Is "good" and "evil" necessarily the same as "right" and "wrong"?

Question

Can an act usually considered "evil", ever be the right thing to do?

For those of you who say "yes", can you give me an example?

Boar's Heart: That's almost exactly what my mate said, lol! But I think the phrase he used was "preemptive strikes and parting shots."

Lady Morgana: VERY well said!

Answer 1

in my mind yes an act of evil can sometimes be the right thing to do.

example:
a few years ago my then 12 year old daughter was raped.
they let this freak out without bail while awaiting his trial.
with in 4 days he had threatened my daughter in order to scare her not to testify against him.
we called the police and tried to things the right way but the police seemed to be doing very little so i took matters into my own hand and beat this man so severely he is now brain damaged severely. he is now in a lock down mental facility
and i went to prison for a few years. was this thing i did an act of evil? most likely. was it the right thing to do? definitely.

i am not saying that i should not have had to pay for my actions... because i should have. but in the same breath i will never say i am sorry i did it.

only my humble opinion.

Answer 2

they are not necessarily the same. What is good to me as a pagan Witch is absolutely not gonna be good to a Christian. Women not wearing burkha may be considered both wrong and evil in Iran, who knows, but they are not here. There is no true absolute good or evil.

It has been pointed out that there is an absolute right and wrong when it comes to mathematics. True, but we are talking about human mores and behavior.

Can an evil act ever be the right thing to do??? I have a feeling I will find out that the answer is yes when I read Villains by Necessity. I read some of the reviews, they dropped a couple of hints along those lines. I can think of an extreme example. Suppose that in order to save a country, the evil leader had to be killed before he ordered the dropping of a nuclear bomb that would effectively kill the whole planet. But this leader is heavily guarded by people who don't care if they die with their leader. But they do care about their wives and children. Suppose that, in order to gain access to this leader, the forces of "right" could use "evil" methods, like threatening to and/or actually killing the guards' family members in order to get through the fortifications, or by just bombing the city where the evil leader is hiding, or even bombing his entire country, knowing that millions of innocent people will die, in order to save the planet.

If these methods work to save the Earth, then saving the Earth is the right thing t do, but the acts that were necessary to save Her were evil.

Hard stuff.

Answer 3

All those terms were created by man most likely through religious laws meant to control the masses. I don't think that there was any such behavior deemed "good" or "evil" until religion came aboard starting with the Sumerians worship of the Annunaki.
People probably just existed normally going about thier lives, surviving and working together.

Answer 4

2 + 2 = 5 is wrong. It is not evil, it is just wrong. Likewise 2 + 2 = 4 is right.

To your subpoint, if an act is evil, the results will be for evil, even if the results seem "right" at the time. The modifier of this is that God can turn all things to good for those who trust in Him.

Answer 5

Yes (to your second question, not the first.)

Here's an example:

Stealing is considered wrong, to most people, right?

Remember after hurricane Katrina, many people in Louisiana were "looting"...well, was stealing for survival wrong in that situation? If no one was there to provide food or help to those people for many days.

Now, some people will be quick to judge and say that stealing is stealing, so either way its wrong.

Well, perhaps they should place themselves in THEIR shoes...what it would be like to lose everything, not be able to sleep, bathe or eat, and possibly have hungry children defecating on themselves...while their neighbors' corpses or those of other people are floating by...perhaps their opinion of what is right and wrong may change.

"Morality" is always in question and will always be.

Answer 6

Good and evil aren't the same as right and wrong. A person that does something wrong is not neccesarilly evil. Right and wrong are the judgements of society. Good and evil are much higher concepts.

Answer 7

The answer to both parts of the question is no. Good and evil are not the same as right and wrong. It may well be wrong to not cross at a crosswalk, but it isn't evil. An act that is evil can never be the right thing to do. The bible tells us to learn to forego the evil and do the good.

Answer 8

Good, evil, right, wrong are all human concepts. One cannot exist without the other to define it. God created everything and said it was good. There is no evil in the mind of God.

Answer 9

Sure.

Murder is usually considered "evil," but let's face it, some folks just flat *need* killing . . . for the good of the community, or the safety of our children, or because they've somehow forfeited their right to our air.

Heathenry is a bit flexible on such matters, as just revenge is a bit of a sacrament, and our Havamal counsels rewarding "lie with lie" to beguile our enemies. I like to think of our ways as . . . pragmatic. :-)

For all that, you have to be willing to live with the consequences of every deed.

Answer 10

Sure.... ever heard of the saying, 'Chose the lesser of the two evils'?