Evil is what one doesn't like. It is no more than that. Tsunamis, wolves, Hitler, economic downturns and other manifestations have caused great human suffering. Inanimate nature, animate beings and societal interaction cause suffering. Hitler's followers and Hitler himself did not think of Hitler as evil. If Hitler's forces had won his birthday would be celebrated, and the excesses would be regretted as we regret the slaughter of indigenous populations. Evil is a theological classification.

According to the Bible God wiped out all the population of the earth except for those on the ark. According to the Bible Joshua 6:21: And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword. The foregoing was an example of great suffering both of humans and domestic animals caused by humans supposedly following the will of God. In the New Testament a psychopathic God condemns his own son to a horrible death. If causing human suffering makes one evil God is evil. Supposedly God created all. Therefore he created Hitler. Hitler was the choice of God. How can a creation of God be evil?

Christian, Jewish and Muslim clerics blame natural disasters on God. He must have flooded New Orleans or Sumatra or did the dirty in some other places because he is punishing humans for doing wrong. In our court system we punish people for criminal activities. However, only the criminal is punished. God isn't as circumspect. He murders whole populations including babies, oxen and sheep. Some people get excited about abortion. However, when God decides on mass murder he murders pregnant women together with their fetuses.

I am reading “Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide from Sparta to Darfur” by Ben Kiernan. Religion has justified and supported the genocide of the indigenous population of the Americas, the English slaughter of the Irish, the Buddhist slaughter of the Hindu Tamils, the Nazi genocide, the Turkish genocide of the Christian Armenians etc. If we call causing human suffering evil then religion is evil.

a few basic errors david...religions arnt about god...its about mankind...

just because..men claim a thing..
dosnt mean they claim correctly

wether its in a science/book...or a religious/book...we are expected to filter the info...sort the true from the faulse...sort the wheat from the tares..for..[ourselves]...

we get into serious troubles accepting others...opinions/hopes/fears/delusions..as true

take the current debate..about evolution...where mindless..faith in science..sees retards claiming brains..lol..simply by claiming evolution...despite..not even knowing the basics...

that any thesus needs a beginning...no beginning..[ambiogensus..first life]...then no evolving of it into nothing..science claims one decent family tree..but has no first[seed/...thus has no root]

what may hold true..for xtians may not hold true for buddists...thus lumping..all belief..into one anti/faith...athiest belief..is attractive..to those..afraid of the god..described into words..in so called holy texts

i have much against..both religion...as well as science...each having their followers...unthinklingly/..unquestioningly following the thiest/or anti thiest line

jesus revealed..none is without sin..or without error..only one is perfect..and this one..[god..]..can be known without science..[and without religions/churches..without even faith

but..lol..science claims science fact..but the fact..they quote is evil..it says species evolve out of genus...but the science..thus far revealed..clearly keeps evolution..within its genus..

thus genus/species..cant evolve from its parernal/maternal/genus..but ignorants accepting one..to validate the other..[in ignorance]..thus they get decieved

miss..seeing..the god behind the forrest..

claiming individual..[distinct..genopmic/trees..are a whole forrest in and of themselves...its the blind leading the blind...but as you point..

But its our own free choice to call it..good or bad..true/false...good/bad

clearly we see good..in many things...and judge bad..in others...i long studied science....till i realised its a scam..[a new religion..that calls trees forrests...

that claims all the trees..in its single tree...that joins all the religions..into one athiest godlessness

anyhow a god topic..[as is usual from your hand...

it will be interestin.. watching the justification for vile...many may chose to reveal/revile/blame or recuse..[and excuse]...

but we can expect to learn...only..by not judging any-of us...

lest we be judged of the same measure..without the full info/..without knowing the full facts..without knowing..the one true good

David,

Religion itself is not evil, however, it is a powerful force for division, and in doing so creates conflict.

I.e. Us (Catholics, protestants, muslims, hindus etc) are the true believers, therefore the heathens (Catholics, protestants, muslims, hindus etc) are teaching heresy and all doomed to go to hell.

To protect ourselves we must (kill / convert / drive out) the (Catholics, protestants, muslims, hindus etc) in order to protect our children from the evils of (....).

Sound familiar?

and of course blaming others for evil prevents you from looking at your own heart. Those that blame God for evil all have one thing in common. They refuse to acknowledge the devil and the corruption of their own heart. The self righteous rants of many who want to put themselves in the chair of God is really quite pathetic. Many of them opening support killing unborn babies and have no clue at all when it comes to righteousness except their own (which is atrocious). Often those protesting for peace are the most violent. Dream on guys, yes man is a pinnacle of morality and Christ immorality. How deceived can one be?

Although I basically agree that religion is frequently used to justify mindless atrocities, david f, I have to take issue with one of your supporting propositions.

I presume that when you mention as genocide "the English slaughter of the Irish", you are referring to Cromwell's nastiness in the seventeenth century.

It is true that some historians paint this as an entirely religion-based atrocity. Robin Lane Fox, for example, asserted that Cromwell's troops used "Joshua’s massacres of the Canaanites, as ordered by the Lord, as a divine justification for what they were doing".

But given the historical background, this is far more likely to be a conscience-easing post-justification, than an example of religious fervour driving genocidal acts.

For one, the alliance between Charles II in exile, and the Confederation of Kilkenny was a clear threat to the New Commonwealth. There was also a revenge element, for the atrocities to settlers during the 1641 Uprising. Plus the existence of privateers using Irish ports as their base, from which they attacked and plundered English shipping - a sort of seventeenth-century Somalia.

In those days, these together would have acted as perfectly sufficient justification for war and subjugation of a people, without the added religious element.

So yes, Cromwell was a Puritan, and considered all Catholics to be heretics. But it is drawing a rather long bow, I feel, to label the entire misadventure religion-justified genocide.

You may have a corrupted heart, runner, but you can't speak for anyone else.

Unless you have seen the light of Allah, you are doomed to burn for eternity.

Dear Pericles,

The religious element in the conquest of Ireland did not begin with Cromwell. It was there when the English were planning the invasion in Elizabethan times. From Kiernan’s “Blood and Soil” Page 174:

'Harvey, the Smiths, and their associates, imbued with enthusiasm for Cato and Livy, stood at the center of a circle of emerging radicals in the Elizabethan order. As the historians Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton conclude, "Harvey read the Carthaginian and Roman past above all in terms of the English present. A rising member of the rising war party, he ached for action, like his patrons" Nicholas Canny calls this group extreme or "advanced" Protestants, compared to whom Henry Sidney was a moderate. Another historian, Brendan Bradshaw, describes them as "a group of radical young courtiers and intellectuals, led by Sir Philip Sidney, with the Earl of Leicester in the role of godfather, who strove to combine the ideals of protestantism and neo-chivalry, and to put military arms at the service of social renewal, the protestant cause, and the greater glory of England."'

>>Evil is what one doesn't like. It is no more than that. <<

This statement and its subsequent explanation are far too shallow for my liking. True evil is real and is embodied in the Lucifer Principle. Its motto is "follow me and you will ultimately be rewarded by being left stranded in a life of internal pain and suffering". In contrast, following the good and natural path, free of purely intellectual decision-making and all dogma, leads to having a happy and fruitful life. Everybody knows the difference between the two. The problem is that many people are lazy and stuck in their rut and are susceptible to bad influences when they sweep through.

I must agree with runner regarding your argument - it's a great example of relativism. When something bad happens, life tends to normalise it. The mind plays tricks that are easy to fall for; there’s a tacit, post hoc attitude of: we're still here, so what came before us can't be that bad. One thing leads to another and the ideas that win out are not those that are the most principled or noble, but those that outlast the opposition. Abortion is a classic example. It all started with the idea of a woman not being tied down to a particular lifestyle. It is a fundamentally selfish attitude that has been normalised over time to the point where governments facilitate the process. Smoking is another deeply selfish personal indulgence. The desire to have a nicotine hit overwhelms all else; even one’s good sense to render one’s body in good health. Once you get caught in its thrall, you are long stuck with the consequences. These are forms of the Lucifer Principle and they are the consequence of the choices that people make either through their strength or weakness.

God created people with the faculties to work out the difference between good and bad. He created the clean slate and people fill it. However, what people fill it with is what they will be judged by over the full life cycle. It certainly isn't God that's evil.

I've always thought of evil as something
that is harmful, injurious, morally wrong,
anything causing injury or harm.

I've alwys been taught to take responsibility
for my own actions - and not look to scapegoat
others for them.

For example, the vast majority
of Australians are descendants of immigrants, yet
we often act as though today's immigrants don't
deserve what we do, that we have something to
protect from their encroachment. It seems paradoxical
to me that we would celebrate our ancestors coming
over to this country, yet condemn someone trying to
do the same thing today.

Of course there are immigrants who abuse our system,
just as there are people born here who abuse our
system. But, it's a national immorality when we
collectively say no to compassion. Compassion need not,
should not, be considered with financial expenditure.
It means simply a mental commitment to accept
the possibility of options we have not considered.

Blaming religion as being evil - I simply don't buy.
Religious beliefs and practices are so ancient that
they can be traced back into prehistory. Believers
may worship gods, ancestors, or totems; they may
practice solitary meditation, frenzied rituals, or
solemn prayer. And, obviously religion can't be defined
in terms of the Western religious tradition alone.
Therefore - mankind has to take responsibility
for their own actions - or lack of them.
They must do unto others as they would
have others do unto them.

Dear RobP,

Sometimes there is profundity in simplicity. To recognise what we call evil as merely something we don't like is not the least bit shallow. It recognises nonsense for what it is. Evil is not an entity outside ourselves. It is not a force driving us. We have given a mystical quality and a theological dimension to what we don't like by calling it evil. God and Satan are human creations that keep us from confronting reality. They, like evil, are human inventions.

Dear Foxy,

I agree that religion is not evil. It is not good either. It is merely another human invention that we use for various purposes. One purpose is to justify and explain our acts. However, I disagree that we should do to others as we would have them do unto us. That assumes others have our tastes and desires. They may not.

I love your compassionate heart.

Dear Shadow Minister,

You are not a sinister minister.

Evil exists. Spend some time with someone who finds absolute joy in cutting off your various appendages and hearing you scream. There's people out there who will do the most horrendous things to you; things you couldn't comprehend, and find sexual gratification in your absolute suffering to your soul.

Evil exists, it's just that you've never met it. Hope you don't. Hope I don't.

EVIL is only LIVE spelt backwards
Thanks from
Dave

StG wrote: Evil exists. Spend some time with someone who finds absolute joy in cutting off your various appendages and hearing you scream. There's people out there who will do the most horrendous things to you; things you couldn't comprehend, and find sexual gratification in your absolute suffering to your soul.

Dear StG,

I agree with you. You have described something evil. I described evil as what one doesn't like, and I certainly don't like what you described. I wouldn't like it at all.

Yes it is well know, I believe there are no Gods.
And yes that reildgions have done great evil.
That we would be better without them.
Even that we one day will be both better and without them.
But evil?
Some of the best in humanity came via reildgions, every one of them.
Yes every one of them.
It could be said of politics or any man made group that both evil and good is a by product.
But it is us, mankind, that gave birth to the good and the bad, runner, in that other thread, about England, you fell for a bait, you got stuck in fly paper and made remarks your God if he existed would say are evil.
You sometimes do not even have the questions or the answers right.

That was not the argument I was making, david f.

>>The religious element in the conquest of Ireland did not begin with Cromwell.<<

Many wars and conquests had a "religious element". This was no exception.

I was questioning the label.

I know that it was fashionable for scholars in the nineties and early noughties to re-define Cromwell's actions as genocide. But they had a twentieth-century agenda that influenced their views on seventeenth-century military aggression.

If "genocide" was Cromwell's objective, you need to explain his sparing Kilkenny from the sword. It was after all, full of the people he was supposedly eliminating.

It is far too easy to blame "religion" for everything under the sun. And there is no question, it has been a baleful influence on human relations for many centuries.

But accusations such as "religion-supported genocide" need to be accurate and specific. Otherwise you are simply mud-slinging.

david f,
>> Evil is what one doesn't like.<<
What a strange definition! My dictionary calls evil “profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, esp. when regarded as a supernatural force”. Since you obviously do not consider “supernatural forces”, we are left with “profound immorality” to which I really do not think one should apply “de gustibus non est disputantum” as one does to aesthetic attributes, the “what one does or doesn’t like”.

I know that some people like to reduce moral criteria to aesthetic ones (goodness to beauty, which together with truth are the three classical Platonic ideals), and I was just wondering whether you were in fact saying you were one of them.

I think most people - including atheists - would keep moral norms separate from aesthetic ones, even when explaining the sense for these Platonic ideals as a result of evolution.

>>If causing human suffering makes one evil God is evil<<
Evil implies (human) suffering (again leaving out the “supernatural” meaning of evil as “going against God‘ will“), but the converse is not necessarily true. For instance, before anaesthetics, doctors, e.g. surgeons, caused their patients suffer but were not evil; the court punishing the criminal often makes him/her suffer but we do not necessarily call that evil, etc.

