Regardless of whether or not you believe in God, do you believe that Evil is real?

[Snsl153]

Is the existence of God a necessary precondition for the existence of evil, and if so, why? The book of 1 Samuel in the Bible actually mentions an "evil spirit" from God more than once, so God, if "He" exists, certainly is not omnibenevolent.

[Ms_Facesitter]

Interesting thought.
Evil is real. Atheists. We don't believe in God, or the Devil. We just believe that whatever we do, is self motivated. But we don't see 'Evil' as the same thing.
I see 'evil' as someone who has malicious intentions towards others. Someone who chooses to ruin the day of someone else, or worse, ruin someone's life. If I wanted to hurt you, I do it because I wanted to, because I hate you. It's my choice and some higher ups in the sky or the debts of the earth have nothing to do with it. "If we believe in Evil, why not God?" Well, add one 'o' to 'god'. We believe that people can be evil, but we also believe that people can be good.

[OldSchool_Metalhead]

In order for good to exist evil has to as well. Like how light can't exist without darkness

[This_Is_My_Opinion8]

No it is not necessary for a God to exist for good and evil to exist.
Let's learn some biology here.
Humans are social animals. Look at any other social animal and you will see a pattern. Wolves for example, when they fight they growl, scratch and mildly bite, but the NEVER actually full force bite members of their own pack. When gorillas fight is the same, they have rules to assure they don't harm each other to much.

Of course sometimes they kill members of their own societies, like humans do, but those are exceptions, just like in humans. We don't go around killing each other. Just like other wolf pack attack other wolf packs.

You can say "but we do go around killing each other a lot! Look at the Russian - Ukraine war"
Because what each of us considers their community is not "all humans beings on earth"
The same russian soldier that will kill a Ukraine civilian for nothing is the same person that would die to protect his own. Whatever is the same religious group, the same county, the same ethnicity, what each of us considers to be their community varies.

In resume, good and evil, morals of you will, come from our biology as social animals and our social evolution.
That makes so that morals are relative... YES! There are no moral absolutes.

The final argument one can make os that whitout morals absolutes then we are fucked because we will kill each other.
Well reality disagrees. The vast majority, as in over 90% of prison inmates are religious.

Having your morals dictated by biology means you will do good by others in your community always. Being religious means you will do good because you are afraid of hell. So at the first moment you find an excuse or during a hot head moment, you will act against your community.

[jshm2]

You're confused.

God is infinite, hence everything comes from and returns to him in it's course. What we regard as "evil" may be something different from what actually is evil. Mainly on merit of us being subjective, human and mortal.

A light scratch at any history would uncover acts of great evil. But we balance that with acts of progress that may have lead to.

But the scriptures, in translation, point out things that genuinely are to be regarded as "evil" by the one person who would know. i. e. God.

[Snsl153]

How am I "confused"? All I did was ask a question.

[Kaneki05]

Evil exists because the concept of hurting other's hurts ourselves in the long run. If a social animal hurts another one part of it's social group it will lead to the fall of the social group, aka why certain understanding and rules are made within these animals as they live together.
And it's nothing more than that, other than we make more complexity out of it but we also make houses that are complex versions of a animal making a burrow shrugs.
It don't have anything to do with the bible since the bible does not pre-date humans or other religions for that matter.
Therefore yes evil exists as a social concept, though I am sure for a lion it's more seen as unspoken instinct. Therefore the evil part only comes from humans and wouldn't exist without us.
So it both does yet don't. But I can tell you now the idea of it never came from a book, it existed way before that among creatures that pre-date humans.

[electromagnetic]

Evil as in spirits or evil people?

There are so horrible People on the planet that don’t deserve to see the light of day ever. As for spirits, I don’t know. I never really believed much in paranormal. I think the more I do, the more it’ll freak me out than scare me

[-Asca-]

Ye it is real. I don‘t see why god would have anything to do with it. The idea that things are evil only if and because god says so is tupid. That would make what is and isn’t evil entirely arbitrary and not based on any objective reasons. What is and isn‘t evil is based on what causes harm to living beings (Who can suffer needlessly) cause they are the only ones to give any meaning to the otherwise dead universe.
Why would it be evil to have sex before marriage or similar stuff that doesn‘t hurt anyone in any way? It doesn’t make sense. And there‘s hundreds of examples like this.

