Was Hitler actually evil?

[Robert Maxwell]

Even though people may not be deliberately invoking religion when they talk about evil, that is in fact what they're doing. Behavior may be concretely described as unlawful, destructive, disruptive to social order, but evil? That's always going to be up to interpretation, and there is simply no single authority on Earth that can dictate what is evil and what is not. That's what brings it back to a religious argument--something greater than us must be the arbiter of those distinctions.

The example you gave with the ancient Greeks actually helps make my point: they considered disorder evil, but that doesn't mean it is. Even today, we recognize some amount of disorder as beneficial to society. Definitions change. Subjective labels like "evil" serve very little purpose when analyzing motivation or consequences.

Your closing phrase, "evil as a given behavior," doesn't even make sense to me, because I cannot describe any particular behavior as objectively "evil." I could describe it as unethical within a given ethical framework, immoral by the standards of a given society, physically or emotionally destructive or disruptive, but not "evil."

You're basically saying it's up to God, or only the theologians, to define evil? No other definition would be valid?
Of course the term is subjective. And, if the Greeks considered disorder evil, who am I to say it wasn't? It certainly seems logical to me that a society would fear chaos and the things that come from it. Evil things can't come from chaos and disorder? Chaos and disorder are often the results of natural disasters, which some Christians even today blame on Evil. So, why shouldn't a society call disorder evil and try to prevent it?

I'm saying there is no definition of "evil" that is universally valid, and therefore a question such as "Was Hitler actually evil?" is meaningless and serves little purpose other than the asserting the moral superiority of those who ask and answer it.

Who "causes" these evil things, who wrought them upon the Earth, is a question for theologians. Making evil empirical and trying to explain it within the empirical world is the job of science.

How would you empirically define "evil"?

Why God would let Hitler come to power is not an empirical quesiton. There is Evil in the world is an answer. How a man could become Adolph Hitler, how a society could fall under his spell, and why he acted as he did are empirical questions. And, it is a study of evil. I don't think anyone would dispute that.

No, it is not a "study of evil." It is a study of history. All the things you mentioned are worth studying, but none of them have anything to do with empirically quantifying evil.

Many political and social terms are subjective. What exactly is sociopathic behavior? What is paranoia? What is partisanship? There can be valid degress of each. So, just because evil is a subjective term doesn't mean there aren't reliable and valid definitions of it. Or even recognized variations in degress of it. The word "evil" gets overused, politicized, and has been watered-down in popular use. But if one wanted to really bear down and conceptualize and operationalize a scientifically reliable and valid definition, one could. Indeed, one could create several. All good.

Sociopathy and paranoia are psychological terms with definitions established by the medical community. Partisanship is easier to define than you think--it is little more than a trend of behavior in which a political almost always acts in accordance with the rest of his party.

You could not scientifically define "evil." All you could do is come to a consensus among a particular group of people, agreeing that they believe something to be evil (or not.) This, however, does not make the act in question evil. Instead, it only reflects the beliefs of those asserting such an opinion.

If we dismiss all definitions as merely subjective, then we're saying the subject can't be discussed at all. We have no common ground other than just agreeing that it exists in an abstract form. In religion, this may be fine because it's the existence of evil itself that's more important than any one empirical defintion. Any evil, however defined, must be reconciled with the existence of God.

Any definition of "evil" is inherently subjective, because what each person believes to "evil" comes from no central authority. That is why questions of what is evil and what isn't are relegated to the purview of theologians, who can claim divine authority on the matter.

Pornography is hard to define. It is highly subjective. But we don't walk away from operationalizig it. We have legal defintions of it anyway. We dispute them, refine them as mores change, but we nonetheless have laws that are at least acceptable to a majority of those under the various jurisdictions which enforce them.

Ah, but we have legal definitions of what pornography is! We have no legal definition of "evil."

When I say, "Evil is a given behavior," I mean I can define the concept and operationalize it. That is the basis of any scientific method. It's not necessarily always about "why" evil exists. That is philosophical and theological.
Sometimes it's about explaining the manifestation of evil. It's employment, and how mankind got to that state. How what's evil even changes over time. Today, we would consider owning slaves evil. Yesterday, some people justified it by saying it was in the Bible.

You have consistently failed to answer my basic point: who defines what is "evil"? When it comes to Hitler, it isn't even a relevant question. You cannot answer "Was Hitler actually evil?" What you can do is document his particular crimes, which most would agree are reprehensible and have earned him eternal infamy.

I must say, this notion that one can scientifically quantify "evil" is pretty bizarre to me.

 

[Shaw]

Even though people may not be deliberately invoking religion when they talk about evil, that is in fact what they're doing. Behavior may be concretely described as unlawful, destructive, disruptive to social order, but evil? That's always going to be up to interpretation, and there is simply no single authority on Earth that can dictate what is evil and what is not. That's what brings it back to a religious argument--something greater than us must be the arbiter of those distinctions.

