Ok, first off, forgive me if this is in the wrong section (Mods, feel free to move!)
Ive been having a very philosophical evening and many thoughts have come into my mind. these are not things I havent considered before, but i realised, this was the first time i had tried to grapple for answers as a pagan.

So, here's what ive been thinking about, and i'd really love to hear what you all think on these things too.
Do you believ in a force of evil? A negative force which makes people do bad things?
Ive often wondered how a person can kill another if its not self-defence? How can grown adults hurt little children and knowingly cause them pain? I cannot watch the news if its about starving people, or children being murdered as it physically makes me ache with pain. Why do I feel like this? Why am i so sensitive?
Ive been in an abusive relationship, and often wondered how someone who supposedly loved me, could hurt me the way they did? ive never understood, how one person, can look into the eyes of another and cause that person pain, either physical or deeply emotional.
Why does genocide happen? I meanm why are millions tortured and killed?
Is it evil that seduces people or is it something else?
My previous beleifs as a christian, meant i had a ready answer for all this, it was satan's work, the work of the evil one etc.........
Now, tho, i dont know. I do believe in positive and negative energy, but does it really all boil down to the idea that, "For evil to triumph, all good men have to do is nothing."???

OK, so thats a lot of points and im not expecting bullet answers to them all, but im interested in how you all feel your path answers these questions for you.

tree x (feeling like an extremely young sapling standing next to a mighty oak asking for advice!)

I'm going to move this to General Paganism as it's too good to be lost in the snug.

And then going to have a think about my answer

Simple answer....

ME!!!!

I am evil incarnate!!!

Mwahahahahahahahaaaaaaa ha haha etc.. (bored of maniacal laughter now)....

Jeesh... must stop drinking beer and replying to posts... *hiccup, burp, fart*

Sorry, evil is feeling tipsy.

Yes there is a power of evil and it is generated by human beings, not some airy fairy superior/ inferior beings. Evil is man's oldest excuse for doing wrong.

Wow.. this is a biggie.

Two concepts slightly muddled in my mind.



Do I believe in a force of evil? No.



Yes.. a negative energy... not force per say...



Eh.. no... I dont think it works that way at all. I dont think that we can be made to do anything. I think inanimate objects can be made to do things. But DO think that we can be influenced. Am I making sense?

Evil is purely man made, and dont forget, we're not that far along the evolutionary ladder at the moment. All those things we currently consider evil.. and dont get me wrong.. as sentient beings doing things like this to other sentient beings its firghtening.. but never the less... all those things are purely animalistic at some level.. starving people to fatten yourself.. thats purely tribal.. you take what you can when you can because you never know when you are going to eat again and to HELL with everyone else...

Hurting children... power...
Hurting the one you live with... power within the pack...
Genocide... my genes will prevail

Its all animal instinct no matter what way you look at it in my opinion, but that doesnt make it any less wrong. But if it helps... take heart.. look where we were 30 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago, 150 years ago.. things are getting better. Doesnt help right now I know.. but its all I got....

Its all animal instinct no matter what way you look at it in my opinion, but that doesnt make it any less wrong. But if it helps... take heart.. look where we were 30 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago, 150 years ago.. things are getting better. Doesnt help right now I know.. but its all I got....

[/quote]

I agree to a certain extent, but, ARE things really better than 30, 40 50 yrs ago?? I mean, REALLY? Is the world a better place now than it was then? personally, i dont think things have changed at all for the better. I beleive we are still in the same position we were 50 yrs ago except that, people are beginning to think about things more.

What do you all think?

tree (really enjoying this discussion!)

Paradoxically people are beginning to think about things less at the same time. Many people now think anything can be solved by starting an initiative about it, standing up and shouting about it without anything more meaningful, organising committees to look into things. e.g. the ASBO thing. What do they mean in real terms? It's just a bit of paper. So it may stop one specific chav going to one spcific area, but it doesn't address the problem of their behaviour, their attitude, their problems.
This is a bit wurbly, I'm on steroids and painkillers and stuff. What i mean to say is as people have become more aware of problems the paper needed to cover the cracks has got more cynical. 50 years ago people did things because they firmly thought they were the right thing to do whereas now people just want the problems to go away.