[Fvghtlxght]

I believe in god and Jesus. And yes I believe it's real. I notice it when I watch a really racy tv show. For example, the boys. If I don't watch that tv show I feel my mind is normal. Then after watching an episode of that tv show I have annoying intrusive thoughts about bad stuff. Stuff I would never think about.

[Snsl153]

Like what?

[Daniela1982]

I don't see how anyone can believe in evil without also believing in the opposite, believing in good. God is the only thing that keeps evil on earth in check. In the last days God will withdraw the Holy Spirt from earth and there will be evil never seen before since the beginning of time.

[Guy13]

No, it is not as God does not perpetuate or perpetrate Evil. Creator, God is a necessary condition for the Beings, themselves.
—Man chooses Not the Good or chooses the Good before him. Intelligently designed with Right/wrong, Conscience/ Conscious, and Freedom of the Will.
—Man does Evil BUT man would not Be to Do Evil unless Creator, God, a necessary condition, Is. So, as a tertiary Construct Evil could not be realized in our Creator, God’s Design if there was not firstly:
-Creator God Is
-man created
-Evil chosen by man
God created man Very Good. Man chose not God (Good) thereby defining and perpetrating Evil 👿.
—Clear?

[Snsl153]

No, not clear at all. The free will argument for the existence of evil just doesn't work, if only because it doesn't account for the bad things that happen to people that are not the result of anyone's choice to do evil.

[Guy13]

That’s your unproven or not Reasoned opinion.
When one puts off or ignores then one chooses. To choose not the option before one is a Determination.-And at the crux of that Determination is Choice.
-To choose to or to choose Not is Choice. In every Event or Choice there is Consequence. What you are contesting is Consequence not Choice. “Bad Choices” which could entail choosing the thing before you, not choosing the thing before you or pretending the thing before you is not there…does not void the Effect (Consequence).
—Now as God determines Consequences can be delayed or not be privy to the generalized Public as Abortion demonstrates. Abortion and all the Choice therein, as well as immediate and long-term Effects/Consequences, occur. I’m sure no one wanted Evil, however, Choice necessitates Outcome/Consequences. And every choosing or choosing not, despite personal hope or intent, has Consequence.
—Explain how my statements are inaccurate please rather than invalid because no one chose to do Evil.
—Fleshy, fallen, and without a Holy Good in us…that I can agree too

[ohshee]

There is evil all over our planet look at ignorance ignorance is one of the greatest evils on this planet because people choose to be ignorant a lot of things in our world and they destroy the world by being ignorant because they are followers most of them they choose not to see the truth and they can sit here and fight all they want with their words and their stupidity but ignorance is real because they choose to be part of the problem and not part of the solution that is the greatest evil

[vald9inches]

Evil and morality in general is a very subjective thing. For examples certain tribes eat their dead to honor them where in western cultures it would be considered horrific and unthinkable act. So I don't believe in evil just like how I don't believe any animal out there is evil

[SkyCastle90]

From a psychological standpoint I do believe there are people who lack the empathy and remorse to overlook the suffering of others, which is not necessarily evil, but could lead to evil actions depending on the individual.

[Anonymous]

Don't believe in a God or Gods and while I might use the word 'evil' at times its just a quick and easy way of conveying an idea it is not referencing a counterpart to a divine 'good'.

I can't check all my work to see how i have used it previously but I suspect that I have generally if not exclusively used it to decribe something which is immoral, with morality being defined by the priniciples of anarchism or similar.

[lightbulb27]

Yes we are living in it… the j owl wedge of good and evil. It gets twisted to look like good and feel good when it’s evil to others.


It’s a sound model for human reality. Its in essence energy drawn from emotions.

[Khronuskeeper]

Evil is defined as 'profoundly immoral and wicked'. If you accept that morals come from a combination or your brains hardwiring and you personal experiences in life, you can easily accept that evil exists, with or without God.

[genericname85]

having morals merely means that you have "some" form of distinction between right or wrong. you could say murder is right and being nice to people is wrong. that's still "a moral".

[Khronuskeeper]

To be moral, is to be concerned with the principles of eight or wrong behaviours. To be moral and consider murder a right behaviour as opposed to simply not caring about right or wrong, would be so incredibly rare that you can't really form an argument based upon it.