Nevertheless. I agree that the Tanakh (OT) often presents God as cruel (I would prefer that to “evil”) often unnecessarily, at least in our 21st century eyes. I would not speculate on whether the image of “God the loving father” or that of “God the severe (cruel?) judge and avenger” contributed more to bringing the West - Jews and Christians - to the (post-Enlightenment) stage where we are now.

Dear Pericles,

Kiernan does not mention Oliver Cromwell.

Kiernan contrasts measures taken against Irish with those taken against Scots who also opposed English rule. Brutality was lesser in extent in largely Protestant Scotland than in largely Catholic Ireland. The English actions in Ireland were of sufficient scale and nature to be called genocide,

The English tried to impose a Protestant church on the Irish. That fueled Irish resistance.

From Kiernan:

'As Irish resistance spread, English repression grew more barbaric and genocidal. During the five Irish uprisings from 1568 to 1576, English troop strength rose to 2,500 soldiers. Colonel Humphrey Gilbert, military commander of Ulster, was transferred to Munster in 1569 to suppress the Fitzmaurice revolt under martial law. Sidney assigned Gilbert 900 cavalry, 400 infantry, and a force of Irish foot soldiers. Gilbert reported back: "I slew all those from time to time that did belong to, feed, accompany, or maintain any outlaws or traitors; and after my first summoning of any castle or fort, if they would not presently yield it, I would not afterwards take it of their gift, but won it perforce, how many lives so ever it cost, putting man, woman and child of them to the sword." Thomas Churchyard, who went to Munster with Gilbert, wrote that civilian noncombatants should be killed in order to starve the rebels of food, "so that the killying of theim by the sworde was the waie to kill the menne of warre by famine." To terrorize the "savage heathen," Gilbert ordered that"[t]he heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were killed in the date, should be cutte off from their bodies and brought to the place where he incamped at night, and should there bee laide on the ground by eche side of the waie ledying into his owne tente so that none could come into his tente for any cause but commonly he muste passe through a lane of heddes." Surrendering Irish visitors then saw "the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinffoike, and freendes, lye on the grounde before their faces."'

This article is nothing but religion versus atheism agitation. People, who often percive themselves as intellectual-elites because of their non-believe in religion, feel compelled to draw attention to this by continually ridiculing religion.

Yes, there are many things that both religion, theological texts and the institution of religion can be criticised for - but the way to go about this analyse of religion cannot be a bland, 'take a look at this' biolerplate.

This does the opposite of the intention; instead of proving intelligence, this sort of anti-religion rhetoric only proves the lack of intelligence in the writer.

Dear davidf,

I'm finding it interesting that as I am getting older I am softening my stance on religion while you seem to be hardening yours, although that might just be a perception.

I was wondering if I might be allowed to a different approach to the question of evil, hardly definative but exploratory none the less?

Could we not think of evil as occuring when something is lacking? Take StG's monster, a universal trait of psychopathic killers is a complete lack of empathy for the suffering of their victims. While we might view a cat playing with a wounded mouse, or crows picking the eyes from weakened lambs, as distasteful, we generally don't attribute evil to either species nor is there an expectation of empathy, even though there are many examples of cross species empathy in the animal kingdom.

We may even think of the psychopath less as evil and more as a malfunctioning or incomplete human being.

But I prefer to look for evil elsewhere. Christ described it in a more religious way than many of us might be comfortable with when he said we are all sinners. But in my opinion he went directly to the heart of the matter. We all have the capacity to do what any rational person would deem to be evil. Our propensity to engage individually or participate with others in such acts is directly proportional to what we are prepared to give up of our individuality or autonomy.

Cont..

Cont...

Kosovo was a prime example with neighbor slaughtering fellow neighbor even after decades of living in peaceful co-existence, Rwanda another.

We accept that people can be one-eyed and uncritical about their immediate family or their football team even though in some way these result in a minor diluting of ones natural dose of empathy for others. But concepts of nationalism and religion are far more dangerous if only because of their size. Ultimately however the military must be regarded as institution most requiring the largest sacrifice of our autonomy and the results speak for themselves, see the example of Colonel Humphrey Gilbert in your previous post.

To me the real evil of Hitler's Germany was not the man himself but that such a high proportion of Germans were prepared to idolise him and vow unquestioning allegiance and support for his actions.

Of course this evil is deemed to be relative for while many in western society view a bomb in a market place in Baghdad as an evil act far fewer would be prepared to label the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings even as non-justifiable. Is this because the second was perpetrated by the military?

We must careful about what we as citizens are prepared to give up of ourselves to our nationalism, our leaders, our religions and our military because often what we are left with is inadequate, under the right circumstances, to restrain the capacity for horrific acts which dwells within us.

We can all probably see the potential for evil in runner's blind adherence, but perhaps the difference lies between those who follow Christ himself and those who follow his example. My proposition is the first creates a lack while the second can not help but promote a positive.

Dear George,

You are right. I am not concerned with supernatural forces.

I apply “de gustibus non est disputantum”. Although we may try to make more of it I think that's all there is.

I don’t believe in any objective or absolute morality. We each have an implicit morality determined by a combination of what we are taught, the views of our society and our individual predilections. Morality in society has developed as a set of implicit rules that have been found to work as a means of living together in a reasonable manner.

Hitler for many of us is a symbol of evil. Yet he was loved by many of the German people. I believe he expressed the mood of the people he ruled much more than most rulers do. I don’t believe it is reasonable to think of him as a symbol of evil. He is only regarded so because he ordered things that many of us don’t like.

I also think Alexander, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan. Napoleon and other successful and would be conquerers are evil, as I think it is a low ambition to subject and kill people. Other people have different views of the foregoing. Babies are sometimes named Attila in Hungary.

Stripped of philosophic dressing good in human behaviour is the behaviour we approve of or like or are taught that it is proper to like and evil in human behaviour is the behaviour we disapprove of or dislike or are taught that it is proper to dislike.

Tsunamis, volcanoes, floods and other manifestations of nature are neither good nor evil but are the consequence of forces that follow the same laws that any other physical phenomena follow.

God is a human creation and is no more good or evil than Hamlet, Mickey Mouse or any other human creation. Of course the Bible pictures God as doing evil, so he may be classed along with Iago as an fictional character depicted as behaving in an evil manner.

Dear George,

You are right. I don’t bother with supernatural forces.

To me “de gustibus non est disputantum” seems reasonable. Although we may try to make more of it I think that's all there is.

I don’t believe in an objective morality. We each have an implicit morality determined by a combination of what we are taught, the views of our society and our individual predilections. Morality in society has developed as a set of implicit rules that have been found to work as a means of living together in a reasonable manner.

Hitler for many is a symbol of evil. Yet many German people loved him. I believe he expressed the mood of the people he ruled much more than most rulers do. He is only regarded as evil because he ordered things that many of us don’t like.

I think Alexander, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan. Napoleon and other successful and would be conquerers are evil, as I think it is a low ambition to subject and kill people. Other people have different views. Babies are still named Attila in Hungary.

Stripped of philosophic and religious dressing good in human behaviour is the behaviour we approve of, like or are taught that it is proper to like and evil in human behaviour is the behaviour we disapprove of, dislike or are taught that it is proper to dislike.

Tsunamis, volcanoes, floods and other manifestations of nature are neither good nor evil but are the consequence of forces that follow the same laws that any other physical phenomena follow.

God is no more good or evil than Hamlet, Mickey Mouse or any other human creation. Of course the Bible pictures God as doing evil, so he may be classed along with Iago as a fictional character depicted as behaving in an evil manner.

Dear Mikhail_Silverwood,

It is abuse rather than argument to accuse one who differs from you as lacking intelligence.

Dear csteele,

Your perception is accurate. I will write more to you.

MS that was a bit strange, you value only your view and your right to state it.
And claim a lack of intelligence for the rest of us.
Have you ever considered your self confidence may be miss placed?

Dear csteele,

I ask, "How can I lead a good life?"

That is a question that I ask and am not completely satisfied with any answer I have come up with. Eventually I will die, and that will be the end of it for me.

I got an email yesterday that made me very happy. It was from one of my granddaughters. She asked for my mailing address as she wanted to write letters rather than exchange emails. I felt very good as I hope I can leave her with memories of a grandfather who loved her.

StG described a psychopath, and you defined evil in terms of a psychopath who was lacking something. However, I would rather consider the question of living a good life. I don't think Christianity is useful in answering that question. You cited Jesus as saying that we are all sinners. That is one thing I find very wrong with Christianity. It inculcates a morbid sense of guilt. I read St. Augustine's "Confessions" and was impressed by the intelligence with which he described time and space. However, he was riddled with guilt due to having stolen pears from an orchard while a teenager. It seems more reasonable to ask what good we can do rather than wallow in guilt for our failings.

If we have done wrong try to make up for it by either compensating in some way the person you have wronged and try to change your behaviour.

The Christian way seems completely unreasonable. Believe on Jesus, and your sins are washed away. How does believing in mumbojumbo make up for wrong? How does it help the person you have wronged?

Our sins are with us. We cannot transfer them to another entity, but we can try to make up for them.

Rather than concern myself with definitions of evil based on psychopaths, Hiroshima, Hitler and other distant entities I would rather try to live a life that is good for me and good for those around me

i feel we often take the path of least thinking...this lack of forward/thinking..is often taken as evil...when..as cs wrote we got no concept,..of true evil

there is truelly good and truelly vile..
out there...as well as..in here..

i know i can have the darkest thoughts...and..its what i let these thoughts bring into realisation...that allows others to judge good or vile

no one can know..whats in our heart..except by that we made real..by our deeds are we adjudged..[by our others]..but that judgment..was created in their minds..so we need to see..what is in the mind of those..who blame evil...upon others...yet see their own vile..as pure

i could have much against..the religious texts,..that i got these thoughts from...the way they present the good..of the only god for just one egsample...as in any form, of bad..is alone by mens words..framing their thoughts

all the texts describe a living loving god of grace/mercy..just like any parent..will assume self guilt..at the negative deeds of their sprogs..[offspring]

what it boils down to david...is we had the bennifits of the thoughts and our annalasys of the teachings in the holy texts...seeing that no one can take gods name in vain...yet so many do and are

some yet still have the temerity and presuming jesus as good...when he himself say why call ye me good..good of god..not of jesus...lol

jesus forgiving us our sins..when its not our sin he is forgiving..for he sees us..and sees the father..sustaining life to live

see me ...see my father...who sent me...

i see you ..nd see the father who did send us all...

its by seeing reason/purpose..yes even my of own good/vile/bad..but knowing the motivations of my own heart..that i can forgive...or at least comprehend the evil...im judging in/..of others

but where im sadend..is that one..as wise as you..fails to see..your an..eternal living being...energy cant be created..[by men]...nor destroyed..[by men]...

see my beloved other...a living sperm..bought to your matriarchal..egg
..brought you..the living...you call life...

that first spark..of life...now consists of a burning fire/..passion of so much more..life...your one sperm..now has trillions of other lives..your living sustains

from the worms..in ya gut..that regulate your health..to the life living..on your eyelash...life sustaining other lives..to live..your life is sustained by other lives...and sustains yet other life...

and you still thinking..life ends...when most of it lives..well past our death...and in being life forces..lives on as its various forms of energy
think of life as energy..that can change its form..and even the delusionaL..GOD HEAD REPLACEMEWNT..dorkins...CONCIEVES OTHER UNIVERSES..damm cap loc...

..so that..final totality..of your lifes..living forces lives on..in those other dimentions..beyond this one..[heaven and hell]..and the trillions of other realms inbetween...

as revealed..by the dorkins god head..in his multi-universe bubbles model..for this is the implication..behind multi-universes

im sad..you feel energy can be destroyed..

thats not even valid..in science...
see how like us..the dead are

the only difference is life enegy...spirit
is either home/within..[emmanuel....
or gone away/without..

<<anyone who is careful with the mitzvah of mezuza..will merit "length of days"..for himself and his children."

The question is..what does it mean..to be "careful with the mitzvah"? To put the mezuza up on the doorpost without delay?..Or to be careful to write every letter properly?..Or to put the mezuza in the right place?

Says the commentary 'Turei Zahav':..'to be very careful'..means to be aware that here,..in this doorway between rooms,..between inside and outside, between what has been and what will be,

in this mezuza,..is..'Yichud HaShem'..G-d's Oneness; &#1492;&#1513;&#1501; &#1488;.....

And if you can be careful..to let the mezuza focus you on this foundation of reality,..then you'll enjoy length..(depth)..of days.

We're always at a point..of moving from one..'room'..to another.

evil has its place...as does good...

and for every level in between..each has their own realm/room..
..in thy fathers house..of which jesus has his room...mahamoud his...the buddists and tha a-thiest..and everything inbetween...

all of their own passions..[gods rooms/dorkins bubbles/universes

each realm..doing only..to those..of their same passion/goats with goats tares from the wheat..chaff from the thorns...the stones from the dirt/waters from the dusts...

till in time the substance..of our god given energies..transformes into its next reveal..through the next doorway...from the one good..sustaining all our lives..to their own individual revealing...

