We have talked about new souls and old souls. I believe that some folks end up doing evil things due to upbringing, environment and personal bad experiences that lead them astray and that this would most likely happen to new souls.

But I also feel there is just pure evil in the the world as well that without outside influences good or bad this evil exists as just evil. It enjoys the pain and suffering it causes.

What do you think?

I do believe that pure evil exists. I also think that outside influences and society can make a person evil of course, but I also think that pure evil is out there because we see it in serial killers or child abusers who had a good upbringing and good parents as well as friends. This is true also of a person who was born into a bad environment but grows up and does good things, and is good.

Great thread, Jann! I like it!

I do agree there is good and evil,, for some reason it just seems as tho there is a lot more evil out there today.
Social and Peer pressure does bring a lot of evil into play.

I don't think I do believe in pure evil. Have you ever seen an evil baby? I think people are made nasty by having evil inflicted on them during their upbringing. It's a fact that victims often turn into the perpetrators of the very act that has been inflicted on them.

Well, I disagree with Bean. I think most people are good at heart, but we feel the nasty more intensely. Like that one bad apple in the barrel, we notice it more than the good ones.

Since I believe in reincarnation . . . I believe that people carry with them baggage from previous lives . . . some of us are moving toward the light . . . others, I believe, are moving toward the dark, although each life is an opportunity to change direction. Upbringing and the influence of the people around is a big factor, but I think that we come into this world with tendencies toward one direction or other based on the kind of people we were before.

I don't think babies are evil, but the soul inside the baby is not a baby. And as the body matures, I believe that our souls awaken more and more and whatever we were like in our previous lives has more influence. It may be subtle, such as a fear of water, but it is there.

We have the greatest opportunity to change the tendency toward evil in young children, but sometimes (as a teacher) I see teenagers who are carrying souls that are dead set on going in a bad direction and my influence may be limited. In many cases, their siblings are fine and show no signs of going bad, but the one kid does.

As a parent, I've seen first-hand that my children turned out vastly different than I planned ( ) I had some influence over them, but there were other forces at work, including tendencies that they were born with.

I believe that all human beings are capable of committing crimes such as murder. But I also believe that people can turn their lives around and change. It's a matter of will power and also having love in your life. Love makes a lot of difference to human beings. Pure evil and pure good just don't exist, if they did, then people would either be devils or angels!

A mix of the both is what makes a human being - and good always triumphs over evil in the end!

Amen to that, Gerry

To be honest, like Gerry in a way, I think the world has to have both to exist. Yin and yang... balance and all that.. or look at it another way.. how would you define good, if you did not know evil? You couldn't

Also, so much good has come out of bad things. For instance, I remember going for a meal with a Jewish couple in Canada and I bought up the subject of the positive things WWII had bought and how Hitler wasn't all bad (Didn't go down well lol) But as an example, more people will be saved then were taken in WWII through advancements in technology because of the war.. The space race being a prime example. Today, new drugs to fight cancer etc. are designed in space due to the 0G environment. All of which was started by Germany both during and post war through employment by the USA. All in all, if WWII had not of happened, if Hitler had never been born.... the space race would of been a long time coming, along with other things we take for granted today.

All in all, as a species, we would never of got as far as we have today....without evil.

Sean xoxoxo

All very interesting ways of looking at it

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including tendencies that they were born with.

Judy I agree with that and it brings me to another question.
Is seems some folks are just born KNOWING what they want to do in life, for instance you hear of actors being very hammish as children and knowing at a very young age they want to be an actor.

My mom said from the moment I could walk she could not get me off my rocking horse and through out my childhood all I thought about were horses yet I am the only one in my family as far back as I know on both sides who has ever had such an intense interest in the equine world. I did go on and make a career of it for 25 years.

I suppose this would have something to do with past lifes? (I know this is off topic but...)

Jann, I guess that there are many variables which could contribute to creating our interests and loves. It could start with a childhood book read to us by a 'favourite' person. Or catching something on tv. Or coaxing by an enthusiastic adult. It could be sparked by having an admiration for someone who also has an interest in that subject. Etc, etc ... But yes, in my view it could be a connection with a past life, or possibly even a gene that is inherited from an ancestor.

