I’m sorry, but you are missing the point.
If you are right that we don’t know right from wrong, than any time you used the word evil or good it would have absolutely no relationship to reality.
i understand, the argument is made quite often here.
your right, they have no relationship to reality, as artifacts of human ethics.
However, your argument uses the fact that evil is passed off as good as it’s premise. Your argument is as follows:
- People commit evil acts and say they are good
- Therefore we do not know what good from evil are
If your conclusion is true, your premise has absolutely no truth value. You effectively saw off the branch you’re standing on.
what? evil is not passed off as good, the people involved in those atrocities, believed they were doing what was good, right, necessary, etc.
how do you get that? if one knows good from evil, than one wouldn’t confuse the two.
the conclusion necessarily follows from the premise, seemingly
but further im not trying to make an aristotelian proposition, so why are you framing it that way?
im talking about what we literally see, we have pics of their social behavior, and their diaries, those people in the documentary were quite normal.
Men choose bad over good all of the time. Many drug addicts know full well that what they are doing is wrong, and admit it candidly. Yet they refuse help.
thats called addiction, not an act of free will.
Some people do things because they know it is wrong. People do things that are wrong to get a particular reaction from others.
those people are called kids
A man may threaten to kill himself so that a woman will remain in a relationship with him. If he did not know this was evil, he would not think that it would cause the woman to try and stop it.
whaqt does evil have to do with emotional manipulation?
It is a delusion of the modern mindset to think that everyone does what they think is right.
so far your examples are of individual behavior, not sociological groups, a man doesnt commit an atrocity alone, at least not the ones we have been discussing,
that aside, unless one is criminal in nature, people do what they think is right, the individuals who dont are generally considered mentally ill.
Do you doubt that Hitler was motivated by a hate of Jews?
hitler didn’t stand on the ramps, culling slaves from those to be exterminated.
The tragedy in Rwanda was motivated by hate as well.
the tribesman who conducted the atrocities, acted in accord, hardly a reflection of personal hate.
North Korea’s Kim Jong il ihas committed atrocities out of pure lust for power.
yet he did not do a single one himself, he is supported by a ruling class of people, in a very feudal system. those people are the enactors of policy.
You said the fact that some condemn some evil but justify their own means that they have NO clue what good or evil is. However, this is bad logic. At most, it means they have an IMPERFECT idea of what good and evil is. Imperfect does not equal nothing.
one can always randomly do the right or wrong thing, that doesn’t equate to actually knowing what the correct thing is.
Aside from that, again, the argument is nonsensical. Your premise would be utterly meaningless if your conclusion is right, and therefore your premise would no longer support your conclusion.
i still dont understand how you are getting that. how exactly does the conclusion not follow from the premise?
i think you are mistaking ‘passing off evil for good’ as ‘believing an evil act to be good’
check out abortion, they claim its done for good reasons all the time, but it doesn’t stand up to examination.
:tiphat: Nice to see you in here.