As to the whole evil thing, I'm still struggling to get out from under the satan problem. I think there may be forces for Chaos, but Chaos is not essentially evil. I think evil comes from within as Xalle said, but as to what makes a person tap into those feelings I don't know. "The devil made me do it" is as much of a cop-out as "god told me to do it".
Badger's Moon
xx

Hi Tree,

You've no doubt held one of your kids by the hands and whirled round and round so that their feet lift off the ground.

What makes them do that? - centrifugal force.

But any physicist will tell you there's no such thing - it's lack of centripetal force that produces that effect.

I think that, in the same way, there's no such thing as evil per se.

But an absence of good intent can have the same effect.

Well now, being as I have yet to find any spiritual/ideological/philosophic terms that can truly define it in Nature, I shall resolve to the laws of physics in as plain words as possible- namely the thing about equal opposite forces in cancellation. "Evil" begins as that state of consumption that has gone beyond its own ability to contribute the resources necessary in order to survive, it thus, henceforth, parasites from others. As it is this state requires ruthless cunning as well as the need for absolute control, it strives for its own absolute advantage in doing so.

Picture continuity as a dynamic balance between entropy and enthalpy, and that what keeps them from cancelling each other out, is Nature's ability to refine these into a whole array of variations in between- thus integrity is maintained and can be further expounded upon...et voila! We have the Multiverse (as Cos called it)!
In these terms, "Evil" is that which seeks the absolute- thus becomes ever more entropic, until it inevitably crosses that conservational limit where Nature counters with the equal opposite. Yup, kaboom! This is why the wiser of us Pagans prefer to carefully weigh out the circumstances before causing that ripple that ends in a tsunami!

In the spirit realm, however, which I have come to understand as a hyperdimensional state, much more transcendental laws must be taken into consideration. I have noticed on numerous occasions, a phenomenon where the unresolved entropies of the dead, can maintain their own entity by parasiting energies off the living. This is what Native Americans deem as being an "evil spirit" or "soul snatcher". This phenomena also accounts for the cold draft one experiences in the presence of such a manifestation. In this cosmology there is also a belief that such spiritual entropy can amass itself on the earth to such a degree that it is also a key contributor to global catastrophy.

Hmmmm, thats a very interesting and very thorough point Quas. i shall go off, ponder,and come back at a later point.

Tree

To be honest the main reason I don't necessarily believe in evil making folkes commit atrocities is simply because in a sense it negates their responsibility.

I do believe in a negative force, although force probably isn't quite the word... let me see... thinking something bad about someone is negative but not evil. Evil is I believe manmade and used to make the populace as a whole feel better about themselves. Afterall, we don't really want to believe that some people will do awful things, simply because they are bad, pure and simple.

I believe that negativity if not counterbalanced with positivity and I guess our societal taboos and niceities to a degree help to do that too, then what is called "evil" can occur. I do think people choose to do evil. Afterall, a psychopath doesn't automatically become a sadistic killer, while studying at uni I came across a paper which noted that many successful people are psychopaths, they channel that compulsion into excelling in their given field... of course a few become dangerous.

"Evil" if you want to call it that, appears to be very seductive, in part, I think because it is a form of power and for some people that sort of power can be very seductive.

I do not believe at all there is some force or bad angel/diety etc that makes individuals evil.. they do it themselves or have it done to them so they reciprocate. I think a concentration of such negativity in a person is what gives us "bad vibes" as well and has compounding effect.

There again of course, i could be utterly wrong and there is some great big bad evil... just seems a little too convenient to me though.

Do you believ in a force of evil? A negative force which makes people do bad things?

the simple answer is no I dont!

The universe isnt evil, neither is the chaos it came from, the gods arent evil, just pains in the ass ocasionally, evil is a human concept, invented by humans some time aftter they discovered fire and built their first Convenience store.

Yeah, I think they are, I really do.

