(February 6, 2012 at 11:04 am)chipan Wrote: we're talking about good and evil and i can say that good and evil are opposites with 100% accuracy. do you disagree?

Yep. Good and evil are descriptive terms. You must lay out an ethical system that uses them and define your terms before you can even have a discussion about them. And before you start screeching about relative morality at me, that is not at all what I am talking about. You must go through the labor of semantics before you can start using good and evil in such specific terms as "opposites with 100% accuracy." By saying that you have removed their inherent generality without replacing it with any detail.

(February 5, 2012 at 3:39 pm)Godschild Wrote: Welsh cake, I have mentioned hell many times and have never meant it as a threat.

I wasn't specifically talking about you, I mean theists in general use hell as a means to threaten and imitate others.

(February 6, 2012 at 9:51 am)Rhythm Wrote: @Tack "Vanilla is necessary for the definition of chocolate"...sigh. What's the opposite of watermelon, since we can't define anything except by it's opposite? Or is this a special case? I don't think that "fact" is a fact at all........

@Chip, roger, roger, credit for the good, washes hands on the bad. Either your description of god is flawed, or your god is a tool......take your pick?

We can define things without their opposite. You can define what is evil to you and I can define what is evil to me, but from an objective perspective we can't come to an absolute definition. As RW eluded to, I'm a theist and my ethical system for subjective moraliy is something probably quite similar to yours. That helps me define my subjective morality. We can probably even come to a concensus one level up from that with societal morality. Seeing as you don't believe (I assume) in an objective morality though that's as far as we can go down the same road. I further define good and evil by my theology and use that to better my subjective definitions of what's good and evil. As our protestant friend chipan pointed out, the typical American theist defines God as good and everything not of God evil. I'm sure you've heard the references to God or Jesus being the light of the world. In context here the analogy would be God is light and evil would be the absence of light. You can't make things more evil or more dark, you can only take away more light. A Christian objective, generally, would then be to reflect as much of God's light as possible. That would make evil the absense of God and thus opposites. I hope that made sense.

Quote:tackattack wrote

In context here the analogy would be God is light and evil would be the absence of light.

This is the Tao! C'mon, this is the basic instinct of man. Let's just simplify it to love and hate. Love is the ground for so much running and freedom! ALL the 15 foreign elements revolve around the Tao my little atheistic buddhas!

Quote:I further define good and evil by my theology and use that to better my subjective definitions of what's good and evil.

I define good and evil through reason.

@Tack Well, I've heard the party line on the subject and you've given a faithful retelling of it, but whether or not it "makes sense" is an entirely different issue.

-defines vanilla as good and everything not of vanilla evil. -

You can't make things more chocolate, you can only take away more vanilla.

The problem with your line here is that you go from god to good and evil to light and dark, and then use the mechanics of light as though they were somehow inidicative of the "mechanics" of good and evil (or god). Well, that's taking a whole lot of steps away from the subject you actually want to talk about isn't it, only to circle back and apply this definition to the initial object. If the behavior of light can tell us about god then maybe we should be looking for god in CFL Bulbs?

In other words...platitude Tack. It sounds good..it's supposed to mean something, but it's all window dressing.

(February 6, 2012 at 1:22 pm)RW_9 Wrote:

(February 6, 2012 at 11:04 am)chipan Wrote: we're talking about good and evil and i can say that good and evil are opposites with 100% accuracy. do you disagree?

Yep. Good and evil are descriptive terms. You must lay out an ethical system that uses them and define your terms before you can even have a discussion about them. And before you start screeching about relative morality at me, that is not at all what I am talking about. You must go through the labor of semantics before you can start using good and evil in such specific terms as "opposites with 100% accuracy." By saying that you have removed their inherent generality without replacing it with any detail.

well i already defined the terms but if i need to reiterate then fine. good and evil are subject to a lot of bad interpritation and mean very different things to many different people but since we are talking about God and the bible it only seams fitting to use the biblical definition when it comes to the question why does God allow evil. evil is the result of man disobeying God. God has very strict commands and evil is the result of disobeying these commands. if God controlled all our decisions, there would be no evil but since he doesn't then we have the ability to disobey. when we do so, evil is a conciquence. you may think hurting someone by lying to them is not so much evil but according to the bible it is. evil is within everyone because he gives us choice to do good or evil; obey him or not.

Your concept of good and evil is arbitrary. "Because god said so" isn't good enough for me.

(February 11, 2012 at 12:22 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Your concept of good and evil is arbitrary. "Because god said so" isn't good enough for me.

your words are like that of a child saying he doesn't have to listen to his parents. the commandments do not fit the definition of arbitrary because they all have a reason.

google Wrote:1.Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

not based on random choice or personal whim. they are based on reason. many aggree with most of the reasoning. examples: murder, stealing, lying, etc. you may not understand the reasoning but that doesn't take it away from it.

(February 11, 2012 at 1:08 pm)chipan Wrote: your words are like that of a child saying he doesn't have to listen to his parents. the commandments do not fit the definition of arbitrary because they all have a reason.

google Wrote:1.Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

not based on random choice or personal whim. they are based on reason. many aggree with most of the reasoning. examples: murder, stealing, lying, etc. you may not understand the reasoning but that doesn't take it away from it.

I don't have to listen to my parents, and there may very well be consequences, but that has nothing to do with whether or not my parents are right or wrong, good or evil. That's just power or leverage. Might making right.

You actually linked that definition as if it supported your disagreement with me? Bolding mine, "personal whim"="God says so". Unless god is just communicating to us what is good, and it is not based upon his whims. In that case, I'll worship that which exists around your god and instructs him in how he should instruct us. I'll just worship good itself. I'm not a huge fan of human middlemen, a cosmic middleman is even less palatable.