A well-known "solution" to the problem of evil is that god allows evil because he desired to bestow free will upon us. Thus, we, possessed of free-will, have the liberty to do anything and "sometimes" we do evil and hence there is evil in the world.

However, if you go by the existence of the law and the police, we come to the conclusion that evil comes naturally to us and we've recognized this fact of our nature. Ergo the need to put a rein on our immoral tendencies by enacting and enforcing laws. In other words, contrary to the free-will explanation for the problem of evil, there's no need for us to have free-will in order to be evil; In fact it's the opposite: we need free-will to go against our innate tendency for immorality and be at our best behavior.

The free-will explanation for the problem of evil is wrong. — TheMadFool

Basically.

Were like mice being played with by a cat. Solute the cat so he eats you quicker. lol.

Once i'm inside the cats stomach and am digested, i go to mouse heaven.

all jokes aside i try to enjoy life as much as possible.

Sure, this extreme behaviorist assumption that we only do what we ultimately like doing, does have some truth to it. (Students like taking exams, since they like getting a degree, a job, money etc.) But if the liking is to be traced back to the ultimate goal of the action, how could you prove that we like evil more than anything? People do a lot of evil, but their final goal is rarely that bad, is it? A murderer kills to achieve something else, to get money for example, and that in itself is not evil. People use evil means to reach good or neutral ends. — Congau

Well, have a look at the decalogue - as everyone knows it lists some do's and don't's and it only takes a moment to notice the don't's outnumber the do's. If one then takes into consideration the fact that the decalogue is just a list of oughts which are basically corrective measures to be applied to the existing status quo, it becames patently clear that more bad things were being done than good things. I take this as evidence that we're, let's say, more devilish than divine in dispostion.

Well, have a look at the decalogue - as everyone knows it lists some do's and don't's and it only takes a moment to notice the don't's outnumber the do's. If one then takes into consideration the fact that the decalogue is just a list of oughts which are basically corrective measures to be applied to the existing status quo, it becames patently clear that more bad things were being done than good things. I take this as evidence that we're, let's say, more devilish than divine in dispostion. — TheMadFool

Any conceivable moral rules would have to focus more on what people are not allowed to do. That would be true a priori, before knowing anything about human nature and how human beings actually interact in the world. The basis of all morality is ‘Don’t hurt people’, and that would be the case even in a society of angellike creatures who only occasionally did something wrong.

The do’s are always conditional. If you find yourself in such and such situations, you have to do this and that: If you have a child, you have to feed it. If your country is at war, you have to defend it.

The don’ts are basically unconditional: Don’t ever steal. Don’t lie.
If I know nothing about you, where you are and what you do, I would give you this general rule: ‘Don’t steal’, but I wouldn’t oblige you to give money to the poor if you are poor yourself.

Duty ethics (like the decalogue) is essentially about negative duties (the don’ts) and the positive duties (the dos) are secondary. It’s possible to be morally perfect with respect to the negative duties: you just refrain from acting, while the possible positive duties are unlimited in number and therefore can’t be fulfilled.

This would be the case whether human nature is good or bad.

Any conceivable moral rules would have to focus more on what people are not allowed to do. That would be true a priori, before knowing anything about human nature and how human beings actually interact in the world. The basis of all morality is ‘Don’t hurt people’, and that would be the case even in a society of angellike creatures who only occasionally did something wrong.

The do’s are always conditional. If you find yourself in such and such situations, you have to do this and that: If you have a child, you have to feed it. If your country is at war, you have to defend it.

The don’ts are basically unconditional: Don’t ever steal. Don’t lie.
If I know nothing about you, where you are and what you do, I would give you this general rule: ‘Don’t steal’, but I wouldn’t oblige you to give money to the poor if you are poor yourself.

Duty ethics (like the decalogue) is essentially about negative duties (the don’ts) and the positive duties (the dos) are secondary. It’s possible to be morally perfect with respect to the negative duties: you just refrain from acting, while the possible positive duties are unlimited in number and therefore can’t be fulfilled.

