http://www.slate.com/articles/healt.../does_evil_exist_neuroscientists_say_no_.html Like most Slate articles, this is actually pretty lame, but the topic of the article is interesting. What really is evil? The response the article's author has to neuroscience seems like a very human, very emotional one... but also very desperate. Like we need the concept of evil to keep going in our lives. Evil is one of those things we can talk about without defining. And what is good but anti-evil? Why do people react in such horror if we suggest evil has natural causes? Or that people are generally not good or evil, but rather do good and bad things? I think it's because people feel a need to believe in absolute free will, whether science accepts it or not (and most scientists would agree that even if there is no free will in absolute terms, it is as if it exists). Anything considering evil to be in the brain people react to, as that puts it out of our control. Anything considering evil a product of society is reacted harshly to, as that makes evil mundane and hard to place on an individual. The notion of a devil seems odd to accept, as that really has the same problems as those two. So maybe it's not the moral implications, but the fear that maybe evil isn't something above and around us, isn't something special. I think it scares us to know that under some circumstances, we may be evil. Under some circumstances evil people might be good. Evil seems to be a linguistic concept, one we throw around without thinking much about it. But when it comes down to it, I think evil, as in existential evil, is just rampant out of control speculation, trying to make something of unrelated events that are just too awful to ignore.
It is anything but a supernatural force. It is the acts of humans and the dangers of the world we live in.
But what makes all those things one force? What makes "evil" different than the more transparently general "bad stuff happening?"
You left out the obligatory option of "Liberalism/Islam/Illegal Immigrants/Communism/Socialism/Unions".
I think it depends on the severity. I believe once grave bodily harm or death occurs, depending on the situation, it could be deemed evil. I am not refuting your post, however I can comment on a more specific case if you would care to provide one.
