Evil

I watched a documentary on the science of evil today and I thought I would share my thoughts. Evil is defined as morally bad, causing harm or injury to someone, or marked by bad luck or bad events. Evil is something that is not born, but made. We all have the ability to commit acts of evil, evil is already within us. It is our actions that determine whether we act on such evil or not. We are tasked with discerning between doing what is right or what is wrong. In the documentary I watched they showed an experiment done at Stanford where college students volunteered to play the roles of prisoners and guards. What the experiment showed is that when placed in a particular situation we inherently take on certain roles and act on those roles whether right or wrong. The documentary also talked about Jeffrey Dahmer, while in prison Dahmer wanted to repent for his sins and be baptized. The true question here is that can a man who is considered to be the most horrible of evils be given salvation and forgiveness, should he be allowed such gracious acts? In my opinion I would say if, and only if, his feeling of remorse and repent are true then only God can decide whether he is still evil or not. But can an evil act not be evil, for example the situation often used to test people: A building is crumbling and you knew the way out, there are two rooms and in one is a friend and in the other a group of strangers, you can only make it to one room in time, which do you choose? In this situation you are choosing between the one or the many, but either way is it an act of evil? If you decide to go to the room of strangers and save their lives you are consciously letting your friend die and is that not evil, oppositely if you go to your friend and save them letting the group of strangers die is that not also evil? The question here is which is the "lesser of evils," both acts result in death which is considered evil, but which evil is not as evil as the other? The documentary also showed a current study on the parts of the brain used in making decisions of what is right and wrong. The study shows that most decisions are made using the emotional portions of the brain, however when given questions with the lesser of two evil options the logic and reason part of the brain becomes active when the individual chooses to save the many over the one. However when they decide to choose the one over the many only the emotional part of the brain becomes active. What I believe this is showing is that evil, or acts of evil are tied to our emotions, and when we are forced to choose the lesser of evils we resort to letting logic decide for us. So is an act not evil when we let logic decide or is it still evil? I believe an act of evil is evil, however one evil act does not make an individual evil. When that individual made a logical decision to commit an evil act they weren't acting out of evil. When an individual consciously commits evil only for the simple fact that they can or that they want to, that makes them evil.