I know that we are floundering a bit at the moment and there is a huge cynicisim about, but I think that comes more from frustration than anything else, because I think there are a HUGE amount of people out there who would much rather the world was a better, more equal sensible place.

Just a couple of examples.

Women.

Women now are pretty much their own compass now. I know not everything is quite 100% but we have the vote, the right to property, to choose what happens or doesnt happen to our own bodies we didnt always have that.

Slavery.

I mean thats a complete no no now. Again.. its not totally resolved, but it IS getting pretty close.

Sexual Discrimination.

There is an increasing acceptance of what some like to class as "alternative" lifestyles... people being gay in other words. You have to admit the planet on the whole is more accepting than we were 50 years ago.. again.. not totally resolved, plenty of nutters out there who still think a sopt of Gay Bashing on a saturday night is A1 for fun... but its NOT the norm.

Poverty.

Tough one this one.. Its not resolved, not by a long shot, but you cant say that people arent trying... governments could do more, but people... they're doing what they can.

I think part of the frustration you feel, and certainly some of what I feel, is the "why cant this just be done" why cant some people just grow up and accept people are gay, or black, or female, or immigrants, or whatever... But I think we are too close to it because we are living in it. We're at the end game stage with all this stuff.. and yeah ok.. it might take another 50 to 100 years to get it all squared off, but I do believe it will happen.

Sometimes you need take your eyes off the summit and look back along the path and be proud of how far you have come.. it doesnt mean you stop walking, but you could admire the view a little...

Indeed "Evil" by human moral definition is an ideal that, much like "Good" simply doesn't fare well in its quest for "perfection" in the real world. Too much of an attempt to enforce either one or the other on natural causality, tends to reduce dynamic equilbrium down to a ever growing state of inertia, where, of course things start to break down into quantum singularity. Its rather like gravitational runaway where mass-density collapses beyond the Schwarzschild limit, where atomic spin ceases, rendering all particles into that neutrino jet of singularity.
Yes, Nature abhors a vacuum.

In this I find the big misconception in human ideology is their attempt to relate chaos as being "evil", when actually its too much order, that is the actual culprit. Were it not for the interventions of "deterministic chaos" on such states of inertia, there would be no continuity of existence in any form. In this respect, I find most human ideals dangerously contrary to the fact, and prefer to keep a safe distance wherever necessary.

Define evil. What is considered by our particular society in this particular time would not necessarily be considered evil by another society in another time.

And no, I don't believe in evil.

I don't believe in"evil" I think thats a term made up by modern man to explain some of the things we do occasianally that remind us (even if it is subconsciously) of our animalistic ancestry.
I would imagine that in our early days if you coudn't kill or maime, or if you wern't at the top of the ladder or apart of the top tribe you wouldn't survive very long.
I do believe there is negative force/energy this counters the positive force/energy, I don't think these can "make" you do, or think things though.
Need to think some more about this...
Blessed be
R.Hart

whew! this is a tall order. Here's my twopenneth.

Do I believe in evil? - yes, definitely. But I don't ascribe to any entity. The human race is capable of doing many things - especially in the name of progress and control (a good film to watch about human evil is 'instinct' starring Anthony Hopkins). Genocide, murder, torture ARE evil things. There's no mystery there.

Is it as a result of an evil force? - from my point of view a 'force' is life, the spark of life and is within living things. I don't think that this spark is responsible for what is done. I think that it is what we do with our life that makes us good/evil etc. I think evil is peculiar to the human condition (as Hopkins says in instinct - animals fight - humans make war).

How can people hurt the vulnerable and defenceless (ie kids)? - there's lots of possible explanations for this one (see psychiatric/psychological documents on medical conditions and abnormal psychology) Here are my thoughts - power and control over another is very addictive and exciting for some people - probably because deep down they are very unsure, afraid, angry, feel bad and so on and all those thoughts and feelings escape in our behaviour/actions which lead us to hurting others. In politics, I think it has to do with power and control over a nation etc. In relationships, its usually because some dodgy expectations of what our partner is supposed to do for us (actually partners don't have to do anything for us, being there is what's important- after all isn't that what love is?)

