Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utcsstat.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!utcsstat!laura From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Re: re: What evil is Message-ID: <726@utcsstat.UUCP> Date: Mon, 27-Jun-83 16:31:10 EDT Article-I.D.: utcsstat.726 Posted: Mon Jun 27 16:31:10 1983 Date-Received: Mon, 27-Jun-83 20:38:49 EDT References: utcsstat.722, <331@mit-eddi.UUCP> Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada Lines: 42 Im sorry, but I still dont get it. From everything you have said so far there is more than one conclusion that can be drawn. To my mind they are esentially different conclusions. conclusion A is that GOOD and EVIL exist. I print them in capitals because they are essential definite qualities "engraven in stone and unchanging" so to speak. Statements like "God is good" fall into this category. God (at least in the Christian tradition) is by definition GOOD, even all-GOOD. Not only do they exist, but they are absolutes. conclusion B is that good is a quality which people only recognise with respect to less good (evil) things. I do not find that the two are necessarily incompatible (God is GOOD but we only notice this in comparison to the EVIL things that we are exposed to) but they need not be. Instead of good and evil, suppose we talk about fast and slow. CRAYs are fast. TRASH-80s are slow. Dec-10s are fast. My grandmother is *very slow*. Considering that she just got out of the hospital, though, she is walking *very fast indeed*. Are fast and slow "engraven in stone" concepts? Are they absolutes? No. If you want to define EVIL and GOOD it makes a big difference whether they exist as absolutes or not. It also makes a difference whether they are 2 qualities or 1. In the example using computers you discover that "fast" and "slow" are merely human terms used to describe the speed of something. Speed is measurable but "fastness" and "slowness" is only relative to the person making the assertion and his ideas of the relative speeds between the two things being compared. My grandmother should not be compared with a CRAY, not because she or the CRAY do not have measurable speed, but because it is nonsensical to compare them. Even if you believe in an absolutely GOOD God, it does not follow that the quality of "good" or "evil" can be viewed as absolutes. If you build a computer which works at the molecular level and is as fast as any computer can be designed you have still not solved the problem of how fast is my grandmother, and indeed, Dec-10s will still be fast. Laura Creighton