Dear David f,
Since we both agreed that you “do not bother with supernatural forces” I did not understand why you brought God into play. What I was asking was whether you thought moral criteria were reducible to aesthetic ones. This is not the same as “belief in objective morality” (see below).

An essential part of my world-view is a belief in the independence (and mutual irreducibility) of the three Platonic ideals beauty, truth and goodness corresponding to the aesthetic, rational and moral criteria of human contact with his/her environment. I believe they are independent, something like the five Euclidean axioms are independent.

As I said, I know there are atheists who do not believe that moral and aesthetic criteria are very different, and I am still not sure if you would be one of them. However, I think the independence of the three criteria, their three ideals, is compatible also with an atheist view that sees them - our awareness of them - as merely the product of evolutionary processes of adjustments to the environment.

The question of objectivity of these criteria is a different matter. Nobody speaks of “objective beauty” (c.f. the “de gustibus...”) but also science strives for truth (the objectivity being beyond dispute until QM) although it does not claim to know something it could call “absolute truth”. Perhaps something similar might hold about the moral value of human actions.

I think everybody knowing the facts would call Hitler, more precisely his Holocaust, “objectively evil” (and the activity of many charitable organisations as “objectively good”). So I think a model of ethics where morality would be completely “in the eye of the beholder” would be unsatisfactory. Perhaps almost as unsatisfactory as a model of scientific knowledge, where the truth value of theories and experimental predictions would be completely “in the eye of the observer”.

Even if you can do without “absolute truths” in science, you cannot make scientific truth purely subjective, and I believe this is the case also with morality, or in our case rather “immorality”.

Dear George,

I don't believe the analogy between the Euclidean axioms and the Platonic criteria is valid. The Euclidean axioms express mathematical relationships and are a triumph of human reason. Two points determine a line. The entities, point and line, can be interchanged, and the axiom will still have meaning. Two lines determine a point.

Beauty, truth and goodness are not independent axioms on which we can build a logical system. They are words that have many meanings. Goodness may have no moral connotation whatsoever. It may merely mean effectiveness as in being a good bomb-maker. The criteria are not independent either as shown in Dickinson’s poem.

I died for Beauty — but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room —

He questioned softly 'Why I failed?'
'For Beauty', I replied —
'And I — for Truth — Themself are One —
We Bretheren, are', He said —

And so, as Kinsmen, met a night —
We talked between the Rooms —
Until the Moss had reached our lips —
And covered up — our names -

'Beauty' and 'Truth,' in a way very nineteenth-century words, are often presumed to be in conflict (for all of Keats having written that 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty. — That is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know'). In the poem the narrator died for Beauty and, interestingly, a man who died for Truth (a clergyman, most probably) is buried next door. It's as if the grave diggers knew that these two abstractions had something to do with each other, but weren't quite sure what. With all the time that eternity offers, the two 'spokespeople' 'talk between the Rooms' without a resolution, without either victory or compromise. Indeed, eventually, the moss of time covers over both concepts. (the discussion of the poem was from Geoff Page’s book, “80 Great Poems)

We both abhor what Hitler did. That does not make the Holocaust objectively evil. It illustrates that we think it was evil because neither of us likes it

Dear davidf,
You ask "How can I lead a good life?" but I get the sense you are also asking 'How can I have a good death?'

I do not presume to have any answers so will try and refrain from any pontification by sticking primarily to observations.

I have heard it said we are only truly dead after the last time our name is spoken. So when you say "Eventually I will die, and that will be the end of it for me." it is rightly balanced by your evident joy at the thought of your granddaughter rereading your letters and reconnecting with your love for her long after your physical form has gone.

Perhaps we might think of the absence of love as a form of evil. Christ was struck by the importance of love as was Paul and indeed so are we all judging by the number of times 1 Corinthians 13 gets a run at weddings.

Once we strip away much of the more cultist aspects of any faith there often lies some very obvious truths about the how we should lead our lives. Surely Christ was attempting to get us to extend the love we have for family to the rest of humanity. For instance the patience with which we accept the slings and arrows that occasionally come our way from our teenage offspring evaporates immediately if we receive the same from non-family youth, although perhaps I'm speaking for myself.

While it might have served the Church's purpose to burden us all with guilt I not sure that was Christ's intention at all. There are primarily two ways to feel guilt, one is through empathy for those you may have hurt and the other is a fear of the authority you may have disobeyed. The Christian message is at its most powerful when it informs the first and at its weakest when it dwells on the second.

Cont..

Con't..

Do you think the psychopath is troubled by deep feelings of remorse? By confessing a wrong to someone you have hurt in a way signals ones return to being a complete person. It shows your empathy to be stronger than your pride.

The Church talks about the Kingdom of Heaven as something removed from this world, something that can only be reached through them after death. Christ talks about it a being all around us, attainable in this life. So how do we assuage guilt? Either by removing our capacity for empathy (an example is Howard's removal of incarcerated asylum seekers from the public gaze and Rudd's insistence that the most recent bunch are not to step foot on Australian soil) or by acknowledging past wrongs, apologising and seeking to correct them if possible.

This message is hardly unique to Christ and it is only that his teachings are more accessible to ourselves and a good deal of the West that I dwell on him.

I have a love hate relationship with the classic Russian authors. Dostoevsky tempts me with his truths but I want to slash my wrists after reading him. So it with a little trepidation that I invite you to examine the life of Tolstoi. Here is someone who thought deeply and only 'came to' Christ later in life. As is often the case with such people he was scathing of the Orthodox Church and its teachings. One gets the sense he was enraged by the actions of the Church in subverting the message of Christ to their own ends and thereby delaying his own exposure to that message. I find it interesting he was most enamoured by the story of Joseph. Tolstoi retreated from the literary world for a period to concentrate of the affairs of his estate and the education of the children of his serfs which he deemed a more "useful" pursuit.

cont..

I don't believe the idea that good and evil are just arbitrary constructs of the mind as has been suggested in this thread.

I watched the show about the Allies' efforts in rounding up and bringing to justice the Nazis responsible for murdering the escapees that inspired the movie, "The Great Escape". It came across as a fair and accurate portrayal of the truth of the situation. What it showed me is when it comes to it, there's bad and then there's really bad. In one scene from the show, the leader of the "great escape" was ordered (by Hitler himself) to be shot by his nazi escort on the way back to the prison camp. The senior nazi at the scene ordered his 2IC to do the dirty work. The 2IC had never killed anyone before and knew if he didn't comply he would be shot himself, so did it although he first tried to remonstrate with his superior. In the background that was done of him, he was portrayed as having a loving family at home and this was borne out in the letters he wrote to his wife from prison (before he was caught by the special investigators). To my way of thinking, while he committed murder, he was nowhere near as guilty as the Third Reich itself and its senior command.

In another scene, a senior officer was completely unrepentant after personally murdering an Australian flier who escaped from the same camp. Even when caught, he was proud of what he had done.

All of the nazis were hanged which to my mind shows a mixture of true justice and victors' justice were carried out by the Allies.

But what differentiates the man who deep in his being wants to kill someone against the man who only does it because circumstances dictate it? There's more to this that just a figment of one's imagination. Where does one get inspiration to do bad? Or good, for that matter? It doesn't just come from nowhere.

I'm beginning to come to the conclusion
that evil is a judgement we hand down
based on our own sense of what's moral
and what's not.

Evil is not something that I feel any one
of us can truly define in a nutshell.
Same as good.
Definitions seem to transcend human reasoning
on some level.

The best I can do is realize that I have a
conscience for a reason - and live my life
accordingly.

Davidf,

I tend to agree with SM things aren't intrinsically evil (guns aren't evil they can be used for good shooting feral pests/vermin comes to mind. or evil rob a bank, murder some one at al. Only human actions either mental of physical are.(untill we discover sentient aliens that is).
Evil is a human construct.
Wolves are bad in our frame, not evil, wanting to survive or protect one's self or family (pack) isn't. Even Hitler wasn't intrinsically evil, what he did was beyond reasonable contemplation. That doesn't mean he shouldn't have been punished for what he did.

RobP

In your example the men that killed did so because they were ordered to (Nuremberg defence). It was clear that these men were, as you say, loving fathers PTA etc. So the idea that they were intrinsically evil, has major contradictions.

Being intrinsically evil has problems
Either the person was born evil therefore there isn't a huge mental jump this could be used as justification for eugenics. To prove this there needs to be a genetic or physical cause.
Determinism in another form. They doesn't exist.

There are human (animalistic) potential in all of us towards gratuitous violence, best observed in chimps. However, they don't have consciences etc. we do. Therefore the defining element is the knowledge and or the ability to choose (i.e. to act or not act).
Deciding to over ride the conscience defines evil.

Cont...
Caught again by the 24 hour rule, to conclude...

My message is don't let your understandable reaction to the self appointed gatekeepers, and I include some of the gospel writers here, obscure deep truths to be found in the teachings of Christ.

While on Tolstoi I wonder if you haven't already you might find the time to read his short story "Three Deaths". The only online copy I can find is here;

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Three_Deaths

To me the death of the noblewoman is a big 'C' Christian death while that of the coach driver a little 'c'.

This highlights a number of definitions of christian.
Runner appears to me in these forums as definitely a big 'C' :). Church based and ultra-dogmatic.

Foxy could be seen as exhibiting a small 'c' i.e. showing a loving concern for others, humane. A christian act. A compassion that you expressed your love for earlier. This is far more the essence of what christianity should be about.

I will admit to being a little bemused by your statement "Rather than concern myself with definitions of evil based on psychopaths, Hiroshima, Hitler and other distant entities I would rather try to live a life that is good for me and good for those around me" which seemed a little strange after your opening paragraph of this thread in which Hitler was referred to 5 times. However as the author you certainly have that prerogative.

From your efforts on this forum you seemed to be taking to heart Socrates message ""An unexamined life is not worth living." If only by that measure you are well ahead of the game. Play on.

Dear csteele,

I object to equating humane with Christian. Non-Christian is not non-humane. Jesus inspires great fear in me. Christian Nazis and other Christians have murdered us and caused great death and suffering in Jesus’ name.

I don't know what Jesus intended or even whether he existed. I don't believe in any of the miracles in the Bible so I doubt the accuracy of the rest of it. I regard Christianity as a continuation of paganism. The humanoid gods of the Greeks and the Roman have been reduced to one humanoid god in the person of Jesus.

Absence of love is not a form of evil. We feel love for those we are close to. Many of our encounters are free of love, but that does not mean they are evil.

A good death to me is one that doesn't involve great suffering and comes quickly. My father was not feeling well, and my cousin took him to the hospital. I had to travel several hundred miles and by the time I got there my father was dead. According to the doctor he was making jokes until a half an hour before he died. He had a good death.

My grandchildren will remember me after my death. However, whether they remember me or not will not alter the fact of my death. One doesn't live in someone's memory. Death is death whether one is remembered or not.

I understand that a characteristic of a psychopath is not to feel any remorse. The only actions regretted are those the psychopath doesn't get away with.

I like Tolstoy’s writing and plan to read the Troyat biography. My wife has already read it and had the impression that Tolstoy was a horrible man. He was more interested in the children of his serfs than his own.

Dear RobP,

I see no point in hanging Nazis regardless of what they have done. It brings none of their victims back to life and is only more killing.

I don’t know why some people do what they do.

Dear davidf,

When I read “I don't know what Jesus intended or even whether he existed.” and see “Jesus inspires great fear in me.” I am a little perplexed. Would it be more accurate to say that the followers of Christ inspire that fear rather than the bloke himself? Still it is an understandable position to take from your perspective.

Indeed 'Jews have murdered us and caused great death and suffering in the name of Zionism' is also a legitimate call from a Palestinian. However does this completely de-legitimise the notion of a Jewish homeland?

You say “Absence of love is not a form of evil”. My reply would be the absence of empathy allows evil to flourish so I am happy to put the proposition that it is intrinsically evil. Further I see the withdrawal or absence of love by parents toward their children as a typical factor in the creation of our psychopaths (and our writers it seems).

I don't think I have ever really enjoyed reading Tolstoi or Dostoyevsky, I just seem to get too tense.

Dear Foxy,

You say “Evil is not something that I feel any one of us can truly define in a nutshell.” but you know it when you see it. To me it is a self evident truth and as a human construct like equality and justice it is one we should be damn proud of. In an evolutionary blink of an eye we are no longer eating each other, in many parts of the world the evil of slavery has been banished, gender equality is steadily rising, global want and disease are being tackled , the list goes on.

You strike me as a whole person. You don't need a reason for having a conscience just accept it as part of being human and realise it has been honed by others before you as you are doing to those around you now.

Sometimes we just need to stand back and feel justifiable pride in the substantial progressive narrative of the human race in recent centuries.

