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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Summary of my questions
Message-ID: <2032@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Nov-85 00:55:10 EST
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Posted: Mon Nov  4 00:55:10 1985
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> 2) Scenario:  You're 12 year old son says he didn't mow the lawn (when you 
>    specifically asked him to) because the damager-God controlled his actions
>    and made him not do it.  He uses the same excuse for taking drugs, stealing
>    and beating up other kids.  How do you answer him?  
> 
> 3) To broaden this last one, how would you deal with a criminal who on the 
>    stand said that he didn't want to kill all those people but the 
>    damager-God made him.  How do you punish someone for something they didn't
>    do or weren't the motivating force behind?  [RICK FREY]

I sure hope Baba is reading this so he can explain to me later how my
"assertion" (that there are people who have become more interested in
punishment than in the goal that administering punishment was supposed to
achieve) is bogus.  Why is Mr. Frey so interested in administering
punishment if the person DIDN'T DO something or if they weren't the motivating
force behind it?  Must all "bad" acts be punished?  To what end?

I don't believe in gods (damager variety or otherwise), I believe in cause
and effect, and if people learn to behave a certain way in the course of
growing up and exposure to the world, are they "evil"?  Worthy of
"punishment"?  Rick attributes good things to his god, and Paul attributes
bad things to his.  In reality, there is no god causing either set of things
to happen, there is simply the interactions of all the things in the universe,
sometimes resulting in "good" things, other times "bad".  The evidence points
to no consistent willful direction toward a general "good" or "evil".  (After
all, a good thing to you might be a bad thing to someone else:  today's
thunderstorm may cause you some temporary or permanent harm, but it helped
the farmers who needed the rain.)
-- 
"Mrs. Peel, we're needed..."			Rich Rosen 	ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr