“We have to get rid of the idea of evil”

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Cat_Herder said:
Let’s say that (God forbid) you are hit by a car and you suffer neurological damage so that you are no longer able to perceive suffering, know your interests or perceive yourself as an entity. Have you ceased to be a person?
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According to Singer, yes, especially if the neurological damage is irreversible.
 
Impertinens said:
The matter is more complicated than that, I think.

The act of killing an unborn child is intrinsically and seriously evil, this is not in discussion.

But this fact is not obvious, and can be known only by recourse to somewhat philosophical arguments or by recourse to the teachings of the Catholic Church. But the latter are not easy to fully understand, and if one’s philosophy starts from incorrect premises then they may even be unreachable, and the latter are not available to anyone who does not have received the gift of Faith.

The fact that Jews are human beings is more immediate to the senses than the fact that a single-celled, brainless organism is also a human being, and hence - even if the acts are equally grave - I do not think that the moral culpability of a Nazi can be compared to the moral culpability of an abortionist.

It does not take an evil person to do an evil action. The world would be a much happier place if that were the case…
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Actually, perhaps this ‘fact’ is more obvious than people realise. Abortion clinics offer counselling. Women who have abortions often require counselling. It is not uncommon to read accounts from women who have had abortions who say the abortion has affected their entire life. Unfortunately, most women who have abbortions don’t go around publicising the fact (which also says a lot about the deed) and so we don’t hear a lot of how abortions affect them. However, abortion must surely go against the natural maternal instinct women have. It is not uncommon for women who are expecting in the early stages to say they ‘feel pregnant’. The body starts to ready itself for the development of the baby and this development includes a mental change, a change in prioroties for the pregnant woman. Is it then not the case that today, with the feminist/womens’ rights/pro-abortion propoganda being bandied about, that women are subverting their natural instincts to the expediency of modern ‘rights’. In other words, they have stopped ‘listening’ to what nature is telling them? If people started ‘listening’ to their bodies and minds acting in concert, perhaps that ‘fact’ mentioned by Impertenens might not be so hard to identify. In other words, the intrinsic ‘evil’ of killing unborn babies might be easier to discern. No matter what modern feminists and pro-womens rights groups might preach, abortion will feel evil. The natural instincts are perhaps the first principles from which to state that abortion is intrinsically evil.
 
From just observations on this thread and the title of the thread, I would say the problem is not getting rid of the “idea of evil”, the problem is getting rid of or dealing with the “reality” of evil. An idea is just that, a formulation of thoughts to a concept in the mind, but the real problem is when these concepts are actual reality. Evil is not an idea, we live it as a reality each minute of our live in some form and that bears out by the very fact that we have abortion, murder and assorted other actions. My two cents, the title just struck me.
 
Sailor_Kenshin said:
Singer and his many sycophants are probably thinking, “We have to get rid of the idea of evil SO WE CAN CONTINUE WITH OUR AGENDA AND NO ONE WILL NOTICE.”
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Getting rid of the idea of Evil will leave only the Good. Or should the idea of Good go too? If just Evil is done away with, does that mean that everything humans do is Good and there is no such thing as Bad? Or maybe some things are just less good than other things? If my neighbor is a real turkey, a maniacal pervert who plays loud music just to annoy us and leaves garbage all over the place and I shoot him, have I done Good, or something that’s just a little less than Good? (The Utilitarian would probably say I did Good!!) If it turns out that I shot a good man for just selfish reasons, I haven’t done Evil because it’s been done away with, so have I done Good but to a few degrees west of reallly Good? How do you categorise something as Bad, without the scale of Badness extending into the Evil zone? If Evil is done away with, will evil acts automatically stop, or do we just relabel them?

Sheeesh. This is complicated…🤷
 
Black_Rose said:
Regarding infants and the unborn, they do not meet the criteria set for personhood: the ability to suffer, possession of interests, and a perception of themselves as an entity with a past and future.

A “right not to be killed” can exist without a “right to life”.
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Interesting; this is not the same set of criteria I got from other abortion advocates; one said that the criteria was a fully functioning brain (or something to that effect), and another admitted that there was no reason not to be pro-life but they decided to be pro-choice anyway. Also, your criteria would leave out certain mentally ill people or deep coma patients.

The criteria is never agreed upon. It’s a slippery slope; there is no “criteria”. A human is a person is a human. Why do people insist on complicating that so they can justify murder?
 
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