Dear csteele,

You wrote: "Jews have murdered us and caused great death and suffering in the name of Zionism' is also a legitimate call from a Palestinian. However does this completely de-legitimise the notion of a Jewish homeland?"

Yes, it does. I favour countries that make no difference among their citizens on the basis of ethnicity and religion. If Australian became an officially Christian state I would become a second-class citizen. Since I do not support a Christian state I cannot support a Jewish state where non-Jews are second-class citizens. I think it better to work for countries that do not discriminate.

You also wrote: Would it be more accurate to say that the followers of Christ inspire that fear rather than the bloke himself?

Jesus is a mythic figure. I know Jesus by the bloody record of his followers. Inquisition, Wars of the Reformation, Witch burning, Holocaust etc. It is a judgment advocated by the New Testament - Matthew 7:18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

The Dark Ages began on 27 February 380 when Theodosius declared "Catholic Christianity" the only legitimate imperial religion. "The Closing of the Western Mind" by Freeman tells how the spirit of enquiry that existed in the classical world was criminalised at that point. In 384 Theodosius prohibited haruspicy on pain of death.

“Constantine’s Sword” tells how the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire changed Christianity to a religion of war and Jew hatred. Then followed a period of great violence as Christianity imposed its religion on most of Europe. Except for Ireland it was by bloodshed. eg. Charlemagne gave the pagan Gauls the choice between beheading and Christianity. "The Conversion of Europe from Paganism to Christianity: 371-1386" describes that bloody process.

Hitler followed Christian tradition.

Dear David f,
Obviously Euclidean axioms was not a good example on which to explain to you what I mean by the irreducibility of the ethic to the aesthetic, and I agree that independence of value-criteria is a different thing from independence of formal axioms, or, say the political independence of countries.

It is also clear that we read differently what Plato (and his philosophical successors) had to say about these abstract things, although I hasten to add that I am not a professional philosopher. Neither am I an ethicist but I still maintain that an ethical system based on pure subjectivity of moral criteria is not very practicable, to say the least.

>>Goodness may have no moral connotation ... a good bomb-maker <<
I think this is as relevant as the observation that space in mathematics is different from space in physics and both are different from a space you are looking for when parking your car.

So just let us just agree to disagree on how to understand and interpret the classical ideals of beauty, truth and goodness.

Nevertheless, thank you for bringing up the philosophical (ethical) concept of evil - although most people see it only in its psychological context - since it made me think over my own views and values, often only subconsciously held.

Dear George,

Irreligious people with whom I have discussed the notion of subjective morality generally have the same opinion that you have.

What is the basic rule of objective morality?

csteele wrote: "Sometimes we just need to stand back and feel justifiable pride in the substantial progressive narrative of the human race in recent centuries."

Twentieth century: Boer War where British held Boer families in concentration camps, Philippine-American War where several hundred thousand Filipinos were slaughtered. Slaughter of approximately 100,000,000 by various Marxist entities.

USSR 20 million
China 65 million
Vietnam 1 million
North Korea 2 million
Cambodia 2 million
Eastern Europe 1 million
Africa 1.7 million
Afghanistan 1.5 million
Latin America 150,000
The International Communist movement and parties not in power 10,000

Two World Wars. Two genocidal slaughters in Indonesia. Genocides Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1992-1995 - 200,000 deaths, Rwanda: 1994 - 800,000 Deaths, Pol Pot in Cambodia: 1975-1979 - 2,000,000 Deaths, Nazi Holocaust: 1938-1945 - 6,000,000 Jewish Deaths, 5,000,000 slavs, Gypsies and other untermenschen murdered, Rape of Nanking: 1937-1938 - 300,000 Deaths, Stalin's Forced Famine: 1932-1933 - 7,000,000 Deaths, Armenians in Turkey: 1915-1918 - 1,500,000 Deaths. Ongoing slaughters in Darfur and southern Sudan.

Orthodox, Christians, Catholics and Muslims conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Muslims and Jews conflict in the Middle East. Catholics and Protestants conflict in Northern Ireland. Buddhists and Hindus conflict in Sri Lanka. Muslims and Christians conflict in Indonesia and East Timor.

Twentieth century also developed nuclear weapons, poison gas, cluster bombs, depleted uranium etc.

Nineteenth century: Opium wars so England could continue selling opium to China, European imperialism in the Pacific, Belgians in Congo killed around 10,000,000, Napoleonic Wars extending from Russia to Spain, American Civil War, etc.

Substantial progress in science and technology. However, what other substantial progress have we had?

In the last two hundred years we have produced no composers equal to Bach and Mozart, no writers equal to Shakespeare and no artists equal to Michelangelo and Rembrandt. A much greater and more literate population with the same genes as their ancestors has not exhibited the same creativity.

What do you feel justifiable pride about?

Dear davidf,

I think your last post has made my case.

Both Hitler and Theodosius were nothing without their followers.

As examinator puts it "Deciding to over ride the conscience defines evil". I would go further and say the evil lies in those of us willing to give up our autonomy to others or, to stifle our natural empathy for other humans, to create a lack or a void within ourselves, to let others decide for us what our conscience is.

That is why I found Cronulla so disturbing. Here were the echoes of pogroms, of mob rule, of people giving themselves over to collective violence.

Unquestioning obedience to others, or ideals, or Gods, leaves us less than human and open to our capacity for evil deeds.

Standing on the outside we can often instinctively recognise this in others. The sad thing is we rarely seem to recognise it in ourselves.

From Watkin Tench's journal at the settlement at Port Jackson;
May, 1791. “Had their marauding career terminated here, humanity would have been anxious to plead in their defence; but the natives continued to complain of being robbed of spears and fishing tackle. A convict was at length taken in the fact of stealing fishing-tackle from Daringa, the wife of Colbee. The governor ordered that he should be severely flogged in the presence of as many natives as could be assembled, to whom the cause of punishment should be explained. Many of them, of both sexes, accordingly attended. Arabanoo’s aversion to a similar sight has been noticed; and if the behaviour of those now collected be found to correspond with it, it is, I think, fair to conclude that these people are not of a sanguinary and implacable temper. Quick indeed of resentment, but not unforgiving of injury. There was not one of them that did not testify strong abhorrence of the punishment and equal sympathy with the sufferer. The women were particularly affected; Daringa shed tears, and Barangaroo, kindling into anger, snatched a stick and menaced the executioner.”

Evil and empathy.

csteele wrote: Both Hitler and Theodosius were nothing without their followers.

Unquestioning obedience to others, or ideals, or Gods, leaves us less than human and open to our capacity for evil deeds.

Dear csteele,

I agree. Jesus is also nothing without his followers. Unquestioning obedience to others, or ideals, or Gods, leaves us less than human and open to our capacity for evil deeds. Hitler and Theodosius were followers of Jesus.

davidf wrote; I agree. Jesus is also nothing without his followers. Unquestioning obedience to others, or ideals, or Gods, leaves us less than human and open to our capacity for evil deeds. Hitler and Theodosius were followers of Jesus.

Dear davidf,

So was Ghandi, at least of his teachings. To him "Jesus represents not a person, but the principle of nonviolence".

Ghandi, in an answer to the question of why he appeared to reject becoming Jesus' follower answered "Oh, I don't reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ."

He went on to say;

"I rebel against orthodox Christianity"

He was intent on formally becoming a Christian until he tried entering a Church in South Africa and was told by an elder "There's no room for kaffirs in this church. Get out of here or I'll have my assistants throw you down the steps."

One of the gatekeepers I referred to earlier.

In your earlier post you quoted from Matthew 7:18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

A timely quote.

This was actually a warning against the teachings of false prophets, not licence to go out and burn witches. Surely Theodosius could be regarded as a kind of false prophet and Hitler was Hitler. If these words in Matthew had been taken more to heart by the German population they might have averted the murderous results.

I think your argument might be with them rather than Jesus.

DAVID your extensive list of wars[misses out some other statistics[like the japenese cities murderd,near the end of ww2..ans cthe million pluss iraqies..or the srilancan genocide

never the less you say religions caused these wars..yet must see in your heart every act of war was conducted bt the state..not the church...and financed by the self same ursurors/bankers...jesus railed agaionst

realise mate that those who charge ursury..arnt xtian...neither are those who pay ursury..realise that these are satans realms...the realm of the outcast's of little passion..[little salt..

this is the only realm..where real evil and true good..may freely interact...alone in these realms..mainly so we can raise our passions..enough..to qualify for the next realms...

we are all eternal spirits having a life term..

.we serve our life/sentance...life/term...and get born again into the next realms..some having a...lol..good death..others not...

but regardless..we all get sorted in the end
so much more..is given...than we could possably concieve..

but it begins with facing the truth honestly...it wernt religions that did evil...but those decieved..into the serving evils..most vile..of many faiths and many beliefs

yet its those..without belief..
yet proffesing..lol belief...

that reveal the passions...of the hell's..on earth..are earthy passions...not proper/religious belief's..nor religious principles..not orded nor done by those knowing to love god via loving neighbour

you call the darkness...to be caused..by the light
but you ere my br-other

but one good...[god]
sustains all living...

no death serves..the life giver
we are called to live...not die

Dear davidf,

You seemed to have taken exception to my remark “"Sometimes we just need to stand back and feel justifiable pride in the substantial progressive narrative of the human race in recent centuries." and answered it with a body count.

I'm not sure how seemly it is to be using this as a measure but in the spirit of debate I see your millions of deaths and raise you many more millions saved.

Although there are many examples in my armoury I will employ just one – the eradication of small pox.

It is estimated that just in Europe alone during the 18th century 800,000 lives per year were lost to this disease. In the first 2/3rds of the 20th century the world lost between 300 to 500 million lives.

It was one of your terrible Marxist countries that first called for its eradication on a world wide scale. From Wikipedia: “In 1958 Professor Viktor Zhdanov, Deputy Minister of Health for the USSR, called on the World Health Assembly to undertake a global initiative to eradicate smallpox. The proposal (Resolution WHA11.54) was accepted in 1959."

By December 1979 it was announced as complete. Absolutely astounding effort by thousands of dedicated personnel and a beacon for those who see world cooperation rather than conflict as our species greatest hope. Copenhagen awaits.

As to Shakespeare, such art is fine if you could access it but at the time literacy rates for men were less than 30% and for women less than 10%. During the 18th , 19th and 20th centuries these rates have been taken to over 97% in most European countries, ably assisted by public schooling and the ethic that sustains it.

Much of the work of your painters lay in the homes of the wealthy who had commissioned it. Now much of it is publicly accessible.

Further strides in wealth distribution means not only your composers are enjoyed by far greater numbers but we can access the creative works of so many who now have the opportunity to distribute widely.

Yup, I'm proud.

Dear csteele,

You wrote: "This was actually a warning against the teachings of false prophets, not licence to go out and burn witches. Surely Theodosius could be regarded as a kind of false prophet and Hitler was Hitler.

I think your argument might be with them [the German population] rather than Jesus."

Dear csteele,

No. The argument is with Jesus. There has not been any noticeable improvement in human behaviour since Jesus. In spite of your equating humane with Christian there is no evidence that Christians are any more humane than non-Christians. All that equation does is denigrate non-Christians and promulgate the years of hate for non-Christians promulgated by Christianity which made fertile ground for the Nazis, Conquistadores, Puritans and other Christians who committed genocide.

The messianic age was supposed to be an age of peace. Since Jesus didn't usher in an age of peace it is obvious that he is merely one of the many false messiahs like Shabbatai Zevi, Jacob Frank. There is no Second Coming necessary. A messiah is supposed to get it right the first time.

Jesus was another false prophet.

You wrote: Would it be more accurate to say that the followers of Christ inspire that fear rather than the bloke himself?

Neither Hitler nor Jesus did much damage personally. Their followers committed the horrors. Jesus and Hitler are fearsome for the same reason.

http://www.johnshelbyspong.com/bishopspongon_theTerribleTexts.aspx
Anglican Bishop John Shelby Spong recognizes the bigotry promoted by Jesus:
"No one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6);This text has helped to create a world where adherents of one religion feel compelled to kill adherents of another. A veritable renaissance of religious terror now confronts us and is making against us the claims we have long made against religious traditions different from our own.

You wrote: "It was one of your terrible Marxist countries"

I didn't write that Marxists were terrible. You made the judgment based on my mention of the number of corpses. The same judgment applies to Christianity.

The smallpox still exists in labs like nuclear bombs waiting to be used.

Dear davidf,

Forgive me but I am going to suggest it is possibly a little curmudgeonly to dismiss the stunning global achievement of eradicating smallpox with the statement “The smallpox still exists in labs like nuclear bombs waiting to be used.”?

As to Bishop Spong could I invite you to read his tome The Hebrew Lord. It details the cultism that grew around the man Jesus. For example there is no reference to the virgin birth in Mark the first Gospel. Your quote is from the final Gospel, that of John. Written by a gentile after the destruction of the temple and bitter conflicts between Jews and the new sect of Christianity, when the hyping of the man was deemed necessary by the movement's leaders.

