I never thought about it like that SQ. Interesting!
I guess we just all assume that, that something is benevolent. Pretty sure any data protection act will be falling on deaf ears in the great beyond!
Imagine we viewed the extended consciousness realms with the same carefulness that we do towards strangers here on Earth? We don't and so we might find it prudent to ask ourselves why we give respect and trust to anything out there, when we have absolutely no idea who or what may be benefiting from our ignorance!
P.S I do chop and change my stance on this. It depends. There does seem to be a genuine good willed force out there, i.e the good guys. I just think we don't really give much thought to it. It's why I didn't really like Ray Hernandez and his shtick regarding the F.R.E.E study. I also checked out their F.B group and to join it, you HAD to agree to not talk about the bad stuff (or along those lines!). I noped right out of there after a while!
I keep wanting to know where all the PTSD patients are who have NDEs? Some significant fraction is negative, but just like the F.R.E.E. group, its like there is this giant conspiracy not to recognize its horror. ITs a learning experience. Uh huh.
For me, evil requires two things:
1) knowledge that your action is harmful
2) intention or will to do the harm
Negligence leading to harm isn't evil, in my view.
But, what if some people learn better through terror, pain, and travesty? What kind of evil would create that?
I don't think most people recognize how odd it is to label things as evil that are not at all evil. But a cursory glance of what is widely recognized as evil can easily be transformed into common, normal behavior. We don't see that with other concepts. Evil has a strange way of being morphed into the good. Sexuality is one area where this occurs. Slavery is another -- it was once seen as good and now its evil.
I go by knowledge (what that person is feeling and what the likely outcome is) and intention only.
I mean you eat meat most likely? Are they pets or food? There is no way we are getting out of this place being good. No one is good even most of the time. But as for evil, that I am not so sure. I think most people are instead ignorant of what their actions are doing to other people since if they experienced it directly, usually they would stop.
I think falsely labeling someone or something evil can be kind of funny when we label others that way (eg, homosexuals during the reign of christianity). I cannot trust our societies intuition on what good is. Slavery, eating potential pets, abortion (its legality and normalcy in secular culture) and so on are all examples of confusion over what evil is, and some persist today or not recognized as being a problem.
Evil acts are commonly mislabeled and disagreed upon. Their is more disagreement upon what evil is than what is good. So to say their are these really super crazy evil people out there...well yes, but they are super super rare. What we have most often is evil as a label, a scarlet letter. Are those who commit abortion evil? Its normal. And lets not forget its part of the design.
So tornadoes cannot be evil...why not the designer who kills billions of babies every year -- on purpose no doubt to teach us lessons? Moms see their babies in heaven yet babies get flushed down the toilet every day -- well, tiny fetuses do. It makes no sense. Fetal loss to natural causes is not a rare event when averaged over billions of women having sex every day. Keep in mind our sex drives were designed to be used all the time unlike other creatures who do not menstruate all of their lives past puberty. Its like the designer wanted to create harm. I can't worship that.
It makes no sense.
Zero.
If instead God is something that develops over time and learns and makes mistakes that does make sense. We are simply in one stage of a very long process. So yes, learning lessons does make sense. We are all helping each other learn what is good and evil here. Our experiences are the proof. But what if experience is just experience...there is no good or evil? What then?
I just hope I get to decide what experiences I have.
tldr; we are too dumb to be evil. Those who are most succesful at being evil, the worse of the worst, are often very powerful and few people have that kind of control. Evil is a non issue since their is almost no agreement over history over what it is. Abortion, eating meat, changes in sexuality...warfare and on and on. The typical child raping and slaughtering "demon" is likely a victim of many harms of society. There is probably not a single person like that who had a wonderful childhood or didn't have some sort of mental illness (schizoid).