What do you believe to be the nature of "evil"?

Question

Is it within a person or without?

Is it giving in to one's desires or denying one's true self?

Have you ever encountered what you believe to be actual "evil"?

Answer 1

I do not believe in evil. We may describe some things people do which upset us as being evil, but that is only our judgment of our actions or the actions of others. Nor can we ourselves be evil simply because we may do things that we or others might judge to be wrong.

I particularly do not believe in evil beings. I believe such things as devils or vampires or demons exist, however it is my experience that it is our lack of understanding and judgement which describes such beings as evil, but that it is not a part of their inherent nature to be evil.

I believe evil does not exist because I believe in god and that god is good and that all things are created by god and therefor all things are good. It is then up to us to understand the things we consider to be evil and accept them as god does. God is all loving and all compassionate. If something happens which seems terrible then we need to understand the reason why that happened.

I believe we are each an integral part of god and that we are the co-creators of the universe and everything we experience, so at the core of all of our experiences we bear responsibility for having created our experiences, and we should therefor look inside ourselves to determine what it is among our feelings or beliefs that has caused us to create experiences which have hurt or upset us.

I don't think we create experiences to hurt or upset ourselves because we are evil, I think we do it out of ignorance and that we can learn better ways to create our experiences.

In the end, I believe we are all striving to become better human beings, but that some of us either become so badly hurt along the way that we may develop a desire to do harm or to be evil as a coping mechanism to empower ourselves and to sublimate the fear and anger within us that we may feel powerless to control, or else we may become lazy or complacent and neglect to do the work on ourselves which will help us to evolve into more loving, compassionate and nurturing human beings.

With regard to your specific sub-questions:

Everything in creation is a part of us. Nothing is genuinely outside of us. We are all inter-connected so if evil did exist it would be a part of us.

Denying your true self might be called evil if you actually knew your true self and were not confusing your true self and your ego. Surrendering to your desires might be considered evil if it caused you harm or brought harm to others. But, if your idea of your true self is that you are an evil person then perhaps it would not be evil to deny your true self. And if your desires were harmless then it may not be evil to indulge them, so these are two separate issues, not really related, even though they may appear to be related since we might consider resisting our desires to be self-denial.

I have worked with Satanists, only one of whom I believe actually desired to be evil. But I would not call him evil, just misguided. I have met the devil face to face but it was me, and I am not evil although some may say I am misguided. Every evil I have ever encountered was simply something I misunderstood, the evil was in how I misunderstood, perceived and judged the situation, not in something or someone else.

Answer 2

Evil is difficult to pin down, mainly because there is this "social contract" that codifies what behavior should be in order to maintain the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In reality, I have found that evil is destructive, not only of others but of the one who does/thinks the evil. The purpose of the social contract is not only to create a stable society but also to allow a species to survive as long as possible, while maintaining the greatest advantage to most of its number.

The evil within a society tends to destroy the framework, and like antibodies reacting against a virus in the human body, society seeks out the root of evil and neutralizes it. When the evil reaches a tipping point, the society is doomed or at least headed for a violent shake-up. The one thing that holds for all evildoers (or evil thinkers) is that they not only wreak destruction on others, but they destroy themselves without volition as well; thus they help to limit themselves in their purpose. This theme runs through a lot of the best fiction (note the blindness of Sauron's grandiose vision in Lord of the Rings and his undoing being partly his own fault for thinking in "evil mode," i.e., overlooking the small).

So, I would have to say that evil is destructive. It cannot build or make anew. It can only act on what has been built, and thus, in that sense, it is absence.

Answer 3

In my humble opinion, evil is the result of a lack of humanity. It is, inhuman. And why do I think that?

To perform a truly evil act, one must lack conscience and compassion. One must only have a concern with the betterment of self, no matter the result. It is, without question to me, psychopathic in nature.

The moment one adds "passion" to the mix, the act is no longer evil.

Yes. I have encountered what I would describe as actual evil. A truly psychopathic individual who had zero concern for anyone or anything outside of themselves. Truly bone chilling.

Answer 4

Contradiction: God is a Father. He's THE Father. The bible clearly says that there are no other gods apart from Him. He is a jealous God and will share His title with no one. If He's not God of all, then He's not God at all. The nature you're refering to is God's influence on all that has no free will (that influence being all powerful without limitations). So, no, I don't believe in any "Mother Nature" of any sort. God bless. :)

Answer 5

Evil exists. It manifests itself within us. If you believe Plato's ideas of the form and the soul we were aquainted with evil prior to joining our bodies. I think if this is true then we must accept or reject evil on a conscious level when we recognise it in our daily lives. To answer your last question I guess it all depends on what you consider to be evil.

Answer 6

Third question? YES
Second, truly evil people never consider "giving in" to their desires, they do, say, take what they want when they want and actually have no thought or conception of right or wrong.
They do however know how to make "normal" people shrink in horror and do it often just for laughs!

Answer 7

I don't believe evil was in the world until man was in the world. I believe it is our evil human nature. It is contrary to God and pulls us like a magnet to do every evil deed imaginable, not every person is pulled to do every evil but in general, if there's a sin to do, someone has done it. Romans says the flesh is set against the spirit and the spirt against the flesh. Revelations shows the devil, the dragon as looking exactly like the beast in chapter 13 and that beast is man. Even Peter said in 2 Peter that man is a brute beast. He looks exactly like him because he is part of him. He gives his power to the beast (man) just as our human nature empowers us to sin against eachother and God, it pulls us to be arrogant and mighty instead of humble and loving toward eachother. I have known several people who especially evil. One of them I have no dealings with. She is my best friend's sister. But she is so evil and has done so much harm to her family all out of selfish envy, jealousy and greed. It is like she is totally controlled by her sins and selfish desires. Right now she is dying of cancer. It's all very sad. What goes around does come around.

Answer 8

I see evil is the rebelion against the will of God. That was the original sin and that is why Jesus came to show us better. As far as actual evil... my ex-wife. A Blessed Christmas to you.

Answer 9

Within

Depending on the desires,both.

Yes,my Mother.Just kidding. Actually,I do think we all sort of encounter it in our daily lives.There are many spirits/souls out there with a malicious intent.

Answer 10

God is pure goodness and when satan and Adam refused to love and serve God then evil was brought into the created world and we have inherited this tendency towards evil.
We are not evil of ourselves but when we do what is opposite to Gods holy will then we commit sin which is termed as being evil.