Evil in the Eye of the Beholder?

Nope.
The points marked with arrows where things that lead me to believe that Jan is just another bible thumper who hasn't bothered to ctually think anything out.

I agree completely. It is generally a helpful book. Reguardless, I've no problems with anyone believing what they want. Christians, muslims, jews, budhists..I don't particularly care.

The only thing I can't stand is when religous/personal beliefs are stated as fact with out one shred of supporting argument behind them.

It is even worse when they contradict themselves, as Jan's are.

 

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MEPHURA;

Thank you.

I believe I know exactly what you mean. Though I am a believer, and have been all my life, there was a time when, if someone told me "I am a Christian," I would immediately be a little uncomfortable. I know how they think-generally speaking-and I know they mean well, and I hated to hurt or offend them.

It was not until the loss of my son that I understood what I was doing to myself. There is nothing like being ill or losing someone to turn them on. The scriptures came with the inuendos as to why Mike was taken from me, and it cut me to the quick. Then I had a moment of truth. It was one day when I was all alone, and was writing a letter to my aunt. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I never sent it, but I still have it. The essence of it was that I was very troubled by much of organized religion, and had been for some time, and more importantly, I too did not care to be hurt or offended. Imagine that! That was the beginning of a kind of freedom I had never known. Interesting how it had taken so long.

You bet, many use scripture to promote their own agenda. In addition, when they say, "I will pray for you," they may mean: "I do not like the way you are, and I am going to pray that God will shove you into situations that will make you more like me." (Possibly extreme, but I sometimes wonder just how accurate it is.)

I love my Christian friends, but now I feel free to ask, "How do you know this?" Interestingly, this has not caused as many problems as one might think. May I tell you who helped me the most with this? Spinoza. Three centuries gone, and yet his take on organized religiousness spoke my heart.

My goal and my hunger is to know. There is so much to learn. But learning and knowing is a lot like buying a house, with it comes a lot of responsibility, with some of it rather unexpected.
I am more careful now about what I say, and even more so about what I write.

There is a verse in the Old Testament that says something to the effect, "With knowledge comes sorrow," and there was never a truer statement made. Though my Christian friends tolerate me, there is, and expectedly so, a distance.

Yet, my burning desire is to leave this world in the way intended for me. In the meantime, I do try to be as kind and gentle as I possibly can until that time comes. It is not always easy, but when I breathe my last breath, I will still be trying.

It was nice to read your comments.

Now, I will see what I can do with our more complicated, subject. PMT

 

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I think that concepts of good and evila re relative fundamentally not absolute. Nevertheless, for me as a biased human being which i and most of us are, i do have a feeling about certain things that they are absolutely unacceptable- the killing of innocents is the major feeling i have like this- re unwanted babies, re the people of iraq, re palestiniam families, re Israeli civilians, re the inadequacies of health care systems, re the failure to distribue food appropriately to feed the world's people, etc etc.

 

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Evil in the Eye of the Beholder?

If you don't know what the future holds then your action of killing another person is purely selfish.

But you don't know what the future holds.

Well stop supplying the shit then.

Poopy-cock...i told you nothing of the sort.

What are you talking about?

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You're talking non-sense. Read the post again....... and this time with feel.

Psycological analysis, hypnosis, confession, just a few ways that could competently judge a persons intention for commiting certain acts.

Where did i say that?

That's like asking whether the ingredients of the cake, or the cake itself makes the cake absolutely yumilicous.

There, you don't need to ask me do you?

I'm not avoiding anything.

Then your mum and dad would be to blame for concieving you. No! Wait, your grandparents are to blame for concieving them. No! Wait, your great-grandparents are to blame for.....

So explain what first degree murder is compared to second degree murder compared to manslaugter compared to self-defence means.

I don't think you've really checked. Have you?

So when one makes a conscious decision to drive under the influence of alcohol, and ends up killing someone in a road accident, do you think he intended to kill someone or was it a consequence of him intending to drive while not of sound mind.

That's not even worth a reply. You're luck to have this much.

*yawn*
How so?

Pain to those people = pleasure, but pleasure does not necessarily = pain. If you like pleasure in a certain way and someone gives that pleasure to you, then reciprocate by giving pleasure in the way that they would like. Do you get my drift?

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

Read above.

As above.

You're an idiot.

