Quote Originally Posted by Fawsto View Post
IMO, each of us need to find a phylosofical north to adress this problem. I've chosen Machiavelli due to its "goal" approach. I will stick to it since it allows someone (my interpretation from now on) to measure the nobility of its cause. There are some easily discernable "evil goals". So, by D&D standards, a Paladin would only choose the most noble goals. Such goals, would, for example, see the sacrifice of inocents as something evil, but not always. As I said, sometimes the noble goal may be "save the world", to wich the sacrifice of inocents would be a valid action.

There are too many interpretations of good and evil about the same topics. The only way that I see to solve this is to set a goal and compare those actions to the goals that you are pursuing.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to disagree with this. Say you're trying to stamp out cancer (a good goal), and a multibillionaire offers you three billion dollars for research, but to get the money, you need to torture and rape a woman (sorry, been watching Dexter).

By that logic, the torture and rape would be fine, since it was for a noble goal. I don't buy that.