Spectrum wrote: ↑July 22nd, 2018, 10:08 pm
There you go again. Classic avoidance. No answer to the prejudice and bigotry. No answer to the cherry picking. Nothing to say about the use of the word, ‘evil’. Nothing about your unjustified assumptions of individual belief. Nothing about the accusation of dishonesty. No refutal when I criticised your sweeping and outrageous generalisations.
Iapetus,
I think you are being unnecessarily pedantic and a "little" (ahem !) disingenuous when you criticise Spectrum for his use of the word "evil". Whether or not you "personally dislike" the term is irrelevant as it is a legitimate English word, and one that is widely and frequently used in both in the vernacular (common parlance) and in the mass communications media (print and electronic) of English -speaking Western nations like the United States, the UK, Australia and so on. I put it to you that know
full well what Spectrum means by the term "evil", and I completely agree with him that what are typically referred to as the "Medina passages" (the passages of the Koran the prophet Mohammed claims were revealed to him by Allah during the time he was a powerful warlord based in the city of Medina are, in many cases, laden with evil content. When the "Medina verses" of the Koran are considered collectively, it is fair to say that they clearly articulate (
amongst other wickness) a divine command for all Muslims to unquestioningly endorse/affirm what is best described as a violent, aggressive, totalitarian, (essentially fascist) political ideology; one which aspires to absolute global domination through the waging of offensive war against all non-Muslims.
Let's be clear about what Spectrum means by the term "evil". As a philosopher you will, I presume, know that there are traditionally three types of evil, namely : metaphysical evil ( i.e. the innate privations bourn by all finite, non-Godly/ non- perfectly good creatures, cf: Leibniz), natural evil ( e.g. the harms brought to bear by natural disasters like tsunamis, cyclones, erupting volcanoes) and moral evil. Spectrum is obviously referring to the later, i.e. moral evil - evil that is brought to bear as a consequence of human agency; the moral evil that is sometimes called "wickedness" in philosophy.
Moral evil refers to the intentional perpetration "bad"/ "wrong" acts by any human moral agent. So what is "bad" and what is "wrong", you might ask ? My response would be to say that I believe human morality is best conceptualised as a spectrum that is "stretched" between two diametrically opposed poles: "Right" and "Wrong". To do what is morally "good" is to do what is "Right", that is, to adhere to "Right" principles in ones behaviour and interactions.
So what are "Right" principles ?
"Right" principles are those that serve to: (1)
reduce suffering (i.e. reduce the physical and/or mental pain) that is being experienced by any moral agent or (2) are
life-affirming in the sense that they serve to protecting and/or increase the pleasure, liberty, ability, happiness, health and general well being of any moral agent ( including one's self). If you act in a way that is consistent with (1) and/or (2) then you are doing what is morally "good".
At the opposite pole of the moral spectrum is, as mentioned above, the "Wrong". What is "Wrong" is to act in a way that is morally "bad"; and a morally "bad" act I defined as one that
intentionally and
unjustifiably harms any moral agent. The basic harms are as follows: (1) Death ( terminating the life of another moral agent); (2) suffering ( the experience by any moral agent of physical and/or mental pain); (3) the disaffirmation of life; that is, failing to protect and/ or diminishing the quality/quantity of the life-affirming attributes of: liberty, pleasure, ability, happiness, vitality, health and general well being that are possessed and enjoyed by, or, are available/accessible for, any moral agent.
In short, morally evil acts are, strictly speaking, simply wrong/ morally bad acts as I have defined the terms "Wrong" and "Bad" above.
To continue. It is fair to say that in common parlance the term "evil" tends to refer to particularly bad, that is, to
very bad or extremely/exceedingly bad acts. It is worth noting here, BTW, that the word "evil" ( as it is used today) is, in fact, derived from the old Anglo-Saxon term
"yfel", ( pronounced: "ee-fell") which meant "beyond", as in the phrase "beyond the pale". That is, "beyond" in the sense that the term connotes going past - i.e. transgressing" - a given finite boundary or standard fixed limit of some kind. Thus, the descriptor "evil" is typically reserved for acts of moral badness that are
so extremely bad they place themselves completely "beyond" (the pale) of rational comprehension by ordinary, everyday, "normal" persons. I mean that when someone describes an act as being (morally) evil today, what they tend to mean is that the act is so shockingly/astonishingly bad that the fact of its actual perpetration is something that lies completely "beyond" the understanding of the majority the reasonable -(sane and sensible) - mainstream of normal human beings; - that the degree of badness is - if you like - "beyond" understanding, in the same kind of way that the concept of "transcendent" or "potential" infinity) - is simply
beyond the grasp of human reason ( i.e. rational human cognition) when one is ,say, contemplating that notion in the context of gazing up into the seemingly boundless depths of a starry night sky. The very idea simply "blows your mind".
To conclude , Spectrum is absolutely correct to point out that there is plenty of evil content written into the Koran, it appears in what are termed the Medina passages of this sacred scripture; and to quote the late Christopher Hitchins the idea that the Koran's Medina verses/ Medina ideology were, in fact, the divine word of Allah as spoken (in Arabic !!) by the archangel Gabriel to the prophet Mohammed who then dutifully recorded them for posterity is pure "********". The Mediuna verses were, of course, nothing more than Mohammed''s own morally twisted and perverted handiwork; and he wrote them at a time when he was, morally speaking, right "off the rails", and acting out big time as a power-mad, psychopathic, rampaging, blood-thirtsty warlord ( not to mention a middle-aged sexual pervert who took a six- year-old girl for his wife !) and I could go on and on telling you about the prophet's legion evil behaviours in the Medina phase of his career but there is no good reason you can't get off your butt and google this history for yourself. As for the Koran's "Medina ideology", there are something like 140 so-called "Sword Verses"
just to start with, and if you try to tell me that when Mohammed commands the faithful to lop of the thumbs, limbs and heads of the infidel in these passages he
actually means something else entirely ( i.e. something subtly kind and peaceful and loving that I and a millions of other sane human beings are just too stupid/obtuse to nuance in your sophisticated postmodern opinion ) well I'm sorry but that is also as CH would say - pure and utter, 100% ********. To cut to the chase, "moral evil" is, as a US Supreme Court jurist once famously put it, just like pornography, (i.e.) : "
you know it when you see it", and I see plenty of it ( moral evil) written into the Koran my friend- PLENTY !
Regards
Dachshund