[genericname85]

no. that's you filling the words "right" and "wrong" with your subjective meaning. i don't agree with that meaning. but that isn't dictated by or inherent to the word "moral". that's subjective opinion.

[genericname85]

i don't disagree with that meaning *** as in i agree that murder is wrong. but again. moral does not make that distiction. in fact murder is considered to be moral in some states that have the death penalty still. so yeah.

[Khronuskeeper]

No, no it's not. I used right and wrong as placeholders. I have my ideas, and these hypothetical people who place murder in the 'right' box for sure exist. My argument is how common these people are. I argue that they are incredibly rare. What is more common, is people who do not care for 'right' and 'wrong' labels, immoral people.

[genericname85]

rarity doesn't matter for principle. the human experience in general is very similar across all humans, that's why they make similar judgement calls. most people associate racism with "whites discriminating against blacks". but that doesn't mean that blacks discriminating against whites is "not" racism, just cause it rarely happens in the western world.

[genericname85]

so we basically agree. everyone puts thei concept of what's "right" in the right box and vice versa for "bad". most people do it very similarly. that doesn't mean this is some sort of "objective universal truth".

[Khronuskeeper]

You are getting sidetracked. The question is does evil exist. Evil is defined as immoral and wicked. Yes that exists. No matter what you want to put in your right and wrong boxes. An immoral person doesn't care about either.

[Khronuskeeper]

I never argued that there was on objective moral truth?

[genericname85]

i agree with your definition of evil. even though i would leave the word "wicked" out of the definition, as that makes the definition circular, cause wicked means lack of moral/evil. but anyway, looking into what "moral" is, isn't a "side track", if that's part of the definition that you introduced. what i'm getting at is that this is a subjective judgement. i see subjective judgements or "opinions" not as things that "exist", cause existence is defined as "the fact or state of living or having objective reality." and opinions are neither living nor do they have objective reality.

[Khronuskeeper]

Well I introduced the term immoral, not moral. Though I do agree with the cyclical nature of including wicked.

As for moral, as I have explained it doesn't have anything to do with what you believe is right or wrong. It is to do with wether you care about what is 'right' or 'wrong'.

What you then decide to out under those labels IS subjective

[genericname85]

ok. but then again. back to the idea of considering murder to be right and being nice to be wrong. it's a possible individual judgement someone could make. it's not immoral. because it doesn't indicate that the person doesn't "care" about right or wrong as you said. they do care. they just fill the meaning of right and wrong differently.

[genericname85]

and also i don't think "caring" about it matters. you have a concept of right or wrong or you don't. you're moral or imoral. "caring" isn't part of the equation in my understanding.

[Khronuskeeper]

Yes I have already agreed that it's possible. That person would by definition not be evil. They would be labelled plenty of other things, but evil would not be true.

Caring does matter. Moral - 'Concerned with the principals of right or wrong behaviours'. If you are moral, you choose to live by the by those concepts, no matter what you put in your boxes.

[genericname85]

yeah i see we mostly agee :D i just don't know if caring is the right word. i think you just have to make a choice. it's not that you are necessarily passionate about your choice. i think it's more that you litterally can't surive without it.

[Khronuskeeper]

I can't say I've disagreed with what you've said to be fair, just that some of it was not the intended topic :)

Caring does come with other meanings, so perhaps it is a little confusing, true. However it is appropriate as it can mean, to be concerned with/for

[Sixgunsound]

You cannot possibly believe in good unless you also believe it’s opposite. How else would you know which you are doing question whether you have religion or not, philosophy and pointing in the right direction.

[CountessSarah]

Evil is just an abstract concept. It's not some 'real', tangible thing, no.
There are no doubt things I would describe as evil but it's all subjective.

[NobodyXox]

I do think there are people who act evil sometimes. But I don't believe in someone being pure "evil". There's a always something that makes them act that way.

[NathanDavis]

we, are bad...

it is us... it is in our nature

but that's just part of what we are and we can be, of course... there's always the other side

[normalice]

If something is to be designated evil, in my opinion, it is people choosing to pretend to believe a lie for the purpose of getting others to believe it.

[Hispanic-Cool-Guy]

Yes. And an evil spirit from God just means God sended or more accurately put alllowd a disturbing and evil spirit to torment Saul mind for his disobedience towards God.