Why are you so sensitive? - I'm not going to intrude on this one. I don't know why. Sorry to hear you were in a destructive relationship - that's a hard experience - as I know all too well from my own experience. What kept me 'sane' in the end was a clear idea about right and wrong behaviour (re: aggression) and sticking to it. I also let my anger out safely (punching cushions, talking, self help, therapy etc) so I wouldn't pass on the hurt.

I don't have a path as such, I am very drawn to druidry and may be shamanism too. I am (for the nearest word) agnostic - not quite aethiest because I believe there is power/force that is infinitely more greater than us - I just don't think its a human or human like, or diety etc.

Hope I've said something useful.

fizz

Evil is manmade. Think about the animals, is there such a thing as evil with them? They kill too, but they do this due to the survival instinct concerning hunger or protection of themselves and their young when feeling threatened.

Evil is an attitude I believe, much like sensitivity, empathy or sympathy is. Where is there evil in nature? When there are divestating Hurricanes, tornado's or tsunamies, would that be consider evil or just the natural order of nature?

When man murders, he does so with conscious thought to doing it and it's about power over someone, greed in that they want something you have or fear, yet Soldiers who kill in time of war is not considered murder even though war may be considered evil. War in most cases is technically a matter of self-defense.

Do you believe in a force of evil? A negative force which makes people do bad things?

No I don't. I don't think that anything in nature including humans is either evil or the opposite of evil (can't think of a better word/phrase, "good" isn't strong enough).
I think that people can behave in an evil or "opposite of evil" way. For me evil is one end of a spectrum with "opposite of evil" at the other. You can say that people are at one point or another in the spectrum but whereabouts they are can change.



A second, related question: In order to do something that is classed as evil would the perpetrator have to be sentient?

My answer is probably yes. We could judge it as a bad thing from our view point of view but if the person/animal/whatever didn't understand that actions have consequences and couldn't understand the world outside themselves then I wouldn't say the act was evil. So in my mind animals can't behave in an evil way. Neither can people with very severe learning difficulties if they can't understand that others feel/think things and that their actions can affect others.


Arddyn

I don't nececarally think that negativity is "bad" or that posativity is "good" they each have there own place and time. sometimes negativity can be "good" and positivity can be "bad". I think it depends on the situation at the time.
bb
R.Hart

It's all a matter of perspective.

Good questions Tree - ones to which I have no answers as am also pondering the same - as you have previously ascribed it all to Satan and his demons!! NOw - i don't know!


ED walks away scratching his head , deep in thought

Very good questions indeed. Is evil man-made? Yes. Is 'evil' only done by humans? No. Dolphins, (bottlenose) despite their friendly smiles, are capable of rape (male and female victims), torture and assault. Are dolphins evil? No. I think we attribute 'evil' to many creatures- only some of them human *. Mass murder? Been done elsewhere int he animal kingdom. Rape? Same, as I say. Torture? Again, yes.

The sticking point, for me, is whether or not the creature doing the 'evil' is conscious that it's wrong...which brings in a whole 'nother argument about whether very young humans know right from wrong.

Hmm.. tricky philosophical stuff, this. Basically? For me, evil exists, and we, as humans, are the direct face of it.


* As far as watching the news goes- well, don't. I have the same sick fascination with BBC news, etc...none of it is good. none of it helps me feel better about this weird world we live in. Try 'Digg' science. Much better for the soul.

(Also try http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ it seems a bit happy clappy, but it cheers me up no end...really!)

Perhaps the world's most beautiful artwork that best illustrates the cosmology of "dynamic equilbrium" as I have described, can be found in the great water temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. This link gives a more detailed description of its huge bas-relief:

http://www.veloasia.com/library/buckley/churning_milk.html

enjoy!

Just been reading my son's GCSE Religion book it suggests two types of evil - moral evil (ie war, cruelty etc) and natural evil (tsunamis, earthquakes etc)

Natural evil?

The mind boggles.

