Evil

[TheOrigDesperado]

Behavioural traits are more likely to be explained by simple right and wrong. After all, where do you draw the line? Evil in these cases are simply extensions of something we find "wrong", when the words "bad" or "very bad" are not enough. Would Bundy have been classed as evil if he had raped a single woman? Or if he had killed only once? Or twice, and expressed remorse? It's an artificial line. This is not true evil. True Evil, I believe, exists independently of people or actions, but as to whether it can cause people to commit certain actions I really don't know.

 

[Jerry_B]

I think you do get people who are obsessively good, don't you?
Like Mother Theresa.

She was anti-abortion. Some people might not think that that makes her obsessively good....

 

[Jerry_B]

...a bit like saying: "If heat can be an external force, then surely cold can too?"

?? Not really - you can measure both of those things empirically.

 

[Jerry_B]

True Evil, I believe, exists independently of people or actions, but as to whether it can cause people to commit certain actions I really don't know.

So, where does it come from? Is it controlled by anything? Does it have a Good counterpart?

 

[Pinklefish]

She was anti-abortion. Some people might not think that that makes her obsessively good....

Ouch, now there's a subject!
God forbid anyone started a thread on it, the board would melt.

 

[TheOrigDesperado]

So, where does it come from? Is it controlled by anything? Does it have a Good counterpart?

You got me there. It would be detectable by us only in the emotion it produced, but as to its real form - that's anybody's guess. If it exists, though, yes there would be a "good" counterpart, similar to the "light" reported by NDE'ers.

 

[Anonymous]

?? Not really - you can measure both of those things empirically.

Only heat exists, cold is merely it's absence. Perhaps Evil is the lack of Good, or vice versa?

 

[TheOrigDesperado]

It all boils down to energy (forgive the pun). Heat and cold are just relative terms for the energy of a system. I suppose you could relate this to good and evil in that they're both relative descriptions for a certain energistic state.

On the other hand, heat and cold are interesting because although there is a minimum temperature, there is no such thing as a maximum temperature. This could be looked on as saying that cold does exist but heat does not. Perhaps good and evil are the same in that there can be a certain measurement of absolute evil, whereas good is incremental and in effect, infinite.

 

[Jerry_B]

I don't think the hot/cold analogy is a good one for the sake of this arguement - you're talking about two things that can be measured. Hardly the same can be said (in real terms) of Good and Evil. To use this analogy, IMHO, would be misleading in terms of comparison.

 

[TheOrigDesperado]

Hot and cold have only been measureable since the advent of the thermometer. Before that, they were just as nebulous a concept as Good and Evil, merely more commonly experienced. If Evil is truly an external force then there's nothing to say it can't be measured, just that we don't have the ability to do that yet.

 

[Pete Younger]

Hot and cold have only been measureable since the advent of the thermometer. Before that, they were just as nebulous a concept as Good and Evil, merely more commonly experienced. If Evil is truly an external force then there's nothing to say it can't be measured, just that we don't have the ability to do that yet.

I don't think it will ever be possible to measure evil, it can only ever be seen from a personal viewpoint, I mean to some folk it's evil to work on the sabath while to some all gay people are evil, so where would the starting point be?

 

[Jerry_B]

To me, Good and Evil are entirely relative terms, constructs of human society that are obviously changing over time, one way or another. I also think that to give Evil some sort of form seperate from the mind of one person or another is to pretty much throw up your hands and just say that something is Evil and therefore cannot be really confronted. I think it would be a sad look out for humanity in general if we were simply to say that a person or a thing or a concept is Evil and therefore it cannot be defined or explained in another way. If you just simply label something as Evil, you pretty much brush it under the carpet and learn nothing from it.

There are too many logic gaps in the whole concept for it to be any way similar to comparisons to Hot and Cold. I think you have to do a few mental experiments of a theoretical situation about Evil to see that it can't be neatly defined or pigeon-holed.

 

[TheOrigDesperado]

I don't think it will ever be possible to measure evil, it can only ever be seen from a personal viewpoint, I mean to some folk it's evil to work on the sabath while to some all gay people are evil, so where would the starting point be?

True, but that's not what this thread's about. It's about the existance of a real force, or entity, known as Evil. If Evil exists as an external force then there's no reason why it couldn't be measured, just like magnetism or gravity. In fact, if it is an external force then it MUST be measurable, by definition. It might be that this force is responsible for making people act in certain ways, but these people themselves cannot be said to be evil in anything else but a subjective sense, hence one is not the same as the other.

 

[Anonymous]

I have to agree here,
I think that absolute terms of good and evil are nonexistant.