This would be the case whether human nature is good or bad. — Congau

Imagine this: There's a world of balls of a variety of colors. You don't like this world all that much which corresponds to our dissatisfaction with the current moral situation of the world. You wish now to do something about this, developing an idea on which colors are better i.e. good and which colors are bad; this corresponds to the origin of moral oughts.

You will eventually come up with a list of oughts the color of the balls should be. Thinking in terms of do's and don't's how would your list look? Surely, if there are more colors that've earned your disfavor (bad) compared to colors you favor (good) then , the there should be more don't's and less don't's, right? More of "don't be this color" than "do be this color". The decalogue has more don't's than do's. What is your inference?

Imagine this: There's a world of balls of a variety of colors. You don't like this world all that much which corresponds to our dissatisfaction with the current moral situation with the world. You wish now to do something about this, developing an idea on which colors are better i.e. good and which colors are bad; this corresponds to the origin of moral oughts.

You will eventually come up with a list of oughts the color of the balls should be. Thinking in terms of do's and don't's how would your list look? Surely, if there are more colors that've earned your disfavor (bad) compared to colors you favor (good) then , the there should be more don't's and less don't's, right? More of "don't be this color" than "do be this color". The decalogue has more don't's than do's. What is your inference? — TheMadFool

I’m inclined to agree with Congau here - plus, I think your analogy is too simplified.

The decalogue seems more like a set of top-down limitations on otherwise open-ended behaviour allowances. If it was a comprehensive list of do’s and don’t’s - like your list of ball colours - then I imagine it would look very different.

Let’s say there were 265 different ball colours, including a few patterned effects - surely your aim would be to simplify the list of do’s and don’t’s as much as possible, rather than list all 265 options as either a do or a don’t.

DO be only one hue (ie. don’t be green-and-red-striped or pink-and-purple-polka-dotted or rainbow-coloured, etc);
DO be a bright colour (ie. don’t be grey or black or brown or some dusty or muted shade);
Don’t be green;
Don’t be orange;
Don’t have stripes of different thicknesses;
Don’t be speckled.

That still leaves plenty of colours and patterns to be, and it isn’t accurate to infer that there are more colours you disfavour compared to colours you favour.

I’m inclined to agree with Congau here - plus, I think your analogy is too simplified.

The decalogue seems more like a set of top-down limitations on otherwise open-ended behaviour allowances. If it was a comprehensive list of do’s and don’t’s - like your list of ball colours - then I imagine it would look very different.

Let’s say there were 265 different ball colours, including a few patterned effects - surely your aim would be to simplify the list of do’s and don’t’s as much as possible, rather than list all 265 options as either a do or a don’t.

DO be only one hue (ie. don’t be green-and-red-striped or pink-and-purple-polka-dotted or rainbow-coloured, etc);
DO be a bright colour (ie. don’t be grey or black or brown or some dusty or muted shade);
Don’t be green;
Don’t be orange;
Don’t have stripes of different thicknesses;
Don’t be speckled.

That still leaves plenty of colours and patterns to be, and it isn’t accurate to infer that there are more colours you disfavour compared to colours you favour. — Possibility

How about if I get at this from another angle. Firstly, what is morality? It seems to me a product of dissatisfaction not with anything but with the way the world is, right? It's nature as oughts/ought nots indicates a wish to, if nothing, alter the staus quo - the way the world is. In other words, at the very least, the essence of morality can be summed up with "not this world but this other" referring to the aforementioned dissatisfaction. Ergo, there has to be more that we're unhappy about (bad things) than that we're happy about (good things). Had we been satisfied as would've been the case if the good exceeded the bad, we'd never have ought thoughts, thoughts that arise from facts about the world that we wish were not.

Not necessarily. It could also be a case of “This world would be perfect, if only...”

Not necessarily. It could also be a case of “This world would be perfect, if only...” — Possibility

:ok: thanks for your comments

Good and evil are conceptual in nature, and are a means to describe someone's disposition, or a reasoning for ones actions. Basically they're just adjectives, not our nature. As far as I can tell anyways :).