silmaril, you have a very good point in your first (real) paragraph and that seems to be the way many people think (I hope you don't mind if I quote you elsewhere?) However, no one has said that every good action has a corresponding evil equivalent. But - if xpioti knew her horse was mean-tempered and likely to buck you off, yet still encouraged you to ride knowing it was likely you would get hurt - wouldn't that have been evil?
No, go ahead and quote. I can expand that bit a little, too: There's even a personal component as to why that thought makes me angry. It implies that I wouldn't do good things without hope of eternal reward, or refrain from doing bad things without fear of eternal punishment. They might as well be saying I wouldn't tidy my room without getting a cookie for it, or I would stay out very late without telling my parents where I was if I didn't know I'd be yelled at afterwards. The connection should be obvious: I am NOT a child. Neither, one hopes, are human beings who are old enough to be called upon to make moral decisions.
Nope, no one said every good action has a corresponding evil equivalent, I wasn't trying to disprove that. I trying to refute the "evil is the absence of good" argument in the original quote---because I don't think it is; evil and good are both attributes of certain types of actions in their own right.
" It implies that I wouldn't do good things without hope of eternal reward, or refrain from doing bad things without fear of eternal punishment."
*nod* The teaching of my faith is that once one is Saved, that cannot be undone; so the idea of preachers waving the carrot and the stick to get people to behave always struck me as odd -- I'm already promised I'll get the carrot and avoid the stick, so, duh, that's not the reason for me to do good and shun evil.
The reason I came up with (beyond things like "enlightened self interest" and all the non-God-based reasons, which are also useful) is love and duty; that is, not because I fear punishment or am trying to earn Celestial Green Stamps, but out of a sense of duty to God, or out of love for Him, with reward and punishment having been removed from the equation.
Translating that to the broader issue you raise, I guess that means I expect God to expect me to not be a child.
Obviously I do not speak for all subsets of Christianity in this ...
But - if xpioti knew her horse was mean-tempered and likely to buck you off, yet still encouraged you to ride knowing it was likely you would get hurt - wouldn't that have been evil?
Interestingly enough, that is *exactly* what happened to someone in my family: they took their child visiting a friend who had horses, the child got a ride on one of them, the child got bucked off, and the child's arm was permanently damaged as a result. During the aftermath, the child's parents learned from remarks made by the owner's son that the owner not only had known that the horse was bad-tempered and likely to buck, but that he often had trouble controlling it himself. The parents sued. The court found for the child, and the horse's owner had to pay medical expenses, plus some extra.
Do I think the court made the right decision? You betcha. The owner's actions were at least negligent, at worse malicious. Now, if the horse had been a proper mount for a child the owner knew was a fairly inexperienced rider and it happened to spook with the same results, then I'd say it was just one of those things. What some might call an "act of God". But knowing that the horse was likely to be a problem, and putting the kid on it without even a warning? That's another kettle of fish. That's *wrong*.
This is the case of the ox that gores (in Exodus, shortly after the revelation at Sinai -- Mishpatim, if that helps). If your ox gores someone and it's the first time it has done that, you owe damages. If the ox does it again, you owe damages and a fine, because you should have known better. There's a fair body of Jewish law on damages and negligence, actually; thsi is the proof-text for some of it.
(I know this is a Christian context more than a Jewish one, but since Christians use at least the ethical teachings from the torah, I figured it might be relevant.)
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But - if
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Nope, no one said every good action has a corresponding evil equivalent, I wasn't trying to disprove that. I trying to refute the "evil is the absence of good" argument in the original quote---because I don't think it is; evil and good are both attributes of certain types of actions in their own right.
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*nod* The teaching of my faith is that once one is Saved, that cannot be undone; so the idea of preachers waving the carrot and the stick to get people to behave always struck me as odd -- I'm already promised I'll get the carrot and avoid the stick, so, duh, that's not the reason for me to do good and shun evil.
The reason I came up with (beyond things like "enlightened self interest" and all the non-God-based reasons, which are also useful) is love and duty; that is, not because I fear punishment or am trying to earn Celestial Green Stamps, but out of a sense of duty to God, or out of love for Him, with reward and punishment having been removed from the equation.
Translating that to the broader issue you raise, I guess that means I expect God to expect me to not be a child.
Obviously I do not speak for all subsets of Christianity in this ...
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Interestingly enough, that is *exactly* what happened to someone in my family: they took their child visiting a friend who had horses, the child got a ride on one of them, the child got bucked off, and the child's arm was permanently damaged as a result. During the aftermath, the child's parents learned from remarks made by the owner's son that the owner not only had known that the horse was bad-tempered and likely to buck, but that he often had trouble controlling it himself. The parents sued. The court found for the child, and the horse's owner had to pay medical expenses, plus some extra.
Do I think the court made the right decision? You betcha. The owner's actions were at least negligent, at worse malicious. Now, if the horse had been a proper mount for a child the owner knew was a fairly inexperienced rider and it happened to spook with the same results, then I'd say it was just one of those things. What some might call an "act of God". But knowing that the horse was likely to be a problem, and putting the kid on it without even a warning? That's another kettle of fish. That's *wrong*.
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(I know this is a Christian context more than a Jewish one, but since Christians use at least the ethical teachings from the torah, I figured it might be relevant.)