I have acknowledged this when I said in an earlier post “My message is don't let your understandable reaction to the self appointed gatekeepers, and I include some of the gospel writers here, obscure deep truths to be found in the teachings of Christ.”

I have tried to show the difference between those who follow Christ and those inspired by or act as he did, often through great personal cost.

I have never claimed “Non-Christian is not non-humane” nor have I claimed he was the messiah.

You have asked "How can I lead a good life?" and I was a little wary of offering advice. I do so now. Take the time to rejoice in some of the achievements of our species because life is too short just to dwell only on the negatives. There certainly is much to be proud of, all the more so because we are doing all on our own.

Beggars belief sometimes.

Dear csteele,

You wrote: "I have never claimed “Non-Christian is not non-humane” nor have I claimed he was the messiah."

Your post dated Saturday, 31 October 2009 2:56:25 PM contained: "Foxy could be seen as exhibiting a small 'c' i.e. showing a loving concern for others, humane. A christian act. …"

If a humane act is a Christian act then it logically follows that a non-Christian act is non-humane.

The word Christ means messiah. Let's just call him Jesus.

There are no known cases of small pox at present nor any dropping of nuclear weapons in anger since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, both nuclear weapons and the smallpox virus present a danger as long as both are not eradicated. There are samples of the virus in the germ warfare installation in Fort Dietrich, Maryland and in similar installations in other countries.

At the moment our species does not seem to be able to control its breeding and is causing mass extinction of other life forms by our actions. There is paleontological evidence for five great extinctions in the past. The sixth is now happening and seems to be man-made. It might be better for the other life forms for the human race to disappear from the planet. We are poisoning the planet. The twentieth century was a century of mass murder, and it appears to be continuing. Some populations are starving while others are obese. Even pop music instead of the witty lyrics and melodies of a Porter or Gershwin is the raucous cacophony of hip-hop or rock.

Curmudgeon? You bet your boots.

Centring a religion around a humanoid God or a man seems a continuation of paganism regardless of the attributes assigned to that man or God.

I see Jesus and Hitler, as exemplified in the acts of their followers. I assume those who call themselves Christian are followers of Christ.

Buddha, Mohammed and Zoroaster do not inspire fear in me, but Jesus and Hitler do.

Reading Spong's "Liberating the Gospels" with pleasure and incredulity.

Dear davidf,

I think everyone who is an octogenarian onwards has every right to be a curmudgeonly old bastard because I'm sure as hell going to claim that right for myself.

Just as I don't 'get' Gershwin or Porter I'm sure my children won't get to experience the joy of the Oils full blast on a desert road trip, or belting out Khe Sanh at a Barnsey concert, although my one of my daughter's favourite songs at the moment is Romeo and Juliet by the Killers which to my untrained ear sounds exactly like the Dire Straits original from my youth.

I wonder how I'm going to be repaid for the soap box lectures I gave my parents about their 'backward' ways. Will one of my children come home to tell me they are getting married to another couple? Will my grandchildren come up and quietly ask me in morbid horror what it was like to have the bloodied carcasses of slaughtered animals driven through my streets? I will admit to be kind of looking forward to it whatever comes.

I am also positive that they will uncover evils that I am blind to, just as my parents didn't march in the streets for Aboriginal voting and census rights there will be things that with hindsight I will be ashamed I didn't recognise.

I am glad you are reading some more Bishop Spong, some enlightened views of Jesus. For something meatier may I commend Robin Griffith-Jones' book The Four Witnesses subtitled The Rebel, the Rabbi, the Chronicler, and the Mystic.

To finish permit me briefly to put on my curmudgeon coat. I used the phrase 'christian act' to illustrate its difference from the Church's strident view of what it meant to be a Christian. But hell, I remember my great-grandmother using the phrase as did my grandmother and my mother so I claim it as part of my culture, so if you don't like it you can stick it in your pipe and smoke it!

I could get to like this so I'll put the coat away for now.

Good stuff, chaps. I don't think I'm quite as far along the curmudgeon track as you guys are, but I think I know where you're coming from.

Somebody accused me of being "evil" in this forum a week or so ago, and I have to admit I was quite taken aback. I've been a very naughty boy on occasions in the past, but to me the word "evil" denotes a kind of superlative badness. At any rate, the forces of "good" apparently intervened and the post disappeared in OLO's meltdown last week.

The relevance of that experience to this discussion is that I think that the person who said I am "evil" did so in davidf's sense, i.e. she's decided she doesn't like me (in part, no doubt, due to my somewhat acerbic - indeed, curmudegeonly - style on occasion).

With all due respect to davidf, I think that this debases the semantics of good and evil. There are many shades of goodness and badness between the polar opposites of Good and Evil - which are not defined by religions but are often claimed by them.

What is "good" is behaviour and ideas that sustain human cooperation in sustainable survival, and what is "evil" are behaviours and ideas that work against those imperatives. That's just my opinion, but I've arrived at it over many years of disciplined study, field research and life experience in diverse locales and activities.

I'd like to think that there's more in the future than 'curmudgeondom', but I'm not exactly inspired by current events.

Dear CJ Morgan,

Great word isn't it. Curmudgeon!

I perhaps should have been a little clearer and said 'I will claim it when I get there, in about 30 years time.'

I think the world being able to step back from the brink of a nuclear holocaust deserves applause. For these weapons not to have been used since WW2 also deserves applause because for so many people our nature should have made their use inevitable by now.

However the population bogey is the one that seems to depress so many about our species future and yet there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel. In 60 years the world wide fertility rate has dropped from 6 children per women to 2.6, not far from the replacement level of 2.3. Of course if we hadn't been so determined to eradicate global diseases the population would have been smaller but the 'Evil' of the death and suffering caused would be burdening us all.

I get a kick out of the notion that the best way of dealing with population growth isn't through forced sterilisations or a one child policy but through raising people from want, lifting gender equality, quality education etc.

That is not forgetting the world does have a population bubble it has to ride out and as a consequence we are going to lose species and face problems we may not solve without pain.

As for inspiration I get it from simple local things like policemen no longer turning a blind eye to domestic violence, the huge strides in tackling racism in our sport, acknowledgement of past wrongs, the list goes on.

It is bad enough when our churches push the doom and gloom message, it is particularly frustrating when our some of our secularists try to out do them.

Dear csteele and CJ,

If our interchange mutates into a love-in I will accede to our inexorable destiny.

I remember over 50 years ago sitting in a restaurant with my wife and another couple in the Poconos. Beautiful view but quiet was broken by waitress playing Presley record of 'Ain't nothin' but a hound dog' 'for us'. Disturbing cacophony in a peaceful setting. Have avoided pop music ever since and am a charter member of the derrierre garde. Could sing the London derrierre. Am unfamiliar with the Oils, Khe Sanh or Barnsey. Have heard of Dire Straits because someone I was talking to mentioned them and was taken aback that I was not aware of their existence. Probably you're not aware of Arslan Alp.

"Origins" by Eric Partridge yields the origins of curmudgeon from the French 'coeur mechant' meaning an ill-tempered heart.

csteele, please think of how Muslim act, Jewish act, Buddhist act or other _______ act sound to you. I connect none of those acts with compassion or goodness because the communicants of those religions display a spectrum of behaviours. Same for Christian act. It could refer to the Inquisition.

I think the doom and gloom message is one that should be pushed. We can take action to stop destroying the planet. We won't if we ignore what is happening.

There’s no reason that we can’t try to raise people from want, have sexual equality together with quality education and also have a one-child policy. Every few seconds somewhere in the world a woman is having a baby. We must find her and get her to stop.

Some horrible weapons have been used since WW2 – land mines, cluster bombs, depleted uranium and poison gas. All those weapons keep killing after the conflict is over. French farmers still die from the poison gas of WW1 when their plough disturbs a pocket of gas.

CJ wrote: With all due respect to davidf, I think that this debases the semantics of good and evil.

Yes. Let’s not be anti-semantic

Dear davidf,

There are many of my in-laws who would be quite bemused by my efforts here defending Jesus and christianity because they normally see me on the other side of the fence so we mustn't tell.

Firstly to further my argument, and I am quoting from Webster's here in difference to your origins, under the adjective for Christianity as opposed to the noun comes the following definition; ...humane, charitable, kind; a true Christian act.

My sister, who is not Buddhist, does not squash mosquitoes when they land on her but gently brushes them off. I am happy to call that a Buddhist act. She is extremely kind to all animals and has been known to do balaclava donned raids to rescue those in distress.

Without giving it deep thought I would probably see a Jewish act as one of rejoicing in God's abundances and giving thanks. As to a Muslim act it would be one of deep piousness and humbleness before God.

If I were in a particular frame of mind I could drench the last two brands in all sorts of evil and misdeeds. Admittedly I would struggle with the Buddhist but I'm sure in the end I would find a way.

I just happen to realise that the prime reasons for adopting a particular faith are upbringing and culture. Most of us are reaching for the same things and we use the vehicle presented to us, the one in easy reach. Our problems really only come about when we let others have too much control of the route.

BTW I am a little perturbed by your statement “We must find her and get her to stop.”. Sounds a wee fascist to me. How about instead we must present her with real opportunities to receive a sound education. Same effect, just a little less dictatorial.

Cont...

cont...

To modern music (sort of). I'm wondering davidf if you had heard Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah? My daughter is mastering it on the piano at the moment and it a truly beautiful song. The younger generation has been exposed to it through Rufus Wainwright's version in Shrek.

My wife's favourite is by Allison Crowe;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIMOdVXAPJ0&feature=related

But for my money Jeff Buckley 'owned' it with his working of it here;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK1UjkXDAJA

Recorded just after the French had tested a nuclear bomb in the Pacific.

“The French government had joined the long list of fools that had insisted on sending death sentences to the earth. This is for all the good people who know the only good place for a nuclear bomb is in the garbage disposal dismantled.”

The first lines go;

I heard there was a secret chord,
that David played and it pleased the lord,
but you don't really care for music, do you.

I thought it might push a few of your buttons and it seemed quite topical to the discussion.

Enjoy.

A final note. Did you know it was Mozart's father Leopold who dicided against inoculatiing his children against smallpox and as a result when he contracted the disease at 11 he was nearly lost to us?

Dear csteele,

I object to ethnocentrism - the idea that a particular religious, ethnic, national or other group is somehow more virtuous than others.

Dictionaries are defined by usage. "humane, charitable, kind; a true Christian act." is usage in language that expresses Christian ethnocentrism. Jews, Muslims, Congolese and others also exhibit ethnocentrism. I object to it wherever it occurs. At the ceremony where I became an Australian citizen Michael Lavarch said, "Australia is the best country on earth." To me that was an extremely offensive statement. There was a putdown of all other countries in that statement. I don't believe Australia is better than all other countries on earth. I don't find other ethnocentrisms any more acceptable than Christian ethnocentrism.

Jewish acts or Buddhist acts may be good or bad. The Israeli air force dropping cluster bombs on Lebanon near the end of the fighting was a war crime and evil act by Jews. Ben Kiernan in "Blood and Soil" writes of the genocides committed by Buddhists. A Christian, Jewish or Buddhist act is one that is committed by Christians, Jews or Buddhists. It may or may not be humane and charitable. It is ethnocentrism to assume that it is.

Our religion and ethnicity are generally the result of the background of our parents. You probably would agree with that.

“We must find her and get her to stop.” was an attempt at humour. Apparently the attempt failed.

I am not familiar with Leonard Cohen, Rufus Wainwright, Allison Crowe or Jeff Buckley but will listen to the sites you posted.

I was once offered three times my salary to work on the Polaris missile and refused. The man who made the offer threatened to report me to the FBI after I refused.

According to the narrative David was a very flawed character who grew arrogant with power.

I did not know Leopold refused smallpox inoculation for Wolfgang.

I am enjoying reading your posts, good people; CJ Morgan, Csteele and Davidf.

I particularly agree that no single culture has the monopoly on 'good' or 'evil'.

Davidf, in parallel to your experience when you became an Australian citizen, when living in America, I experienced "USA is the greatest, freest, (well it is probably the richest)" ad infinitum and was alternatively amused and insulted when pitied (implied) for not being an American - the prevailing view was that even other western democracies were somehow lacking in freedom. Therefore, I learnt a very valid lesson as you did that, "... was a putdown of all other countries in that statement. I don't believe Australia (USA) is better than all other countries on earth."

I fully endorse Csteele's claim that Jeff Buckley's rendition of Hallelujah is stunning, but have to acknowledge the master who wrote that particular song, Leonard Cohen. Upon reflection I ask, is music the great equaliser? Music certainly contributed to the emancipation of Afro-Americans. Therefore, music is a 'good'?

Then, is it 'evil' to enjoy Wagner? Because I don't mind a bit of Tristan and Isolde when in the mood. Also, I used to share my home with a German Shepherd too (best dog), however neither loves make me a fascist.

