Good and Evil: Universals?

[SteveDallas]

Since you were kind enough to provide check boxes instead of radio buttons, I was a smartass and checked all 3. It's impossible to discuss even the concept of "absolutes" in the absence of cultural constructs. Having said that, yes, there are some things that are just Wrong. I don't need any kind of validation to tell me that they're wrong, and I really don't give a damn if somebody else says they're not. And contrariwise with good. Perhaps this is a kind of Locke-ian "self evident natural law" kind of thing.

The problem is, in the middle there are a whooooollleeeee bunch of other things that are not completely good, and not completely evil. Let's look at the recent military action in Iraq. (I may regret bringing this up as an example, but it springs to mind.) I think everybody can agree that the atrocities permitted by Saddam's regime are bad. (Or maybe not--Saddam obviously thought it was OK.) We can also agree that killing people is bad, and perhaps we can agree that killing civilians in a military conflict is worse than killing soldiers. Well, if we take those as axioms, we can then argue that the killing of people undertaken by the US was unfortunate, but that it was justified by the need to rid Iraq of a government not merely corrupt but, well, evil. Or we could argue that killing all those people was uncalled for and that a single man could have been removed from power without all that bloodshed, that the cost of human life can't simply be written off in a political calculation.

So from where I sit, the problem isn't whether Good and Evil are universals. The problem is that they are very, very gray, instead of the black and white demagogues on both sides of any issue like to pretend.