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From: mambo@mhuxt.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Life as a basis for good vs evil
Message-ID: <11@mhuxt.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 20-Jun-83 17:57:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhuxt.11
Posted: Mon Jun 20 17:57:07 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jun-83 11:09:05 EDT
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 21


>	Without human life, there can be no good or evil - because there
>	would be no one to judge actions or events, and no humans to
>	be effected by them.

Now wait just a minute. How can it be said that good and evil don't exist
without people defining them? Isn't that like saying, "If a tree falls in
the forest, but nobody is there to hear it fall, it didn't make a noise"?

What if humans detonated a weapon that destroyed all human life on this
planet? Is that weapon evil before it goes off, and not necessarily evil
after it goes off?

And what if there exists some hypothetical life form that may be more
advanced intellectually or emotionally than human beings? Would something
that harms that life form but gives a great deal of satisfaction to ALL
humans be good? Something fundamental seems to be missing in that initial
premise.

Fred Richards
..mhuxt!mambo