You are confusing MORAL EVIL with NATURAL EVIL. It's immoral to kill everyone with AIDS, but if we did kill everyone with AIDS, then we wouldn't have to worry about that disease anymore. Disease is something we can't always control, but sitting back to watch someone who is hungry starve is always morally evil.

Im glad your not in charge. Im glad Im not in charge, but I don't pretend to know absolute good or evil . . . I don't even acknowledge that such things exist.

This is why I would never want a fundamentalist in office.

You are confusing moral evil and natural evil (disaster). We cannot always control disasters from nature, but we can moderate our own behavior so that we commit moral acts.

"AdventureBegins" mans laws are there to control the society those that do not follow the laws may face consequences ...the same apply to the laws that a God has set forth ...violate those laws and face the God's wrath

God's laws are not for the approval or disapprove or man ..his laws are absolute....that is why people are turning to panthiesm aka scientology

When you can't win my reason, malign your opponent.

No, I haven't read it.

Owl have to check it out.

It truly saddens me that so many people support and push the biblical picture when it's clearly a negative picture of both mankind and God.

And they push it on pure faith.

No one has ever answered my simple question of why they would want to believe in such a horrid picture on pure faith.

Who would want to have faith that they are responsible for God having to have his son butchered on a pole to save their unworthy pathetic failed butt?

Yet, this is precisely what the story says. It claims that all men are sinnsers, and all have failed their creator, and their created had no choice but to have his son butchered on a pole to pay for mankind's pathetical disgusting shameful fall from grace.

Who would want to believe this picture on pure faith?

It's a horror story!

Why place our faith in a horror story?

If we're going to guess. Why not guess at something more positive?

Sheesh!

Hey, you believe it could be more moral to let the hungry starve to death. You can't take the moral high ground when you can't even admit that hungry people should always be fed. The Bible tells us to love even our enemies and never turn the hungry away with an empty belly. Say what you will about the Bible, but on that point at the very least, it has the moral high ground over you.

So, then I would guess you could agree that by instilling fear we get things done?

This is the exact mentality that promotes terrorism.

Would you agree that government has been using fear to manipulate the masses all through the ages and continues to do so?

When we use fear to fight the same, do we not then create more of the same?

I don't believe that humankind is capable of absolute good or evil, that would imply perfection. Humankind is capable of making good and evil choices. I am a moral Objectivist, which is what the Bible teaches us to be.

Imagine: A woman is fleeing her violent husband and asks for refuge in your home. You allow her in to hid and moments later her husband arrives at your door demanding to know if his wife is in your house.

The moral absolutist would say "Yes, she's hiding in the basement.

The moral objectivist would say "No, is she missing? Would you like me to help you look for her?"

The moral objectivist accepts that a lesser sin (lying) can be committed to avoid a larger sin (handing a woman to someone who is dangerous). When a Jew is in a country that has laws that go against the commandments, the Jew is allowed to break all of the commandments except 1) They cannot commit murder 2) They cannot commit sexual immorality and 3) They cannot worship idols. All other commandments can be broken to obey the local laws. God understands that sometimes all possible actions result in sin, so we are forgiven for the lesser sin when we choose it.

Sometimes.



Didn't take you long to draw an analogy between stoping the Germans from killing Jews and Terrorism. Do you think (just like Ghandi) that we should have let the Germans kill all of the Jews?



Some have and some haven't. I don't believe in government as a "monolith". And sometimes, good comes from using fear to control those who are out of control Or do you think that we should have let Hitler kill all of the Jews in the world?



No idea what you are asking. Probably implying something about the war on terror, which has a lot to do with the current discussion...

No I am saying there is no absolute morale high ground. I have not said what I would do, I have actually said I am glad I don't have to decide.

So what is the larger sin in my scenario spider? Feeding a starving man or allowing the whole world to die of plague? A more dramatic situation, but not one that could not happen.

You are ducking and diving already bud, that should really be a clue.

The whole idea that some authoritarian God supposedly made a commandment of everyone, "Thou shalt not lie!", is where the falacy lies.

It presumes that to tell anyone misinformation (a lie) is morally wrong.

But as we can see there are morally valid pictures where giving certain people misinformation is a good thing.

So clearly the whole idea that some stupid God would have commanded eveyone with an absolute commandment, "Thou shalt not lie", if a false idea to begin.

And God giving such blanket commandment would not be wise. And would therefore be a stupid God.

This is just another reason why the story makes no sense.

In fact, when I read through the Bible I see a lot of really stupid things being put forth. And the reason is perfectly clear. The men who wrote the Bible didn't want to get into writing out elaborate explanations of when something might be ok to do, and under precisely which circumstance it might be wrong.

But an infinitely patient and all-wise God would not be bothered by this. An infinitely patient and all-wise God would know precisely how to word things to explain all the reasonable options available.

The mere fact that the Bible lumps everything into very crude absolute commandments is just another indication that it wasn't written by any all-wise supreme being.

Lying isn't wrong if it's done for the purpose of good. Period.

It's that simple.

Even a mere mortal man can see that.

So this idea of a God who gives absolute commandents without allowing for contexual situations is absurd.

Besides, is this the same God who told people, "Thou shalt not kill", and then asked people to stone each other to death an mass murder heathens?

Clearly such a God would be sending grossly mixed messages. And also implying that context is more important than his own commandments.

Clearly any book that attributes these things to God is itself a lie.

Yikes, Spider...

