If you crossed paths with a coyote and it showed you its teeth, it would be frightening (photo of it here. It would seem “evil”. And if it attacked you, or you saw it attack another animal, that act would seem evil. But you would know that the coyote isn’t actually “evil”. You would conclude that the coyote is merely in survival mode. That it’s doing the only thing it knows how to do to survive. It would merely seem evil.
Conversely, if you saw a human being do such things, you would instantly conclude that you were witnessing an act of evil. It wouldn’t matter how hungry the person was, you would consider the act of killing and eating another person to be evil.
When an animal acts in a savage way, it seems evil to us. Then we remind ourselves that it’s “just an animal” trying to survive. But when a human being acts that way, we think the person is evil.
Complicating the issue even more is the fact that humans are capable of killing for pleasure. Sometimes we conclude that the person has a mental illness, so it’s not their fault. But the act still caused the same results. The act itself still *seems *evil.
So in all this complication, how do we know if evil objectively exists. And how do we identify it? Under what circumstances is savagery objectively evil? Does it only apply to humans? Are animals excluded? They seem to not have a conscience, but we do.
Maybe evil isn’t the point. Maybe evil is just a word. A label. Maybe suffering is the point.
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