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Only if you believe in evil. I'm not christian so I don't see the world like that. He killed his s/o, like what 15 years ago now? People change and deserves

Only if you believe in evil. I'm not christian so I don't see the world like that. He killed his s/o, like what 15 years ago now? People change and deserves a second chance.

themerone 3y ago
Evil is not a religious concept.
- shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
  Dude. Good & evil is such a central concept in Christianity it is practically ingrained in your society if you live in a christian country even if you are secular.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    Christianity also features the premise of marriage, so does that mean no secular conception of marriage can exist? Most people think otherwise. Christianity doesn't own "good and evil", even though it features it, and nor are these premises even owned by religion generally.
  - skissane 3y ago
    The English words for good and evil are pre-Christian in origin. So are their cognates in other European languages. Greek philosophers were debating “good and evil” centuries before Jesus of Nazareth was born. So there is nothing inherently Christian about those words, or the concepts they describe.
    - shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
      You are correct, but you are also ignoring the fact that we are no longer living in ancient greek time. I did not claim that Christianity invented good & evil. I claimed that it is a central concept in Christianity. Your way of reasoning here is often referred to as a straw mans argument.
      - skissane 3y ago
        > You are correct, but you are also ignoring the fact that we are no longer living in ancient greek time. Even today, people still read and are influenced by Plato and Aristotle. > I did not claim that Christianity invented good & evil. I claimed that it is a central concept in Christianity. You claimed you don’t believe in evil because you are not a Christian. Not being a Christian and not believing in evil have little connection with each other, given billions of non-Christians believe in evil. > Your way of reasoning here is often referred to as a straw mans argument. You argument was too unclear to strawman.
        shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
        In my part of the world, christianity has dominated for 1000+ years. There are no influences from eastern religion or Plato or whatever. I suspect the same is true in your part of the world.
        selimthegrim 3y ago
        You do realize there was a great deal of Ancient Greek influence on Christianity?
        Tainnor 3y ago
        Christian theology is heavily influenced by Plato and especially Aristotle, so what you wrote is self-contradictory. I don't know where you live but it's almost impossible to overstate the significance of Plato on Western thought.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - anthk 3y ago
    Goodness and evilness predates Christianity by millenia. Read about Mesopotamian religions, or the Hindic ones.
    - shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
      It's not relevant since those religions are no longer practiced. Christianity is, and is still influencing our world, like I wrote above.
      - anthk 3y ago
        Hinduism it's pretty much alive, and Christianity it's just a fork of Judaism. When Cristianity didn't even exist, the Chinese already had a good chunk of philosophy perfectly set and written, and even modernish rules for war and diplomacy: Tao Te King, and The Art of War. Heck, America from Canada to the Patagonia didn't even know about Jesus until the Europeans arrived 1500 years later. 1500s damn years. For a huge continent mass spread over from almost the North Pole to the South pole. So much for an 'Universal' God. So universal that Aquinas had to rip a good chunk of Greek philosophy to adapt (more like smash it down with nails and duct tape) ancient Middle East fairy tales into the less-desert bound Europe as the modern Christian canonical sources. If any, the Western world is shaped by the Roman architecture and law, and the Greek worldview, mindset and math.
        shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
        >> It's not relevant since those religions are no longer practiced. >> Christianity is, and is still influencing our world, like I wrote above. > Hinduism it's pretty much alive, and Christianity it's just a fork of Judaism Okay, so you're a hindu or a jew. Are you arguing my point about christianity influencing "our" world? I guess I expressed myself rather western-centric.
        anthk 3y ago
        I am not neither a hindu or jew. Christianism in Europe is larguely cultural, our values shifted a lot since the Enlightenment times. The US, not much, they have a large sense of prudeness which affected even policitically left leaned people. I mean, here people it's Christian by name only. Technically, even the Southern Spain with infamous street parades with large walks carrying a big structure with a Virgin, most of that it's just a showoff and a way to say "look how loaded we are, so much that we can build great golden clothes for our Virgin". If any, lots of lore in Europe it's just paganism with a Christian disguise. Even Christianism itself it's so-so Christian-wannabe unlike the original one which came from the Middle East; it was largely repurposed with Greek values so people here could assimilate better these alien customs such as not being able to eat pork or nonsense about alcohol when the risk of dehidrating in Europe was near nil. Kinda like North Korea with Communism. Marxist? Today, in name, maybe. Because Juche it's almost a copycat of right wing fascism with Asian features. Kinda like the Japanese one, but with Koreans.
- hnbad 3y ago
  Evil as a moral judgement isn't. Acts can be good or evil. In more secular terms we prefer to say "harmful" or "unjust" but the meaning is arguably the same. But the idea that "evil" is an attribute a person can possess is 100% a religious one. If you're not religious, there can be no evil person unless you think there is an "evil" gene or an "evil" psychosis - "sociopath" and "psychopath" are often used this way but usually in ways that have very little to do with diagnostic criteria and more with trying to sound more profound than just calling someone a bad person; in pseudoscience this also sometimes manifests as the idea that some people are more predisposed to crime, though usually nowadays this more often manifests as vague notions of "racial culture" than measuring skull shapes, but this too is just a more elaborate way to call groups of people inherently bad. As a religious concept, "evil" can be somewhat nebulous where people just take some wrong turns and "evilness" seeps into them making them irredeemable: many Christians (especially certain sects of American protestantism) believe "sins" (i.e. disobeying God's rules, not necessarily causing