good vs. evil

Wil, you are our very own Dr Pangloss!
"All's for the best in the best of all possible worlds!"
 
We can only go by the facts and the statistics we have personal observation and anecdotal evidence cannot be expanded to the world...

While Nigeria, El Salvador, all over the world is strife if we expand that to the whole world it is inaccurate, just as is if we extrapolate from a monastery...

So violent crime stats....murder stats...they all add upto something....and if they are wrong today, (too low you say) they were wrong yesterday...and we are looking at trends and violence is trending down...

If anyone can find facts to dispute my claims...let us see them.
 
Definition of Evil: profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.

Definition of Wickedness: the quality of being evil or morally wrong.

At a glance, they seem to have more or less the same definition. The difference, if I were to attempt one is that Evil is a mental construct or a thought; Wickedness is a physical action performed in furtherance of the evil thought. Neither word is 'more' bad than the other. They both define a form of immorality.
 
Making it clearer...

a local flood made people think that the entire globe was flooded....

local instances of crime and worldwide instances pounding us instantly on the media make us think it is worse than it is...not only that...the opposite of what is.

The world is shown to be less violent, less murders...

You may dispute the crime rates and reporting methods...but these are the same reporting methods that have been used in the past and are showing a trend of less violence.
 
Gordian Knot said:
Definition of Evil: profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.

Definition of Wickedness: the quality of being evil or morally wrong.

At a glance, they seem to have more or less the same definition. The difference, if I were to attempt one is that Evil is a mental construct or a thought; Wickedness is a physical action performed in furtherance of the evil thought. Neither word is 'more' bad than the other. They both define a form of immorality.
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In secular languages, humans ultimately determine meanings by usage: most of us will remember the time when "bad" meant "good."

Hebrew is difficult because it has become a secular language; but it was a liturgical language from its beginnings, as careful reading of the biblical references to language and speech indicates (at least to me ;-).

We are promised the emergence of a pure language and a pure speech, but in the context of the assertion that there is nothing new under the sun. Dusting the centuries of confusion off the Sinatic Hebrew word forms is the path to clarity of scriptural concepts.

b.
 
wil said:
Making it clearer...

a local flood made people think that the entire globe was flooded....

local instances of crime and worldwide instances pounding us instantly on the media make us think it is worse than it is...not only that...the opposite of what is.

The world is shown to be less violent, less murders...

You may dispute the crime rates and reporting methods...but these are the same reporting methods that have been used in the past and are showing a trend of less violence.
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You are uncharacteristically insistent in your opinions wil! The fact that the methods being used is the same as past methods isn't really convincing for me, if anything, less so. But I won't push on, we have different opinions, nothing odd there.

And Finton, GK knows I'm more inclined to your way of thinking concerning the definitions of the words we use in these contexts. If there's anything he and I argue over, it's that.
 
wil said:
The world is shown to be less violent, less murders...
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The murder rate, I would suggest, is not the sole means by which we determine the quality of life.

The numbers have gone down, and that's a good thing. Of other measures, the figures are worse, and that's a bad thing.

I think we'd have to take in a bigger picture before we can make the claim that the world is getting better because people are choosing the good.
 
b.finton said:
I'll leave you all to it. I need to go dust off my feet.

b.
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LOL..... that is ALWAYS hilarious.... talk about your I am more illumined than you insults Thomas! (not saying you made the insult Thomas, call back to another thread) but to me, everytime I hear it what it really means is "I can see my agenda is not going to fly here, I must move on to find someone else I can bend to my will to make myself feel better."

Thomas said:
The murder rate, I would suggest, is not the sole means by which we determine the quality of life.

The numbers have gone down, and that's a good thing. Of other measures, the figures are worse, and that's a bad thing.

I think we'd have to take in a bigger picture before we can make the claim that the world is getting better because people are choosing the good.
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Murder rate gone down, violence gone down, (here in the US our prisons are 1/3 full of nonviolent marijuana offenses), charitable giving gone up...

I posted the polls, and studies... I have heard much disagreement but no links counter scientific studies indicating otherwise.

As I said, anecdotal evidence doesn't work...our view IS the little picture...the studies ARE the bigger picture...
 
I believe you misread Wil's comment Thomas. He was making a statement about B. Fenton's last (and apparently?) final comment. Fenton saying if we are not going to listen to his wisdom, he is going to walk away.

That is my perception of Wil's comment. And as always my disclaimer. I could be wrong!
 
Conclusion of the economist article...
For the moment, few people agree on the relative significance of all of these factors. All or none may have contributed to the fall in crime, in different quantities in different countries. For criminologists and other social scientists, trying to assess the causes is a growth industry. For the rest of us, we can at least play Grand Theft Auto without fear of being mugged on the way back from the shop.
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Conclusion reached in Wall Street Journal article
At the deepest level, many of these shifts, taken together, suggest that crime in the United States is falling—even through the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression—because of a big improvement in the culture. The cultural argument may strike some as vague, but writers have relied on it in the past to explain both the Great Depression's fall in crime and the explosion of crime during the sixties. In the first period, on this view, people took self-control seriously; in the second, self-expression—at society's cost—became more prevalent. It is a plausible case.

