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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1550684" data-attributes="member: 3146">Not necessarily (though they and many other evil people don't have goals that would be recognized as good). In the Christian tradition, for instance, demons and devils aren't distinguished between, but they are not evil for the sake of being evil. Generally, they are considered to be evil because of pride ("better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven") or some other sin. They are often considered to continue in evil behavior out of spite ("God punished me so I'm going to punish God by hurting people he loves"), jealousy, anger, etc.Evil deities are somewhat different. There are few examples of such things about which we have a lot of information IRL. Loki could be thought of as an evil deity. It's not clear why he is treacherous in the tales but he generally has some goal in his betrayals--he's not treacherous for the sake of being treacherous. The greek gods as presented in many of the myths might be though of as candidates for evil deities (particularly Poseidon, Aires, Hades, and possibly Dyonisius, and Zeus). They, however, generally did their evil deeds out of anger, jealosy, lust (they were all womanizers and many of them didn't bother with consent), pride, etc. Even the goddess of discord who tossed the golden apple into the hall of the gods did so with recognizable human motivation: she was miffed that she hadn't been invited to the wedding. Other gods about which we have less information but that might well be considered evil would be Molech (to whom the ancient middle easterners sacrificed babies) and the god of the Aztecs to whom they sacrificed the hearts of their prisoners. In these cases, if my understanding is correct, the evil is primarily associated with the worship rather than the god. So the question is not, "why is the god evil?" but rather "why does the god want his followers to do evil things?" The obvious answer is "because he's evil." However, the answer need not stop there. It might be that he benefits from consuming the souls of the sacrificed children or soldiers (sacrifices are often portrayed as the food of the gods). Then his evil lies in the fact that he finds such food acceptable. It might be that he wants to take human life as a demonstration of his importance (pride). In that case his evil lies in the fact that he finds his ego more important than human life. (Of course, it's also possible that the evil god doesn't care about the sacrifices per se--he's made that a precondition of his help and service because he wants to encourage people to do things that are abhorrent to some good god or other whom he hates and despises).One need not suppose that even creatures who are supernaturally evil are evil for the sake of being evil.</blockquote>

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