h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hardly bitterness. I can't feel anger towards an entity whose existence I have strong reason to doubt. Your statement is one of the typical logical fallacies believers fall back on, called ad hoc... "attacking the person." I read a book that makes a surprising insight into that. Believers often claim that the reason nonbelievers feel as they do is because of anger, when that couldn't be further from the truth. The anger they detect is really the anger they feel at reading or hearing this sort of thing, and they project it onto the messenger. I have to believe, based on experience, that there is some real truth to that statement.

I thought Ad Hominem was attacking the person. Ad hoc is making things up as you go along...

Yeah, yeah... one of those latin gibberish thingies...

"The only evils I can't explain away are birth defects and cancer."

Now this is not that different from natural disasters - in fact it is the same but on a smaller scale. But it hits closer to home and therefor get's more emotional.

Ok...here goes nothing.........

If a creature like an omnipotant God goes around giving other lesser beings sickness on purose it MIGHT seem malevolent. But look at it from a different perspective:

Say that we the one's getting sick, say that we are expected to experience or learn our self or others something from this sickness and what it entails. What then? In my book that means only one thing:

We are not capable of judging what is evil and what is good. We may try but 99.99% of all times we most likely fail. We as individuals can not possibly see all effects on a middle and long term basis, that comes out of an event. There is simply no way we can do that. So in the same way we can not say that something is good or bad. We can have an opinion as an individual and as a society - but an opinion is not the same thing as either fact or truth (however cynical it may sound).

If you consider, for a while, that no god is messing about with our existence. Then everything that is happening in our and other peoples life (and animal & plants alike) are parts of a very sophisticated machinery that works on both macro and micro level. It works becuase it deliberately searches for equilibrium: balance.
Life is a complicated process. Sentient life even more so. But sentient or not does not alter the basic functions or parameters that makes the clock tick.
But as all mechanisms it can some time malfunction, and in fact that too are part of the whole, and create new events and situations. Only the sentient ones put a value to this event. But this value does not change a thing.

And I for one does not feel so small - in the eyes of the creation - that being part of this HUGE machinery makes me less of importance. It does however make me (and all of us) one possible epic in the history. But in the same time my period of life is very brief and of very little importance. What I make of it only worth something to me and possibly the one's who know me as a person. And this is not bad at all. In fact it is quit enough. I do not need any God to give me a reason to exist or value of thought.

This kind of thinking must be a real pain to those people who can not, and will not free them self from their illusion.

Now, here's an interesting thing:

"True evil is that which damages or attempts to destroy our immortal souls..."

With room for error I hereby enter the following:

Our soul is NOT for sale. I can NEVER be destroyed, sold, twisted or otherwise damaged. It can get lost, stuck and most likely evolved. But your soul is yours without any strings attached. All other notions simply are NOT!


That is....if we have a soul..............

"We are not capable of judging what is evil and what is good." - Although Proteus makes a lot of sense in these forums, I have issues with this statement. Good and evil are concepts born of the human mind. As such, WE are the only ones who can determine what is good and what is evil. They are relative terms, and they have changed throughout history as our personal values have changed. Case in point: at many points in history, throughout Western culture, a wife who argued the will of her husband was considered Evil. Today, it is considered healthy, and a man who continually tries to force his will on his wife is now Evil. Humanity created good and evil, and is the only judge of them that we will ever have.

I take a bow for your praise

You are so right. We are the only ones who can determine what is good and evil. And they are relative. But therin lies my whole point:

As inventors of the consepts of good and evil we in that action already have made a great error. They are indeed created of human mind (as well as what and who God is) and as such they are faulty due to the inability of the human mind to go beyond it's own limits.

Because these values on much bigger scene makes no sense at all. They are purly human consepts - opinions agreed up.

So if humanity are the only judge of what is good and evil then it kind of makes the concept rotten in it's core - does it not?

I agree that we will probably not have any other will power come down on us and correct this notion - so we make do with what we have. But that does not make it any more true or a state of fact.

It's like saying that "I'm not able to understand the complexity of events created from a sigle point in time and place, and what this leads to i total, but this is of no imporance because I make my own reality as I go along. I can not see you, therefor you can not see me."

But your argument is a good one - as all of them they are a joy to read.

> "Because these values on much bigger scene makes no sense at all. They are purly human consepts - opinions agreed up.
So if humanity are the only judge of what is good and evil then it kind of makes the concept rotten in it's core - does it not?"

I can't agree here. Think of the concept of "average height of a human".

Now, clearly if there are no humans, then the average height of a human is meaningless.
Also, the average height has changed over time.
The average height in different countries or in different groupings also varies
Indeed, by wearing high heels I can change the average height of a human all by myself - though only by a short amount.

This is kind of like evil - without sentient creatures there is no evil, evil has changed over time, and changes over place. And we can all change what it is to be evil, but only by a very very small amount.

But average height isn't a concept rotton to it's core - why then should evil be?

And now there is another day and another mood.

H2G2 is a big place and there are many subjects to talk about (and write in).

I think this thread of 'Good & Evil' has carried my thoughts as far as possible this time. I therefor withdraw, for the moment, and promise to return at a later date.

Thank you all for a fun and thoughtful discussion in this matter. I hope to read the continuation from the rest of you later on.

Regards,
//Proteus