Note I have already stated there are two concepts of ‘evil’ i.e.
- empirical based evil acts and
- the Metaphysical/ontological evil
I have already the OP is not about the Metaphysical/ontological evil which is proposed by theology-God and such evil do not exists.
Empirical based acts of evil are those acts that can be observed and identified as ‘evil’.
During the past thirty years, moral, political, and legal philosophers have become increasingly interested in the concept of evil. This interest has been partly motivated by ascriptions of ‘evil’ by laymen, social scientists, journalists, and politicians as they try to understand and respond to various atrocities and horrors of the past eighty years, e.g., the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and killing sprees by serial killers such as Jeffery Dahmer. It seems that we cannot capture the moral significance of these actions and their perpetrators by calling them ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ or even ‘very very wrong’ or ‘very very bad.’ We need the concept of evil.
plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-evil/
If you want to insist on evil in the Metaphysical and Ontological sense, you will have to open up a separate thread. Btw, ensure you prove such evil exists before anything else.
True, it does pose a problem for theism, but it also poses a problem for secularists or “world citizens.” Who in your world determines what constitutes a “net-negative”? You? What makes you qualified to to meet the highest interests and welfare of the universe and the children of time? How do you propose to coordinate and harmonize the world’s rivalrous interests, races, and nationalisms without a universally accepted ideal? Are the “progressives” on college campuses doing you any favors by shutting down free speech?
It is not “me” to determine what is net-negative. This project will be done by the collective of all humans as far as possible.
We can start this exercise by assigning rating to a list all known evil acts.
Then we produce a list of agreed evil acts starting with the acts with the highest degree of evilness.
Now if I proposed ‘genocide’ mass rapes, serial murders are net-negative to the well being of the individual[s] and to humanity, I am confident all normal human beings will agree to that. Do you disagree?
We then work down the list to obtain 100% consensus for as man as possible and somewhere down the list there will be contentions and disagreements.
The point is we will be able to have a reasonable list of acts that are agreed by all normal [not psychopaths and the mentally ill] human beings as net-negative evil.
Where are are disputes of various degrees we can work at it to establish greater consensus, where we cannot then we will leave it as “agree to disagree” in the meantime.
Another critical point is you cannot assess what I am proposing based on our existing [2017] collective state of morality which on average is very low and bad.
What I am proposing is for the future, say 75-100-200 years’ time when we have an established Framework and System of Morality & Ethics with a very high average Moral Intelligence within humanity. What is critical is we must start now to establish the foundation.
The examples of evil you give reflect a much deeper problem than you are willing to admit. The world is filled with lost souls, not lost in the theologic sense but lost in the directional meaning, wandering about in confusion among the isms and cults of a frustrated philosophic era. Too few have learned how to install a philosophy of living in the place of empirical authority.
Yes, at the present we are in a bad state relative to normal expectations and ideals. What is critical is you cannot give up hope that there is a possibility of continual improvement and progress.
I have given evidence [babies, mirror neurons], all humans has the potential drive for higher morality.
This is proven by the obvious trend of improving moral standards and practices over the last 100, 200 and > 1000 years, e.g. emergence of the Golden Rule, banning of slavery, etc.
While I am optimistic with potential positive systems, Why are you so pessimistic and defensive on there is a potential for all humans to improve and progress in Morality and all other fields of knowledge and technology?
With your defensiveness, you are not a net-positive citizen of humanity.