Doing bad deeds makes a bad person?

oiram said:
I notice many people say a person once bad always bad…. I was always taught, it was the “act” not the “person” that is bad. Good people do bad things. There will be those who argue.
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A good person can certainly do a bad thing, but if you keep doing bad things, eventually you become a bad person who, perhaps, occasionally does a good thing.
Someone said it was a person’s action’s that defined who they are; others say that once a person does bad it is easier to always be bad. How can anyone argue that John Wayne Gacey was evil because he killed 13 children and then accept President Bush for a war that he instigated that killed thousands of children? Does this make Bush a bad man, if not then why is John Wayne Gacey a bad man? A murdered child is a murdered child.... Both bad acts in my book.
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SAM, yourself, and various left wing bloggers excepted; most people do not consider war the equivalent of mass murder. And, of course, Sadamn started the war back in 1991.
 
Betrayer0fHope said:
They definitely weren't beneficial to society. Someone else might hail all of these people as heroes, and you know that. I don't know how one can pick which persons judgment of good to use, so I choose none.
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Oh, please! You ARE old enough to know no one could possibly see most of them as heros. The woman who drowned her kids? The one who killed her baby in a microwave? Just exactly WHO could consider them heros??????

Please think about that - and then PLEASE answer me.
 
The person doesn't have to actually exist, but the possibility that the person could exist does have to exist. What Norsefire is saying is basically what I'm thinking, Good and Bad are entirely subjective, so who's definition do we use? Is there really truth in numbers?
 
A good person can make a mistake, certainly.

I draw a line between a mistake and a "bad deed".

It's like the difference between, say, hurting someone's feelings because you were angry or hysterical, and raping someone.
 
Everyone always does what they think is right/good and/or what they have to do.
No 1 wakes up 1 morning & decides to be a bad person. Something(s) makes me them different from me. Something makes them think differently from me. But they do what their thinking tells them should be done.
I never decided to be a nice person any more than I decided to be intelligent or heterosexual or compassionate or a coffee drinker. It's simply the way I am & always have been. I have no choice but to do what I think is right. I always do good according to my thinking. Fortunately that usually (not always) coincides with what the majority says is good.
 
madanthonywayne - SAM, yourself, and various left wing bloggers excepted; most people do not consider war the equivalent of mass murder. And, of course, Sadamn started the war back in 1991.

Unjustified war is certainly the equivalent of mass murder.

Saddam was the tool of the USA as long as he was considered useful then suddenly he wasn't considered useful or having an excuse to invade the area was more important.

Saddam asked the US ambassador to Iraq how the US would feel if he invaded Kuwait to take it back. The US ambassador asked Bush Senior & was told to give an ambiguous answer to make Saddam think it was OK but which could later be shown as not saying OK. So they attacked Kuwait & the rest hopefully doesn't need to be explained.
 
of course the answer to this if your talking in apsolutes has to be no.

If we take quite a likly senario, someone is suffering from O2 deprivation and they acidently kill one of the ambo's trying to get an oxygen mask on them because they were flailing around with a knife

Oviously they are not responcable for there actions because it was out of there control and so they are not evil

now even a premeditated "evil" act doesnt nessarly mean the person is evil. Killing is wrong but if your being systomatically torturered and you kill your captor?
 
StrangerInAStrangeLa said:
Everyone always does what they think is right/good and/or what they have to do.
No 1 wakes up 1 morning & decides to be a bad person.
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My, my! Those have to be two of the most naive statements I've ever seen anyone make.:bugeye:

So all of the guys that went into schools and killed kids and teachers - after planning it for days and weeks - had not decided to do something they knew was bad??????????

Or the hit-man that wires up a bomb in a car didn't know that was a criminal/bad act??????

PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:bugeye:

According to YOUR silly view, there are NO criminals in the world and everyone is simply doing what they think is OK. Or that they HAVE to do - as if they have NO choice!!!!

Which world do you live on? It sure isn't the planet Earth.
 
umm read only
not that i nessarly disagree with you but "illegal" doesnt nessarly mean "bad" or vise versa
 
Asguard said:
umm read only
not that i nessarly disagree with you but "illegal" doesnt nessarly mean "bad" or vise versa
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Oh, come on, Asguard - of course it does!! "Good" and "bad" are defined by the laws (legal/illegal stuff) of the society we live in - you already knew that.;)

For example, the Incas (and others) thought human sacrifice was good thing - we've decided it's a bad thing. And you knew that, too.:)
 
ok then, let me ask you a question

is being gay bad?

now i know some people will answer that hell yes but im specifically asking YOU to do an ethical assessment of wether homosexuality breaches the principles of principle based ethics to the point that its bad

because until very recently it was Illegal.

law and ethics are two different things
is it ethical (ie good) to let a person suffer in pain when they clearly want to die?
its currently illegal to help them die

did abortion using RU486 go from being "bad" the day before the law was passed to "good" the day after?
 
