Talk:Good and evil

Freud's contribution
There should be a major section on Freud's contribution to the idea of the superego (force of destruction) and id (force of renewal and life). It is the closest thing we have of scientific confirmation of the ancient religious doctrines of the struggle between good and evil.67.168.58.103 (talk) 16:51, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose that Evil be merged into Good and evil. Either we create one article for good and another for evil, or keep both under the same article, otherwise it doesn't make sense. I vote for the latter and it fits under the conceptual scheme of the Unity of opposites Lbertolotti (talk) 19:24, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Merging, as no objection has been raised, per guidelines Lbertolotti (talk) 14:51, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

The seven goods and evils
This article needs to say something about the seven deadly sins and the seven virtues. I think this should be mentioned in point 3.4.7 Christianity. Lbertolotti (talk) 15:08, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Undiscussed 'merger' of two Wikipedia pages into one without consensus, propose to return back
During the week-end I started reading a book on ethics and decided to look up some key terms on Wikipedia for comparison's sake when I discovered that there is no Wikipedia page for "Evil" nor is there one for "Good" as key terms in ethics and philosophy. When I looked closer, I found that another editor last June here, had apparently decided to delete both of those pages in his or her preference for a single merged page called "Good and evil". The "merger" was apparently done after a tiny Talk page announcement which no-one seems to have taken seriously, but that editor decided that a no-response to his Talk page proposal could be interpreted by him or her as non-opposition and therefor endorsement to do the merger, which was done last June with no-one noticing it. This merger makes no sense from the standpoint of the study of ethics and philosophy. Philosophy pages should not be merged together because they represent polar opposites of meaning. The two pages should be returned to their original state from last June and the current "Good and evil" page can just be left there as its own limited discussion of this polarity in philosophy. The single topic pages deserve to remain as single topic pages for "Good" and "Evil" separately and without merger. I do not think that the editor that did this had any ill intentions, only that the background of that editor appears to be in economics and mathematics and not in philosophy or ethics. I have notified their page anyway for fair notice practices at Wikipedia. Can somewhat restore the single purpose pages to their state last June before they were apparently inappropriately merged. ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 16:56, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree that we should revert this merger. Andrew D. (talk) 17:00, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

This issue is similar to the cause and effect redirect. I said "Either we create one article for good and another for evil, or keep both under the same article". To do the former you need to split this article in a Good article and a Evil article, by separating the contents, reverting the merger won't solve anything. That is precisely were the problem begins: can you discuss good without referring to evil, and vice-versa? You said the book you are reading discusses both evil and good. Separating War from Peace, or Love from Hate is easier than separating Good from Evil or Cause from Effect. Lbertolotti (talk) 18:28, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * No. it's more like "poison" and whatever the opposite of poison is. The etymology section is all about "evil", where's the etymology of good? We don't have an article about "good", because that is, well just ordinary and normal (i.e. not particularly notable). Wikipedia is not a dictionary. I just restored our former article about "good", which was deleted with the rationale essay, original research, no independent sources. We shouldn't merge evil into good, because, like poison, there's a lot of encyclopedic content about evil, but, not so much about good. We have an unbalanced-weight article now, which tilts too heavily to "evil". wbm1058 (talk) 20:51, 28 January 2017 (UTC)


 * At 16:07, 12 June 2006, now blocked and indefinitely banned user moved Goodness and value theory to Goodness and evil. At the time, the word "evil" was not even used once in the article. Their next edit, which ostensibly per their edit summary just "made some changes - spelling, etc.", created an entirely new lead section (these are supposed to be summaries of the article body) which introduced the concept of "evil", relegating the former lead section to become the first section of the article body titled "Theory". I would argue that edits of this nature are highly disruptive and "evil". Now, somehow this article, which originally was about "goodness" and "value" has scope-crept to become mostly about evil. Note that we have forks at Value theory and Conflict between good and evil. wbm1058 (talk) 22:21, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Evil: "evil is usually perceived as the dualistic antagonistic opposite of good, in which good should prevail and evil should be defeate", "no direct analogue to the way good and evil are opposed", "1. By good, I understand that which we certainly know is useful to us. 2. By evil, on the contrary I understand that which we certainly know hinders us from possessing anything that is good" ""According to the guidance of reason, of two things which are good, we shall follow the greater good, and of two evils, follow the less." "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil" "evil is non-existent and that it is a concept for the lacking of good" "Are they good or evil, for they are existing beings?" " Since God is good, and upon creating creation he confirmed it by saying it is Good" "the good vs. evil splitting has no direct analogue in it" "clearly divides the world into good and evil" "This division of good and evil is of major importance" " the balance of good and evil" "good and evil may seem neatly separated" " evil does not have a positive existence in itself and is merely the lack of good" "non-Jews have the free will to choose good" "evil arises from a misunderstanding of the goodness of nature" "final resolution of the struggle between good and evil", goes on...