I'm gonna be pure cheeky here

Moral evil??? George Dubya & co??

Natural evil??? The act of their conception..... ha ha

Barnowl... Ye ha... it's Friday

Heh heh, if that's what they believe, I'd love to see them try to exorcise one!

Dear gods! Is this what apsses for religious "EDUCATION" these days?
Not exactly sane and balanced is it!!! How can tsunamis and other "natural! events possibly be seen as evil????
I remember when i was in secondary school, altho my Re teacher was a catholic, he was very open to us asking all sorts of questions or studying things from our own angles. So, When it came to project time, i did mine on reincarnation.funnily enough, many of my clasmates had never heard of it!!! Ah for open class discussions like those were!

Tree x

I don't believe in evil as a natural force, it's humans that have decided what's good and evil. However I think that people who do really horrible things are either a. really really selfish and willing to do anything for their own ends or b. Mentally fucked up by their upbringing.

Okay there is evil in the world and its called AOL!

id have thought a certain food chain beginning with Mac woudl have been up for that title!!! lol

Tree x

No I am afraid I have to confess to my belief in Satan and the fact that he is incarnate in the body of George dubya

Rupert Murdock and Bill Gates!

Have pondered further on this. And then I went to eat some chocolate.
If there's a 'force' for evil then I can be as evil as I like cos it's not my fault. I was taken over by this evil force and I was only following orders.
Similarly I can't take any credit for good things I do since again I was only following orders.
Hmmm.
It's back to the old saw about guns. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

Conclusion: No forces at work, just people, some doing good stuff and some doing bad stuff. The bad ones will come back as plankton.
Badger's Moon
xx

Arent' they the spawn of satan rather than satan himself incarnate?????

There IS evull!
It is what comes of reading Quasi's links on things metaphysically discombobulating on the "Time Travel Not Possible" thread. (I am STILL wurbling.)

Oh, you wouldn't believe the half of what they teach - its all biased - even richard the lionhearts been second placed by the importance of muslim experience (not that I am knocking that as a religion its just that there has to be so much 'correctness' in education today.

Manchester United! The Evil Empire! Pikey.

Sorry Pikey I think Arsenal beats Manchester United at that hands down!!

I heard of a vicar doing a primary school visit who got a kid to write his fave word in toothpaste (why?) on a piece of card - the boy elected to write hi football team but ran out of room and the vicar was left standing in front of the assembly holding a large piece of card with the word ARSE on it!

my thoughts...

Well, i dont belive in an evil force or negative energy/force, forces are only forces they have no conscious motive to be good or evil, they are just forces. Evil and good are just psycological destinctions to create forms of order, and is relative to the interpretation of the collective.

What makes an action good or bad? it is the the premeditated choice and intent of the action the empathy and relationship toward that action. for exampl, youthinasia, (cant spell), someone is dieing painfully and slowly, the loved one makes the choice and intends to put them to sleep, the intent is to kill them, this is on the face of it murder, it is an 'evil' action, thought to be evil by conscious thought but is it really evil to let someone rest peacefuly without the slow pain and struggle? we do it to animals when they get to old or are incurably injured. This is an act of love, to releace the sufferer from their pain and in my opinion not an evil.


As has been said befor , the concept is a human invention and a cop out for the nature of our own existance and responsibility. Yes there are bad actions, and bad people who hurt and cause pain but that is their choice, their intent which makes it 'evil'maby out of feer or ilogical hatred or even for selfish gain. 'evil' is just a name to the empathy we get from the intent of the act. it is a state of mind.

i think that makes sentce hummm, maby im contradicting mu self...

Absolutely - proof of the existence of evil!

Frey

um... Im gonna disagree with you on this one point in your post. Energy DOES have positive and negative. All energy does, everything has an opposite, there is always balance.

Youre not over sensitive, its others that lack sensitivity...so we are the lucky ones.

ps. Did you get the TV license yet?

The BBC making everyone pay their tv license to watch a load of old crap, or programmes that your parents watched when they were kids!

Now that's evil!! lol

BB, Minty. xx