I started mentioning terrorism for a different reason. I wasn't actually drawing an analogy between stopping the Germans from killing Jews and Terrorism. You stick to that analogy because it is one of the more dramatically obvious examples to help support that you are absolutely right in everything you post.

I'm more getting at an analogy between the application of fear in terrorism and religious intimidation. Terrorists are taught all justifications for their actions which produce fear. Many Christians seem to justify the whole bit about hellfire, damnation and killing in the name of "God" as being sufficiently important that this kind of intimidation is also justified.

Christians have killed and died in the name of "God" and have used fear to attempt to dominate. Terrorists have killed and died in the name of their cause and have used fear to attempt to dominate.

See some similarities?

Yet, the Religious Right would label Terrorism as "evil".

We can sit and try to endlessly label what is "good" and what is "evil" and try to get specific on what is more or less "evil". It would be endless and pointless.

Let me ask you something...

Do you REALLY love your enemies?

It would be evil to allow a man to starve.

If I fed a man and something bad happened because he lived, that's unfortunate, but I did the moral thing. We cannot worry about the big picture, we can only worry about our own behavior.

I'm not getting what you are saying.



How is a Christian dying a martyr's death, the Christian causing fear or terrorism? A Christian is never justified in killing himself, that's not Christian Martyrdom. Christians die in the process of doing the morally right thing. I'm really not getting the analogy. Have some people done very non-Christian things in the name of Jesus? Yes. In no way is murder or forced conversion justified by the Bible. So those are undeniably evil acts.



Terrorism is always wrong, even when committed by Christians.



It's actually very easy. Any child can do it, but as we get older the lines blur.



I'll tell you when I get some.

actually it raises the question - "did jesus lie?"

when asked by the pharisees and others questions jesus often spoke in such a way that the hearer's could not understand, since in the book there are 2 kinds of lies, ones of commission and ones of omission, by not giving an answer one could understand, would this not be a sin of omission?
would it not be the same as me telling a friend [or enemy] something of truth in a round about way, so as not to readily offend or let him know my honest feelings, instead of in plain understandable language?

Rather than suggesting that Jesus lied, I prefer to just believe that the gospels can't be trusted to be actual words of the man named Jesus.

It's my own personal understanding that there are historical records that people existed between the time that Jesus died, and the time the writings of what we know call the gospels took place.

Those people considered themsleves to be 'Christians'. (i.e. followers of Christ) Yet they had a totally different view of Jesus. In fact, many of them viewed Jesus as just a man (similar to Buddha). Many of them did not believe that the crucifixion was planned by Jesus but rather it was an unfortunate fate. In fact, some of them believed that the Jews murdered Jesus for blaspheme because Jesus certainly did reject many of the things that the Old Testament had established (like stoning sinners to death for example)

In fact, there is evidence that in the early times there were many confusing and differing rumors about what Jesus might have stood for or actually preached.

"Christians" were pitted against "Christians" suggesting that each different story was more valid than the others.

Finally some people in authority decided to put an end to the bickering and wrote the stories that we know today as the 'gospels'.

Then they made a decree that this is the word of God and anyone who questions it or rejects it will face the sword.

They had the power and authority to do it. And so that's what we have today and call the Holy Gospels.

I don't trust that they truly contain the verbatim words of Jesus. In fact, they might actually have very little to do with the truth of any man named Jesus. Some guy was crucified and those are one set of the rumors.

They were also written with the sole purpose of reviving the failing religion of the Old testament. So of course they were written to support that picture.

That's how I see it.

The whole picture of a god sending his son to be butchered on a pole to salvage mankind just makes no sense to me at all. I can't imagine any god being that helpless or unwise.

in response to "natural evil and moral evil.

NATURAL things - aka - "nature" - is not evil, it is a system of forces there is no evil connected to it.

man may project his thoughts of good or evil upon it, but it has no evil or good intent one way or the other!

in fact it "IS" the neutral denominator in those who look for such! being a force or set of forces - it is not capable of thinking or acting in such a way to be good or evil. to think other wise is foolish at best and demented at worst.

what would even give one the idea that they could blame or hold these forces to good or evil standards?

As to moral evil, this is no more than mans concepts and not proven by such things as feeding the hungry. would i think myself evil if i knew of someone hungry and did not feed them? if that's the case then all of us are filled to the brim and overflowing with this so called moral evil spoken of here! why? well we all know and hear daily of millions of starving people and children around the world and here at home and do little or nothing about it. do you walk your streets at night and take in the homeless you find? do you search for those near by that may not have food to eat? Even if you do this occasionally your still guilty by not always doing it - whats your excuse? to busy? not enough time? barely getting by yourself? don't trust the person/people? morals are not equal in anyones mind, therefore they are doled out and used only as one See's fit and is moved by them to do so. it has always been this way and always will be.

Spidercmb said...


In the Bible, the word "evil" sometimes means disaster or calamity. I used it in that way in two posts, but in the second I clarified what I was talking about.

Is it evil to watch someone starve to death? Undeniably so. We have all fallen short of God's example. Jesus feed thousands of people to set an example for us. People are starving all over the world but we are suffering a plague of obesity in the world. The point? None of us do as much as we could to help our fellow man.

"if that's the case then all of us are filled to the brim and overflowing with this so called moral evil spoken of here!"...SO? Because we're all guilty of doing it, it must not be morally evil to let people starve to death? How is "Everybody does it" a valid argument?