Fight Between Good And Evil

What Hollywood uses instead of a plot. What Washington uses instead of an explanation. What political critics and opportunists use instead of a constructive agenda. What happens on a wiki page which introduces a controversial topic, such as this one.

Each editor thinks themselves on the good side. Occasionally, someone may observe that ItDepends. FightBetweenGoodAndEvil is typically a BifurcationFallacy.

GoodAndEvil is a relatively (in the history of humans) new invention. If you look at earlier myths, such as the Norse, Hindu, or Greek myths, there is plenty of conflict, but no call to the righteousness of Good over Evil. Instead, there's just a bunch of people battling it out for their own sakes. GoodAndEvil is a powerful meme in the human mind, and I would wager that it is one of the primary factors in the rapid spread of Christianity in the past and Islam today.

Christianity and Islam are just the latest carriers of good vs evil theological dualism. See Zoroastrianism for their primary antecedent.

And oddly, the extremists in each label the other as evil. But another way to look at it is the "make earth heaven" (MEH) group versus "Let God decide later" (LGDL). The first group, such as the Taliban and far right, want to pass laws that either force people to do good or punish them heavily if they don't. The second group generally let people do what they want as long as it has no physical consequences to neighbors, and then let God(s) dole out punishment in the afterlife. A LGDL will only care if you have sex with goats if it causes the spread of horrible diseases, but a MEH will jail you immediately, disease or not.

This assumes the concepts held by Zoroastrianism preceded the concepts held by Christianity. If Christianity is true, Zoroastrianism is just a spin-off of knowledge poorly passed down from descendants of Adam and Eve. Of course, Z-ism would hold that some commonly known "truths" came from the source, God, and were watered down through generations of parents who failed to "keep the faith", so to speak. -- BrucePennington

Interesting. I recall the version of the Norse myths that I read as having a definite GvE spin on the Aesir's side. The foes were all giants and monsters, plus Loki.

Not so much. Odin is forever raping and betraying his relatives, and every godlet has his own agenda. It pays to remember that the Norse myths are just a degenerate form of the ancient Greek, which were pretty much every god for themselves.

Certainly the Aesir weren't monolithic, but the other side was presented as worse - Fenris wanted to eat the sun and moon, the Midgard serpent wasn't deadly venomous, etc.

Strict monotheism suggests there can be no FightBetweenGoodAndEvil - if the whole thing was made by a loving God, then the whole thing must be Good. Unfortunately, Christianity and Islam seem to be crypto-duotheisms, so get hung up this way.

This is a common misconception. For a loving God to create a being who would love Him back, he had to create FreeWill. Doing so, though, creates a condition where people can choose to love God, hate Him, or just ignore Him. All evil can be traced back to rejecting God's love and His way of life. This did not mean that God approves of our choices, or the current state of affairs of this world. -- BrucePennington

Is FreeWill, in your view, really something that can be created, or just a consequence of lack of constraints?

Not all good vs evil comparisons are theological. Some are observational, as in DietingVsIndulgence, NormalVsExtreme, MyLanguageVsYourLanguage, and MyTakeVsYourTake. In fact any X versus Y argumentation is a FightBetweenGoodAndEvil.

No, that's wrong. "Good" and "Evil" carry value judgement baggage that X vs Y does not necessarily possess; for example, choosing to paint a room red vs green.

[Agreed, particularly in the case of "evil". "Good" can be the opposite of "bad" or "evil". In the case of "bad", there's little theological baggage. Not so in the case of "evil".]

The word Evil as used on this wiki does not always carry theological baggage, Demonstrated in:

AccessorsAreEvil CategoryEvil ContextObjectsAreEvil DesignDiagramsArentEvil DistributedTransactionsAreEvil DrEvil? EntityBeansAreEvil EvilDoer EvilGeniusesInaNutshell EvilIsEvil EvilOverlord EvilWebCompany FightBetweenGoodAndEvil GoodAndEvil JavaExceptionsAreParticularlyEvil JavaFinalConsideredEvil MultipleInheritanceIsNotEvil NatureConsideredEvil PatentsAreEvil PatternsAreNotTheLesserOfTwoEvils PrematureGeneralizationIsEvil PreprocessorsAreNotEvil PurposeOfEvil RonJeffriesIsEvil RootOfAllEvil SingletonsAreEvil SoftwareIsEvil SwitchStatementsAreEvil TheEvilThatLurksInTheHeartsOfMen TheRootOfAllEvil TunnelingThroughFirewallsIsEvil WhyMplIsEvil? YourBadExperienceDoesntMakeItEvil

Value judgements are not attacks on your morality and whether or not you believe in a deity or a devil. Often the judgement is as to whether damage is done to an institution, group, individual, method or system, not only in terms of existence, but in terms of magnitude.

[I think evil is used on those pages precisely because of its theological baggage.]

Wrong! Read the pages, you'll see a much different picture, after all this wiki is not about theology, it's about computing! Those who introduce theology where it isn't have missed the point of this wiki! In reading the pages (I did), I come away with the idea that Evil is used to mean: not the best way, or possibly an appropriate way to accomplish. Witness the usage:

"necessary evil" "EntityBeans can be used for evil" "powerful and dangerous tool, difficult to use, and often applied in ways that do more harm than good"

Even on the page EvilDoer, 2/3 of the definitions quoted from a dictionary are non-theological!

If you want to debate sociology, psychology, politics or religion, there are many much more appropriate venues than this one.

Evil will always triumph because good is dumb. Some view the world this way, which is tragic. To equate good with dumb thereby implying evil is smart, is to construct a world no-one would like to live in.

[I've read the pages. They aren't about theology, but I still think the word "evil" is used because of its theological baggage. If evil wasn't a concept of supernatural malice, I don't think those pages would be using that term now. Folks say things like "Accessors are evil" to exaggerate their position, often for comedic effect. They don't mean Satan lives in accessors, but they draw upon the history of the term "evil".]

See GoodThing and BadThing