Culture creates a problem for social scientists like me, however. We do not know how to study it in a way that produces hard numbers and testable theories. Culture is the realm of novelists and biographers, not of data-driven social scientists. But we can take some comfort, perhaps, in reflecting that identifying the likely causes of the crime decline is even more important than precisely measuring it.
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Conclusion from the guardian.... Longer sentences... for criminals...
"You can make the case that mass incarceration hastened the end of the crime wave. You would have a much more difficult time making the case that a continuation of that mass incarceration is necessary. The benefit from preventing crime, since crime rates are so much lower, is a lot smaller than it used to be and the costs continue to go up. We're investing more and more in prison and getting a smaller and smaller return."

But the public may not share that view. A recent poll showed most Americans feel crime is still getting worse.
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But they do agree with me...despite crime going down....public perception is otherwise...

and Huffington?

Criminologists have been debating the reasons why violent crime continues to decrease both nationally and within New York City, but nobody's come up with a definitive answer as of yet.
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All of them say crime, murder and violent crime is on the decrease and they don't know why....

And yet somehow you think they disagree with my contention??
 
wil said:
And yet somehow you think they disagree with my contention??
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No, I mean you've offered no evidence in support of your contention. They never even suggested it as a possibility.

A drop in the crime rate is not evidence enough to contend that people are becoming more altruistic
 
Did I say more altruistic? or did I say
We've been choosing the good....repeatedly...consistently....over the course of time...

From the beginning of recorded history we see the evolution of man becoming more humane, more concern for the environment, the land, our fellow man....whether it has to do with scarcity, or self preservation...it is happening...
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When Man Changes Laws, (elects people who change laws) when we put more policeman on the street, when we decide to eliminate slavery, integrate society, become more diverse...all these things are indications we are becoming more humane...

A drop in animal cruelty charges, reduced dog fighting....when we treat our animals better we tend to treat each other better as well....

Do we do this anymore? (back to OP was this evil? then?) Cat-burning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(when I was a child I knew old folks who spoke of this and convinced kids to do it...(heard the stories in primary school, didn't actually see it, but heard descriptions and knew it happened))

What really baffles me now is you guyses desire to deny the change is afoot.
 
wil said:
Did I say more altruistic? or did I say ...
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OK. Not altruistic then. Selfish?

wil said:
We've been choosing the good....repeatedly...consistently....over the course of time...
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We've been choosing what's good for ourselves, certainly. That seems about right to me. But that doesn't equate to 'the good'.

As GK said: The American 'Good Life' has 5% of the global population using 25% of global resources. How is that a 'good'?

You abolished slavery, right? And then you replaced it with the penal system. Do you know how much 'prison labour' contributes to the US economy? And you lead the world in having the highest percentage of your population in prison. So by that reading, America is getting worse ...

wil said:
From the beginning of recorded history we see the evolution of man becoming more humane, more concern for the environment, the land, our fellow man....whether it has to do with scarcity, or self preservation...it is happening...
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Suicide is the third leading cause of death for teenagers and young adults in the West. Males predominate. Then factor in suicide in later life ... Girls? Look at the self-harm stats ... Humane?

wil said:
more concern for the environment
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LOL, you are kidding, right :eek: 'Primitive' man had a far, far greater empathy for and with the environment than 'modern' man. Read some of the letters of the Native Americans to the settlers — the devastation they saw has continued exponentially — meanwhile the 'world powers' are snapping up every available resource from the indigenous populations.

Sweatshops in India for your cheap trainers. Good?

People today have more concern for their devices and their own entertainment than for the environment.

We, well you, managed to kill off the bee population by 'inhumane' methods of carting colonies round the country on trucks to pollenate your crops. The seas are fished to extinction. Species after species are at risk from mans' misuse of the environment for his own gain ... Jeez ... if that's your idea of concern, I'd hate to see your carelessness ... :D

wil said:
the land
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Ditto.

wil said:
our fellow man
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And yet the gap between rich and poor is increasing across the globe, as every indicator tells it.

wil said:
A drop in animal cruelty charges, reduced dog fighting... when we treat our animals better we tend to treat each other better as well....
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Is this in your hometown, or America generally? Here in the UK, it's a downward trend. More abandoned animals than ever.

wil said:
Do we do this anymore? (back to OP was this evil? then?) Cat-burning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Cat burning? CAT BURNING? Are you serious?

Well, it was done to a Palestinian kid just recently, but I guess that clinches it! ;)

wil said:
What really baffles me now is you guyses desire to deny the change is afoot.
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Oh, Dr Pangloss ... our problem is we have to face up to what is, for the sake of our kids.
 
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