The argument is flawed in that you are saying that good & evil must be defined in absolutes... because you need absolutes. So because they need to be defined in absolutes for you and the only thing that can define absolutes is some deity (in your mind), this absolutely roots them in religion. But of course by that logic, a deity must have been the single authority that said that good & evil must be strictly defined for you, right? After all, you aren't a high enough single authority to declare that good & evil must be defined in such absolutes (unless you are a deity... in which case I guess you believe this brings us back to religion as well).

Absolutes are a finger trap for the mind. And you've got yourself nicely stuck in this circular argument.

Trying to discuss this type of thing with someone caught in this type of logic loop is like trying to play with a dog that is more interested in chasing it's own tail... while amusing for the moment, there are so many better things one could be doing in life.



... I'm just not absolutely sure what those things are at the moment.

 

[auntiehill]

Yes, Hitler was actually evil, and fire is actually hot and water is actually wet.

Next question?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Actually quite a few people have compared Obama to Mao, not to mention Che.

Oh look, the rabbit-fucking retard has returned!

Jeez, dude. Let's have a betting pool on how long it'll take for the flaming infraction to materialize...

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

My only comment on the language non-religious people use - some frequently say stupid things like "I don't believe in god but I hope he rots in hell" which only shows that they are either fooling themselves about their religiousness or ignorant about the religious iconicity they are using. It still doesn't change the fact that 'good' and 'evil' are religious concepts.

Some of us just appreciate the rich heritage of metaphor and imagery that religious history has bequeathed to us. Who wants to give up angels and demons and Hell, any more than we want to give up Batman and Santa Claus?

I've been an atheist all my life, but have learned that the most comfort and reassurance one can often give a friend when there's nothing to be done is a hug and a "God bless you." I'm not giving up either to prove that I can be consistent.

 

[the 4th hanson bro]

Actually quite a few people have compared Obama to Mao, not to mention Che.

Oh look, the rabbit-fucking retard has returned!

Infraction for flaming, comments to PM

 

[Silvercrest]

Dang. I didn't have a chance to get in on the pool.

 

[Deckerd]

He had plenty of time to change it. Dennis is just bad (not religious terminology).

 

[gturner]

Back to the topic,

Do rabbits think coyotes and wolves are evil? Are coyotes and wolves evil from the bunnies' perspective?

Since humans used to be prey animals for large predatory cats, would we have had the same view of cats that rabbits do? Wouldn't an inate sense of good and evil be useful to prey animals and early hominids? If so, wouldn't this sense predate religion?

But as we got good at hunting would we then view ourselves as evil?

With the adoption of dogs, and later cats, wouldn't we naturally learn to seperate "evil" into actions versus beings? The cat may play with a mouse before it kills it, which is evil, but the cat may be a sweetheart. Likewise, even cats spend most of their time lounging around, licking themselves instead of carrying out their evil plans for world domination.

 

[Deckerd]

Unless you are a vegan you can't really point the finger at animals for eating meat. If you are a vegan it's very likely that your parents weren't in which case you still can't point the finger at animals for eating meat.

 

[Franklin]

Sociopathy and paranoia are psychological terms with definitions established by the medical community. Partisanship is easier to define than you think--it is little more than a trend of behavior in which a political almost always acts in accordance with the rest of his party.

You could not scientifically define "evil." All you could do is come to a consensus among a particular group of people, agreeing that they believe something to be evil (or not.) This, however, does not make the act in question evil. Instead, it only reflects the beliefs of those asserting such an opinion.

You have consistently failed to answer my basic point: who defines what is "evil"? When it comes to Hitler, it isn't even a relevant question. You cannot answer "Was Hitler actually evil?" What you can do is document his particular crimes, which most would agree are reprehensible and have earned him eternal infamy.

I must say, this notion that one can scientifically quantify "evil" is pretty bizarre to me.

OK, maybe I should define my term. Methodologically, a conceptualization is a way of taking a fuzzy word, like evil, and making it more specific and precise. You may want to study prejudice. Well, what do you mean by that? How will you know it when you see it? What kinds of prejudice are there? These terms have to be defined. But a concept cannot be measured. The concept must be operationalized. That is the definition is turned into something that's measurable or can be seen. If racial prejudice is a type of prejudice, how do we know it when we see it? If evil exists, and people can do evil acts, how do we know it when we see it?
People can always debate your conceptualization and operationalization, but I don't see why that means something can't be measured. Many social concepts are slippery and validly quantified differently by different people.
A concept can also be thought of as a holding bin for things that go together. If it has a beak, swims, has webbed feet, feathers, quacks, lays eggs, and so on, it must be a duck. It's helpful to be able to call that thing a duck, rather than just describe it by its component parts.

