Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I'm not a Christian, so my comment may or may not be significant to you.
In my view, evil isn't a zero, isn't a default. Evil is wrong actions which are not corrected. Wrong actions can arise out of ignorance, or be caused by previous bad situations. So, ultimately, ignorance is the root of evil.

Well, I could just as easily argue that Good is an absence of Evil. By not committing evil, one is being good. And it seems to me that God (and/or his designated representatives) spent more time making lists of things that were evil than things that were good, therefore evilness is a more valid basis on which to measure morality. Remember, one of the key phrases that keeps coming up in Christian theology is "being without sin"

I suspect Mr Sparks's supposition is a basis for an argument that if one is not actively doing good, then one is evil, a restatement of the "If you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem" paradigm. I think that the Mr Sparks's argument falls down by not acknowledging that good and evil acts are both departures from moral neutrality, where good acts give pleasure to others or reduce pain and evil acts do the reverse, but part of this is that my definition of Good and Evil differs from his.

A question occurs to me at this time: can one commit an act that is both good and evil at the same time?

Um, no.

First off, it arrives at the "no measure of morals without God" argument which raises my hackles on a good day and has me snapping on a bad one (ask Kor... or, on second thought, don't). There's a tiny step from there to "no morality without God" and thus "no ethics without God" all the way to "people have no incentive to behave morally without God", which is just wrong in several ways. The most obvious one is "you must be amoral if you're an atheist."

Second, evil and good both imply activity [1]. You can leave the thermometer in a bedroom and measure a temperature. You can't leave the evil-o-meter (or, I guess, in his argument the good-o-meter) in the same bedroom and get a reading while a person is sleeping. People will be actively evil by behaving evilly: When they are afraid, when they feel threatened, when they feel they have something to gain, or even when they are confused and not willing to think things through. Similarly, people will be actively good by behaving well.

Lastly, not every opposite of an evil action is a good action, or vice versa: For instance, I'd classify xpioti letting me ride Banker on Wednesday as a good act; I had a lot of fun, learned some stuff, and there's some ecstacy in feeling such a powerful animal in some sort of communication with you. But if she hadn't thought I could handle Banker, or if Banker was having a bad day, the impromptu riding lesson wouldn't have come up. Which wouldn't have been evil on her part, and it's absurd even to think of it that way.

(Lastly-lastly, that seems to bring up something else that always rubs me wrong in that sort of discourse. People talk of Evil and Good as always large, all-encompassing, sweeping things. No they aren't. Evil is often petty, good is often simple.)

[1] Yes, in some cases, lack thereof, but it still works both ways: Not raising a hand to help a friend in need is passive evil, but not spreading gossip about a friend passing through a hard time is passive good by the same token.



Not very coherent, but hope it helped. Have to run to lab now.

Five tons of flax!

That final bit about all people being evil compared to God is just plain creepy. How can there be evil without choice, and how is it conceivable that people have chosen not to be God?

Okay, so "cold" is a measure of "relatively less heat" and "evil" is a measure of "relatively less good". Whatever "good" is.

So where's the dividing point? And how do we measure "good" in the same way we measure "heat"? I know some of us say "cold" at 18C, others call that "comfortable" and yet others, "baking hot." Is there such a middle, neutral, ground between "good" and "evil", or must I label every action with one or the other. In which case, how do I label eating my breakfast? Washing my clothes? Admiring the creations of God? Oh, yeah? Is it different if those creations aren't the one I'm emotionally involved with? What if she supports me in that?

Sparks' logic inevitably leads either to confusion -- individuals set their own points of division between "good" and "evil" -- or authoritarianism -- someone(s) (likely a church hierarchy) sets such bounds. If every individual sets their own dividng point, the division is meaningless. And if some authority does so, I would argue that they will fail to set a point that works in all cases for all individuals.

The problem is that when using terms that measure relative values, such as "hot" and "cold" and "good" and "evil", unless there are VERY careful definitions put in place up front, the discussion is meaningless. And, even if there are such definitions, it's a very good bet that they're only for the use of the author, as the reader will have hir own definitions that differ in some respect.

I think Sparks is wrong and as an agnostic I find his thesis that Good is equal to God and only God (and I suspect he means the God of his type of religion ... e.g. Catholid) to be very disturbing. Since I don't believe that we (as humans) can be sure whether or not there is any higher power(s); by his logic, I cannot wonder about good.

