Good and Evil, Right and Wrong.

http://www.buglenewspapers.com/opinion/article_e8c66640-14dd-11e3-9619-0019bb30f31a.html

ROUND ONE! FIGHT!

      So a very good and dear friend of mine whom I like to call the Angelic Atheist just to confuse people posted the above link earlier today.  I read it and it brought to mind many of the various ponderings I have had over the years dealing with the subject of good and evil/right and wrong.  (Hence the title of the rant.)  It is something that has bothered me on a spiritual level to no end because to me it doesn't have a clear answer.
     On the front of it, the argument seems pretty simple.  People argue that somethings are just right and somethings are just wrong.  The extension of this argument is (At least to me) people who do the right things are good and the ones who do the bad things are evil.  Simple enough, right?  The disconnect seems to come because most people cannot agree exactly what determines right and wrong.
    Fer example, show me one concept that is UNIVERSALLY accepted as good or evil.  (Well okay, planetally.)  I promise you that you won't find very many examples that are accepted within one social/spiritual construct, let alone across every culture/race/religion on the planet.  Culture X might say that certain things are an abomination while Culture Z disagrees.  Religion Y might say such and such is a sin, but Religion G might welcome it with open robes.

Yes pay attention, there will be a test later.

      So if no one can agree on what is good and what is evil, then what do we base what we believe on?  How we decide if someone is a good person or a bad person?  How do we understand if their actions are right or wrong?  The above article reminds me of a late night discussion I had long ago with Thomas W. Green, David Barron and a few others of our weekend gaming group.  Like Peter and Paul (Prowl?), we pondered what would happen if someone was raised within an exclusive community with no real exposure to the outside world. 
     In this scenario, Joe was raised amongst the followers of the EVIL (Kills babies rapes sheep sort of Guy) God, Fred.  Fred's believers completely and utterly believe that Fred is a great god and a good and righteous God.  They do his bidding because they completely believe that his is the right and true way.  So all Joe has ever known for his 18 years of life is the Cult of Fred.  With no exposure to the outside world, he has only what he sees and is taught to base his concept of Good and Evil off of.  So of course, Joe believes that Fred's ways are good and the OTHERS are evil.  So when Joe is unleashed upon the world and commits atrocity after atrocity, he is doing good at least as far as he can possibly understand it.
     So back to the idea of Good and Evil as a Universal Concept.  I think that, at least looking back in an historical sense, we can agree that certain events/actions were evil.  The Holocaust comes to mind as a prime example.  However, we only seem to be able to apply these concepts in retrospect.  In this example, during the time it was happening, many people in the German High Command supported the extermination of Millions of People and even viewed it as a good thing to help their race become stronger.  So in hindsight, most (But not all which goes back to the idea of a Universal Concept) agree that it was a horrible period in our world's history.
     Unfortunately, when it comes to present day, even that uniformity seems to slide away.  I have actually seen points being argued that Syria's use of Sarin Gas was not necessarily an evil act since it might cut down on the overall total of deaths incurred by the war.  On a less grand scale, you have plenty of people who think it is perfectly okay to steal from others because they "need" things more than their victims.  You have people who believe that is fine to beat someone to the point of death because their sexual practices are an affront to "God."
     So is there such a thing as Good and Evil.  Can we have a concept of Right and Wrong that everyone accepts?  Probably not.  I am reminded of something one of my professors posited way back at Troy State.  He asked, "What would happen if tomorrow GOD appeared in our skies and proved beyond any possible sense of doubt that he was indeed the One and Only God.  How would our culture change?"  His answer was "It wouldn't change much at all.  Since most if not all of world's religions would be instantly proven wrong, every devout follower of that religion would immediately rail against GOD because he said they were wrong."
    Until and if we reach that pinnacle that so many Sci-Fi Authors have written about where we move past national and cultural boundaries and become a truly Global culture, Good and Evil/Right and Wrong will always be difficult concepts to nail down.  I guess in the end, all we can do is the best we can and hope the decisions we make are the right ones.

End of Rant