Absolute truth

Originally posted by LemonJello
Suppose one were to believe the earth is flat; suppose further he quits questioning it because he believes this proposition is true for, as you say, whatever reason; this seems to satisfy your definition. So it sounds like a pretty terrible definition (and misleading terminology) to me since it admits as "absolute truths" propositions that are clearly fa ady exhaustively gone through and addressed these and other relevant questions?

In an barter economy, there would be no money. Therefore, before the invention of money as a medium of exchange and a store of wealth, there would have been no evil?

There are only two basic candidates for being the “root” of moral evil that I am aware of:

(1) Some innate wickedness as part of human consciousness (“original sin” or “sin nature” are the conventional Christian terms).

(2) Illusion—which can take many forms, and can be as deeply rooted as post-hypnotic suggestion.

The former is generally considered to be ontological—as ontological, say, as sexual reproduction. The latter is more existential in nature. The former can only be posited (unless someone finds a “wickedness gene”, or the like). The latter has plenty of discernable evidence; examples abound.

EDIT: I am excluding pathology here, clinical psychopathy and the like, since it represents a small subset of the population. Simple moral error can be taken under illusion, as can social conditioning.