Does evil exist?

Good question. But better question is does anything exist without a human?

How Can Mirrors Be Real If Our Eyes Aren't Real

The universe does not exist unless we are looking at it, so no.
You can thank quantum mechanics for that.

I think therefore I am.

wooooooooooooooooooooooow u so deep

just kidding

maybe im not
think about it

Interesting thought.

I understand the logic you're using there, which may be true in part.
Not that I'm disagreeing or anything, would just like to explore the idea further...
...so in more a direct meaning, evil doesn't exist, it's merely the absence of God?
The argument then could be that non-God believers are evil, since they don't have God in their lives. But, at the same time, they don't exist without God, so they cannot be evil either. Which comes back to the OP question, does evil exist? In a human sense, I don't think so, but there are, in Catholicism, other forces beyond what's human that could be evil.

Or maybe I'm just barking up the wrong tree in my approach. :D

I think that atheist believes in evil as much as religious people. I'm not saying that it is a power though, I mean that there are things you can do that are considered immoral or bad.

I'm an atheist myself but I won't insult or mock other people's beliefs. unless of course if they are forcing it on me, I'll argue but I'll choose what kind of person you are. if you're someone who can't be reasoned with, then I'll just probably shut up and walk away.

Not really.
Agnostics would say : I don't know if there is something...

I wouldn't elevate the discussion to that of the supernatural.

Not to mention you are misusing terms.

View attached image.

View attached image.

It should for EvilBudgie...

not if you're a budgie *gg

View attached image.

Dr Evil Brain. I see we meet again. You missed our last Evil Convention to discuss Evil Entertainment.

Well played Evil named guys well played

If you kill to survive you have to be good at it... Practice makes perfect?

you could argue, that serial killers have some kind of mental disorder and therefore don't fully understand the consequences of their actions. so socrates is still correct. :)

to my mind the reason we and every lviing creature exists is to observe the universe

Yes, but it is just your interpretation of our purpose as you said yourself. If evil depends on my interpretation as well it would mean it doesn't exist - I'm just making it up.

a purpose in life indicates design, which is not what atheists believe to be the case. you can create your own purpose in life. you can make it your own purpose to observe the universe, or to help other people, or to own 10k games on steam. but a general purpose of humans as a species? no, nothing indicates there is such a thing.

nothing is objective, morality isnt a inherit part of reality, we create morality, if it was moral to steal, kill and rape then being a what we call "goog person" would be consider like being evil

There is an objective morality

is there? how is it defined? are you talking about religious morality?

This closes the discussion I^v^I

After all, once you are born you are not innocent. You are guilty. Guilty of all crimes against nature.

Being human is a crime. Therefore I submit to you that all humans are evil No matter what age you are, be it newborn or on your death bed.

Being Trump should automatically warrant a death sentence.

Good / bad is often judged by intent. For example if someone kills in self defence, or by accident, that's different than premeditated murder. In a similar way, your examples of using something for a general purpose, in particular survival in a natural order, aren't considered evil. That doesn't mean that you can't define things better if you look at a more limited context. (What I mean is, a conclusion of 'in the end all this good / bad stuff doesn't matter much, when we look from bigger / other perspective' can't be reached by taking examples in a particular context.)

I really disagree with moral relativism. Just because something is accepted in other culture doesn't mean it isn't evil. I think there is a true moral code separate from what society decides. Societies ethics evolve as we as humans do and gather more knowledge. And I believe that culture where bad things are accepted are still evil. We know what good and bad is, but we can convince ourselves that bad we do doesn't count because the people we do it to are really human based on their race/religion/sex/sexuality/other bs. Cognitive dissonance is a unfortunate part of human nature.

The problem is that slavery and genocide are perfectly acceptable by God's standard, if you look at the bible. God exists only in people's minds. I don't necessarily mean that in the sense that 'God doesn't exist', but in the sense of 'God doesn't show Himself directly, so our religious mores are nothing but interpretations through the flawed human mind'.

Thanks for your input, really appreciated! I have a few questions though if you don't mind to have polite discussion :)

Thus man was given the ability to choose whether or not he even wants a relationship with God. With the ability to choose comes the ability to choose evil.

So without ability to choose there would be only 1 path - relationship with God. So God has offered a man ability to choose. A man could now choose whether he wants to have relationship with God or not. Now let's treat these paths metaphorically for a sake of discussion. A man has two paths to choose. My question is: how could second path exist without permission of God. And if God has created this path how can it be evil? It is actually said that whatever God has made is good.
Please note that I'm not denying existence of God, I'm trying to figure what evil is and if it even exists.

