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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.religion
Subject: Re: what IS evil
Message-ID: <695@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 18-Jun-83 09:56:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.695
Posted: Sat Jun 18 09:56:24 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jun-83 10:41:46 EDT
References: <390@sbcs.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 14

If you define evil to be "the absence of good" then the whole question changes.
I have yet to find anything without *any* good -- there are merely things which
are more good than others. By this reasoning, there is no way to assign 
"evilness" as a quality to something, only a way to measure its relative
"goodness" to other good things.

Of course, you now get to define "good" and you may have a symetrical
problem, in which case you can accuse me of begging the question. But if
"good/evil" are one quality, (albeit composed of separate qualities
such as honesty, compassion...) the value system which emerges can be
strikingly different from one that acknowledges two polar opposites.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura