Is most evil the product of good intentions?

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This, I think...



"Malice under the guise of good intentions" ... this may be closer to True Evil than "An action, undertaken in good faith, that does harm to one's self or others". The former includes deceiving others to commit a harmful act, while the latter may include both murder and suicide.

What about teasing/bullying? I guess the good intention could be interpreted as it makes the bully feel better (like was said earlier, looking out for number one) But that answer still seems odd to me.

Murdering all of Jewry ( or of all Tasmanian Aborigonies or whomever) is what you consider to be a GOOD intension?

If I set out with a tire iron in hand and ring your doorbell with the intent to break a few of your bones - that is usually defined as "malice."

So setting out to murder a whole race would also be so defined.

You know "malice". Which starts with the Latin syllable "mal"- which means "bad".

By your reasoning every crime is the result of good intension.

Robbing a bank is the result of the intent to make the world free of poverty- the poverty of one person-that of you the putative bank robber.

The road to evil is often paved with good intensions. But not always.

Evil often results from evil intensions.

The Utilitarian line of thought would interpret bullying as harmful - and therefor evil. Teasing may or may not be considered harmful, as social intercourse often involves some form of banter that includes teasing. Thus, if the teased person learns to tease back, then he or she has learned how to be more socially acceptable. On the other hand, if the teased person reacts to the teasing as if it were a violent attack, then the results would indicate that the teasing was evil.

Of course, an equally valid argument might be made to justify the actions of a narcissistic and overly-sensitive individual as evil, especially if the individual's behavior is constantly disruptive and causes others unnecessary grief.

Actually, I think that the take-home is that we ought to be cautious about what we try to do to make the world a better place. If we become too single-mindedly devoted to an idea, we can lose sight of what is really important.

I agree, but I have found from personal experience that actual evil intentions are fairly rare outside of football hooligans and drug addicts. I have actually had the displeasure of encountering people who devoted their entire psyche to violence and acts of spite against their fellow man, and they had little other content in their character. I agree with you that these people exist. I just see such sociopathic tendencies as kind of abnormal.

Let me put it this way. There is this saying coined by a guy named Weinberg that goes, "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion." I think that touches on the point. It's not that good intentions are bad, it's just that good intentions accompanied by sins like willful ignorance and deliberate blindness RESULTS in evil.

For example, a woman doing something like falling in love with a gay guy and convincing herself that she can change him somehow, I have seen those kinds of relationships fall apart, and it's always incredibly ugly. There was no evil in the woman's intentions, and her feelings were sincere. It was all done in the purest of heart. It is just wrong. Not wrong because of any malice on anybody's part, just wrong because of what happens as a result.

So I think the gist of it is, malice is not the only cause of sin.

Well time for me to venture into the unknowns of the grey area...

The consequences may not be intended when it comes to those who do have sincerely good intentions, but once they are aware that what they stand for has such consequences, they may stubbornly refuse to change their worldview accordingly not out of shock but out of either arrogance or fear of uncertainty. From this point on, it goes from good intentions to self-preservation. So they are aware that the choice they make will continue to harm others.

So while people with genuine good intentions may have been aware of the harm after the fact, those who malicious intentions knew from the very beginning. Allowing others to be harmed by the product of your good intentions out of fear of uncertainty or arrogance may not be as bad as going out of your way to harm others, but it is still selfish to preserve your worldview at the expense of the harm that goes on in spite of it. So it still isn't good enough for me as an excuse if you are aware of it.

Nah, I think evil is the product of skewed sense of what good is though. That would imply that being a self serving prick would somehow make the world a utopia,. I don't agree with this, because self serving people try to package their personal agenda as being for a greater good to get people to go along with them. It may produce more honest, self serving people, but I don't think that would be necessarily good. I don't really see any advantage for self serving people to be honest either, as the deception is what they benefit off of.

I think the people who sell the "good intentions" often know what they're doing and that's advancing their selves at the expense of others. The poor souls who buy into it and jump on the bandwagon are deluded fools though.

I don't think evil would exist without good. If things were in balance, in harmony, as far as humanity interacts with itself, we'd probably have no concept of either.

People tend to disagree on the "goodness" of certain intentions.

Witch hunting, mutilation and murder because you believe, anyone? There’s a special after life prize if you ground the infant.

Even the Devil claims he is acting for good. He is a "fan of man"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGR4SFOi ... _embedded#!

ruveyn

No, evil is bad intent under the disguise of benevolence. I can be a little harsh and critical on people and sometimes I use the word haphazardly, but true evil is always hidden behind a benevolent mask.

It's not the same thing as having good intentions and just screwing up royally due to idiocy or foolishness. There is a very big difference.