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See ten unvirtuous actions in Buddhism. Specifically, evil means whatever harms or obstructs the causes for happiness in this life, a better rebirth, liberation from samsara, and the true and complete enlightenment of a buddha samyaksambodhi.
Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil: And what is the root of evil? Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil.
In Hinduism, the concept of Dharma or righteousness clearly divides the world into good and evil, and clearly explains that wars have to be waged sometimes to establish and protect Dharma, this war is called Dharmayuddha. This division of good and evil is of major importance in both the Hindu epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata. However, the main emphasis in Hinduism is on bad action, rather than bad people. The Hindu holy text, the Bhagavad Gita , speaks of the balance of good and evil. When this balance goes off, divine incarnations come to help to restore this balance.
In adherence to the core principle of spiritual evolution, the Sikh idea of evil changes depending on one's position on the path to liberation. At the beginning stages of spiritual growth, good and evil may seem neatly separated. However, once one's spirit evolves to the point where it sees most clearly, the idea of evil vanishes and the truth is revealed. In his writings Guru Arjan explains that, because God is the source of all things, what we believe to be evil must too come from God.
And because God is ultimately a source of absolute good, nothing truly evil can originate from God. Nevertheless, Sikhism, like many other religions, does incorporate a list of "vices" from which suffering, corruption, and abject negativity arise. These are known as the Five Thieves , called such due to their propensity to cloud the mind and lead one astray from the prosecution of righteous action. One who gives in to the temptations of the Five Thieves is known as " Manmukh ", or someone who lives selfishly and without virtue.
Inversely, the " Gurmukh , who thrive in their reverence toward divine knowledge, rise above vice via the practice of the high virtues of Sikhism. There is no concept of absolute evil in Islam , as a fundamental universal principle that is independent from and equal with good in a dualistic sense. Within Islam, it is considered essential to believe that all comes from God , whether it is perceived as good or bad by individuals; and things that are perceived as evil or bad are either natural events natural disasters or illnesses or caused by humanity's free will.
Much more the behavior of beings with free will, then they disobey God's orders, harming others or putting themselves over Allah or others, is considered to be evil. Accordingly, qualifying something as evil depends on the circumstances of the observer.
An event or an action itself is neutral, but it receives its qualification by God. Since God is omnipotent and nothing can exist outside of God's power, God's will determine, whether or not something is evil. According to the Ahmadiyya understanding of Islam, evil does not have a positive existence in itself and is merely the lack of good, just as darkness is the result of lack of light.
In Judaism , evil is not real, it is per se not part of God's creation, but comes into existence through man's bad actions. Human beings are responsible for their choices. However, Jews and non-Jews have the free will to choose good life in olam haba or bad death in heaven. In Judaism, there is no prejudice in one's becoming good or evil at the time of birth, since full responsibility comes with Bar and Bat Mitzvah , when Jewish boys become 13, and girls become 12 years old. Evil according to a Christian worldview is any action, thought, or attitude that is contrary to the character or will of God.
This is shown through the law given in both the Old and New Testament. There is no moral action given in the Bible that is contrary to God's character or God's will.
This evil shows itself through deviation from the character or will of God. Christian theology draws its concept of evil from the Old and New Testaments. The Christian Bible exercises "the dominant influence upon ideas about God and evil in the Western world. In common parlance, evil is 'something' that occurs in the experience that ought not to be. In Mormonism , mortal life is viewed as a test of faith, where one's choices are central to the Plan of Salvation. Evil is that which keeps one from discovering the nature of God. It is believed that one must choose not to be evil to return to God.
Christian Science believes that evil arises from a misunderstanding of the goodness of nature, which is understood as being inherently perfect if viewed from the correct spiritual perspective. Misunderstanding God's reality leads to incorrect choices, which are termed evil. This has led to the rejection of any separate power being the source of evil, or of God as being the source of evil; instead, the appearance of evil is the result of a mistaken concept of good. Christian Scientists argue that even the most evil person does not pursue evil for its own sake, but from the mistaken viewpoint that he or she will achieve some kind of good thereby.
In the originally Persian religion of Zoroastrianism , the world is a battleground between the god Ahura Mazda also called Ormazd and the malignant spirit Angra Mainyu also called Ahriman. The final resolution of the struggle between good and evil was supposed to occur on a day of Judgement , in which all beings that have lived will be led across a bridge of fire, and those who are evil will be cast down forever.
In Afghan belief, angels and saints are beings sent to help us achieve the path towards goodness. A fundamental question is whether there is a universal, transcendent definition of evil, or whether evil is determined by one's social or cultural background. Lewis , in The Abolition of Man , maintained that there are certain acts that are universally considered evil, such as rape and murder.
However, the numerous instances in which rape or murder is morally affected by social context call this into question. Up until the midth century, the United States—along with many other countries—practiced forms of slavery. As is often the case, those transgressing moral boundaries stood to profit from that exercise. Arguably, slavery has always been the same and objectively evil, but men with a motivation to transgress will justify that action. Universalists consider evil independent of culture, and wholly related to acts or intents.