measurable harm to others in secular terms) work kind of like this where habitual sinning in one way can lead to sinning in other ways as sinfulness takes over the person's life (like an addiction spiraling out of control). It can also be a much more literal idea of outright demonic possession (e.g. the kind of thing you need an exorcist to help with) or demonic presence (e.g. evil people actually being lizard people masking themselves as fellow humans to hide among us). And yes, I'm labelling certain fringe conspiracy movements as religious as they operate on a similar framework and often have direct ties to religious traditions and concepts. Conversely, not only are "evil people" a religious concept but so are "good people". If good is something you do that means you need to continously demonstrate your "goodness" by doing good things. But if good is something you can be then any accusations of wrongdoing are highly suspect because a good person would do no such things. This is why most people don't take kindly to being told even in the most polite terms that something they did was kinda racist (or sexist, or misogynist, or...) because "I'm not a racist" (i.e. thinking of it as an innate attribute of their character rather than one of their actions and hence something they can and need to actively control) - mind you, liberals did not do a good job with this distinction either over the past decade because as it turns out even self-professed non-religious people often have religious upbringings that stick with them (i.e. self-applied labels like "feminist", "anti-racist", etc should only ever be read as statements of intent and dismissed if they do not manifest in their actions which they rarely do).
masklinn 3y ago
Has Hans Reiser changed and does he deserve a second chance? His first parole board certainly didn’t think so and decided to keep him in for 5 more years.
readthenotes1 3y ago
Religion-free definition of evil: inclined to increase someone else's suffering without regard (that is, without caring enough to try to reduce that increase).
nulld3v 3y ago
What do you mean by "I don't believe in evil"? I think many people can agree that inherently "evil" people are very very rare. Usually people who commit an "evil" act have a reason or justification. It's portrayed in literally every movie with an antihero and spawned the "villain origin story" meme. But even if they have a reason/justification, that does not make the antihero or villain any less evil.
- shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
  > What do you mean by "I don't believe in evil"? I mean that the popular idea of evil is a childs story and should not blur our reasoning. One can consider an act "evil", but if you saw the other side of the coin, perhaps it was done out of necessity, revenge, fear or another "non-evil" reason. (I am not trying to rationalize away horrible deeds). I believe in selfishness tho. That's a real thing.
hnbad 3y ago
If you don't believe in evil (I don't) that not only means he isn't evil but that he also didn't murder his ex because he was evil. So there must still be something to him 15 years ago that made him plan to and murder his ex, hide the body, use elaborate lies to deny his actions and then only admit to it when offered a deal to disclose the location of the body to allow the victim's grieving family to bury her. That's a lot. The prison system is neither equipped nor designed to resocialize or rehabilitate people. He hasn't demonstrated any considerable change in his character or outlook on the value of human life that makes me believe he changed for the better. He didn't make a mistake. He intentionally planned out the murder of his ex and how to hide the body and explain her disappearance and he did this to keep his children he neglected, which was the reason for her breaking up with him to begin with. And then he acted out that plan and stuck to it for months. Most people don't even commit to their gym memberships as long as he did to his cover story. People aren't evil. But people also don't improve by rotting in prison. You can argue that means we need something better than prison and I would, but you can't argue that means he should be treated as redeemed or released early. Dropping a feel-good out of context MLK quote to try and impress a future parole hearing is not a demonstration of character growth. Still referring to his victim as "my wife" when she had already broken up with him is not a demonstration of character growth. If he seeks redemption he needs to address those surviving his victim. If he wants to demonstrate rehabilitation he needs to do more than just get older and memorize meaningless platitudes.
- shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
  > If you don't believe in evil (I don't) that not only means he isn't evil but that he also didn't murder his ex because he was evil. So there must still be something to him 15 years ago that made him plan to and murder his ex, hide the body, use elaborate lies to deny his actions and then only admit to it when offered a deal to disclose the location of the body to allow the victim's grieving family to bury her. For sure, there were reasons. We just don't know them. > but you can't argue that means he should be treated as redeemed or released early. I'm not. Was just saying people deserve another chance.
- themerone 3y ago
  If you don't believe in evil, then you must not believe in friendless, meanness, empathitic, or any other adjective for describing how a human acts.
seti0Cha 3y ago
Christians believe in evil AND believe in redemption. If you are looking for people who believe that positive change is impossible, try genetic determinists.
beepbooptheory 3y ago
> The true Übermensch would never give a second thought (or the light of day) to such a piddling subject as this, one who exhibits all the frailties and animal passions of the last man! "Second chances" and "forgiveness" are just as much symptoms of christian morality as good and evil themselves. Remember always that justice died with God. Our only arbiter is the creative life, is the aesthetic domain. Thus spoke Zarathustra..
rayiner 3y ago
If you’re not religious, what’s the basis for saying anyone “deserves” anything? If he’s just meat, then he’s clearly a defective model. Just take him out. How is society better with him alive?
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  Do you think BD was right to execute all the “war criminals” with their very flawed trial? Why so?
  - rayiner 3y ago
    I’m an ex-atheist so it’s complicated. If I’m taking off my religion hat, I would say yes. It enhances national unity and in-group loyalty, and the risk of antagonizing Pakistan seems to be of no real consequence. And it’s not like BD has any lack of people. Now if I’m positing that human beings have intrinsic worth because god made them, and that we need to turn the other cheek and all that, then no, the process is deeply flawed and shouldn’t be happening.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

