Saeviomagy said:
See that's the thing - somehow a preference for [evil] spells 'invariable corrupts', but a preference for [good] spells only 'helps purify his soul'.
I don't seem to recall saying that the impact was greater with [evil] spells. If I conveyed that impression, I'm sorry. That's not how I meant to describe it. In either case, using a spell of an opposing alignment will have a slight affect on the caster's own alignment. Neither will instantly nullify the many other choices a PC makes/has made regarding right and wrong. But they do add their small weight to that scale.
It sounds very much like using the slightest bit of [evil] makes you not good, but it takes a significant use of [good] to make you not evil... It assumes that somehow being good is a harder state to achieve than evil, and that the entire alignment system is skewed for that exact purpose. That's usually why I disagree intensely with people who take your stance - they want their cake (ie - to be good you must be truely good to the core in every action, word and deed), but eat it (but to be evil it just takes the slightest bit of a slip, and no, killing evil monsters because it's the easiest solution isn't a slip).
This is not how I run it. I apologize if I gave that impression. When I said that a wizard could not be truly good by consistantly using [evil] spells, I meant a wizard who makes regular and strong use of such spells over their [good] alternatives. Of course a few here and there will mean little. No PC is required to act in accordance with his alignment in every decision he makes. But on the whole, if he's acting closer to another alignment, his own alignment will change to match. And constantly preferring to summon fiendish creatures over celestial ones, for instance, is a part of that.
On a side note, though, I wouldn't have a problem with the scenario you mention. Traditionally, it's always been considered harder to remain pure than to slide into evil, harder to redeem oneself from evil than to fall from grace. So I could easily accept a campaign paradigm in which using [evil] spells was weighted more significantly than [good] spells.
I don't know "why eyebite." It wasn't [evil] in 3.0, and I'm not sure why the designers felt a need to change it. I suppose because it's the closest thing 3.x has to giving someone "the evil eye" and they thought that should be an evil effect.
Symbol of pain, contagion, eyebite and nightmare all have non-evil analogues which are at least as bad, if not worse. Symbol of pain, eyebite and contagion cause debilitation for a while. Bestow curse , feeblemind, or blindness/deafness however can cause a lifetime long disability. Other symbol spells (punishing for disturbing an object) which maim and kill escape the [evil] tag.
Looking over the spells that you single out, it seems that all of them are strongly tied to pain, torture, and disease. All of which strike me as evil.
Symbol of Pain: "...each creature within the radius of a symbol of pain instead suffers wracking pains..."
Contagion: "The subject contracts a disease selected from the table below, which strikes immediately (no incubation period)."
Eyebite: "Sudden pain and fever sweeps over the subject's body."
Nightmare: "You send a hideous and unsettling phantasmal vision to a specific creature"
This all seems very evil. Now, while Feeblemind and Blindness/Deafness are certainly as mechanically debilitating, they are not nearly so evil in nature.
Nightmare kills people (not necessarily good or evil people) in their sleep from a distance. In this manner, it's objectively not any more evil than just fireballing them in bed.
I disagree. There's a difference between sending someone a hideous phantasmal vision in their sleep and literally frightening them to death, and just incinerating them in an instant. One is torture, the other is just killing. Same with Symbol of Pain vs. something like, say, Power Word: Stun. Sure, at the end of the battle your opponent may wind up dead in either case, but with one spell your foe is incapacitated with "wracking pains" and with the other they're just held immobile. There is a significant difference here. The means, not the ends, are the reason the [evil] tag is being applied.
Finally - deathwatch is just absurd. Because the flavour text describes seeing the life forces as people in an evil way, the spell is obviously [evil], despite having equally good and evil uses.
I have to agree with you on Deathwatch. It's shiny new 3.5 [evil] tag seems misplaced. I suppose they may have merely wanted to make a flavor differentiation between good and evil clerics: forcing good ones to use Status while evil ones can feel more evil by using the now [evil] Deathwatch. *shrug* It doesn't bother me overly for the spell to be [evil] since Status is just as good, though I could see a DM removing the [evil] tag and have no problem with it.
Hmm, every single one of them deals with... fighting evil. Well, except for the two which summon good creatures and then compel them to do the will of the caster.
Interesting. I think the designers made a mistake using this clause in the Planar Binding spells. As you point out, the compulsion effect of Planar Binding changes the tone of the spell dramatically over, say, Planar Ally. My guess is that the designers just didn't consider the drastic difference in approach between Planar Binding and Planar Ally, which also contains the same clause.
I've shown above that the distinction between good spells and evil spells isn't really as simple as "this one does bad stuff and this one does good stuff"
You've done nothing of the sort. The examples you gave only further illustrate the reason why spells are tagged [good] or [evil]. The lone exception is Planar Ally, which goes further to prove the designers weren't paying attention to that particular spell, than that [good] and [evil] spells weren't meant to have any bearing on alignment.
In regards to the discussion of paladins you commented:
Because almost all of the spells mean that you're allying with evil creatures (prohibited in his code) or acting dishonorably (weakening a creature through magic is presumably at the same level as using poison, and attacking someone in their sleep is not an honorable tactic).
Weakening a creature through magic is the same level as using poison? Oi vey. We could get into another discussion on that alone, I think. 
However the paladin's code is NOT the normal standard for a good alignment.
I agree, I think we should leave paladins out of the discussion. It would only muddy the waters.
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