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Does evil exist PS.
A lot of responses to this question. Far far too many to answer individually.
One of the reasons I asked this is a TV play I watched called "Longford". It concerned his friendship with Britains most notorious killer Myra Hindley. She with her partner Ian Brady kidnapped, tortured and killed 5 children in the 1960s and buried them outside of Manchester.. Long Longford was a Christian judge. Not one your alt right guys although he was anti abortion and also anti porn. However (I digress). This guy is what you might think of as the best of Christianity and he takes up Hindleys case. Arguing for a possible release date etc, Now at one point in the play she turns to him and says "You are a good man. You see the beauty of good and are attracted to it but at night on the moors when we were burning those children I saw the beauty of evil"

273kelvin 8 Oct 8
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1

Level 5

I think what we call evil is really a disregard for spoken/unspoken rules of species protection/ continuation. The worst are the people that make the little lizard part of our brains perk up and gives us the willies even before we know what they did.

1

Level 8

Yes. Just look at trumper!

3

Level 10

Did she in fact ever utter these words or were they put into the mouth of the actress who played her by the script writer? Lord Longford was probably “played” by Myra Hyndley in order to be released on parole. Her acts were no doubtedly evil by any definition of the word if by evil we are using it as a synonym for depravity and heinous behaviour. If you are using it as a noun....evil as an entity does not in my opinion exist, as an adjective describing Hyndley’s behaviour....then it does.

I have no way of knowing if she used those words but there must be an attraction to evil for anyone to commit such acts.

@273kelvin I don’t believe in the concept of evil as an entity....I have just explained why. Yes she got a kick out of torturing and killing these unfortunate children, it was most probably sado/sexual as Brady was involved too....but that doesn’t prove the existence of evil. It only proves that what she did could be described as evil. Do you understand the distinction?

@Marionville Yes I do but people can be moved by abstract concepts such as beauty, justice, truth or compassion. If we accept these as existing? Then why not evil as something that some people are predisposed to follow?

@273kelvin I don’t think there is an equivalence between any of these things and the concept of evil as an entity.....but I can see I am not going to convince you. Evil is something dreamt up by religions to counter the “‘goodness” of believing in god. Take away god and you can take away evil. Just substitute any of the other synonyms instead...there, it is gone!

@Marionville Of all the comments on my original post I found the one by a former prosecutor most informative. Did you read it?

@273kelvin I will go back and look....Im sure I probably read it at the time.
0

Level 8

"Britains most notorious killer Myra Hindley. She with her partner Ian Brady kidnapped, tortured and killed 5 children in the 1960s and buried them outside of Manchester" is a drop in the bucket. POTUS has killed between 65,800 to 88,600 during the War on Terror; that's the result of an evil conspiracy. However, the force behind this mayhem is not evil, it's greed.

I get what your saying. However evil if it exits is easier contemplated in individual acts rather than numbers no matter how large and sometimes because of them. Hence Spielberg's highlighting of the girls red coat in Schindler's list.

@273kelvin IMO evil does not exist, except in our minds.

@EdEarl But neither does the law of gravity

@273kelvin Oh? What holds us to the Earth? What holds the Earth in orbit around the Sun, and the Moon around the Earth? Gravity.

The Law of Gravity is a statement about Gravity, and you say it does not exist. Why?

@EdEarl What I am saying is that only exists in our minds. Orbits etc. support the concept but they are not the actual law. It is when all said and done "a concept" just like calculus, truth, or beauty.
The law of gravity has no mass or energy,so where is it?

@273kelvin The difference in the Law of Gravity and evil is that the Law allows anyone to calculate orbits, escape velocity, terminal velocity, etc. and everyone comes to the same prediction/answer. However, the idea of evil does not allow us to predict anything. It is merely what we say about something or someone we don't like.

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