Good (religion): "good and evil is first mentioned as ‘God said it was good.'" "He does not mention anything about evil until the fall of mankind in Genesis 3. In Exodus 20, God set out laws to try and separate god from evil"

The poison article doesn't goes on making differences between poison and non poisonous substances. Also, since poisoning may cause death, it is very difficult to redefine a poisonous substance as a non poisonous one. I don't think you would a find a section like:

*Moral absolutism holds that good and evil are fixed concepts established by a deity or deities, nature, morality, common sense, or some other source. *Amoralism claims that good and evil are meaningless, that there is no moral ingredient in nature. *Moral relativism holds that standards of good and evil are only products of local culture, custom, or prejudice. *Moral universalism is the attempt to find a compromise between the absolutist sense of morality, and the relativist view; universalism claims that morality is only flexible to a degree, and that what is truly good or evil can be determined by examining what is commonly considered to be evil amongst all humans.

Value theory is ok: the aim is to a present a list of different value theories, not a description of antagonistic concepts

Conflict between good and evil: this article is better defined, as it concerns actual examples of good vs evil, not a general description of trying to explain what is good and what is evil.

"... where's the etymology of good?" Well, that dictionary entry has not just one, but five etymologies for good. Lbertolotti (talk) 11:39, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. Now this article has both an "Etymology" section and an "Origin of the concept" section, so it strikes me as a fork of itself, or disorganized or of amateurish construction. Without arguing the merits of the merge, this merge has been awkwardly performed. I don't know how much time I want to put into this, as I feel that topics like this are difficult to do well in an encyclopedia, and, in Wikipedia by its nature, kind of like building sandcastles on a beach. That's my thoughts for you, for what they're worth. wbm1058 (talk) 18:20, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

This article has many problems, see if you agree with the layout for the first section.Lbertolotti (talk) 12:45, 30 January 2017 (UTC)


 * This discussion of returning the Wikipedia article for "Good" and the article for "Evil" back to their original form appears to have the agreement of all three responding editors that the original separated version of the two pages should be returned. On the basis of all three editors agreeing ( and this editor), is it possible for you to return the merged version of the page you introduced to its previous original form as two separate articles. This appears to be one of the options you had originally offered and it seems that all three editors here are in agreement that the article should return to the original two articles. Since the discussion has been open for over thirty days could you return the articles to their previous format. You can also retain the current version of your article for separate development if needed, and the original two separate articles for "Good" and "Evil" separately should be returned by you with any updates you might add. ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 19:36, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
 * OK after discussion I have moved Good to Good (disambiguation), recovered the version of this article from 3 June 2016 and placed it together with earlier revisions at Good. The remainder of the revisions of this article are retained here for you to cover the topic of Good and evil. I have also left the talk page here - it can be split if required. Drop me a note if this is required. It may not be ideal as there were database timeouts during the process so I have just deleted the merge tag rather than not getting those versions. Keith D (talk) 19:02, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

A long long time ago someone attacked a page either 'good' or 'goodness' with nihilism on the talk page back in the early first decade of this century. I tried to look up the exact talk and article and edit descriptions, which had some name changes since then, I forgot whether it was 'goodness and value theory' or something else but several articles have changed their name since then. Since then good was contaminated with evil. There was no 'good' or 'goodness' page, only a 'good and evil' page and an 'evil' page. This was different from other languages where a similarly equivalent word to 'good' had its own page.

Wikipedia is bad because many people will claim that one word means exactly the same as another when it does not, and they have a lot of agendas for not liking certain words, and so they will oppose certain articles such as 'goodness'.

Hopefully someone else will not attack the article with nihilism again and render it into the pit of doom for more than a decade for a second time.75.175.105.44 (talk) 16:07, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

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Nietzsche portion
Could the person who wrote the nietzsche part please cite the sources? Thx! 2600:100E:B013:EDC0:9ACC:3DE2:9B7:3C8D (talk) 05:59, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

"Conflict Between Good and Evil" redirects here even if there are other uses
I suggest removing it entirely or repurpose that page back into what it originally was for (according to the revision history, it was used to talk about literality themes). It just bothers me that it's... inconsistent? Benroyz (talk) 00:30, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

I gotta problem with the third line down from the top.
The sentence begins, "In cultures with Buddhist spiritual influence ... " Instead of characterizing Buddhist influence as "spiritual," the word "philosophical" would be preferable. I don't know how to do an edit. If someone agrees with my assessment, maybe they can make the change. 2600:8801:BE01:2500:DDB6:D92C:4A56:48D9 (talk) 00:24, 13 May 2023 (UTC)