Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by thewoodenwand on February 18, 2012 at 1:58am

First murder is a sin even when killing a mass murder, we all will admit this deep down.

Next abortion, when is a fetus alive? when it can think, when its heart beats? when it has a spinal column, when it is joined as a pair of half DNA to a single complete DNA, is Sperm sacred? Killing is murder when you destroy a life, if you have not lived a life - it cannot be taken from you.

Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on February 18, 2012 at 3:29am

"...we all will admit this deep down."

I won't admit it, so your "we all all" is a fantasy.

Permalink Reply by thewoodenwand on February 18, 2012 at 1:53am

Wrong, there is evil, evil is when you consciously decide to harm something or someone, you knowingly choice to do something for whatever reason that you know will cause pain or destroy beauty.  God does not make any behavioral rules, or a devil. Do not not believe because you do not understand, decide to an atheist because you have no need for forgiveness, fairy stories or a social hierarchy that is unfair.

Permalink Reply by Madhukar Kulkarni on February 21, 2012 at 2:43am

thewoodenwand

First, there is no such thing as evil.  Evil is a concept invented by man.

Wrong, there is evil, evil is when you consciously decide to harm something or someone,

 

Both the things that you say are contradictory.

Evil is that evil does: It is man who does evil and it is man that defines evil.

 

 

Permalink Reply by Paula T. on January 4, 2012 at 7:28pm

I was skeptical for many years, but dare not admit it!  To question was taboo! It made me think "What's wrong with me for not believing??"

One of the events that pushed me closer to atheism happened 5 1/2 years ago.  I met my current boyfriend, who is a widower with three daughters.  His wife died almost 11 years ago.  His daughters were 11, 5, and 22 months old when his wife died from leukemia, which had been diagnosed when she was expecting the youngest.  When I asked my then-best friend, who is VERY catholic, why a loving god would take away someone with three small children.  Her response was..........."well, maybe god meant for you and X to be together."  I was completely floored.  The ridiculousness and immorality of her statement went right over her head.  She totally saw it from a positive viewpoint :/  

We are no longer friends for that reason and many others and her inability to see things in a rational way.

Permalink Reply by Patricia on January 4, 2012 at 7:56pm

What a crappy thing to say!!!!

Permalink Reply by Paula T. on January 4, 2012 at 8:19pm

You're so right!  I wish I could remember exactly what my reply was, but all I remember is feeling shock at such a thought.  How they rationalize everything, twist everything to fit what they believe.  A sad side note - this former friend is an elementary school teacher, working with 1st to 4th graders at a catholic school :(  

Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on January 4, 2012 at 8:39pm

"...working with 1st to 4th graders at a catholic school."

Where, sadly, she is destroying more young minds.

Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on January 4, 2012 at 7:45pm

Before I saw the evil in the world, I felt it in my life, thanks to Catholicism.

I will say it briefly and I hope clearly. First, puberty struck and I received enough testosterone to want a lot of sex--then and after I married. My dad's physical violence convinced me that raising children would be a nightmare. Indeed, a nightmare in which I had fathered a large family did one night frighten me out of my sleep. That vision of my future was the first evil I felt. Felt, not saw.

Second, Catholicism was telling me that birth control is sinful. Still idealistic, I saw injustice in the Church's demand that I have children and its refusal to help me pay for them. Looking into a probable future, I saw that if I complied with the Church's demand, then like my dad I would be so busy providing for a family that I wouldn't have time to answer the questions that would help me make sense of my life. That vision of my future was the second evil I felt. Again, felt not saw.

In those Catholic schools, nuns had for years described what they saw as the world's evils: one being the sufferings of martyrs, another the discrimination Catholics had felt throughout history. (They said nothing of the Inquisition.) Again and again they said Catholics must be strong, and obeying the many rules would help make me strong.

You know what? They succeeded. By the time I graduated high school, my thinking was about as rigid as that of any of the fundamentalists we hear today. I know now that if someone then had mentioned the question of evil, I would have looked at them with a blank stare.

Upon quitting Catholicism but still in college, I was for the first time outside its walls and began to deal with the question of evil. It so perplexed me that I set it aside, became an agnostic and put my energies into graduating. In a post-graduate mathematics course I discovered computers. Amazed, I asked my professor, "People will pay me to do this?" He said they would and, and they did.

I will wrap this up. For about twelve years, until I threw myself into politics, I very happily ignored the question of evil. The politics became hardball--a few people lost their jobs and one, an investigative reporter, was murdered by a car bomb. That's when I began dealing with the question of evil.

After enough thought to require some time, I decided that college philosophy professors lecture on the concepts of good and evil. The words have uses: "good" signifies what its user likes; "evil" signifies what its user dislikes.

Kind of post-modern. English has two excellent uses: poetry and fraud. Be careful.

Need some persuasion? Liberty.

In one context, the word refers to the right people have to do as they please to themselves and with the products of their labor. In another context (think 'taking liberties'), the word refers to the right people have to do as they please to others and with the products of others' labor.

It's why some of us favor government regulation and others of us oppose government regulation.

Enjoy.

Permalink Reply by Carl Pastor on January 4, 2012 at 8:17pm

heh heh heh, im  aware of the relativity of words, and the non reality of good and evil, but these words do have meaning to believers, and the idea of a good god is in our monotheistic religions. altho im very aware its not there in the polythiestic shinto or in non theistic buddhism, at least in many of the sects.

i think the prob of evil affected me so strongly because i have a lot of empathy for my fellow man.(heh heh man that sounds like im taking a lot of credit) i not saying thats a good thing, but wenever i watch the news im always thinking wat wud i do. i think thast some people regard others as compltetly separate from them, whereas i am always seeing the connectrions between me and others. cud this be the difference that made this such a big deal for me? how about you? i remember thinking "frog wasn't any different from me"

Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on January 4, 2012 at 8:49pm

"...empathy for my fellow man."

A thought worthy of some thought.

Does empathy for others require a prior empathy for self?

Permalink Reply by Carl Pastor on January 5, 2012 at 11:13am

well i have been called "totally self centered", but then ive been called a lot of things. i do think believers must have a low opinion of themselves, after all theve been told they were sinners from childhood, which i imagine would interfere with the development of an identity or self. mebe thats it. mebe a believer can only have a self thru god.  that wud sure explian why they hang on to therir imaginary father so tenatiously.

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