I thought this was English, not philosophy

Do good and evil exist? This question has been the subject of many a philosophical discussion in the course of human existence on earth. And given so many brilliant thinkers, one would surely come to a logical conclusion that everyone could agree on. And yet such a conclusion has not been presented. Still we continue to contemplate this, hoping that we will come to a conclusion that no one before us has. And now the burden comes upon me to answer this question.

But first it is probably a good idea to define good and evil. Good is defined as "that which is morally right," while evil is "profound immorality." Given these definitions, it becomes clear that the answer lies in our understanding of morals, which brings us to an even harder question: is there some ultimate standard of morality by which all actions can be judged?

It seems to me that morals (and therefore good and evil) are man-made things. In nature, no one would call it immoral for one animal to steal from or kill or rape another animal. After all, they're only animals. It's only us as humans that create a distinction between right and wrong. And often these divisions between right and wrong vary between societies. Even something like killing another person, which to us seems to be obviously evil, is not universally agreed to be so. There have been cultures, like the vikings, which have believed that it is not wrong to kill anyone. And while some would say, "we've become smarter and are therefore able to discern that such a thing is wrong," this seems to be an unsatisfactory answer, which assumes that our moral system is correct and that we were smart enough to find it while they were not. Could it be instead that neither of us is correct, as there is no ultimate standard by which to measure right and wrong? And that our moral code is not better, but simply different.

And given this same belief that killing is wrong, our own moral standard only stretches so far. While most of us would agree that it is wrong to slaughter a defenseless person, there is no such agreement on whether killing someone in self-defense is wrong. Our morals leave a large gray area in which we are forced to take every situation on a case by case basis.

In the end, our belief as to whether or not good and evil exist comes down to religion. And while I could go on, and assess merits of the existence of a higher good which we call God from which our sense of good and evil is derived, I find this to be straying too far from the question at hand. Instead I will close by saying that there is no objective or universal good and evil in our world and our answer to whether or not we believe in good and evil is ultimately based on whether or not we believe in a higher power.