So you don't believe evil is the intention of harming others for no good reason other than a selfish one?

I have no need to counter, you are doing all countering.

Thanks.

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Ohh....that's really profound, did you think that one up all by yourself.

Love

Jan Ardena.

 

What's really disgusting is that you could sign a post like that "love".

LIAR.

 

You're right!
I'm positively evil aren't I?
ssssssssssslurp!!!!!! ;P


Love

Jan Ardena.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Evil in the Eye of the Beholder?

So if I make a choice with out knowing the future then it is evil, reguardless of the good intended?
(But I thought it was the intentions that mattered?)

Taking what we've learned applying it to your second quote we can see that having children is evil. We can't tell the future. We don't know if any good will come of it. The sex is a purely selfish act.

Hell, it is simpler than that even.
1) No one knows the future.
2) Any good intentions are cancelled out by this (see your first quote)
3) since no one knows the future, we can see that no one's good intentions matter.
4) All act/people must be evil.

MAKES NO SENSE

Exactly. No one does. You can't make decissions based on it. Since intentions are wishes for future outcomes, they are based on the future and, thus, irrelevant.

So your inconsistency is my fault?

A man who can cure a major disease of the world shouldn't try to stay alive so that he can do so, becuase he isn't sure he will succeed. Ie, he shouldn't try to help because he has no knowledge of the future. (It's the island senario. That is what your answer amounts to.)

Why is it not surprising you have trouble following a simple argument...

With feel? Sorry. Personal feelings have no place in a logical argument structure.
It's quite simple: My intentions for killing this man where good. I was attempting to save other people. This makes me killing him, according to you, a good thing even though he was actually innocent.

Hypnosis isn't widely accepted.
Confessions can be coerced.
Psycological analysis is hugely flawed. You have differring schools, the bias of the analyist, and some people can fake the results.
None of those are ways that intentions can be judged.
Hell, even polygraphs can be faked.

Then we can throw in your bit about not being able to know our own intentions. If that is the case, Then how are we going to confess them?
If we don't know them, how is hypnosis going to get it out of our head. (oh, right..That can show past lives and other stuff we don't know about ourselves..How could I have missed that very ocvious and scientific, in no way fallible answer.)
If we don't know them, psycho analysis isn't going to do much good either as it generally works on the large scale influence, and not what motivated me for half a second.

"Actions or thoughts with an intention to harm oneself or another living being purely for selfish reasons. "

Right there. The intentions of the agent have nothing to do with any outcome that his/her actions may have. This includes the victim's thoughts, feelings, well being.

Actually it would be closer to asking if it's my intentions to make a "yumilicous" cake, or my actions I take in making one that make it "yumilicous".

Can't answer a simple question now?

See above.

First degree: You planed it out in advance. (An ACTION)
Second degree: You did not plan in advance, but still performed actions that killed the man voluntarily.
Manslaughter: You killed someone with out trying to.
Self defence: actually a defence and not an actual charge, and would normally fall under second dergree or manslaughter.

If this was based on intentions, manslaughter wouldn't be a crime.

Cute. More avoidance.
You made the claim. Prove it. For a universal court system to exist, it would have to have authority over everyone. No such court exists.

My point exactly. If he didn't intend to kill him, apparently there is nothing wrong with it, right?
As far as intentions go, he/she made the choice to drive under those conditions knokwing full well what that might lead to. For all intents and purposes, you can say that yes, he intended to kill some one. Negligence doesn't remove blame. This is the real world and not your fantasy one in which actions are irrelevent.
He intended to drive in a condition that was not safe to himself or anyone else. He made the choice. No court in their right mind would let anyone off becaue they didn't mean to kill someone in an alcoholic stupor.

Now that is funny.
I'm lucky? Choosing to deal with idiots that are too dense to understnad simple concepts in no way shows luck. It shows a choice I made to fight the spread of stupidity.

The only reason you have for not replying is your lack of a supportable position.

If you haven't noticed it by now, get your vision checked.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Not "Read people's minds, find out what they really want, and act accordingly."
If I want someone to be nice to me, I should be nice to them. If I want someone to smack me around, I should smack them around. The key word is "do". It is pertaining to actions, not intentions.

Tell me you didn't try to look that up as one term..