Evil and good are subjective concepts related to our own view of the universe.

Malice on the other hand, is what I think is often confused with evil.

The example of the the cow is best used to illustrate this.

Imagine a cow that has its unborn ripped frmo its owmb. Or its young enslaved for slaughter as food for another species. Is this evil?

No it is inhumane but not evil. So imagine it this way, to the cow, this is ultimate evil, but to us, it is farming.

Evil is just a subjective concept.

P

 

[TheOrigDesperado]

The religious would say that ultimate good was God and ultimate evil was the Devil. I don't think that many people who believe in God really think He's a guy in a robe with a beard, which means that He must be Good incarnate. Likewise but opposite with the Devil.

 

[SimonBurchell]

Just copied this from the Collins Modern English Dictionary (just the relevant bits):

evil
1) Morally wrong or bad, wicked
2) Causing harm or injury
3) Characterised by anger or spite
4) (sometimes cap.) A force or power that brings about wickedness or harm.

As far as Evil as an external force goes, using definition 4 above, it would be anything disembodied which brings about wickedness or harm, or tries to.
Looking in “In Search of Ghosts” by Ian Wilson, Chapter 12 (Ghosts that attach themselves to people) has an interesting account of “Sanjay” (a pseudonym) a remand prisoner of Sikh parentage who had stolen a taxi (along with its driver!). Psychiatrists described him as “an intelligent, well-educated and insightful young man, westernised in his appearance and outlook.” His family claimed he had been cursed by a jealous aunt, and her (evil or Evil) ghost would supposedly possess him in order to commit crimes, thereby wrecking “Sanjay’s” life. If true, it is therefore “a force or power that brings about wickedness or harm.”
To skip a bit, Sanjay’s psychiatrists came “within a whisker of diagnosing him as a paranoid schizophrenic. Some unexpected developments…led the psychiatrists to change their minds…to their astonishment the prison chaplain one day telephoned them” to say he had seen “a descending cloud and an impression of a face alarmingly like a description of the dead woman [i.e. the ghost] given…by the patient, of which the chaplain denied prior knowledge.”
“Furthermore, ‘frightened cellmates’ of Sanjay’s reported witnessing similar happenings.”
If true, this would seem to be a case of Evil…
Interestingly, "It would appear that Sanjay has responded encouragingly totreatment with the anti-psychotic drug clopenthixol." Maybe this drug disables the part of the brain which Evil uses to seize control...or maybe not, who knows?

 

[Anonymous]

I have once had a glimpse of something that could be described as external Evil. There was no way to fathom it. It was beyond any kind of understanding . It was just bottomless malevolence with form.

The kind of people behaviour that we talk of as evil is , to me, just levels of self interest. To a physcopath other people have no meaning so any gain, either sensually or fiscally as a result of any action (including killing) is fine, as loosing that person doesn't compromise their self interest. The rest of us see repurcussions to that kind of action, emotionally and legally so don't indulge, in fact the negative aspects are so obvious it would not occur to us as an option. People reside on the entire scale, and where they are grouped in the middle is known as normality. Either end of the scale is good and evil. We ascribe good or evil to behaviour depending on our relative positions on the scale.

This is very different from Evil, which seems oppressive, malevolent and powerful, like disembodied hatred/anger directed at everybody. It is not subjective at all.

Evil - Real or not? I dunno. But if I somehow made up the thing in my subconcious, how? it is beyond experience. Its not like you add 2 and 2 to get 4. How can you extrapolate that from normal life.

Answers on a post card................

 

[TheOrigDesperado]

But if I somehow made up the thing in my subconcious, how? it is beyond experience. Its not like you add 2 and 2 to get 4. How can you extrapolate that from normal life.

This is what I was saying earlier and is the real point of the post. Hallucination cannot IMO explain the feeling of Evil, which does not fit with any known sensation or emotion. The fact that a section of our brains is equiped to translate a certain force into what we perceive as Evil goes some way (if not all the way) to proving that Evil must be a real "entity".

 

[Pinklefish]

I have once had a glimpse of something that could be described as external Evil. There was no way to fathom it. It was beyond any kind of understanding . It was just bottomless malevolence with form.

Looks like we saw the same thing...

:eek!!!!:

pinkle

 

[TheOrigDesperado]

I think what confuses people is they say "How can evil exist independently?" Perhaps a way to understand it is to look at the other senses:

Sight, for example, provides us with an intricate portrait of colour and form, yet externally it is simply photons.

Sound can provide a symphony or a voice or a billion other auditory experiences, but it's simply varying densities of air.

