Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter Sinister
Sure it does. Suppose that rock you mentioned rolled down a hill in an earthquake and struck the man, breaking his leg. He'd certainly call that a bad thing.
LOL I wonder if he would say 'god damn rock' (if an atheist uses that term does he/she believe in God subconsciously). The man might even go and hit the rock with a big hammer and shatter it into many pieces. A rock, being without any will at all, is not capable of either doing good or evil. The rock did not intentionally target the man so this should be under the heading, crap happens.
Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter SinisterIt's what the theologians would call non-moral evil, or physical evil, as the rock has no volition, but the man would certainly call it evil and he'd be right, who is there to gainsay him?
Nobody, but should that still come under the definition that exists here on this earth today? A 'car' on some other planet could be anything but a car as we know it.
Changing the meaning of the word wouldn't even have to take place on another planet, we could use this one in the same condition it is today. One country could call another 'evil' and go out and destroy it for all intensive purposes and not consider that an evil act, the rest of the world could disagree but until that nation itself sees acts like that as being wrong will not curtail such incidents, it will stay that way forever.
Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter SinisterIf the being that got eaten lacks the intellectual equipment to think in those terms, how could it define that as evil? I doubt anyone but a PETA lunatic would try to argue that livestock are justified in viewing humans as evil. They don't have the brains (the livestock I mean) to think about such things. With the possible exception of some of our nearer relatives among the primates, animals do not have ethics.
Whales and Dolphins are most likely the 2nd smartest beings on the planet. I wasn't trying to say that cattle know the difference (that implies that good and evil would play a part in their thought process). If the man was going to try and kill a bear so you could eat it and the bear did not want to be killed and he killed the man then that's fair.
Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter SinisterI don't see the logic of that at all, and now you've implicitly hypothesized a third volitional consciousness, a deity, as the actual source of the rules. So where does the deity get those rules from? If he made them up himself, they're no more or less arbitrary than any other set of rules, they're just his opinions and need not necessarily concern us.
In all the civilizations that have existed on this earth (that we know anything about) were there any that did not have a set of rules that covered things that were NOT to be done, and if they were done was there a punishment attached.
Even if you have just the man making the rules then is he not playing god? What if he says he can use physical force on others and that is not evil but if anybody tries the same against him then it is evil.
Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter SinisterOne of his earliest strictures, in your view of these matters, is the injunction against killing, then he leads his chosen people along a trail of slaughter and conquest and genocide that'd make Stalin blush.
That all the Nations He removed had armies already would seem to indicate they were no strangers to war. That conquest only covered the area that was previously specified.
Was it a moral thing for God to do, under the right to life clause God was in error. What absolves Him of that, if He restored those lives would that absolve Him? If He gave His own son up for slaughter would that absolve Him? Does the Book of Wars of the LORD hold every name of the ones that died because God said it should be done?
The nitty gritty of it is that back then the way to be safe from outside armies was to have the strongest army around, weakness would be quickly acted on and you Nation would belong to another. Most of the descriptions have God winning in decisive ways, totally one-sided. While that is not good for the ones being pounced on it would have given them a reputation of being very strong and anybody left would be wary of invading. Trade was going on after all the fighting so the 'neighbors' would seem to have accepted the way they got their territory. It is the ones around today that bitch about it but don't bitch about the unjust wars of today.
Do you think Stalin (and anybody like him) has any thing that they would not do because they would have considered it a sin?
Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter SinisterIf he didn't invent them himself, then either they exist independently of him and he's not necessary to define them (and he certainly doesn't seem to honour them himself), or he got them from some higher level lawmaker and we're into an infinite regression of lawmakers. Postulating a supernatural source outside of human beings for these things doesn't solve the problem it sets out to solve, it just creates more issues.
For this exercise lets not assume that God has parents and that they are part of a society.
I assume it's the killing that is what honour is referring to. Death doesn't seem to be the worst that can happen to man, God certainly is said to be able to reverse that.
How much credit does Satan get in this, he introduced death to this world, for man and beast, who bitches about his role?
prof. Nuggler. BS MS PHD*