Only if you believe in evil. I'm not christian so I don't see the world like that. He killed his s/o, like what 15 years ago now? People change and deserves a second chance.

themerone 3y ago

Evil is not a religious concept.

shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
Dude. Good & evil is such a central concept in Christianity it is practically ingrained in your society if you live in a christian country even if you are secular.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  Christianity also features the premise of marriage, so does that mean no secular conception of marriage can exist? Most people think otherwise. Christianity doesn't own "good and evil", even though it features it, and nor are these premises even owned by religion generally.
- skissane 3y ago
  The English words for good and evil are pre-Christian in origin. So are their cognates in other European languages. Greek philosophers were debating “good and evil” centuries before Jesus of Nazareth was born. So there is nothing inherently Christian about those words, or the concepts they describe.
  - shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
    You are correct, but you are also ignoring the fact that we are no longer living in ancient greek time. I did not claim that Christianity invented good & evil. I claimed that it is a central concept in Christianity. Your way of reasoning here is often referred to as a straw mans argument.
    - skissane 3y ago
      > You are correct, but you are also ignoring the fact that we are no longer living in ancient greek time. Even today, people still read and are influenced by Plato and Aristotle. > I did not claim that Christianity invented good & evil. I claimed that it is a central concept in Christianity. You claimed you don’t believe in evil because you are not a Christian. Not being a Christian and not believing in evil have little connection with each other, given billions of non-Christians believe in evil. > Your way of reasoning here is often referred to as a straw mans argument. You argument was too unclear to strawman.
      - shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
        In my part of the world, christianity has dominated for 1000+ years. There are no influences from eastern religion or Plato or whatever. I suspect the same is true in your part of the world.
        selimthegrim 3y ago
        You do realize there was a great deal of Ancient Greek influence on Christianity?
        Tainnor 3y ago
        Christian theology is heavily influenced by Plato and especially Aristotle, so what you wrote is self-contradictory. I don't know where you live but it's almost impossible to overstate the significance of Plato on Western thought.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- anthk 3y ago
  Goodness and evilness predates Christianity by millenia. Read about Mesopotamian religions, or the Hindic ones.
  - shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
    It's not relevant since those religions are no longer practiced. Christianity is, and is still influencing our world, like I wrote above.
    - anthk 3y ago
      Hinduism it's pretty much alive, and Christianity it's just a fork of Judaism. When Cristianity didn't even exist, the Chinese already had a good chunk of philosophy perfectly set and written, and even modernish rules for war and diplomacy: Tao Te King, and The Art of War. Heck, America from Canada to the Patagonia didn't even know about Jesus until the Europeans arrived 1500 years later. 1500s damn years. For a huge continent mass spread over from almost the North Pole to the South pole. So much for an 'Universal' God. So universal that Aquinas had to rip a good chunk of Greek philosophy to adapt (more like smash it down with nails and duct tape) ancient Middle East fairy tales into the less-desert bound Europe as the modern Christian canonical sources. If any, the Western world is shaped by the Roman architecture and law, and the Greek worldview, mindset and math.
      - shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
        >> It's not relevant since those religions are no longer practiced. >> Christianity is, and is still influencing our world, like I wrote above. > Hinduism it's pretty much alive, and Christianity it's just a fork of Judaism Okay, so you're a hindu or a jew. Are you arguing my point about christianity influencing "our" world? I guess I expressed myself rather western-centric.
