My mom always told me that if you lie in life, then you will always be caught. I sometimes doubted my mom, but as most kids find out, their parents are always right. I would get away with little white lies, but when they are as serious as the lies were in, Scribbler of Dreams, those lies would always get busted. And when the lies finally got busted, like Kaitlin’s, it was never good. Kaitlin lied to bram, her family, and just about anyone about her true identity, while knowing she was with her arch nemesis Bram crutchfield who revealed his true identity to her at one of the biggest parts in the story.…
We in the twentieth century would be much more hard-pressed to define evil than would people of either Chaucer's or Dante's time. Medieval Christians would have a source for it -- Satan -- and if could easily devise a series of ecclesiastical checklists to test its presence and its power. In our secular world, evil has come down to something that hurts people for no explicable reason: the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the burning of black churches in the South. We have taken evil out of the hands of Satan, and placed it in the hands of man. In doing so, we have made it less absolute, and in many ways less real.…
Various religions define good and evil in various ways. However, one thing is certain. Since our society has existed, good and evil have also been in existence and many religions see them as two sides of the same coin. Some religions see them as counterparts, one of which focuses on promotion of happiness and the other on everything evil or all that is contrary to happiness. Every religion and mythology define them in its own way and they find representation in various forms like demons and angels in Christianity and Devas and Danavas in Hinduism. But the concept of good and evil has always been there and in old times people considered everything that made them unhappy evil - even diseases - and everything that made them happy good.…
Throughout the course of ones’ life, one encounters various forms of good and evil consistently. Often, examples of good and evil are not clearly defined, and this leads to difficulty in defining the distinction between the two. To be able to find the difference between the two terms, one must understand what each label really means. According to Google’s dictionary, good is defined as having virtue, righteousness, high morality, and integrity. On the contrary, evil is defined as pertaining to immorality, malevolence, and dishonorable actions. Although there are widely accepted definitions of good and evil, the final decision is up to the person facing the situation. In East of Eden, John Steinbeck…
Goodness is self-righteous: evil is purposeful. Seems rather counterintuitive doesn’t it? But what truly is good and what truly is evil, or are the two even separate entities to begin with? After all, good and evil is all hinged upon perspective, viewpoint is the key. Can something so obscured by opinions really be quantified? So where do monsters fall then? Who are the monsters? Why is our society obsessed with such monsters both in reality and fiction tales? The answer is rather simple: since we cannot define what good and evil is and we presume monsters fall into the spectrum of evil, we write about them, mold them into what we believe they should be to fulfill our desire for a definitive ideal of good and…
Summary: James Rachels addresses the conflicts of evil in his book “Problems from Philosophy” by providing various forms of logical problems. The author points out the different possible explanations to why evil would exist. The first major idea Rachels makes is that perhaps pain is essential to caution people of danger. He goes on to suggest that this would not account for why some people are born with deadly diseases. Another idea he makes is that evil helps people appreciate the good in life. One would not be able to distinguish the good in life if evil did not exist. However, this does not explain why the world needs so much evil to exist, instead of letting a few bad things happen occasionally. The third idea the author makes questions why bad things happen to good people. Rachels suggests maybe those bad things that occur in life are…
The question of evil is a common hot button topic among atheists and non-Christians who attempt to disprove Christianity. They argue that an omnipotent and omniscient God cannot exist in a world with so much evil. The argument is used by them to try to prove that Christianity is “internally self-contradictory and thereby to be rejected.” Many claim that a benevolent and caring God would certainly not create evil or allow it to flourish in the world that He created. So, the problem of evil is how to explain that there can be a perfect, all-powerful, and all-loving God that exists in a world with so much moral and natural evil.…
Throughout history, good and evil have been a constant topic of discussion. Whether we are talking about terrorists, natural disasters, or simply your older brother breaking your toy, good and evil surround us. While opinions differ about the nature of good and evil, the tension remains the same. Outcomes are created, whether positive or negative. However horrible an event is, we seem to make light of it. We seem to be able to find the needle of good in the haystack of evil of life. But what is evil…
