The Origin of Species

with or without religion....people will do good or evil....people just use it to hide behind.

so if an athiest does evil (no religion attached) then does it really have to do with religion or a sick mind? same with any religion....if they do evil, does it have to do with religion or a sick mind?

The Origin of Species

Religion can do its part to feed and breed sick minds. More people have killed and more war began over religion than not. WWII was largely religious based, estimated death toll of WWII 48,231,700.

i know this wasn't to me. and i know you didn't condone them. but could good and evil be what someone perceives?

to me the above is evil, wrong, and bad

My point is that good and evil are definition used to describe culturally unacceptable actions, but they do exist as anything more. They are not like gravity or magnetism. Some talk like they are.

This falls into the realm of Sociology not general religion. What has religion ever done for us? For that matter, what have the Romans ever done for us?

rome is the heart of the catholic church...i'm not catholic. but the romans have done their share as well....Nero for one. the Coliseums to house barbaric sporting events, etc

I was quoting Monty Python

i think i see what you are saying....maybe i just didn't understand.
are you saying good and evil can't be proven? and that it is more of a matter of opinion?

That is a rather simplified explanation, but not inaccurate.

ww2 was started by a very sick man. there is nothing credible about him. he was a psycho and used religion to justify what his warped mind wanted to do. hitler only used it to hide behind. all sorts of religious beliefs fought against him for what he was doing

There is no evil. Right and wrong, good and bad are constructs created by religion. Don't go trying to put words into my mouth by saying I condone those actions. I believe in acting in such a way as to make the world a more pleasurable and better place to live in. Those types of actions are not socially acceptable and do not benefit mankind or make the world a better place.

You do realize that Hitler wanted to be a priest, and grew up a Roman catholic, right?


This is one of my problems with Religion. You really have no proof that Hitler wasn't a believer, but still all you say is that he wasn't a true believer.
The only logical conclusion one can come to, if "they weren't true believers" is to be believed, is that no one is a true believer, and if no one can be a true believer, why have religion?

Actually Darwin wrote the Origin of Species WITH God in mind because he was a religious man but he likewise was a truth seeker and a scientist who used Empirical Method in his studies and subsequent authorship of OoS. He was not out to debunk God with it. Even he says that he "seen method in what on the surface seemed like God's madness."

Darwin was not an atheist by any stretch of the imagination. He was a scientist though and a real one for his day!

so how do you explain those without any religion???? are they just sick in the mind where as the religious has to be crazy because of religion?

Again good and evil are purely from the point of view of each individual.

I can likewise ask if Anarchy is good or evil.

The thing about arguing if outside of religion or God can good or evil exist is basically asking if it takes a sun in the sky to make a day.

Night and day are also human concepts. Innately the universe seems to us to be a big empty nothing (blackness) dotted by stars and we happen to have one close enough for us to have light in the darkness. Outside of the spin on the earth and the sun does DAY exist? The same can be applied to good and evil. Without man to define them they do not exist. With man and any other higher intelligence it does.

It is Homocentric to think that good and evil exist only because "MAN" thought of it. Even Dogs have a sense of right and wrong to a very strong degree. The funny thing to me in this argument is that creatures that can dream seem to have a certain degree of self awareness and self understanding. In that these creatures can make decisions based on criteria we assign to our decision making processes. A worm knows it exists but does it even care about the environment around it? Only if it is threatened with harm. otherwise all it does is look for food and occasionally when the hormonal triggers go off mates. Even worms learn to avoid dangerous areas by smell taste and touch. Do they dream? I doubt it.
Rats do dream. I raised pet rats and I know them intimately as a creature. They act a lot like us in fundamental ways. I have seen them sleeping with their eyes darting under closed eye lids and their bodies jerking like ours when we dream. They can show affection as well and in some of my more exceptional pets they had personalities that really shown them to be more than just a one pound ugly tailed vermin. I also had pet rats that turned out to be nothing more than snake food because if you can call it willful I would because they would not get with the program and not stop biting. Even cats have personalities.

I have to argue in counter point to the prevailing argument that Good and Evil do not really exist that the viewpoint is almost completely egocentric because it discounts the possibility that there may be a perception based "instinctual" basis for the ideas of good and evil. There at least is a right and wrong choice.

Would a worm willing go into a salt plain where it knows it will be dried out and die? Even they have to have an idea of what is the right way to go vs. the wrong way to go.

If a lion is chasing an Impala is the right choice to run the hell away from the lion? Or should it run right at it which would very much be the wrong choice for it in the end?

At this point I see a need to qualify your argument past the currently presented counterpoints because the only place good and evil do not exist is in oblivion. The very universe itself much like our lives is/are a contradiction of everything we understand.

but that is the gist correct? if so then i am more inclined to agree with that