Smell is nothing more than differently shaped molecules...

And so on...

Which means that Evil may well something physical that could be detected by science, yet our senses convert it into something that is obnoxious and threatening (in all probability for good reason).

 

[Anonymous]

I just finnished the Artical in FT170 on TM and part of the artical mentioned the theory that evil is the result uf enviromental sress.

This got me thinking, What if the sensation of evil that over welms people at time is a case of being sensitive to a high point of this enviromental stress?

I think we can all agree that some people can be extra sensitive to sinsations, some can hear frequencies that most can't, some are sensitive to light, and so on. Whos to say that people couldn't be sensitive to evil.

(Actualy I think a lot of people could say that, and probably will.)

 

[Anonymous]

This is one of the best threads I've read so far.

The comments that resonate for me are the ones about receptive minds picking up on Evil and psychopaths having 'space' to let Evil inhabit their minds. Sometimes you do get this wierd feeling when you see footage of serial-killing psychopaths - it's the eyes, of every one of them, too.

I believe that Evil is an external force. Like the mass hysteria/real presence in West Virginia in the 60's. Or people who commit murder because the 'Devil told them to'. The mass looting of Iraq was evil and pointless (and NOT justified by a repressive regime, you can talk about spring-back all you want that behaviour was freaking me out big time!) but it wasn't Evil like the hysteria in Salem and again in Georgian France that was blamed on ergot. Maybe it was ergot but it wasn't ergot in West Virgina in the 60's and they aren't suffering from it in South America today where there are some very strange and frightening reports. People hear voices and see things that prompt them into action but that is very different from human cruelty as has been said before on this thread.

All I know is that I've experienced something evil and I have never felt anything like it in my life. It was very different to living in a haunted house and being scared to open my eyes at night in case I saw something in my bedroom. And very different to the time I thought I was being followed home one night when there was a rapist loose in town. And different, again, to experiencing a real 'ghost' who was very angry about something and hammering on the door I'd just shut which was two inches from my face, heart pounding, etc.

It's so hard to describe unless you've felt it. I didn't believe in any of that good and bad stuff but I 'knew' the minute it was there and I thought I could kiss goodbye to the soul I didn't think I had until that very second.

It's wierd but its palpable and I think is very similar to the feelings of euphoria and 'presence' some people feel with God. My sister has had this very feeling and believes with all her heart that he is a real 'presence'. I wish I could. But because of the Evil I know Good HAS to exist although I've not had the pleasure of feeling 'Good' yet. I've been told, as has been suggested about evil, that once you feel 'God' you never doubt that he is real again.

Horizon did a programme on this a couple of months ago about how there do appear to be physical mechanisms within the brain for belief systems and this feeling of 'presence'. If Evil doesn't exist then perhaps it's these mechanisms that have been distorted by Ultra Low Frequencies in our immediate environment that we misread and the feelings we might have experienced had the contamination not been present would have been 'Good'. That's the only explanation I can think of if Good and Evil do not exist objectively and are purely a mental construct. To be honest if I try and believe THIS then its only because I'm feeling too cowardly to admit that we MIGHT be pawns in someone else's game and that's a feeling we're not used to and will kick back against until the day we die.:eek!!!!: I don't really care if there's a God or not, just as long as there's not a Devil

 

[Anonymous]

I have to agree here,
I think that absolute terms of good and evil are nonexistant.

Evil and good are subjective concepts related to our own view of the universe.

Malice on the other hand, is what I think is often confused with evil.

The example of the the cow is best used to illustrate this.

Imagine a cow that has its unborn ripped frmo its owmb. Or its young enslaved for slaughter as food for another species. Is this evil?

No it is inhumane but not evil. So imagine it this way, to the cow, this is ultimate evil, but to us, it is farming.

Evil is just a subjective concept.

Is a lion throwing itself on a dear, young deer and ripping it's throat and entrails out, evil? Or, a wasp paralysing a caterpillar and laying eggs in the living body?

Or the deadly bacteria on the feet of a bluebottle walking across a child's slice of birthday cake, as the fly, symbol of Beelzebub, salivates to cut itself a slice?

Are these a few of 'Evil's' favourite things?

Or, is it just nature vying for survival in a crowded world?

It's nice to externalise the uncomfortable truths about human nature. That way, it can always be someone else's fault.

The Devil made me do it, the Devil made me buy that red dress!

 

[Anonymous]

I respect what you're saying and I do feel that people can take the piss and use all sorts of excuses for their own behaviour but aren't we getting away from the original point.