        anthk 3y ago
        I am not neither a hindu or jew. Christianism in Europe is larguely cultural, our values shifted a lot since the Enlightenment times. The US, not much, they have a large sense of prudeness which affected even policitically left leaned people. I mean, here people it's Christian by name only. Technically, even the Southern Spain with infamous street parades with large walks carrying a big structure with a Virgin, most of that it's just a showoff and a way to say "look how loaded we are, so much that we can build great golden clothes for our Virgin". If any, lots of lore in Europe it's just paganism with a Christian disguise. Even Christianism itself it's so-so Christian-wannabe unlike the original one which came from the Middle East; it was largely repurposed with Greek values so people here could assimilate better these alien customs such as not being able to eat pork or nonsense about alcohol when the risk of dehidrating in Europe was near nil. Kinda like North Korea with Communism. Marxist? Today, in name, maybe. Because Juche it's almost a copycat of right wing fascism with Asian features. Kinda like the Japanese one, but with Koreans.
hnbad 3y ago
Evil as a moral judgement isn't. Acts can be good or evil. In more secular terms we prefer to say "harmful" or "unjust" but the meaning is arguably the same. But the idea that "evil" is an attribute a person can possess is 100% a religious one. If you're not religious, there can be no evil person unless you think there is an "evil" gene or an "evil" psychosis - "sociopath" and "psychopath" are often used this way but usually in ways that have very little to do with diagnostic criteria and more with trying to sound more profound than just calling someone a bad person; in pseudoscience this also sometimes manifests as the idea that some people are more predisposed to crime, though usually nowadays this more often manifests as vague notions of "racial culture" than measuring skull shapes, but this too is just a more elaborate way to call groups of people inherently bad. As a religious concept, "evil" can be somewhat nebulous where people just take some wrong turns and "evilness" seeps into them making them irredeemable: many Christians (especially certain sects of American protestantism) believe "sins" (i.e. disobeying God's rules, not necessarily causing measurable harm to others in secular terms) work kind of like this where habitual sinning in one way can lead to sinning in other ways as sinfulness takes over the person's life (like an addiction spiraling out of control). It can also be a much more literal idea of outright demonic possession (e.g. the kind of thing you need an exorcist to help with) or demonic presence (e.g. evil people actually being lizard people masking themselves as fellow humans to hide among us). And yes, I'm labelling certain fringe conspiracy movements as religious as they operate on a similar framework and often have direct ties to religious traditions and concepts. Conversely, not only are "evil people" a religious concept but so are "good people". If good is something you do that means you need to continously demonstrate your "goodness" by doing good things. But if good is something you can be then any accusations of wrongdoing are highly suspect because a good person would do no such things. This is why most people don't take kindly to being told even in the most polite terms that something they did was kinda racist (or sexist, or misogynist, or...) because "I'm not a racist" (i.e. thinking of it as an innate attribute of their character rather than one of their actions and hence something they can and need to actively control) - mind you, liberals did not do a good job with this distinction either over the past decade because as it turns out even self-professed non-religious people often have religious upbringings that stick with them (i.e. self-applied labels like "feminist", "anti-racist", etc should only ever be read as statements of intent and dismissed if they do not manifest in their actions which they rarely do).