Mercedes Lackey had a section in Arrows Fall about "what is evil" in which the heir to the throne gets some understanding. One of the people (IIRC) said that evil is the ultimate greed. It only sees things/ideas as that which can be possessed and gets no joy out of the things it possesses. If it cannot have an object, it prefers to destroy it rather than to allow others to have it (happiness, love, house, whtever). It cannot create, only copy, it can mar and destroy.

I see evil in people who use religion to do horrible things. I also see evil in doing things for the purpose of harming others. This can include the small things (like the class bully), it can include ignorance (spare the rod, spoil the child ... who cares that the kid is yelling because the diaper hasn't been changed), it can include malicious gossip.

It isn't necessarily good vs. evil. Many actions can have components of both good and evil.o

"Not good" is not at all the same thing as "evil". Sparks completely fails to account for neutral or indifferent acts.

Evil, like good, requires intentionality. If I get distracted while driving and hit you I'm not evil, just careless. If I see you and decide to run you down, that's evil.

As for "what God wants is good; all else is evil", that postulates a pretty limited and petty God. Personally, I think there are many things that God neither wants nor doesn't want. At the risk of sounding like I'm trivializing this, God doesn't care which grocery store I go to, y'know?

Christianity (as far as I can tell, not being of that persuasion) teaches that people are born evil. I believe that people are born neutral, with the capacity for both good and evil acts. It is very, very rare for a person to be good or evil, because that would imply a level of consistency in behavior that I believe is beyond human ability. Actions (in their contexts) are good or evil or neutral; most people aren't. (Yeah, when the balance is so far in one direction I'm willing to make a declaration about a person, even if he has some contrary acts. But we're talking about Hitler and the like here, not your next-door neighbor.)

Even if I believed in the God people talk about, or had a religion, I would still find this a gross oversimplification of the concept of good & evil. Everyone who's commented previously has made a valid point. I liked Silmaril's best.

ex. Is someone who drives a really loud car through a residential neighborhood with their radio on loud enough to rattle dual-paned windows together, be clearly audible in a brick house, and wake me at 0200 just as I've gotten to sleep evil? How evil? Do they not know how much unhappiness listening to music so loud at such an hour inflicts on other? (ignorance) Do they know and not care? (a little evil maybe) Do they drive around chortling "Heh-heh. Let's see who we can wake up tonight." (malicious, probably evil, but I dunno. The effect's the same in all 3.) They aren't breaking in. They aren't killing or raping me. They can't turn me into a pillar of NaCl or send me back to Hades because my husband disobeys a vain and unnecessary command. Yeah, god(s) is/are all good. There's probably someone out there to tell me s/he/they are, but I ain't buying so don't try.

Purely good acts are few and far between, sometimes, it seems. Humans are inherently selfish in that at some level, we all want what we want, preferably now. Even when we think we don't. It's what we do with it and how we do it that is how good can be measured if it can be. I try to act outside the selfishness while realizing it's not possible to do so, and be honest about it when I can't. If forced to lie, I do so as little as possible. (I've seen dresses that fit better. Maybe a different belt or necklace...) and try to help.

Anniemal's atheist doctrine. Obey Golden Rule. Recycle. Don't run stoplights on purpose. Try to smile. See what there is to be done that you can do to make everyone's life a little easier. Hope you guessed right. Try not to be a gadfly too much. Turn things found in to lost & founds even if you really want them. Try not to lose temper. Do not steal. Do not kill anything you're not prepared to eat except plant pests, stinging things, and spiders found in the bathtub. Don't expect that because you try to do all this that anything's going to come of it.

And then there are sociopathic predators who think all of the above are are signs of weakness, indicating thaat one is prey. If they're crazy or not quite human, are they evil? Oh dear.

I agree most with silmaril. It's a bad comparison.

Evil and Good aren't absolutes. They are relative. Without good, you cannot measure evil. Without evil, you cannot measure good.

Actually, he is misusing terminology. The correct words are Cold and "Hot" which are qualitative descriptors for a measure of Heat.
"The Sun is Hot."
"The Antarctic is Cold."

Besides, to follow his analogy to its logical extents, people can only withstand a certain range of temperatures (or heat). So that would mean humans can only do so much good, or so much evil. To far to either extreme, and you would die.

Ok, done rambling. Hope that makes some kind of sense.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about his interpretation is that, by implication, it's saying Only Perfect (God) = Good, therefore Anything Less Than Perfect = Evil.

That's a really poisonous mindset, IMO. *shudder*