Asguard said:
ok then, let me ask you a question

is being gay bad?

now i know some people will answer that hell yes but im specifically asking YOU to do an ethical assessment of wether homosexuality breaches the principles of principle based ethics to the point that its bad

because until very recently it was Illegal.

law and ethics are two different things
is it ethical (ie good) to let a person suffer in pain when they clearly want to die?
its currently illegal to help them die

did abortion using RU486 go from being "bad" the day before the law was passed to "good" the day after?
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Wake up, Asguard - I think you're typing in your sleep.;)

THOUSANDS of things went from being good (or neutral) in the very moment before a piece of paper was signed into law making them illegal/bad. And vice-versa.
 
i must be asleep, i thought you were AGAINST goverment control

Laws are a set of things demed nessary to promote social cohesion
Ethics and morals are a code either indervidual or as a collective about what is concidered "good" or "bad"

most laws dont even deal with good and bad, for instance its no more "good" to travel on the left hand side of the road than the right but ONE side needs to be picked to alow safe travel so its the law that we have to drive on the left

ethics however do deal in good and bad (or ethical and unethical), it maybe legal to sterilise a 14 year old child because there parents dont want her to get pregnant but it is unethical. Actually in this case its illegal as well but *shrug*
 
Asguard said:
i must be asleep, i thought you were AGAINST goverment control

Laws are a set of things demed nessary to promote social cohesion
Ethics and morals are a code either indervidual or as a collective about what is concidered "good" or "bad"

most laws dont even deal with good and bad, for instance its no more "good" to travel on the left hand side of the road than the right but ONE side needs to be picked to alow safe travel so its the law that we have to drive on the left

ethics however do deal in good and bad (or ethical and unethical), it maybe legal to sterilise a 14 year old child because there parents dont want her to get pregnant but it is unethical. Actually in this case its illegal as well but *shrug*
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How did you manage to conclude that I FAVOR more government control from what I said?? I didn't even come close to indicating either like or dislike - I simply stated how things work.:confused:

And contrary to what you just said about laws, there are more of them that deal with civil/moral issues than there are with things like which side of the road to drive on. And even laws like you mentioned can be considered defining good and bad things because their purpose is to promote public safety. And NOT controlling public safety would certainly be a bad thing (drive on either side that you like, ignore stop signs and signals, etc.)

Besids all that most laws governing human behavior/interactions are generally based on some moral or ethical principle, anyway. (Murder, robbery, child abuse, blackmail, etc., etc.)
 
true but you cant just point to a law and say "there its bad because the law says so"
that doesnt take into account bad laws

for instance the laws against homosexuality were unethical as were the laws alowing slavery and the laws alowing the Nazi's to kill jews but they were all LEGAL laws.

in one of the papers i had to read on the law it asked what is wrong with A.V Dicy's view of the rule of law. now for us the correct answer was ment to be that the law is expencive and there for discriminates through access but i also found an artical critizing him because "just because the law is aplied equally doesnt make it an equal law" or a just law

your right some laws are about morality but its more about keeping sociaty cohesive than "good and evil"

and i dont mean to say that public safty laws are bad laws either but they dont determine GOOD vs EVIL, they just determine what is nessary to a) keep the public safe and b) keep the public together
 
StrangerInAStrangeLa said:
Saddam asked the US ambassador to Iraq how the US would feel if he invaded Kuwait to take it back. The US ambassador asked Bush Senior & was told to give an ambiguous answer to make Saddam think it was OK but which could later be shown as not saying OK. So they attacked Kuwait & the rest hopefully doesn't need to be explained.
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I remember hearing a story to that effect, but I only heard it once and assumed it was false. Do you have a source for that?
 
Asguard said:
true but you cant just point to a law and say "there its bad because the law says so"
that doesnt take into account bad laws

for instance the laws against homosexuality were unethical as were the laws alowing slavery and the laws alowing the Nazi's to kill jews but they were all LEGAL laws.

in one of the papers i had to read on the law it asked what is wrong with A.V Dicy's view of the rule of law. now for us the correct answer was ment to be that the law is expencive and there for discriminates through access but i also found an artical critizing him because "just because the law is aplied equally doesnt make it an equal law" or a just law

your right some laws are about morality but its more about keeping sociaty cohesive than "good and evil"

and i dont mean to say that public safty laws are bad laws either but they dont determine GOOD vs EVIL, they just determine what is nessary to a) keep the public safe and b) keep the public together
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I agree with this post 100% of whatever I read of it. I'm still undecided of what I think of anarchy, so I guess right now I don't think all laws are bad, but MANY are clearly wrong. Who says keeping society is actually a "good" thing? Who says anything stated in anyone's post generally stated as good or bad is truly good or bad? What I am asking is, Who determines what is right and wrong?
 
BOH i didnt mean to suggest that i am anti law, i was just trying to point out that the law isnt nessarly the best way to regulate ETHICS (right and wrong). im all in favor of laws which goven public safty like road laws and broud laws for things we all as a sociaty agree are wrong like rape and murder but the legislators and the legal system gets in trouble when it tries to regulate ethics in a micro-sence. for instance how do you regulate concent in a statitory way?

well if we look at sexual concent its dam near impossable, do we go with an age of concent? if so WHAT age? are there exceptions in this age for people around the same age or people with more power over the person?
do we go with some kind of licence? how do you get the licence? cognitive tests? does this take into account power differences?

ect

medical concent is handled a little better in that it has a MAXIUM age where concent is assumed to be able to be given (ignoring situations of incapacitation) which is 16, however below that it doesnt say that concent ISNT present only that the person needs to be able to prove that they can give that concent and understand the conquences ect.

then we could look at laws on ethansia, well its currently illegal in all australian juristictions but it goes on, unprocuted because in general the DPP knows they cant convict unless there are other cirumstances

then we have abortion which i found out is TECHNICALLY illegal in all australian juristictions except the ACT. However this law is unenforced because again there would be no conviction, further more the goverment actually gives advice on HOW to get abortions

Humans in general have a real problem with grey and the law even more so
 
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