masklinn 3y ago

Has Hans Reiser changed and does he deserve a second chance? His first parole board certainly didn’t think so and decided to keep him in for 5 more years.

readthenotes1 3y ago

Religion-free definition of evil: inclined to increase someone else's suffering without regard (that is, without caring enough to try to reduce that increase).

nulld3v 3y ago

What do you mean by "I don't believe in evil"? I think many people can agree that inherently "evil" people are very very rare. Usually people who commit an "evil" act have a reason or justification. It's portrayed in literally every movie with an antihero and spawned the "villain origin story" meme. But even if they have a reason/justification, that does not make the antihero or villain any less evil.

shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
> What do you mean by "I don't believe in evil"? I mean that the popular idea of evil is a childs story and should not blur our reasoning. One can consider an act "evil", but if you saw the other side of the coin, perhaps it was done out of necessity, revenge, fear or another "non-evil" reason. (I am not trying to rationalize away horrible deeds). I believe in selfishness tho. That's a real thing.

hnbad 3y ago

If you don't believe in evil (I don't) that not only means he isn't evil but that he also didn't murder his ex because he was evil. So there must still be something to him 15 years ago that made him plan to and murder his ex, hide the body, use elaborate lies to deny his actions and then only admit to it when offered a deal to disclose the location of the body to allow the victim's grieving family to bury her. That's a lot. The prison system is neither equipped nor designed to resocialize or rehabilitate people. He hasn't demonstrated any considerable change in his character or outlook on the value of human life that makes me believe he changed for the better. He didn't make a mistake. He intentionally planned out the murder of his ex and how to hide the body and explain her disappearance and he did this to keep his children he neglected, which was the reason for her breaking up with him to begin with. And then he acted out that plan and stuck to it for months. Most people don't even commit to their gym memberships as long as he did to his cover story. People aren't evil. But people also don't improve by rotting in prison. You can argue that means we need something better than prison and I would, but you can't argue that means he should be treated as redeemed or released early. Dropping a feel-good out of context MLK quote to try and impress a future parole hearing is not a demonstration of character growth. Still referring to his victim as "my wife" when she had already broken up with him is not a demonstration of character growth. If he seeks redemption he needs to address those surviving his victim. If he wants to demonstrate rehabilitation he needs to do more than just get older and memorize meaningless platitudes.

shzhdbi09gv8ioi 3y ago
> If you don't believe in evil (I don't) that not only means he isn't evil but that he also didn't murder his ex because he was evil. So there must still be something to him 15 years ago that made him plan to and murder his ex, hide the body, use elaborate lies to deny his actions and then only admit to it when offered a deal to disclose the location of the body to allow the victim's grieving family to bury her. For sure, there were reasons. We just don't know them. > but you can't argue that means he should be treated as redeemed or released early. I'm not. Was just saying people deserve another chance.
themerone 3y ago
If you don't believe in evil, then you must not believe in friendless, meanness, empathitic, or any other adjective for describing how a human acts.

seti0Cha 3y ago

Christians believe in evil AND believe in redemption. If you are looking for people who believe that positive change is impossible, try genetic determinists.

beepbooptheory 3y ago

> The true Übermensch would never give a second thought (or the light of day) to such a piddling subject as this, one who exhibits all the frailties and animal passions of the last man! "Second chances" and "forgiveness" are just as much symptoms of christian morality as good and evil themselves. Remember always that justice died with God. Our only arbiter is the creative life, is the aesthetic domain. Thus spoke Zarathustra..

rayiner 3y ago

If you’re not religious, what’s the basis for saying anyone “deserves” anything? If he’s just meat, then he’s clearly a defective model. Just take him out. How is society better with him alive?

selimthegrim 3y ago
Do you think BD was right to execute all the “war criminals” with their very flawed trial? Why so?
- rayiner 3y ago
  I’m an ex-atheist so it’s complicated. If I’m taking off my religion hat, I would say yes. It enhances national unity and in-group loyalty, and the risk of antagonizing Pakistan seems to be of no real consequence. And it’s not like BD has any lack of people. Now if I’m positing that human beings have intrinsic worth because god made them, and that we need to turn the other cheek and all that, then no, the process is deeply flawed and shouldn’t be happening.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]