By evil, I mean the infliction of undeserved suffering on humans (some would go so far as to say animals, too).
Now what is deserved and undeserved is open to debate, but it's my starting point. For instance, (a) Hitler may have thought it wasn't an evil act to kill Jews because he thought they deserved it. In this case, he'd be in a miniscule minority and the rest of us would say: Evil act = evil person. (b) Hitler knows they don't really deserve it, but he does it, because it's needed to carry out some greater good as he sees it. In this case it would be gratuitous evil, as defined below. Hitler would feel justified on this basis even though almost everyone in the world would still be horrified and call the act evil. To them: Knowingly evil act = evil person.

If we can differentiate types of evil, then that means we must be able to conceptualize and operationalize evil.
-- Evil caused by humans.
-- Evil caused by nature.
-- Gratuitous evil that God could stop but doesn't (rationalized as an evil allowed by God as part of the greater good). Of course, this one is not empirical.
-- Non-gratuitous evil, or evil that's a by-product of fee will. Apparently, God can do nothing about this. To that end, people may be able to freely choose whether or not to do evil acts. The scientific assumption would be this encapsules all evil acts by humans.

As far as a legal definition of evil goes, yes, we have no single charge of being evil. "You're under arrest for being evil. Book 'em Dano." But the laws are full of defintions of illegal acts, many of which could be part of a broader category of "evil acts."
Deciding when a person has crossed the line into being evil comes from studying the types of people who commit multiple forms of those acts. It may get into the psychology of what makes a person evil. Which in the long run may prevent some of that non-gratuitous evil that God allows.

I'm sorry, but what you're saying is evil is actually a useless word because it means both everything and nothing. So what if it's subjective? Very little isn't.

As far as defining partisanship goes, believe me from my experience, it's not easy. Is partisanship the same as affiliation? Is it multidimensional? Unidimensional? Is it a spectrum at all? Is it like ideology? How do we isolate partisanship from ideology? What types of acts are partisan? How do we explain degrees of partisanship? What about non-partisans who act partisan? Is there even real non-partisanship?

 

[Silvercrest]

Unless you are a vegan you can't really point the finger at animals for eating meat. If you are a vegan it's very likely that your parents weren't in which case you still can't point the finger at animals for eating meat.

Heh. Vegans can't point the finger at animals regardless. Being vegan is a lifestyle choice. Being carnivore is a biological adaptation. Most carnivores would starve if they were forced to eat plants.

I once picked up a vegetarian/vegan cookbook, and threw it away when the introduction page started lumping vegetarians in with herbivores. Geez, guys, just stick to publishing recipes and leave the rhetoric for the professionals. Humans are not herbivores, we're omnivores, regardless of lifestyle.

Just like rats. And pigs.

 

[Deckerd]

Rats and pigs are both noble creatures. Ask the Chinese.

 

[Silvercrest]

True! So they're already ahead of us.

 

[Roger Wilco]

Omnivore doesn't mean you have to eat everything, only that you can.

 

[Deckerd]

Doesn't it mean something more than that? Something about digestive systems and vital amino acids and stuff.

 

[Roger Wilco]

Doesn't it mean something more than that? Something about digestive systems and vital amino acids and stuff.

I don't think so. I guess some kinds of food are healthier or more nutritious than others, and maybe to survive in the wild you do have to eat everything, but that's just depending on the situation and not biology.

Pandas eat almost no meat, other bears eat lots of meat, they are all omnivores.

But you'll never be able to make a tiger survive on a vegetarian diet and feeding beef to cows didn't turn out too well either.

 

[Silvercrest]

Omnivore doesn't mean you have to eat everything, only that you can.

Sure! But that means that you're still not an herbivore, just because you call yourself a vegan/vegetarian/vege-nazi or whatever. You can eat everything, you're just choosing not to. That's why I disliked the propaganda in that book.

Sorry, how did I get on this topic??!! Uh, Hitler was a vegetarian, yeah, that's it! Or maybe he wasn't....

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Omnivore doesn't mean you have to eat everything, only that you can.

Sure! But that means that you're still not an herbivore, just because you call yourself a vegan/vegetarian/vege-nazi or whatever. You can eat everything, you're just choosing not to. That's why I disliked the propaganda in that book.

Sorry, how did I get on this topic??!! Uh, Hitler was a vegetarian, yeah, that's it! Or maybe he wasn't....

He wasn't a true vegetarian.

 

[Kira's Mom]

Omnivore doesn't mean you have to eat everything, only that you can.

Sure! But that means that you're still not an herbivore, just because you call yourself a vegan/vegetarian/vege-nazi or whatever. You can eat everything, you're just choosing not to. That's why I disliked the propaganda in that book.

Sorry, how did I get on this topic??!! Uh, Hitler was a vegetarian, yeah, that's it! Or maybe he wasn't....

Hitler also supposedly had a terrible problem with flatulence. A side effect of a vegetarian diet.