Owning Mahowny

I'm glad to hear we agree on something. All sane and healthy human beings regardless of where they live, what they believe, or who they are can agree that those murders in CA were evil. When you stop and think about it though that is quite an extraordinary thing. Despite all our diverse opinions, beliefs, perspectives, etc. all people agree that such wanton violence is evil. It is enough to make you wonder if there is not some definition of evil that is universal and ingrained in us as human beings.

One way to explain this is that evil does indeed exist outside of our opinions and is so real that we all recognize independent of our differences. I also think that going back to the movie Owning Mahowny (yeah!) it is quite obvious that evil can often overtake a person against their will. Mahowny was owned by those casinos and by his addiction. He was as we talked about earlier, a slave to sin. The young man you mentioned was overtaken by his hatred towards women and the despair of his life. He, like Mahowny, eventually gave his will to the actions, but you can see it took awhile to get to that point. Evil was plotting, working its way deep into his heart until he was weak enough to give his consent to the evil actions. You don't wake up one day and out of the blue say I'm going to go on a shooting spree or embezzle millions of dollars. These thoughts lurk and plot for a long time before they are acted upon. Again this sounds a little like what a "thing" would do if it was evil.

Quote: FrGamble

These thoughts lurk and plot for a long time before they are acted upon. Again this sounds a little like what a "thing" would do if it was evil.

Humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize everything.
Give human traits to inanimate objects or to concepts that
have life of their own. We've done that to the universe, given
it emotions and morals when it has none. It all springs from us
and we project it outwards