Welcome to Gaia! ::

I believe evil is intentional harm or destruction while knowing what u did is wrong... any harm done by accident or in faith is for everyones good is not considered pure evil if evil at all

I see your point! and yes evil and good may not in fact exist... but every human has good or bad intentions sooner later.... it is the opinion of the people it effects that call it good or evil... there may be no divine balance... the only way to know would be to have created a universal set of morals... but sadly no one will ever accomplish this so evil and good may not in fact exist after all...

lol I understood it! ^^ yeah god is just a allusion in our minds that guides us as far as we know... but I doubt we'll ever know until we die

And even if we do ever truly know during our lifetime, there's always the possibility of having somehow become schizophrenic..

On the other hand, it's possible that we don't ever find out even after we die.. If God did not exist, and if there was no place to go after death, then one wouldn't get to know due to the ending of that person's consciousness.. On the other hand, if God did not exist and if there were something in the afterlife, and if one did retain one's own personality and memories, then one still wouldn't know, as there wouldn't be any way to answer that problem.. And if God did exist, there's still a lot of possibility about what could happen in the afterlife, as..there's the possibility of the existance of a single God or multiple Gods that are in no means close to what those three major religions I've mentioned in my previous post describe as God..and in that case, one still might not know.. For instance, in the afterlife, whatever that person believes in might occur.. (So if you believe in no afterlife, you don't have any, but if you believe in reincarnation, you get reincarnated, and so on.)

<.< Yes, this is out of topic. Yes, my rant was quite pointless..but I kind of wish someone would come and say something contrary to my ideas so that we could debate.. (Yes, I'm dying of boredom..x.x..)

But then, wouldn't that raise the question of what good is?

The biggest hang up people have here, apparently, is the question "do the ends justify the means?"

I used to have the idea that "good and evil are relative," until I came to the conclusion that it is impossible to hold in any practical sense.

The way I came to this conclusion was by following two ideas/concepts:

The Harm principle, which in efect states that your actions are acceptable so long as you do no harm (in a general sense that ranges from infringing on the freedom of others, to actually hurting them).

Then the idea that we treat our means as ends unto themselves. For a better description of this concept you'd have to read some of the works of Kant or other deontologists (ven a few objectivists, despite how much they hate Kant).

I'd say that these two notions are complimentary, and a basis for a good set of ethics or "moral rules."



To be more directly on topic:
I think an action is good so long as it causes minimal harm to other sentient/rational beings. An action is evil if it causes excess harm to sentient/rational beings.

If something "evil" was done, with a "good" result? The original action, and the one who took the action, have done wrong. It is by chance that it ended up working well for other people.

I'd still say the Harm Principle applies. If a person has stolen, then they've harmed the livelihood of their victim. That makes what they've done wrong, despite their situation.
There are legal avenues that can be pursued for a person to get what they need, thievery is not necessary. Those who feel compelled to do so either have a pathological disorder (kleptomania), or have convinced themselves they need some luxury item to be happy.