Does one's thoughts make one 'evil'? Or is it to act on those thoughts? I think the latter. And I agree with Csteele that we have much to be proud of, such as our increased awareness of 'evil' through our world citizens being the most educated at any point in human history. Admittedly, we still have a long way to go, but people, nations are moving from ignorance into, well, I won't go so far as to say 'enlightenment' but less ignorant. That has to be 'good'.

The Quakers or Society of Friends is one Christian group that attempts to be honest in both language and action. Before the US Civil War many Quakers were extremely active in the anti-slavery movement. At the risk of their lives some helped slaves to escape. However, the Society of Friends refused to pass a resolution against slavery at their annual meeting. Their reasoning was that the annual meeting speaks for all Quakers. Unless they could be sure that all Quakers felt that way about slavery they could not in good conscience pass such a resolution.

Confucian ethics requires one to name names and be accurate in one’s speech. Chinese tradition requires a chronology to be composed to form the yearly annals. This tradition existed under Imperial China and has been kept up by both the Kuomintang and the Communists. They may promulgate propaganda, but the annals have to be truthful.

A historian mentioned in the annals that the emperor was a murderer having unjustly exercised the death penalty. The emperor ordered that the writing be changed. The official historian refused and was executed. The historian’s son was appointed in his place and was also executed when he refused to change the annals. After several historians were executed the emperor gave up, and the annals remained unchanged.

I appreciate the attitude of the Quakers and the Confucians. My children have all had some of their primary education in Friend’s schools.

Truth in language has been a preoccupation of mine.

The first article I wrote for olo was "Lying language".

I am a citizen of both the US and Australia and object to US triumphalism together with the lies that justify that triumphalism. Relda, please note, "Popular democratic governments are a danger to the world" which has come out today is my latest effort.

I object to calling syrup, maple syrup, if it isn’t maple syrup. Labeling is a string I started on Forum link: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3150 to discuss that.

I object to the equation of Christian with "humane, charitable, kind” because it is another lie.

"Buddhist slaughter of the Hindu Tamils"

Pretty evil statement. Do you have any proof apart from Terrorist propoganda? Their numbers have actually increased as a percentage of the population. If genocide is occuring then the Sri Lankan are not very good at it. The genocide claim arose from the rumour that while the north was evacuated for the mines to be cleared the GOSL was going to move muslims, buddhist and christinas into the are there and therefore are polluting the Tamil race with inferior species.

Dear TheMissus,

The Tamil Tigers are on the EU list of terrorist groups. However, that does not justify the Buddhist supported killing.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/10/22/sri-lanka-us-war-crimes-report-details-extensive-abuses
Human Rights Watch's own research into the fighting found that both sides repeatedly violated the laws of war. The LTTE used civilians as human shields, employed lethal force to prevent civilians from fleeing to safety, and deployed their forces in densely populated civilian areas. Government forces indiscriminately shelled densely populated areas, including hospitals. Both parties' disregard for civilian life resulted in thousands of civilian casualties. Because independent observers, including the media and human rights organizations, were denied access to the war zone, detailed information on violations of the laws of war by both sides has been limited.
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly called upon the United Nations and member nations of the Security Council and the Human Rights Council to establish an independent international investigation into allegations of laws-of-war violations. The Sri Lankan government has promised to ensure accountability through domestic inquiries. For example, in a joint May statement, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, underlined the importance of an accountability process for addressing violations of international law and stated that "[t]he Government will take measures to address those grievances." In the five months since the war ended, however, no investigations have taken place.
http://www.genocide.org.uk/genocide/?p=58

Savagery replaces Sri Lanka’s eroded cease-fire
By Somini Sengupta – The New York Times – MONDAY, MAY 15, 2006

… The ethnic Tamils of Trincomalee, who are mostly Hindu and Christian, saw the clandestine raising of the Buddha statue as an act of provocation by Sinhalese Buddhists. The Tamils protested. The man who led the protests, Vanniasingam Vigneswaran, was shot and killed as he went to the bank one morning. Another morning, the bodies of five Tamil youths were found on the beach. The largely Sinhalese security forces came under steady attack by people suspected of being ethnic Tamil guerrillas.

There are many stories regarding the conflict. From what I have read Buddhist monks have blocked attempts at peace, and genocide of Tamils has occurred.

david f,
You said, "I object to the equation of Christian with "humane, charitable, kind” because it is another lie".

The lie lies in the behaviour of those calling themselves Christian while their attitudes, behaviours and motives have no resemblence to the attitudes, actions and motives of Christ Jesus or his teachings. They are the deceived, using an association by name of a religion with a respected character of the humane Jesus of history.

Terrorist never follow the rules, that is their choice. If they use the hospital as command centre then they should move patient elsewhere. Their choice. There are no charges of genocide in any official capacity against the Sri Lankan government so far, only propoganda initiated by the LTTE itself. The foreign journalist would probably be allowed in for a better assessment if they could actually write based on facts rather than cut and paste an opinion piece and offend a antion giving sound reason for their absence.

The truth is we know little of the facts and the reason is because we fail to be good reporters. Iraq is a lesson we should have learned from yet choose to ignore and repeat what suits the US. The US, UN and EU reports focus on the one screening camp and detention. They focus on the last insurgency but currently suggest no geneocide, only detention issues. However both guilty of doing same following wars.

May have happened but we do not get doors opened by making allegations and so fail to be of any assistance. Also the US is obviously unhappy at the alliance of Sri Lanka, China, Iran and Russia and the stragic port that is built by the Chinese. Both EU and US want as few countries as possible on the side of Iran as it wants to stop it becoming nuclear capable and needs the numbers. Anytime the US make even a vague accusation one should know there is politics behind it..and the allegations were vague. I guess they would have to face their own failure to comply with the rule of war if they pushed it. So just a little to allow the propoganda to spread all the while saying very little.

So I do not see how anyone has the proof to make such a allegation. There has been some reports of errant soldiers killing Tamil but whether they are government sanctioned remains to be seen.

Going around like this will never result in peace. So many words on what happens with no evidence.

Dear Philo,

Christianity, like other religions and groups of humans, is defined by the way those bearing the name behave. They are not defined by how their apologists think they should behave.

Dear David,
“Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.“ (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe).

Could this hold also when “man” is replaced by “religions and groups of humans“?

Dear davidf,

Firstly the Confucian in me must correct your language/facts. The Quakers or Society of Friends are not entirely made up of Christians and it certainly is not a prerequisite. In fact a fair percentage would probably take you to task for the presumption.

Secondly I have been caught again with my humour radar not fully tuned, sorry, I will get there.

Ethnocentricity, could we just call it tribalism, is part of being human and I'm not sure it can be considered an evil or wrong unless taken too far. We don't expect impartiality when someone is dealing with their family, or their football team, their town or city (if you haven't caught Waleed Aly's effort in the intelligence2 debate last October make the effort, very funny), or their state, then why are we surprised and angered when the same instinct is applied to their country or religion?

Me? Well I find myself sticking up for my species and so could well be labelled by yourself as speciescentric. Where does it stop? Heliocentric?

As I have argued I feel we give up a little of ourselves by joining various groupings but when this involves a complete cauterisation of empathy for a different group then we have a problem. Until then I'm not sure I have a issue with someone saying Australia is the best country in the world because all they are really saying is it gains that label because it is theirs.

Dear Fractelle,

You said: “Does one's thoughts make one 'evil'? Or is it to act on those thoughts? I think the latter.”

I'm going to say the former. For instance to harbour a serious prejudice toward a particular race while acting normally toward them does not remove the evil of racism it only removes the hurt caused.

I'm uncertain that music can be considered a good but it certainly is powerful and its universality makes it a mark of our species, an attribute that has the ability to lift us from the ordinary.

Dear George,

You cited Goethe’s saying: “Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.“ and asked: "Could this hold also when “man” is replaced by “religions and groups of humans“?"

I don't think it holds in any case.

I regard that statement as arrogant. It implies that one knows what someone else should be. I would regard it as an imposition if another person were to decide what I should be, and I would not impose on others what I feel should not be imposed on me.

There is too much of that attitude. I prefer to recognise the humanity of others, treat them decently and let them be what they want to be.

I favour the philosophy of Jimmy Durante, “Why doesn’t everybody leave everybody else the hell alone.”

Dear csteele,

I have attended Friends' meetings in various places. The Friends I knew regarded themselves as Christians.

As far as one's football team goes I am bemused when an Australian politician finds it relevant to state which football team he roots for. Other things being equal I do not vote for a person who makes such references. I regard it as an inappropriate attempt to humanise a candidate. I am interested in what a person plans to do in office not in their irrational prejudices.

Australia gets gold medals in the Olympics out of proportion to its population. That means to me they are overemphasizing sports and spending too much on the Institute of Sports. I am a dual citizen of the US and Australia, and I would like to see both stop competing in that orgy of nationalism, the Olympics.

I think we have different attitudes in that area.

Dear David f,

I think the quote is not about the NEED to “treat” other individuals (or groups) but about HOW to go about it in case you happen to have to “treat them”. Arrogant or not, I think Germans (and others) would have been much better off had they heeded Goethe’s (and Schiller’s) late 18th century warnings against nationalism, although those warnings implied he knew what they should and should not become.

He wrote in 1808: “The German nation is nothing but the individual German is something, and yet they imagine the opposite to be true. The Germans should be dispersed throughout the world, like the Jews, in order fully to develop all the good that is in them for the benefit of mankind.” (quoted in Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany, Macmillan 1960.)

>>I prefer to recognise the humanity of others, treat them decently and let them be what they want to be.<<
A fine general rule though I do not think educators, judges and law enforcers would find the last part always practicable.

Csteele

Well, by your definition "thinking evil thoughts" as being more than evil than actions, I am most definitely 'evil'. When my ex-husband was abusing me I wished with every mote of my being that he would just drop dead. Of course he did not oblige me of that wish, so eventually, I found the courage to leave him.

As for music, well my simple point was that it can be used for good or ill, like religion, patriotism, gender or skin colour. Therefore, I do not think of Nazis when listening to the "Ring Cycle". I remain more concerned by songs like "Onward Christian Soldiers" than Wagnerian operas.

Dear George,

Thanks for putting the statement in context. I try not to consider groups when dealing with individuals. Humanity or its lack should not be associated with a particular group of humans. Many consider all Nazis evil. Oskar Schindler of "Schindler's List" joined the separatist Sudeten German Party in 1935. Though a Czech citizen, ethnic German nationalist Schindler started to work for German military intelligence (the Abwehr under Wilhelm Canaris). He was exposed and jailed by the Czech government in July 1938, but after the Munich Agreement, he was set free as a political prisoner. In 1939, Schindler joined the Nazi Party. He was a committed Nazi but also a humanitarian.

Unfortunately Hegel had more influence on Germans than Goethe or Schiller. Followers of Hegel (1770-1831) split into left Hegelians, the most notable was Karl Marx, and right Hegelians who were mainly German nationalists. Some heirs of the latter were Nazis. Hegel opposed individualist concepts of freedom contending that only absorption in an organic society generates self-realisation for the individual. This justified state tyranny under Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini and Mao and the murder of millions. The we/they philosophies of class struggle, nationalism and race struggle supported these murders. Hegel maintained that history had a purpose leading to an apotheosis or fulfillment. Hegel's fulfillment was the Prussian state. Marx's was the eventual classless society. The racist philosophy of Nazism was responsible for the death of millions. The philosophy of class hatred called Marxism is also responsible for the death of millions.

Another of Hegel's bad ideas was that of the dialectic embodying a mechanism for social change proceeding from the contradictions within society. This also supports the we\they philosophy justifying sending of opponents of the Marxist or fascist tyrannies to the concentration camp or the grave. They opposed the march of history. History has no direction but is contingent on human ingenuity and the physical milieu in which humans exist.

Hegelian garbage has produced Marxist and fascist garbage to drive the two great murder machines of the twentieth century. The current century is recycling the garbage of religious fundamentalism.

Davidf

re your response to treating individuals as they should be et al.

I really believe that you are misinterpreting his words comprehensively.
Firstly one should consider the time and mores of that time to see his intended meaning. I suspect you are putting C21th spin on his intentions

secondly your JD quip is right but contextually doesn't relate to the above.

Judging individuals is an essential part of survival. Therefore JD's quip could be interpreted as non involvement and denies the point of society. Extreme example: a man is beating his wife do you leave him hell alone or do you intercede?

Conversely IMO Goethe’s argument was geared more to prejudice. i.e. if you treat a peasant as a peasant (with contempt, dismissal)the peasant will resent you.
The C21st lesson might be ;if a person is rude so be polite/measured in return (treat them as they might be). If you heavy them they will respond more aggressively. or just because they're an ex-con don't assume they're worthless.

This is in keeping with my earlier stated view condemn the act not the individual. However, punishment must also attempt to rehabilitate. To do otherwise is simply feeding the beast within not nourishing the person.

A little overly Pollyanna (unrealistic at times) but if we stop trying to better our-selves and wallow in our failings that IS where we will remain. This to me is enlightened self interested commonsense humanist philosophy rather that arrogance/superiority or even judgmental etc.

