How do various religions/philosophies deal with these questions?

Good and evil are based on people’s opinion and what type of environment they grew up in. Every religion and philosophers have their own views with many differences and similarities. Some philosophers believe that there is no such thing as good and evil. Plato believed that in reincarnation there were no eternal rewards or punishments except for an evil few who were not allowed out of Hades. All the others had to face the prospect of their next life, and they were given the opportunity to choose the character of their next life from a variety of alternatives. Also another philosopher, John Locke said people were born as good. However Thomas Hobbes was against that idea and said that people were born evil.

In my limited studies of religion, I have discovered that the Eastern religions have a similar view of evil and view it as a duality of good. Evil has no real existence, being part of the illusory world of phenomena. Hinduism sees evil in a light similar to that of Taoism, that it is part of the continuity of life. It is understood that all that is created, including life and this earth, must inevitably be destroyed. In Buddhism, there is no particular dealing with evil. Rather it is just another aspect of suffering. Once one is aware of oneself then one will recognize that one is capable of evil only in ignorance. Suffering and pain can be ended through the pursuit of truth and self knowledge. Like Hinduism, Buddhism sees evil in light of the whole of creation. We are not individuals, but rather a part of a whole and as such it does behoove us to understand evil and to attempt to eliminate it from our lives and that of others in general.

Similar to the eastern religions, the monotheistic religions share a common view of evil as they are borne of a common history. A main tenant of Islam, Judaism and Christianity is that of God’s gift to man of free will. God is understood to be all benevolence and any evil that may arise on earth is a manifestation of humans’ wrong decisions. The problem of evil in contemporary philosophy is used as the basis for atheism. Because God and evil are incompatible, and evil surely exists, there must be no God. Overall, though different religions and philosophers deal with good and evil differently, they also have many similarities.