Some people genuinely, seriously, believe they have met Evil and that it was palpably DIFFERENT to anything met before - we've all met bad people - who funnily enough turn out to be the charmers and that's why they get away with it for so long - and NO ONE on this thread is saying, I think!, that humans aren't inherently cruel or malicious. I think what people are saying is that people are cruel and evil but that SOME have room for Evil to step in and take it that one step further. Or that Evil doesn't even have to be personified, that it can be felt in its energy form. God I'm sounding parapsycho-babblish but you know what I mean?

We have our dog-eat-dog struggles like anything else and nothing alive on this planet is a patch on us for spite and evil but what is this feeling of sickening dread/revulsion/terror - I can't describe it very well but you know it's sentient - What is it that makes this emotion, however you can describe it, so SPECIFIC to this phenomena. I've been in situations that presented a very clear and real danger to my physical person but nothing compared to 'that' feeling I had that night. It keeps me awake at night 12 years afterward and I'm a responsible intelligent wife and mother. I remember other incidents with evil people and think 'that was a close shave' but THAT incident can bring me out in a cold sweat and has nearly had me to the Church door begging for a salvation I'm not entirely sure exists! If Keel is right there may be no God - only the paranormal phenomena we're already experiencing and that is just so depressing I can't even tell you...

 

[Anonymous]

As free-thinking humans, do we not feel inherently guilty of the lack of fulfillment of the responsibilty this thinking gives us? Do we not believe ourselves to be the failing gardners of this eden, our world? Are we not alone in pitying the poor beasts we must slaughter to feed our hungry children?

And then we are presented with an excuse, a get-out clause, a redemption.

"It is not us that has failed, but it us that has been failed! For we have been subjected to a greater force, an unbending will that turns the weak from their role and sullies the work of the kind and noble. This will has a name and that name is Evil and all who presume to do good should fear it, for it will tempt you from the path of good, the path of God!"

And so now it is all very simple. We are but pawns, it couldn't possibly be our fault. Christianity has capitalised on this. The fanatic general, the ruthless CEO, the lying politician, all are saved as long as they give themselves to the cause and ask for forgiveness.

My point is not to deride the church or any other similar religion, but to demonstrate the state of mind our species endures. Not only is guilt a product of our free-thinking but a treasured assurance of such thought, and religion provides the ultimate crutch. Now presented with an encompassing unknown, such a mindset will try to align the experience with it's own education and recognise the unknown as either Good or Evil. Consider what would happen if you sent a photo/holographic picture of somebody back a 1000 years. The main reaction would probably be fear of the 'devil' or 'spirit' in the paper, even though we know it wouldn't harm anyone their fear of the unknown wouldn't offer such comfort. In fact consider the initial beliefs on the invention of the camera, that such a device captured the soul.

It may well be that Evil exists in the observable form, but who is to say that the entity/experience labelled Evil and the religious construct of Evil are the same thing.

Fear, guilt and faith are blunt instruments in the dissection of Evil, science and understanding are the tools for the job, and although it may take a long time and the conclusion may be the same, the answer will be greater to our satisfaction.



PS sorry about the long post, got a bit carried away there!

 

[Anonymous]

Phew! Well said!

But no one is saying that people are empty toys to be influenced by another. We're saying there is something too! on top of! As well as! in conjuction with!

We are what we are because we've become what we are through our own free-will choices. !!!:gaga:

But you have to admit that there are some, even the teeny tiniest teensiest weensiest number of things that seem a little other worldly - Like West Virginia in 1960 and all the UFO sightings seen around the world - is everybody hallucinating? - and other wierd stuff like documented poltergeist activity by parapsychology departments around the world. It's not ALL human activity, is it? Even if it's only one percent that's genuine then ONE PERCENT is something we can't explain!!!!!!:eek!!!!:

And all that DOES NOT DETRACT even the tiniest amount from the undenial fact that humans are complete bastards - but it's STILL there, isn't it?

We might all have to agree to disagree on this one because it's starting to loop in on itself, isn't it?

 

[Anonymous]

But you have to admit that there are some, even the teeny tiniest teensiest weensiest number of things that seem a little other worldly - Like West Virginia in 1960 and all the UFO sightings seen around the world - is everybody hallucinating? - and other wierd stuff like documented poltergeist activity by parapsychology departments around the world.

I'm not sure I'm getting the 'West Virginia' reference, here? Is it being suggested that UFO, and even poltergeist phenomena, are manifestations of external evil?

There are many other possible and plausible explanations, including paranormal ones, which have no need of an abstract concept like 'evil.'

