how good is absolute good?

Question

How good is good?
Can absolute good allow any evil to remain?
In moveis the good guy gets the bgad guy who then cries mercy!
the good guy (being good) decides to show mercy and the bad guy tries one last treacherous attack and forces the good guy to kill him against his will.
would not absolute good be equally as ruthless as the evil it fights seeking to utterly destroy the evil?

Why is it that if the example to show a premise does not fit your idea of a PERFECT example you completely ignor the point it makes?
I never said that a movie hero is absolute good, in fact, I was trying to show the opposite and pose the question of absolute good, would it act that way?and I never said that life IS a movie. If you are unable to get with the spirit of a question, why not just move along?
absolute sarcasm is appreciated though, as it shows that you DO understand!

donsoze,where did you get the idea or definition that "The purpose of Good is to preserve, so can not (in good conscience) destroy Evil."?
However you bring up a point that you seem to have missed, if evil destroys and good preserves, then the only way to preserve what evil seeks to destroy, is to destroy the evil.
and this is not a contradiction.
in order to protect the body, antibodies destroy that which seeks to destroy the body (foreign matter, virus, bacteria etc)
no one could correctly think that they were doing bad in destroying something else that seeks to destroy!

randy, I did not state (directly, at least) "that a quality of the absolute goodguy is mercy"
I am quite sure that God will have NO merct on Satan, his fallen, angelic followers, nor those that have the mark of the beast.

it seems to me, and hence the question to get othr opinions, that the goal of good is to utterly erradicate evil and this would mean, in the movie scenario, not giving the bad guy the chance for one last chance to do evil.
of course we are outside of that scene and our judgement does not affect it either way.

Answer 1

great?

Answer 2

Absolute Good is pretty good. To answer your question, no. Not unless you consider ruthlessness to be a quality of goodness, which we as a society have decided it isn't. We find mercy to be of a higher moral standard, and just because the "bad guy" doesn't accept the mercy in the movies, doesn't mean that the "good guy" shouldn't offer it. It's not the smart move, it's the right move. That's what makes him the "good guy".

Answer 3

But absolute good is screwed over by its very nature. The purpose of Evil is to destroy so it destroys good easily. The purpose of Good is to preserve, so can not (in good conscience) destroy Evil.

Therefore (unless you're in Hollywood) Evil always wins.

Answer 4

It's all relative and I doubt if there's a DEFINITE storyline of ABSOLUTE GOOD in this planet Earth that we live in. I imagine it will have to be under a different set of circumstances, one where the Code of HONOR and INTEGRITY become the prevailing principles absolutely.

The example you give is the Law of the Land: "Survival of the fittest." It is one that does not distinguish between Good and Evil...

Peace be with you!

Answer 5

Does Evil Exist???...........


The University professor challenged his students with this question.

"Did God create everything that exists?"

A student bravely replied, "Yes he did!"

"God created everything?" The professor asked.

"Yes sir", the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are, then God is evil."

The student became quiet before such an answer. The professor, quite pleased with himself, boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?"

"Of course", replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, "Professor does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The students snickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit
energy. Absolute zero (-460? F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."



The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does."

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into
many colors and study the various wave lengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of Darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure
the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it everyday. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These
manifestations are nothing else but evil.

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least is does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

The young man's name -- Albert Einstein

Answer 6

Well, if you view your god as absolute good, you are sadly mistaken.

Consider:
The supposed god is all good,and all powerful, and all knowing.
Since he is all knowing, he knows the future.
If the future is known, it can't turn out any other way.
Since the supposed god created us, we are going to turn out exactly as he meant us to, because he knows how we will turn out.
Since he is perfect, we have no choice but to turn out the way we were meant to be, because he wouldn't be perfect if we didn't turn out the way he meant.
That eliminate the idea of free will. Furthermore, it eliminates the idea of an absolute good god, because if he created us to be exactly the way we are, and we have no choice to be any other way, then the people that go to hell were sentenced to go to hell from birth. They never had a choice.

That is an EVIL god, if you ask me.

Answer 7

Funny you answer your own question. You state, quite profoundly, that a quality of the absolute goodguy is mercy. Longsuffering. That is exactly what God is doing now. And when that's over, it's over baby. :)

Answer 8

Absolute good is pure, holy, sacred, & untouched of evil. It's the purest thing you can find, but the search for it is like trying to find The Fountain of Youth. Therefore, it cannot exist in earthly form.

Answer 9

There is good and evil in the heart of everyone. The degree of control we have on our inclinations, in my opinion, determine how close we are to absolute goodness. A worthy goal, difficult to achieve

Answer 10

I will give you an example of two "absolute good" and compare them. Absolute good #1 God Jehova- he is supposed to look out for his people yet in his history he has committed murder, infaticide, and demanded sacrifice of animals and humans (jesus) He allows evil to exist (Lucifer) . Absolute good #2 the Goddess of Witches and Wiccans. She has never asked for sacrifice, never had one of her childeren sacrificed to save us, she does not allow for the existance of a supreme evil being as she had never created such. Her rule is "Love unto all things". She accepts all her childeren regardless of their belief in her or not. There is no eternal damnation or punishment. We just pay our karmic debt that we ourselves create. There is no "devil" to make us do it.

My answer is then which "good" do you follow. Is the Good of one better than others? It depends on the shade of white.

Answer 11

Absolute good wouldn't kill the evil, rather, convert it.
In such case, there is no absolutely good super hero who ends up killing the bad guy.