Dear examinator.

I admit I put my own spin on the words. However, if a lord treats the peasant as he would another lord the peasant will probably be uncomfortable with the treatment and wonder what the lord wants of him. It is necessary to treat the peasant with respect while not making him uncomfortable. Where there is a gap in status that is not always easy to do.

examinator wrote: a man is beating his wife do you leave him hell alone or do you intercede?

Dear examinator,

I don’t know. I would have to know more before I can answer the question. In Philadelphia I once saw a man beating his wife on the street. Another man much closer to them than I was intervened whereupon wife swinging purse and husband swinging fist together attacked the intruder. I think the intruder was well-motivated but wrong and possibly could not know that he was wrong.

Being 84 and aware of my physical limitations I would probably not intervene but would try to get the police or someone else to intervene if intervention seemed called for. I have heard that domestic violence is responsible for more police casualties than any other cause.

I agree very much with your statement, “…if we stop trying to better our-selves and wallow in our failings that IS where we will remain.”

I have heard “We are all sinners” many times on this list. This seems to me to be one of the bad features in Christianity. The doctrine of Original Sin can encourage wallowing in guilt. Somehow I manage to wallow in guilt without the ‘benefit’ of Christianity.

You wrote: condemn the act not the individual.

That sounds like the exhortation to hate the sin but love the sinner. Let’s take the example of Dennis Ferguson, the child molester. I feel both pity and abhorrence for him. I feel pity because he is not allowed to live in peace. He has been hounded wherever he lives. Yet he apparently would do the same thing again if he could. Apply that to him.

Dear Fractelle,

I'm sorry to hear about your experiences in your former relationship and I'm sure the emotional hurt didn't end when you removed yourself from the situation.

If I can make my point another way, one can have evil intent or 'evil in ones heart' and not act on it but I'm not sure someone can do an evil deed without having the evil thought in the first place.

Therefore the thought lies at the foundation whether it is acted on or not, the action is responsible for compounding it.

Now that evil thought, I would argue, might take the form of handing your conscience for someone else to mould and use i.e. someone who kills in order to do 'God's work' and feeling completely righteous in doing so.

Naturally I don't know enough about your situation to be the least bit definitive but may I suggest while there might have been 'evil' thoughts or even intent it was also more than balanced by the 'good' of not acting on them despite what may have been extreme provocation.

To have those evil thoughts is just an undeniable part of being human and is our species' collective input that dictates what form the construct we call evil takes. It lacks none of its validity because of it.

Music however seems to me to be more innate. One only has to see a chimpanzee mother crooning to her infant, or engaging in rhythmic rocking to calm it, to see its origins. Leonard's Hallelujah has been covered by so many artists and although using essentially using the same words and tune have given us religious, sexual, sad, celebratory, romantic, lonely and many other versions of it. It is an example of how, with its ability to elicit such powerful responses, music heightens our awareness of things that are can be beyond speech.

Dear csteele,

I reject the idea that a thought without action no matter what it is can be the least bit evil or even bad. I think it creates unreasonable guilt to think so.

Dear davidf,

You said “I think we have different attitudes in that area.” you are right and I really wouldn't want it any other way, keeps life interesting.

Imagine the hell of heaven with everyone agreeing.

I have to thank you for exposing my surprising (to myself) tribalism for Christianity, something I would have sworn till now I didn't have.

Let us hope it is of a benign nature.

Just a quite word in the shell-like if I may. When you said “As far as one's football team goes I am bemused when an Australian politician finds it relevant to state which football team he roots for.” visions of Kevin clad only in a Brisbane Lions scarf atop Therese flashed into my brain. These are visions I would rather not have.

While you have said “Truth in language has been a preoccupation of mine.” you should know there are many different truths and that 'ethnowareness' is a good in my book.

Dear davidf,

I should have refreshed before posting. By the way at 34 words your last post must be the shortest exchange between us.

To answer; No, unreasonable guilt only enters into the equation if you think it is bad or unnatural to have evil thoughts.

For any person in a situation such as Fractelle's to harbour such thoughts is entirely understandable and I don't think they should be made to feel guilty in any way, shape, or form. Be a wallower not!

To wish someone dead in most circumstances should/is/must be regarded as an evil thought. But we're not angels thank god, we are humans. If the evil in us isn't there for good to conquer then good must be meaningless.

Many years ago I will admit to being a few steps further down the path toward eliminating the source of a 'clear and present danger' to my family. Unquestionably entertaining evil thoughts even though never acted upon.

It must be the height of arrogance to believe that evil only lies in the deeds of others. In fact a person who fails to recognise evil thoughts within themselves is one of the most frightening sort going.

Even God recognised some of his plans and actions were evil. Not to see them as such is a particularly Christian perspective.

From Jerimiah 18:11

Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.

We have discussed evil but a possibly a more interesting topic might be 'good'. What should we regard as the act displaying the greater good? A tee-totalling minister passing up a stiff drink or a new inductee into AA doing the same? A pauper or a wealthy man returning a fattened wallet?

I could put the argument that angels are far less capable of a measure of good than a human being because of what is innate in each of us.

Dear csteele,

I don't recognise evil thoughts within myself since I don't recognise evil thoughts in others. To me evil is an action not a thought. It's that simple. I can't see that a thought that does not result in action of any kind can be evil. I have wished the entire population of countries dead. You know what? Didn't hurt them a bit. To feel guilt over such a thought can mean a belief in a kind of magic. The magical belief is that mere thoughts without action have some mystical power to hurt. They don't.

You wrote: "It must be the height of arrogance to believe that evil only lies in the deeds of others. In fact a person who fails to recognise evil thoughts within themselves is one of the most frightening sort going."

The two sentences have little to do with each other. You are comparing evil deeds of others with 'evil thoughts' of one's own. Deeds can be evil. To my way of thinking thoughts cannot be so it is a meaningless comparison to me.

However, excessive love breeds hate. One thing that is generally neglected in considering the Nazis is the great love they had for each other and the German volk. Their love drew tight boundaries around the love objects and made it easier to hate those outside those boundaries. Like thoughts love and hate are only meaningful when they are expressed in action.

As we both get older my oldest son and I have grown closer, and he has felt free to tell me things that bothered him. He mentioned to me that when he was a child I rarely praised him. My thoughts of love for him were meaningless if I was too uptight to express them in word or deed.

What does a tee-totalling minister passing up a stiff drink or a new inductee into AA doing the same have to do with good or evil?

The good of returning a fattened wallet depends on more than the wealth of the returner. To be continued.

Csteele

You can only have as much insight into my personal situation as I am able to explain, given the limitations of this forum. I agree, that to do evil one must start with the thought; however, it remains the act which defines it.

One can harbour animosity towards race or religion or whatever even while behaving 'normally', although I cannot imagine such prejudices as always remaining fallow. These are long held beliefs; in my case I described a reaction to a situation.

Prejudice towards groups, whether because one is aligned with a religion or other ideologically based organisation (or one is simply a misanthrope) have the greatest capacity for harm to others. How a single person acts under duress is a mark of their character, how one acts on one's prejudices is more malleable and, therefore, of use to either an individual's sense of superiority or may be cultivated by others for nefarious ends. Ergo: greater capacity for evil.

What I have a great deal of difficulty in understanding is DavidF's statement: << I don't recognise evil thoughts within myself since I don't recognise evil thoughts in others.>>

I'll take the second half of this statement first:

My ability to recognise evil intent in others has quite literally saved my life on a couple of occasions and alerted me to potential for malice from people like the workplace bully, as an example. Therefore, I recognise evil thoughts in others. However, I do start on a basis of innocence until otherwise indicated.

:)

To fail to recognise evil in my own thoughts (either deliberately, as Davidf appears to be, or by lying to myself) may result in harm to others (even if not consciously acted upon) , or a massive load of subconscious guilt. Better to be aware of one's limitations and underlying motivation.

I look forward to Davidf edifying his above statement. Thank you.

Csteele:

<< Music however seems to me to be more innate. One only has to see a chimpanzee mother crooning to her infant, or engaging in rhythmic rocking to calm it, to see its origins. Leonard's Hallelujah has been covered by so many artists and although using essentially using the same words and tune have given us religious, sexual, sad, celebratory, romantic, lonely and many other versions of it. It is an example of how, with its ability to elicit such powerful responses, music heightens our awareness of things that are can be beyond speech. >>

Absolutely.

Other animals respond to music - I can relax my pets by singing their names softly to them - just as a mother does to a baby.

And music can rouse to action, think "Das Deutschlandlied", the Maori Haka or the afore mentioned "Onward Christian Soldiers".

<<.. music heightens our awareness of things that are can be beyond speech >> Although not religious, I would described this as a spiritual reaction. I do get rather peeved when religious people claim to hold the patent on spirituality.

Regards

Fractelle wrote:

“My ability to recognise evil intent in others has quite literally saved my life on a couple of occasions and alerted me to potential for malice from people like the workplace bully, as an example. Therefore, I recognise evil thoughts in others. ...

:)

To fail to recognise evil in my own thoughts (either deliberately, as Davidf appears to be, or by lying to myself) may result in harm to others (even if not consciously acted upon) , or a massive load of subconscious guilt. Better to be aware of one's limitations and underlying motivation.

I look forward to Davidf edifying his above statement. Thank you.”

Dear Fractelle,

I try to choose my words carefully and sometimes succeed.

I also wrote: “To me evil is an action not a thought. It's that simple. I can't see that a thought that does not result in action of any kind can be evil.”

I doubt that you or anybody else can read minds. However, I am sure you are perceptive enough to recognise evil intent. You don’t do that by reading minds. You do that by picking up physical manifestations of people’s feelings. It may be a hesitation in speech, a raised eyebrow or some other subtle action that expresses a feeling. You have recognized evil intent because a thought has resulted in a physical manifestation that you have been able to pick up. There has been an action.

The action may not be evil in itself (I wrote ‘of any kind’), but it is sufficient to alert a perceptive person such as yourself.

Dear csteele,

I don’t regard having a drink as any more good or evil than eating an apple. Therefore “a tee-totalling minister passing up a stiff drink or a new inductee into AA doing the same” has no relevance to good and evil. The minister has probably falsely, in my view, equated drinking with evil. The AA member has a problem with a personal proclivity that he or she finds hard to control – could also be overeating.

Davidf

Appreciate your thoughts.

Just quickly:

I would posit that a thought IS an action; chemical and electrical responses and transferences between synapses in the brain. Therefore physical, therefore an action.

Cheers

Dear Fractelle,

A thought can be detected by chemical and electrical responses and transferences between synapses in the brain so you are correct. I must abandon my dichotomy or further refine it although it must remain hazy to some degree. There are thoughts which are merely speculation and thoughts which have intent behind them. I don't think there is or even can be an apparatus capable of differentiating between the two. When a thought crosses my mind I cannot be sure that I would not carry it out if I had the opportunity so the differentiation must remain hazy. I think my wife is better than I am at picking up vibes which is another way of saying she is better than I am at detecting those subtle movements, gestures and speech patterns that indicate a person is not to be trusted.

I think I made the distinction between thought and action because I make a distinction between speech and action. I favour minimum legal restrictions on free speech and don't feel speech should be prosecuted even if it is loathsome and unpopular or because some object to the speech.

I am loath to use the word, evil, because of its theological connections. In writing evil is what one doesn't like to start this string I was trying to rid the concept of theology. The concept of evil often justifies prejudice by treating evil as an objective truth rather than a dislike.

Thank you. You have made me think.

Dear csteele,

My thoughts on returning a fattened wallet are complex. They involve moral conditioning, societal approval and many other things. eg. A dishonest person might return the wallet to gain a reputation for honesty. Another person would keep the wallet but his conditioning against doing so is so strong that if he knows if he keeps it he will be tormented in mind so he returns it.

My stepson left a fattened wallet behind on a train. It was returned to him by mail much slimmer.

I don't want to write more on the subject at this time.

Dear davidf and Fractelle,

daivdf wrote; “The two sentences have little to do with each other. You are comparing evil deeds of others with 'evil thoughts' of one's own. Deeds can be evil. To my way of thinking thoughts cannot be so it is a meaningless comparison to me.”

I disagree, the sentences have everything to do with each other. I will tell you what I was thinking when making that statement, I have on numerous occasions sat and spoken to older Australians in particular who, when the surface is scratched, exhibit deep seated anti-Semitic views even though they are usually flippantly expressed. The same people will decry the evils of Hitler.

It is almost an archaeology of the mindset cultivated through formative years in an atmosphere of anti-Jewish hatred during the pre-war period.

Even before the war sales of Mien Kampf had made Hitler a millionaire many times over. He had made the equivalence of around 25 million Aussie dollars and had incurred a tax bill of $8 million which was waived when he came to power. This seedbed of hate was being laid in countries throughout the world. I cannot accept that the priming of this German people can only be regarded as evil once the act of the Holocaust made it so.