Likewise, the Nazis found it acceptable to exterminate the Jews, but that would not be accepted today.

Believe me - there are still some mindless people who keep saying it was good. And about human interpretation of morality Kant did quite good job in my opinion. I don't want to explain his work here cos it would be too much effort but you can read a little about it. I agree that God's vision of morality would be better but where you can find it? In Bible? In Old Testament it is clearly stated that you can have slaves (source) if they aren't Israelites (source) so your opinion that "actions of slave owners (...) obviously are not justified, neither now nor when they were committed" is not true. And even if it changes with time and there's no such things in New Testament (not 100% sure though) then there is no universal God's law in this matter since it changes with times. At least in Bible. Although I still agree that God's morality is supreme I cannot find it in Bible. Unless you have different source because I can only refer to Bible.

If I was wrong somewhere, I'm sorry.

There is no absolute morality. One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. The Nazis actions weren't justifiable to the rest of the world, but through their very misguided lens, they saw themselves as doing the right thing. They (the leadership) didn't think, "Wow, I hope we get away with this nasty stuff". They were proud of what they were doing and they kept meticulous records. They thought that Jews were the source of their (mainly economic) problems that arose after the First World War, and that they were evil, making what the Nazis were doing good. They believed what they were doing was in the best interest of the majority of the German people, and made a compelling enough case to win their support (fear and hatred are easy to propagate).

As such, human opinion cannot possibly the standard of morality. For us to say that anything is evil, there must be a standard of good, and that standard must surpass human opinion, i.e. God.

i disagree for two reasons.

1. the bible is highly immoral. god kills people left and right. he kills children, and he commits genocide. the bible supports slavery and doesn't see women equal to men. if i remember correctly, according to the bible i could rape a woman, and she then would be forced to mary me, if i so desire. there are hundreds of immoral passages in the bible, and you really have to cherrypick, if you want to get some reasonable moral out of it - and then it's as far from an objective morality as possible. because the cherrypicking is done by humans. no christian really lives as the bible suggests, and for good reasons.

2. i believe you can define an objective moral standard based on human opinion. it depends a little how you define objectivity, of course. if you definition is that objective values can only come from god, then i've already lost. ;) but there are attempts to explain how an objective morality without god could look like. sam harris says it like this:

human well-being can be the basis for an objective morality. if we can agree that a world in which every human being experiences the worst possible pain is something like evil, then we can just go from there and everything that lowers the suffering and brings us away from the worst possible pain is good. he can explain it way better than me, and if you're interested, there are several youtube videos where he explains it. i am not sure if i want the debate to go in that direction. i personally think there is absolutely no need for an objective morality, because we in our society can easily form what you would call subjective morality and live pretty good lifes with it. in fact, if we go back to the bible again - our modern moral standards are way better than many "moral" passages in the bible*. but it's an interesting concept, and it shows that god is not necessarily the only one who can provide objective morality. :)

*because they were written in a time where morality was completely different from today, and those passages reflect that - which should also make clear that the bible has nothing to do with god's word; it simply was written by humans, in the context of their time

Same, I don't want to start an argument, I just want to share my opinion and ask a serious question.

First of all, as you'll probably see I'm an atheist, so my knowledge about the Bible or religions are not so accurate.
If whatever I'll write is wrong feel free to correct me, however in doing so please understand that I would like you to have a "proof" or a reasoning explaining why and in what I've made a mistake.

I don't agree what you have said, so lets start here:
My point in this post is based on the fact the God is considered Omniscient and Omnipotent, so God basically knows everything that has been, everything that is and everything that will be. (Note : I personally think that Omniscience and Omnipotence could be considered as synonymous since having the knowledge of everything also imply having the knowledge of how to do everything, and having the power to do everything also imply having the power to know everything.)

Following that assumption God has always know that after creating everything what we are now calling "evil" would be created / born as well. Thus meaning that God knowingly created "evil" directly. For example lets take in consideration Lucifer, once an high-ranked Angel (I think) now "evil" itself; this being was created by God itself. nevertheless God already knew what Lucifer would become. Doesn't this make God the one who created "evil" ?

Also :

but he also gave freedom of choice.

Following the above assumption, being Omniscient also mean that God knows whatever we will choose in every occasion. Thus meaning that there is a "preset destiny", meaning that the freedom of choice is just and only a mere illusion.
Someone could argue that God may know our "future" for each choice we're giving, meaning :

                                                             Choice A.a → "Future A.a"  ...
                Choice A → "Future A"  - |
                |                                            Choice A.b → "Future A.b" ...
                |  
Person   |
                |
                |                                           Choice B.a → "Future B.a" ... 
                Choice B → "Future B" - |
                                                            Choice B.b → "Future B.b" ...