I do believe in evil. Whether born that way or not, or by society is all a matter of conjecture. I think that belief stems from what we are taught as a child. I have noticed over the years, that those of us who were raised in a church (so to speak) tend to believe in evil without a doubt. However, as we get older we are able to decide on our own conclusions, does evil exist or is it a type of religious hold used to adhere believers to the way of Christ?

I for one strongly believe that there is evil out there. I agree with Sean, without evil how would we know what good was?

We are surrounded by evil on a daily basis. Murder, rape, abuse, child molestation, are those crimes committed because someone just snaps, or are they in part caused by evil? Can the hand of evil touch a weak minded human, causing them to commit these types of crimes?

Once again this is a topic that each person is going to have their own opinions on. I have greatly enjoyed reading everyones views on the subject. Great thread Jann!

Some thoughts on this:

I believe in absolute good and evil, but I generally don't think that's what this plane of existence is intended to be. I think we all have potentials for either, and the battle for good vs. evil is a personal one for each of us. I think this world is a training ground for that battle, with some people more or less good or evil.

I believe if we were perfect, or perfectly evil, we probably wouldn't even be here. The world is comprised of a blend of both. Even an evil person like Hitler probably had some hidden good quality, as I recall Anne Frank suggested.

I too believe in reincarnaton, and that a baby is not necessarily a newer soul. I heard a spiritual philosophy once that a baby's ego is fully hardwired by the age of three. If that's true, that means one's basic identity has already been established, and why parents exert less control over their children than they might imagine. So each person is uniquely individual, and that personality forms many life long traits at an early age.

The big difference between man and other life forms is we have a choice to strive for perfection and good or succumb to evil, or as previously said, to go towards light or darkness.

Very nicely expressed, justavisitor . . . and Jann, I know exactly what you mean. I have seen this . . . not in most of us, but in a few. There was a girl I remember who was "born" to dance. Perhaps it was genetic, as Ruby suggested, but it may also have been more of much experience in an earlier life. Gerry, I liked your comments about how we all have this mix within us and are capable of choosing our destiny and direction. I wholeheartedly agree, and as teachers I know we often exert as much energy in trying to help young people choose the direction of good as we do in the nuts and bolts of our subjects.

But, Sean, waiting to go into space would have been a small price to pay for avoiding the horrors of the Holocaust. No scientific advancements in rocketry or medicine are worth that. Your point that science always advances during war is valid, but they do not justify the horror that is war, not then, not now. I love you, guy, but I can see why that topic fell flat at the dinner table.

Yes Judy, quite a few silences I can tell you, learnt my lesson that day!

But I disagree that war cannot justify advancements in medicine...It can and does to countless millions around the world right this second!

Still although war is a horror, I think it is an intricate part of human existence and advancement and the a way of controlling the population explosion. People only see the horror and not the good that came from it. For instance..

60,000,000 people died during WWII.. If half of those where to have children (I suspect it would of been a lot more) This would of taken the population to an extra 60,000,000, We are now entering the fourth generation So it would work out something like this

1st generation = 60,000,000 Children
2nd Generation = 120,000,000 Children
3rd Generation = 240,000,000 Children
4th Generation = 480,000,000 Children

Most of the 1st generation would be dying out by now, but the rest would total 840,000,000 extra people which will keep on rising. Causing death, disease, famine etc. A bigger global problem. Even if you look at the environmental impact of another Billion people on the planet and the resources they use. Its catastrophic!

The medical advancements that only space design could of made such as the Digital Cardiac Imaging (DCI) System and the Heart Rate Monitor made by Johnsons Space laboratory, Aid's treatment advancement, a cure for cervical cancer, prosthetic robotic advancements to name but a few.

Even if we look at the Aids virus alone, 39.5 million people are living with aids today. Due to the advancement in treatment (From the space program) they are alive and haven't died the long and painful death that they would of if these drugs had not been made..,thats over half of those who died in WWII alone, If we add all those who die of cirvical cancer (27,000 a year) And then chemotherapy... tracing its roots back to the Nazi regime then countless millions have been saved. Well overtaking the original figure of 60,000,000.