Religious notions of evil and moral notions of evil are not mutually exclusive. This paper defines religion, morality and evil, and explains how religion and morality are compatible and have similar characteristics. Despite the compatibility, they also have their differences but this does not make them mutually exclusive in my opinion. This paper also makes use of ‘Love and Law’ by Alison Gopnik to explain the commensurability between religious and moral notions of evil. Gopnik explains the mind of a child and how children are innately empathetic. She shows how morality is grounded by empathy and creative examples and scenarios.…
Good and evil are polar opposites, yet one cannot exist without the other. To understand this intricate relationship, one must have a clear understanding on what exactly good and evil are. These two are not always so black and white, but good can be defined as acting agreeably with societical and personal values. Evil can be defined as going against those values. However, as societies and humans differ, so do their moral codes. What is seen as good in one society or time may be seen as evil in another. Two more factors to consider are intentions and actions. They are two separate entities. Actions are seen, and judged, by everyone else, but intentions are known only by the doer. This is why there is no clear-cut line between good and evil.…
Martin Luther King Jr. once said “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” Evil comes in many forms resembling events like terrorist attacks and crimes such as burglaries, rapes, hit and runs, plus more. No matter how small the evil may seem it always has its companion, fear. Fear is able to consume even the smallest of children and make evil seem much more extreme than it has to be. Evil is something that you can overpower or it can overpower you no matter the age in the novels Lord of the Flies, I am Malala, and the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.…
In a world of chaos, he who lives, lives by his own laws and values. Who is to say that the death of millions is any worse or better, for that matter, than injuring a cockroach. And in the case of an existing power in the form of God, who is presumed to be all which is good, presiding and ruling an organized universe, why then does evil exist? The prosaic response of "without evil, there is no good" no longer holds any validity in this argument as the admitted goal of good is to reach an existence without evil. So even if a God does exist, I think it is fair, at this point, to say that he is the embodiment of both good and evil. And if humoring those who would answer the previous question with the response that there can be no good without evil, then can we assume that evil is simply a subsection of a defined good? Or perhaps even a good thing? If it is essential, those who chose the side of evil are simply abiding by good values. In the case of a world ruled by Chaos, evil is a non-existent word or value, rather. The system upon which a person's actions are judged also disappears leaving nothing but an instinct for natural survival as basic and primary as the life within the forests which we tear down to build our houses.…
There are different types of evil that are allowed in this world. The first is moral evil, which began in the garden of Eden when Eve ate the fruit off the tree and deliberately disobeyed God in an act of sin and evil (Gen. 3)(Elwell, pg 412). The next is natural evil; this is explained mainly in natural disasters such as, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and disease. Elwell writes, “natural evil is the consequence of moral evil,” then goes onto explain that natural evil is not distinct…
In the short story ‘’The Nature of Pure Evil’’, the word evil seems to be used casually without trying to explain something. Hedy’s female ‘’friends’’ don’t seem to really think about the meaning of evil and they only use it to describe something that they think isn’t correct. For instance Brigit, one of Hedy’s friend insist on saying that: ’’If he’s not crazy, then he’s pure evil’’ [p.112; L.57] Brigit also has her idea of pure evil, but in this short story everyone has one, and so it seems that the word lose its meaning and changes into a banal word. One of Hedy’s female friend says something on the room in Ottawa with a pentagram on the ceiling: ‘’There was something evil in there, I could feel it. [p.117; L.265] So evil doesn’t seem…
But psychopathy mostly is caused by abuse or neglect from parents and also genetics. Certain genes can inhibit the chemicals that are responsible for “happy” emotions and make you more susceptible to becoming a psychopath. But we don’t blame the person who inherited a medical condition for an illness, we blame the condition itself. Nor do we blame the person with PTSD for having it; it’s the event’s fault or the illness itself. Are antisocial people evil when they commit atrocities such as murder, when they have no control over whether they feel remorse or regret because of their past? It’s not right for them to murder, but they aren’t necessarily evil when they can’t understand otherwise. So in reality, the idea of evil is not as hard cut as black and…