Note: You could use an infinity of possible choices on every point and the example could go on forever, or till the person dies depending on one's beliefs.

But that would mean that God only knows our "possible futures" and not our "future" thus meaning God is not actually Omniscient.

In addition:

Thus man was given the ability to choose whether or not he even wants a relationship with God.

This statement is actually false even if my points above would be proven wrong, and the reasoning could probably be expanded on every religion that you may choose to have or not a "relationship" with God.
What I mean is that for Christian theology, you can be a believer or not, sinner or not, and you're still bound to have a relationship with God; if not when you're alive since you don't believe in it, after death wherever you're placed (Hell, Purgatory, Paradise) you will inevitably either strive for God unable to ever reach him, strive for God in the wait for you to ascend to Paradise, or strive for God in its domain.

This part could be easily skippable since it's almost entirely composed of speculations done by me. Also it's greatly influenced by my inability to picture God as something different than a "human" with godly attributes.
On a final note:

Let us make man[a] in our image, after our likeness.

This is a pass taken by Genesis 26,27 if I'm not mistaken. The quote means that we retain certain characteristic of God, though we don't know everything we retained from it. Even so we're sure to have even some of God's Attributes: Love, Jealousy and Wrath are the easiest do see; however they may be no the the only ones, we could also have Immanence since we're not transcendental beings, Oneness since we are unable to be something we are not (even with Multiple Personalities), and that lead me to the last point "Trinity" that here I have to consider as being more parts in one, the "" are because I can't use the number 3, with which Multiple Personalities could exist :

                | ------- Personality A                                        
                |                                                                           
                |                                            
                | ------- Personality B
                |
Person   |                 
                |
                | ------- Personality C 
                |                                          
                |
                | ------- Personality D

Meaning a Person is composed by every Personality (A,B,C,D, etc...)
but every Personality is not the Person nor any other Personality

By following this reasoning we may have other characteristic we share, and here it comes the purest of the speculations: if you take a man with too much power, or scientist with extraordinary knowledge, or an athlete that is head and shoulder over the others, I can only think of 3 possible choices available to such person:

1. After being at the top, a foreign element would be implanted in the scene and that person would step down, now only watching.
2. After being at the top, a self imposed handicap would be inserted and such person would still play in the scene.
3. A mixture of the first two options.

If we imagine a human with Omniscience and Omnipotence he would sorely be bored really fast. In fact what fun could it be in knowing and being able to do everything without room to improve or discover anything ? Wouldn't he create an element of uncertainty, temporary remove his ability of Omniscience and watch everything as if were a TV Drama. (Yes I'm basically describing God as the spectator of our existence seen as a divertissement.)

So basically I'm unable to agree with you because as I'm understanding things right now, if I were to acknowledge the existence of God, I wouldn't be able to see it as a "good" figure.

Now coming on the answer for the OP:

As I see it, we can't really define what's "good" or "evil". As the word is not either white or black neither is the Morale. And we also can't define "good" as the absence of "evil", imagine this scene: you just opened a present from someone you hold very dear and are extremely happy, after a bit this sensation would gradually vanish, that doesn't mean that you're now sad, true you may be "unhappy" in the sense that you're not happy in that instant, but you could just be in an intermediate "neutral" state.

As I see it there are multiple layers of Morale, but as now could be synthesised as : Personal, Group, Mass, Universal.
The names are pretty much self explanatory :

1. Personal : A type of Morale dictated unique to everyone, developed by the environment, society, situation and experience we find our self in. For me this is the "strongest" since it's the truest form of yourself.
2. Group : This is a resulting mixture of Personal's Morales born by the grouping of more peoples. It's the "weakest" mostly because: it's almost always not shared by everyone in most of its aspects, it's most likely defined by the more charismatic or influential party in the group.
3. Mass: The Morale of an entire race or species, it's the result of the Personal's and Group's Morales combined. It's not weak, and often try to push itself to the Universal's Morale.
4. Universal: The Universal's Morale it's the "purest", it's what we could define as white or black. Its the ideal of what we strive for and what we repulse. But being and ideal it's an unattainable form at which we can only take inspiration from.

I hope that everything it's understandable. If there is something that you don't agree with, please replay without starting a drama, I'm open to discussion.

Regards,
Morshock.

P.s. Thanks for reading.