The very basis of our racial and religious vilification laws is a recognition of the evil of hate propagation even it is not realised in action.

Fractelle when you said “To fail to recognise evil in my own thoughts (either deliberately, as Davidf appears to be, or by lying to myself) may result in harm to others (even if not consciously acted upon) , or a massive load of subconscious guilt.” you seem to be echoing davidf's position that evil thoughts must have an effect to be evil, why can't they be regarded as evil just of their own accord?

Dear csteele,

I oppose antivilification laws as I believe people should be allowed to express ideas that other people might find loathsome. I am against hate propagation but feel that there should not be a law against it. I make a distinction between speech, opinion and action. If we are to have a democracy only the last should be subject to legal sanctions.

Democracy is a risky business. If we allow free speech we risk a demagogue such as Hitler destroying democracy. If we ban categories of speech, we have certainly lost democracy. I prefer a risk to a certainty.

Earlier on this string I mentioned the Nazi, Oskar Schindler. I don't know why he joined the Nazi Party or whether he was an antisemite, but he saved the lives of many Jews at great risk to his own. He was also a genuine Nazi - a Sudeten German who was put in prison before the war by the Czechs due to his activities in supporting the Nazis.

Not all antisemites are willing to murder Jews. One may hate Jews and still not be willing to murder human beings. One may not hate Jews and be willing to murder them if one is expected to do it as part of one's job. I do not think Eichmann was an antisemite, but he was responsible for the murder of many Jews.

I think it is quite reasonable to be an antisemite and decry the evils of Hitler.

After WW2 Sarah Gordon examined archives, interviewed Germans and wrote "Hitler, Germans, and the "Jewish Question"". One finding of hers was that Nazis were as willing to give Jews a place to hide as were other Germans.

Antisemitism is an opinion. Murdering Jews is an act. They may be but are not necessarily connected.

I favour laws that ban discrimination based on ethnicity or religion. Those are acts. I oppose laws banning vilification. Those are opinions.

When the state decides which opinions are good and which are evil we are on the road to tyranny.

Dear davidf,

As your earlier post illustrates the problem lay in our respective views on what constitutes a thought although I felt you may have shifted the goal posts a little, especially if a raised eyebrow is deemed an act. But you have explained how you arrived at your line of reasoning well.

You say; “I think it is quite reasonable to be an antisemite and decry the evils of Hitler.”, fair enough, but it doesn't mean the first can't be considered evil. I hope you won't try and make the argument that our sense of what is evil only comes from our reason any more than love does.

The same applies when you say “I make a distinction between speech, opinion and action. If we are to have a democracy only the last should be subject to legal sanctions”. Sure, but people should be able to express moral sanctions, to consider such speech or opinion as evil.

Our racial and religious vilification laws should be focused on the act of incitement. I have no problem with someone having the freedom to hold evil views but if it means doing an Alan Jones and whipping up a Cronulla then I want our law to step in.

And just because I like the last word...You previously asked; “What does a tee-totalling minister passing up a stiff drink or a new inductee into AA doing the same have to do with good or evil?”, probably nothing if we accept your premise but from my point of view if that drink means the AA inductee 'falls off the wagon', starts abusing his wife and children again, driving while under the influence etc., then the act of refusing must surely have a greater good attached to it, especially in light of his addiction.

Good and evil define each other

Dear csteele,

I specified act of any kind. Stationary goal posts.

If antisemites do not discriminate against Jews or act unfairly to Jews their opinion is their own business. I won't sit in judgment and call them or their opinion evil. They hurt nobody.

Focussing on incitement we need no antivilification laws at all. Incitement and harassment are offenses under English common law which is law of Australia. One problem in Australia is our racist police. According to "Racist Violence" put out by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission in 1991 most of the harassment of Aborigines has been by the police. The police unions are powerful, and politicians are afraid to anger them. If police would engage in neither incitement nor harassment and arrest those who do racist violence in Australia would almost disappear. I believe Alan Jones has violated common law with his incendiary broadcasts, but he is a powerful media figure with a big following which will see his arrest as persecution. We need no antivilification legislation for the law to step in when there is incitement or harassment. Police should enforce existing English common law.

Antivilification laws serve to mask the continuing acceptance of the police culture and Australian culture in other areas which accept racism. Every once in a while we read in the papers of football racist slanging or violence by the hoodlums who are professional athletes. Some professional athletes are not hoodlums.

Abusing of family due to drink or driving under the influence is criminal. However, taking a drink is not. All alcoholics are not abusers or law breakers.

I don’t like moral sanctions. One cause of youth suicides is the inability of teenagers uncertain of their sexual identity to cope with the moral sanctions of their community.

Matthew 5:28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

That is nutty. The heart is not the organ that commits adultery. Evil is what you do. Not what you think.

Davidf
The immediate problem with your argument is there is a distinction between common law and criminal law. The police are responsible only for criminal law i.e. crimes act.

There is a difference in the burden of proof, in the crimes act it is beyond reasonable doubt. Common law is the weight of evidence, the common man test.
Vilification is under the crimes act i.e. did the person do the crime yes or no, the govt is the prosecutor and has rights of apprehension and arrest.

Damages (common law) the victim is the prosecutor, the court determines financial losses (how much).(no powers of apprehension or
arrest).

The idea that the police could get involved in common law say a libel suit has horrendous implications. As many common law cases are bargaining chips.

Therefore vilification as something that should be stopped now (public order), is rightfully placed under the crimes act and is carefully spelled out.

Jones can be arrested for vilification (incitement) but for me to take him to court for damages (common law) means That I would have to in addition to guilt, show the court losses of financial or my good(?) name.
As it is expensive, to discourage trivial claims, my losses because of Jones words would have to be substantial to justify the expense.

These differentiations are major pillars in our justice system.

Dear examinator,

Thanks for removing my ignorance as to the difference between common law and criminal law. I thought police could arrest people for common law offenses.

Please elucidate further. I thought that vilification is different from incitement. I thought vilification merely meant to speak of in a disparaging manner. That puts nobody in danger by itself, and I don't believe it should be a crime. I thought an example of incitement would be to put a person or persons into immediate danger by encouraging individuals or a mob to attack that person. I thought that sort of thing would be included in our criminal code and is different from vilification although vilification could be included in incitement.

Dear examinator,

You said; "The idea that the police could get involved in common law say a libel suit has horrendous implications"

Indeed, but where it does get interesting is in the area of criminal defamation.

From the EFA website;

"Criminal liability arises from publications that affect the community, such as those that have a tendency to endanger the public peace, and penalties in most jurisdictions include imprisonment. Generally, proceedings for criminal defamation are commenced by law enforcement authorities. (In most jurisdictions, a private prosecution concerning criminal defamation requires the prior consent of, for example, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Attorney-General, or a court order.)"

Dear Davidf, Csteele

I am not able to contribute to this discussion as fully as I would like. My offerings, thus far, are more simple musings than solid opinion. Such as:

Are we just the result of chemicals, electronics and (apparently) 90% + microbes?

Rather ego deflating, that question. No wonder others prefer to think we have souls - which is tempting. However, to go further and claim that we are born sinners - as many religions are want to do and as Davidf has assiduously (and quite rightly) avoided, is taking the idea of evil to an extreme that doesn't hold to scrutiny. At some point in time Hitler and Stalin were babes in arms - I doubt they thought much further than their next meal and how fascinating the world was.

My opinion then? I don't believe in pure evil as some kind of entity or characteristic. I find the word itself misleading. Davidf started this topic by stating 'evil' is something we don't like - I don't like custard apples, but they are not 'evil'. For myself it is actions taken by humans than result in harm to others - this may be deliberate such as vengeance (even psychopaths believe they have valid reasons for what they do) or through mishap. Entire populations have concerted to do 'evil'. War results in 'evil'.

I no longer wish my ex dead, although I really did at that time in my life. I accept my desires as based on the circumstances I was in back then. I know I am not evil. But Pol Pot would probably say the same thing if he could.

Not sure when I will next be posting, but it is reassuring to read your intelligent and thoughtful posts.

Thank you.

Dear Fractelle,

Evil isn't a take it or leave it option. You are human. Those without evil might be considered angels but can they be considered human? And if not are they poorer for it?

If programmed only for good then one becomes little more than a traffic light. Creating order from chaos, preventing injury and death therefore it can be said tirelessly combating evil. All admirable qualities but oh so sterile.

Jesus was wise enough to say none are good but the Father, however biblical writers were also wise enough to have God doing evil, especially in the Hebrew bible, and it shows. Just compare God depicted then to how he is portrayed in the New Testament. He has gone from an interesting complex character to an insipid bit player.

Probably for me the most formative book on this theme was Gulliver's Travels, notably the story of the Houhnhnms and the Yahoos. Have you read it?

A definition of humanity;
1. Humans considered as a group; the human race.
2. The condition or quality of being human.
3. The quality of being humane; benevolence.
4. A humane characteristic, attribute, or act.

This mirrors the definition of Christianity that davidf and I were discussing earlier. I won't speak for him but the argument could be made that the human race doesn't deserve definitions 3 and 4.

But language can be other than just absolutely precise as some would have it, often it conveys the hopes and preferences of our species and that on the whole, that hope is for a better world, a world where good prevails, or a least less evil.

To your question “Are we just the result of chemicals, electronics and (apparently) 90% + microbes? “

Scientists claim that all the atoms we are made up of at the age of seven are fully replaced by the age of 35. If you are going to think of a soul perhaps you might think of what continues through this process that allows us to maintain ourselves as entities despite the complete replacement of our physical form.

Dear Fractelle,

Just a quick additional point if I may.

Please don't confuse evil with sinning even though the bible does. Sinning really means doing wrong by God, disobedience or worshipping other Gods.

Things tend to be a little clearer and the idea of evil within us a little less confronting when we are prepared to keep the two separate.

I tend to take the biblical story on this as a literary device to show how we all are capable of evil. What the gatekeepers of our religions have done with this notion shouldn't negate the message which I am happy to accept because it is confirmed by my experiences of the human race.

Dear davidf,

I feel we have stated our positions on evil thought or the lack thereof clearly and certainly in my case I may be in danger of cementing myself into a position more for the sake of the argument than what I truly believe so I'm happy to go and ruminate a little further on our exchange. Thank you.

Unlike you I do like moral sanctions. I loved the thought of the mothers and wives of England boycotting sugar in their tea in support of the anti-slavery movement.

I can recognise how they can be used punitively but in many cases they are the precursors to our laws.

As to Matthew 5:28 having been in love to the extent that I felt a physical pain in my heart I'm a little more forgiving in the anatomical references made by the New Testament writer.

I have been reflecting on (please forgive the stereotyping) a gloominess that seems to be a particularly Jewish affliction which may help to explain why Jews are so over represented in the comedic ranks.

I understand there is an official “Day of Laughter” called Purim where people dress up an act silly even though the story is about the impending annihilation of the Jewish people.

I have been asking myself whether my optimism regarding the human race is purely because I haven't been fully exposed to its horrors thus leaving me naïve?

I played my Vietnamese English student (a doctor) Hans Rosling's TED talk on global health and wealth statistics. Hans has the habit of increasing his speed of delivery when excited and combined with his accent makes it a good test.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

This was very inspirational to me when I first viewed it and it has lost none of its magic three years later. We were able to discuss Vietnam's dramatic climb in life expectancy (unaffected by the war years) and reduction in family size.

To realise how many people have been lifted from wretched lives and deaths in the last half of the 20th century still blows me away.

Blind optimism?

Davidf, CSteele

the police can arrest someone in common law case only after a judge has issued a bench warrant. This occurs when someone involved has breached/disobeyed a ruling or has 'offended' the court. In which case as far as the law is concerned is a separate an action under the criminal code.

Case in example
Criminal 'deformation' is part of the vilification which may directly cause incitement to violence etc.
i.e. suppose you advocate in print(defamation) or by speech(slander) that the 'Godly Religious Order of Gnomes'(GROG) (a new religion, I'm also canvassing new members) are all Feral disease ridden Terrorists waiting to rape everyone's daughters. That can be criminal deformation/villification. The mob around you may decide to go on a GROG hunt. If you added "let's go and down a few GROGs waving your magic staff in the air" that is then 'incitement' both are under the crimes act.

If you and your mob find me (the founding member) and You threatened cause me to pee my pants or be affraid that's (common assault....police)
you then bash me (that's battery...more police, crimes act)
As you are a wealthy capitalist Pixie I can sue you for damages (compensation) I prove financial loss or loss of standing in the community (Common Law no police, 'lawyer fest', 'BMW dealers wet dream')
I get judgement 7million bottles of golden/brown nectar. You refuse to pay I go back to the court and get a judgement the police may enforce that judgement.(crimes act)

OK perhaps I drink too much golden brown nectar! It's a tough job being a GROGer but someone has to do it :-)

Dear examinator,

Thank you.

A most enjoyable explanation.

Just a quick point, I'm not sure but "waving your magic staff in the air" after downing "a few GROGs" may well come under a different section of the crimes act.