C.S. Lewis said: “Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.”

Why is this? It is because the religious folks who listen to them are poisoned by their rhetoric, or shamed by their behavior.

When tithes from working folks are taken for sports cars and not the poor, this is not the work of God.

When a fatwah tells to murder, or the word comes from a pulpit to bomb a clinic this is not the word God.

When a priest molests an acolite, this is not the work of God.

This is corruption of the highest order.

Plato argues that there is no Evil, what we see as evil is just ignorance; what everyone wants “the good”.

Genesis speaks of Adam and Eve being cast from the Garden of Eden because they “ate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Evil must therefore be something related to humanity in its current state.

The Bible considers sin as a break in the covenant between man and God. The Koran considers sin to be against the sinner himself. Sin, for purposes of this discussion may be evil, but is not necessarily so.

There are those that find anything that varies from their “normal” is evil: unapproved sexual practices, other religions, disobeying rules within their ethic system, etc. For purposes of our discussion, let us consider only those things that are morally bad, intrinsically corrupt, wantonly destructive, inhumane, or wicked in the abstract.

I propose that we consider Evil not to be terrible acts, but the principles and conditions that lead to destructive behaviors that make the world a poorer and meaner place to live.

I will be writing and revising essays on the following that are proposed for your consideration as Evil:

This list is subject to revision, and the definitions we want to use may not be the common usage. Please comment and add your views. Perhaps at this site we can come to a “generally accepted” definition of evil.

Torture

(my Definintion)

1) An act to cause substantial pain to a person held in captivity.

2) An act that through pain or severe discomfort that terrorizes prisoner so as to fear imminent loss of life, body parts or permanent function.

3) An act described above proscribed by international agreements and accords.

Torture is Evil.

Torture is ineffective as an intelligence activity because an individual will say whatever the captor wants to hear, whatever will “make it stop”. What the captor wants to hear as often as not turns out not to be the truth. often is not the reality.
Torture will cause an individual to make false confessions, to implicate innocents, and fabricate plots or false history. This terrible for intelligence, as decisions are made on the preconcieved notions of the captor, and not the reality of the situation.
No civil society should employ or tolerate torture.

See:

Torture in Wikipedia