Portal:Philosophy/Selected article/44

In religion, ethics, and philosophy,  goodness and evil, or simply  good and evil, refers to the concept of all human desires and behaviors as conforming to a dualistic spectrum &mdash;wherein in one direction are those aspects which are wisely reverent of life and continuity ("good"), and wherein the other direction are those aspects which are vainly reverent of death and destruction ("evil").

Religious and philosophical views tend to agree that, while " good and evil" is a concept and therefore an abstraction,  goodness is intrinsic to human nature and is ultimately based on the natural love, bonding, affection that people grow to feel for other people. Likewise, most religious and philosophical interpretations agree that evil is ultimately based in an ignorance of truth (ie. human value, sanctity, divinity), and evil behavior itself is an aberration &mdash;one that defies any understanding save that the path to evil is one of confusion and excessive desire (greed)...