So, these are just a few reasons why I think WWII was not all evil, while it was unintentional that these things came out of it.. more people owe their life to these 'horrors' of the war and the people's sacrifice. Its just as a society, we do not want to look at it this way, as if accepting that more people lived overall than died would somehow make us accept that death through war actually breads life as a side effect and is thus acceptable. We are all raised to to look at these two wars as something so henus that it is undebatable. Seriously, the Jewish meal was just one occasion. Try discussing WWII in a positive way... with anyone.. its very difficult and not because there is no positives, just people don't want to hear.

My trouble is, I have foot and mouth, in my head I can see a flip side to it but trying to explain it to a family of Jews was not the right move but I did find it an irritant that at the time it appeared that they seem to impress upon me they where the only victims, we all were, we all have family that lived and died through that era, and we all reap the benefits of what came from it. I still see WWII as a 'long term' good thing and not the pigeon holed horror story the world wants us to see.

Everything has a flip side, even good projects have horrific evil side effects, even something as simple as taking water from a stream to irrigate a countries farmland, may mean the death of countless others due to starvation further down that river.... Cause and effect...there is good and bad in everything, we just should not blinker ourselves to see only one half of the whole story.

Sean

How do you define "evil"? Seriously, think about it for a minute. What is evil?

When I worked at the United Methodist Boys' Ranch in Gore, OK, in 1983, one of my boys was a psychopath. That is to say, he had no compassion, no empathy. He was purely selfish and had no emotional understanding of how his actions affected others. Patrick wasn't really interested in hurting anyone or causing pain - that is, as long as you didn't get in his way or interfere with what he wanted. I taught him that, if he wanted to survive long term in the world and be able to be happy, he would have to learn society's rules and play by them. He was extremely intelligent and very good at games, so I taught him to approach life as a game. The rules don't always make sense, but you have to follow them to win, and sometimes teamwork or cooperation can advance your own position. I came to love him, although I knew he couldn't love me. Last I heard he was living in OKC, had a good job, and had not run afoul of the law. Was he evil? With just a little more inclination in darker directions, he could have been a serial killer or worse; he didn't have the ability to grasp how his actions affected others on an emotional level. Patrick may have learned to function in society and may not have ever significantly harmed anyone; I don't know for sure. But he was still a psychopath and always will be. That's just how he was "wired."

Then there's me. The sexual abuse started at age 4, the emotional, physical, and mental abuse started a little earlier than that. By age 10 I had 7 of the 10 markers for a serial killer, but I turned my rage inwards and became depressed and suicidal. I will never be "normal." I will never be the person I could have been with a nurturing childhood, but I have overcome. It was a long slow process and I didn't attain a state of mind and heart that allowed me to be happy until my mid 40's, but I did make it. Although I attempted to kill my mother by cutting the brake lines on her car when I was about 14 after a particularly bad week, I can say with great pride that I have never hurt anyone intentionally (not counting the usual hurt feelings and "broken hearts" that almost everyone has in their past), and I stopped hurting animals in my teens and have since done a lot of hard work to make amends as best I could, working with animal welfare groups and animal rescue societies.

By all rights, I should be an "evil" person. But I'm not. On the one hand, this leads me to say that we all have a choice. The violent criminal can't blame his actions on his upbringing, not entirely. He DID have a choice, just as I did. But on the other hand... had someone not as strong-willed or intelligent as I been subjected to my childhood, could they have overcome? Do some people become what we would call "evil" simply because it's all they've ever known and don't see another choice? If so, are they truly an evil person, or are they, like Patrick, simply unable to understand the external consequences of their actions at any meaningful level?

Yes, what we would define as pure evil exists. I have seen - and been attacked by - a "demonic" entity. But I'm not sure that a human being can embody "pure evil," regardless of the harm their actions cause. Most people would agree that Hitler was evil, as would I since his youth group activities twisted my biological father into a sick, warped, s.o.b. whose only thought for his children was how to use them. But Hitler himself believed that he was doing the right thing, trying to make the world a better place.

I don't really believe that any human being capable of compassion and empathy can be truly evil by intention, but certainly misguided human actions create results that we can define as "evil." This world is not black and white, it has many colors. What you call aquamarine I may call sea green, and I think that moral labels are even more difficult to apply correctly than naming colors.

I just take people as I find them, do what I feel is necessary to protect myself from harm, and try to do no harm myself, and do positive things when I can. I'll leave the labeling and the sorting to someone - or something - with more wisdom than I have.