Thus, while the ideological leaders of Nazism and the Hutu Interhamwe accepted and considered it moral to commit genocide, the belief in genocide as fundamentally or universally evil holds that those who instigated this genocide are actually evil. Hitler considered it a moral duty to destroy Jews because he saw them as the root of all of Germany's ills and the violence associated with communism.
He therefore considered non-Muslims and Shiite Muslims evil people intent on destroying Islamic purity and therefore heretic. To say that someone who has stolen a candy bar, for instance, becomes wholly evil is a rather untenable position. However, universalists might also argue that a person can choose a decidedly evil or a decidedly good life career, and genocidal dictatorship plainly falls on the side of the former. Given his mixed record of efforts to give the Cuban people free-of-charge healthcare and education as well as opposing US hegemony in Latin America, while crushing all opposition and wrecking the Cuban economy, Fidel Castro saw himself as a Caribbean Robin Hood who considered the US and capitalism evil, while Cuban Americans , Cuban dissidents, and other communism-bashing people saw Castro as the personification of evil in late 20th-century Cuban and Latin American history, viewing his Castroist ideology as just as evil as any other form of communism and bashing him for locking up dissidents and killing innocents by firing squads, while creating mayhem in the developing world by working to foment violent communist revolutions in the Americas and many African countries.
Views on the nature of evil belong to the branch of philosophy known as ethics - which in modern philosophy is subsumed into three major areas of study: One school of thought that holds that no person is evil and that only acts may be properly considered evil. Psychologist and mediator Marshall Rosenberg claims that the root of violence is the very concept of evil or badness. When we label someone as bad or evil, Rosenberg claims, it invokes the desire to punish or inflict pain. It also makes it easy for us to turn off our feelings towards the person we are harming.
He cites the use of language in Nazi Germany as being a key to how the German people were able to do things to other human beings that they normally would not do. He links the concept of evil to our judicial system, which seeks to create justice via punishment— punitive justice —punishing acts that are seen as bad or wrong. In such cultures [ citation needed ] when someone harms another person, they are believed to be out of harmony with themselves and their community, are seen as sick or ill and measures are taken to restore them to a sense of harmonious relations with themselves and others.
He says the root of anger, and the desire to harm someone, is almost always related to variations of implicit or explicit philosophical beliefs about other human beings. He further claims that without holding variants of those covert or overt belief and assumptions, the tendency to resort to violence in most cases is less likely. Scott Peck on the other hand, describes evil as militant ignorance. Peck argues that while most people are conscious of this at least on some level, those that are evil actively and militantly refuse this consciousness.
Nevertheless, Sikhism, like many other religions, does incorporate a list of "vices" from which suffering, corruption, and abject negativity arise. Noun bad , evildoing , ill , immorality , iniquity , sin , villainy , wrong Antonyms: Examples of evil in a Sentence Adjective She drank an evil potion. Then are there some who desire the evil and others who desire the good? Thank goodness some of the perpetrators have been discovered and their evil plans thwarted. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof Bible:
Peck describes evil as a malignant type of self-righteousness which results in a projection of evil onto selected specific innocent victims often children or other people in relatively powerless positions. Peck considers those he calls evil to be attempting to escape and hide from their own conscience through self-deception and views this as being quite distinct from the apparent absence of conscience evident in sociopaths.
According to Peck, an evil person: He also considers certain institutions may be evil, as his discussion of the My Lai Massacre and its attempted coverup illustrate. By this definition, acts of criminal and state terrorism would also be considered evil. Martin Luther argued that there are cases where a little evil is a positive good. He wrote, "Seek out the society of your boon companions, drink, play, talk bawdy, and amuse yourself. One must sometimes commit a sin out of hate and contempt for the Devil , so as not to give him the chance to make one scrupulous over mere nothings According to certain [ which?
The international relations theories of realism and neorealism , sometimes called realpolitik advise politicians to explicitly ban absolute moral and ethical considerations from international politics, and to focus on self-interest, political survival, and power politics, which they hold to be more accurate in explaining a world they view as explicitly amoral and dangerous.
Adjective decent , ethical , good , honest , honorable , just , moral , right , righteous , sublime , upright , virtuous Antonyms: Noun good , morality , right , virtue Visit the Thesaurus for More. Examples of evil in a Sentence Adjective She drank an evil potion. The city has fallen on evil days.
It was an evil omen. Noun the battle of good versus evil our free will allows us to choose between good and evil. Recent Examples on the Web: Bose—Einstein condensates are not evil. Is that really how Bose—Einstein condensate behaves? Time tumbles out of control in The Doctor Falls," 3 July Well, not evil , really, but more bureaucratic, legalistic b. Learn More about evil. Resources for evil Time Traveler!
Explore the year a word first appeared. Dictionary Entries near evil evidentiary evidently evidentness evil evildoer evildoing evil eye. Phrases Related to evil the evil eye. Statistics for evil Look-up Popularity. More Definitions for evil. More from Merriam-Webster on evil See words that rhyme with evil Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for evil Spanish Central: Translation of evil Nglish: Translation of evil for Spanish Speakers Britannica English: Comments on evil What made you want to look up evil? Get Word of the Day daily email! Need even more definitions?