The Problem of Evil

In the past, I believed that the concept of evil is an absurd one. "There are no such things as good and evil", said I in my high school grad blurb. That was because I believed people judge acts of goodness and evilness according to their own up-bringing and personal beliefs. The flaw in that thinking was brought to light in Nietzche's idea that the opposite of good is not evil, but bad (or rather, he pointed out that in the ancient Greek, that's what they thought). Good is something that has greatness and fulfills their role (ie. a sharp and hard knife is a good knife), while bad is something that don't do that (ie. a dull and soft knife is a bad knife). Evil is something all on its own. After years of thought, I decided to define evil as the following:

purposely trying to make the universe a worse place than before, for its own sake.

Which means, the only ones capable of evil are sentient beings. Acts of evil would include burning piles of recyclable paper for the sole purpose of pumping out green house emissions onto the environment (which I've done before, after the stupid recycle truck took every piece of paper outside the blue box, but not the ones inside!). Torturing a random person for the sake of causing pain and suffering for the victim and people that loves the victim.