I agree; there may very well be the rare innately evil person, but promoting or implementing an ideology that is based on false premises that turns out to have evil consequences does not require “innate” evil. The 9/11 hijackers might very well be described as “neurologically intact people with beliefs that have utterly destroyed their sanity” but, if the beliefs they had about the state of the world were actually true (which they weren’t!) then many value systems would endorse their actions.
If there were a diety that condemns unbelievers to Hell and cannot be caused to do otherwise, it’s not hard to argue that it it is morally necessary to kill people who try to persuade people to become unbelievers. Given the existence of such a diety, a utilitarian perspective might easily reduce to something like “Do whatever it takes to minimize the number of souls in Hell.”
I agree; there may very well be the rare innately evil person, but promoting or implementing an ideology that is based on false premises that turns out to have evil consequences does not require “innate” evil. The 9/11 hijackers might very well be described as “neurologically intact people with beliefs that have utterly destroyed their sanity” but, if the beliefs they had about the state of the world were actually true (which they weren’t!) then many value systems would endorse their actions.
If there were a diety that condemns unbelievers to Hell and cannot be caused to do otherwise, it’s not hard to argue that it it is morally necessary to kill people who try to persuade people to become unbelievers. Given the existence of such a diety, a utilitarian perspective might easily reduce to something like “Do whatever it takes to minimize the number of souls in Hell.”