 

[Anonymous]

The West Virginia thing was a reference to the Mothman Prophecies by John Keel about a geographical location in 1967/68 I think, called Point Pleasant which experienced a gamut of phenomena from giant birds, men in black, telephone messages from unknown beings that could track Keels movements despite his deliberate misinformation to those around him, UFO activities, Alien contacts, Prophetic dreams, etc. that happened to hundreds of witnesses during the thirteen months before the Silver Bridge fell down it was all across the media and documented, etc. but wasn't it strange how everybody saw their own version of the same thing? That in itself suggests a subjective reaction to an objective stimuli and to ME personally that screams of Evil rather than objective intelligences as objective intelligences whether interdimensional or alien would have a consistent objective reaction.

A similar thing is happening on a Nevada Ranch (the location of which will not be disclosed by UFO Magazine for fear of intrusive sight-seers) which claims to have similar phenomena - crop circles, poltergiest activity, tampering with electronic surveillance equipment by unseen things, UFO's, cattle mutilations, extinct dinosaur tracts in soft mud around the ranchhouse, etc. The owners have let University departments and serious paranormal researchers set up camp there and they are documenting the activity as we speak and claim to be baffled by it but state categorically that it is SENTIENT and that all sorts of wierd portals have been seen (lights appearing with a figure seen struggling through and then the light closing behind what is seen running away into the distance).

To me, this isn't other aliens or beings trying to get through to our world, these seem to be manifestations of something that is teasing us, making fools of our expectations of what we think aliens should BE. Dinosaurs? I mean for heavens sakes! Why would these objective intelligences let an extinct dinosaur out of a portal to roam around?

It's as if something is taking the piss out of all these paranormal researchers giving JUST ENOUGH but not enough to prove anything for real...It's all bullshit and I think its a manifestation of Evil. It's also beyond what we might expect of 'lost souls' of the paranormal that are wandering other dimensions sometimes breaking through into ours. It seems to have an intent. On the Nevada Ranch Site the researchers are claiming that as soon as they set the camera's up on one area where the activity has been strongest it moves somewhere else, so they move the cameras and it moves again. it's almost as if they know what they are about to do. When things HAVE been tampered with and other cameras that are intact and nearby have been analysed the footage gets interference at the crucial moments and then kicks back in again after the damage is done, or nothing is seen at all seeming to make it invisible with the damage clearly there, or blanks out altogether! Something is enjoying the ride and I would put my money on something Evil rather than interdimensional intelligences or the plain old paranormal souls we usually get.

Many cases demonstrate quite clearly, and I WILL be willing to dig them out for you if you insist, that reliable witnesses - namely police-officers and air-line pilots and pilots with the RAF who rely on their observational skills see SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT THINGS - some see an oval whilst the co-pilot will swear it was round, some see diamond shapes whilst others see a cone or a ball and they are most insistent that the other observer got it wrong and deny the possibility that it could have been the angle of sight. Now that is a very subjective reaction again, isn't it? What do you reckon, cos it freaks me out!

 

[Anonymous]

If you are so sure that this is Evil, would you care to give us a definition of Evil?

 

[Anonymous]

I think of Evil as a sentient energy that, through boredom or spite, breaks through into our dimension to mock us and tease us like a cruel magician at a party he got reluctantly roped into.

I don't pretend to know exactly but it's a bit like when you watch children playing amongst themselves and you can hear them bullying eachother and saying 'I KNOW what I'm talking about and you are wrong' and saying the most ridiculous things and all the others are listening and the know-it-all gets too big for his boots and is SO cruel and you're just dying to go over there and grab him by the scruff of the neck and lift him up, dangling, whilst you shout 'shut up you pathetic little squirt, you know NOTHING so wake up!' Not so much out of a sense of needing to protect the others more than the fact that this little know-it-all shit is getting away with murder and there's no one big enough to stand up to him except you. And here's the thing. You know you'd LOVE to see the look on his face if you went over and actually DID it!

I think whatever God is and whatever Evil is are sentient energies on separate other dimensions.

I never used to believe ANY of this stuff before I looked further into UFO's and noticed that most of the sightings seemed like hallucinations or were 'screen-memories' or what I call 'screen-sightings' and then I began to wonder what it might be screening. Why did people see different things whilst looking at the same verifiable documented event? Because IT WASN'T THERE. Yet something objective WAS there because although you can have mass hallucinations you can't have radar hallucination at the very same time as people are describing three different things for the one object.

Evil is definitely out there along with Good and with evil and humanity but what it all means is a mystery.

Please someone tell me convincingly I'm talking bullshit so I can sleep at nights

I mean it. It scares me so badly sometimes that I dread dying.