[delluminatus]

Are you familiar with the Trolley Problem? [0] It's a simple thought experiment, which is intended to make you re-think whether murder is always an evil act.

Suppose a trolley is barelling down a track towards five tied-down people. If it continues, it'll kill them. But, you have access to a lever which would send the trolley down a side-track instead. But the side-track also has one person tied to it. By pulling the lever, you are effectively murdering that helpless, innocent person -- but you would save the other five. If you don't touch the lever, then you are just an innocent bystander who happened to see a quintuple homicide.

In this case, if you insist that murder is evil, and you refuse to be evil, then you have no choice but to let the five people die. But if you allow that murder is sometimes okay -- which is a utilitarian perspective, in the sense that you care more about the ends than the means -- then it becomes much fuzzier whether murder is inherently evil. Indeed, as soon as you give an explicit definition for evil, it becomes very difficult to defend it. The fact of the matter is, the good/evil dichotomy is false and artificial.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

[oldmanjay]

Philosophizing abstractly about edge cases is fun but it doesn't really offer anything useful for day-to-day basic living. It's pretty clear that to a vanishingly small gap, murder is 100% evil.

[jpfr]

Discussing edge cases is just the way to find out if a concept (either a technical model or a qualitative worldview) is generally applicable.

Especially if those concepts are touted as being all-encompassing, holding without exception or being superior to other concepts.

[delluminatus]

It's true that it doesn't affect our day-to-day life. But I think it is important in the context of being an informed citizen (and, more fundamentally, an ethical person) to have an understanding of different moral systems and the philosophy of ethics. I recognize that this is a personal opinion though, so I won't try to force it on you.