acts that humans seems so inclined to carry out on each other need no supernatural answer.

In the nature / nurture debate I am firmly in the middle. I think it is a little of both. A certain genetic make up in a certain environment has the potential to create a person that just does not work like "normal" people. Perhaps if that genetic make up found itself in a different environment, or if that environment had a different set of genes for work with the results would have been different.

I think it is simply a case that some people are predisposed to, under certain circumstances, act in a way that we, as "normal" members of society think is wrong. For example, under extreme provocation or simply with a bit of drink onboard.

I think there is also a section of humanity that, due to their particular genetic makeup and the environment they were brought up in simply see no wrong in the action they take.

MrP

eoin5

I think its important to seperate a good and evil spiritual argument and the understanding of the human brain.

As far as the spiritual agrument goes I do think that there might be manevolant and good forces at work in the world on some frequency or plane that we dont know a lot about yet. I think the Satanists have it right, we need both light and dark for our world to work.

Tim_Murphy

You can't be serious? You really think those who commited acts of genocide saw no wrong in their own or others actions?

People will justify their actions in any number of ways. If you look at any conflict throughout history you won’t find too many examples of a war where one side put their hand up and said ‘ya, we’re the bad guys in this one’, people justify their position, they justify their actions. People generally view themselves as moral, so they justify their actions as being moral. You don’t go from peace to mass genocide in one move, it happens in a step by step process. It would be comforting to think that all those who commit such acts are simply evil, but it is really just a childlike view to take. Throughout history ‘normal’ people have ended up doing immoral, evil, things. The Catholic church has a huge amount of examples of people doing truly evil things on a grand scale. No doubt many people involved were just bad b%$tards but most probably weren’t. Good people can eventually be led down a path to beating children in their care, taking children from single mothers or burning heretics. This does not happen in one step, but in lots of little steps, each one justified as being righteous or necessary.