What's Good and what's Evil? Should they be in the mechanics?

Good and Evil are quite subjective, and what counts as good and what counts as evil depends on the person defining them. Strangely enough, many games including Dungeons & Dragons, Fable, Knights of the Old Republic, and Jade Empire use them. Now when used in a game, what's 'good' and what's 'evil' is determined by the creator of the world. They then tie Good and Evil into the mechanics of the game.

Anyway, I'd like to see how the posters here define good and evil. Also if you can, I want you to try to make good and evil opposite such as they are often represented, especially since they're on the same axis (This thread is not to tell people who's wrong and who's right, so don't argue about someone else's views, I probably don't have to say this, but I'm just saying it for good measure)

Well, it seems to me that the creator of the world has every right to determine what's good and evil in that world-- if you create a game where the laws of the world are to kill as many people as possible (as twisted as that sounds to us), then the people who follow that law are good and those who don't go around killing people would be considered evil. It depends on the laws of that specific world, and it's something the creator decides. We just haven't seen a game that's flipped yet, mostly because I don't think anybody wants to be the first one to make it.

I guess the problem for me is that in most games it's never really clearly stated as what's good and what's evil. For example, if it's simply those that are destructive are evil, then anyone that goes around trying to destroy should be considered evil and those that try to create (the opposite of destroy) are good. So Destructive = bad, Constructive = good. Unfortunately that train of thought would make all Paladins, who go off to destroy all that is unholy, evil while Tyrants that use slaves to build pyramids would be good.

You can continue doing this singularly with different concepts, and it can always get bizarre. My real issue is that Good becomes a conglomeration of things and Evil becomes its own conglomeration of things and the two are no longer in total opposition of each other and even contradict with themselves.

To be honest I am fine with using alignment to describe something, but it's so subjective that I feel it really shouldn't be in the mechanics. I'd much rather just use the terms holy and unholy. Paladins are holy, right? And it gives off that impression of someone who would help someone in need. At the same time, while a holy being who that believes that destroying the human race would better the world, they may not be 'good' but they could still be holy, just misguided (or maybe even totally on track).

They probably are just too lazy to create something new/different and to describe it, so they base it off the real world, assuming that every player will understand...