Main Entry: om·ni·scient
Pronunciation: -sh&nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: New Latin omniscient-, omnisciens, back-formation from Medieval Latin omniscientia
Date: 1604
1 : having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight
2 : possessed of universal or complete knowledge
- om·ni·scient·ly adverb

One entry found for observer.


Main Entry: ob·serv·er
Pronunciation: &b-'z&r-v&r
Function: noun
Date: circa 1550
: one that observes : as a : a representative sent to observe but not participate officially in an activity (as a meeting or war) b : an expert analyst and commentator in a particular field <political observers>

Sorry for using those oh so big words on you. I should have guessed you wouldn't be able to understand. Let me put it for you in simple terms.

You say: Good and evil is all about intentions. We can't be sure we know our own. The judicial system is based on these intentions. With out knowing the future, intentions are meaningless.

we agree:You can't know the future.

If we can't know our intentions, and we can't know the future, then how are we able to tell if what we are doing is good or evil?
Even if we knew our intentions, and they were good ones, our actions might still be evil because we don't know the future, so our intentions might not be as good as we think they are.
If this is the case, they court systems, which are based on intentions, can never tell if a person did something wrong. Hell, we can't even tell if our judging him would be an evil act.

Because of this, the only thing that could judge our actions is an omniscient observer. (something that knows everything and sees it all)

If this is the case, then we can never tell if what we are doing is good or evil. Therefore, we cannot be held accountable for our own actions.

This according to you.

Ditto

Ditto

Why isn't this surprising?
The ones that can't support their views (normally because they aren't rational) always seem to resort to "you're an idiot".

What ever gave you that idea??
Christ, I would think it would be obvious.
No, I don't believe it. That is beside the point though.
The issue here is that that conclusion can not be supported with a valid, rational argument.

Main Entry: 3coun·ter
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): coun·tered; coun·ter·ing /'kaun-t(&-)ri[ng]/
Etymology: Middle English countren, from Middle French contre against, opposite, from Latin contra; akin to Latin com- with, together -- more at CO-
Date: 14th century
transitive senses
1 a : to act in opposition to : OPPOSE b : OFFSET, NULLIFY <tried to counter the trend toward depersonalization>
2 : to adduce in answer <we countered that our warnings had been ignored>
intransitive senses : to meet attacks or arguments with defensive or retaliatory steps

I said things. You replied in opposition to what I was claiming.
A counter.
This isn't rocket science, brain surgery, or even calculus.
This is 1+1=2

No need for thanks. Pointing out the obvious is just what I do.

Actually, its just a responce to your line. I wouldn't say it's profound. Just the obvious that you seem oblivious to. But, yes; I did "think that one up all by" myself.

 

No, not evil.
Just ignorant.

 

This is incredibly Ender Wigginish......

"Andrew sighed at Styrka's unforgiving attitude; it was the fashion among Calvanists to not weigh human motive in judging the good or evil of an act. Acts are good and evil in themselves, they said"
-from "Speaker for the Dead.

And so I nominate these shortsighted theosophs as the laziest slobs in the world- you don't ask why something is done because this carries the risk of branching out into possiblities you'd rather not think about.

And so there are people like Jan Ardena that would call a baby killer the devil himself without even having to ask at least why it is the baby was killed in the first place.

Oscar Schindler hired thousands of Jews to work in his grimy factories, underpaid and underfed yet narrow definitions would say what he did was an evil. "Slavery"

In the 70's a plane goes down on the Alps and a handful of Argentanians are forced to cannabalize their dead friends. It was the human flesh that kept them alive and yet what they did constitutes evil, according to tightassed definitions.

Motivation is the precursor of evil, if its to have any definition at all. Prologation of a selfish intent is the closest thing I can think of as evil, so long as that intent is for useless means.

 

Now here we really have something interesting.

I think willful ignorance can be evil, under circumstances exactly like what Jan is doing, so I must contend that ignorance is evil if you refute that 1 + 1 = 2 and have the capacity to refute it, but willfully refuse based on what amounts to spite.

Aye?

I suppose though that technically that's not ignorance. Hmm.

Oh and Gendy:

/And so I nominate these shortsighted theosopshs as the laziest slobs in the world- you don't ask why something is done because this carries the risk of branching out into possiblities you'd rather not think about.

Right on.

/And so there are people like Jan Ardena that would call a baby killer the devil himself withouth even having to ask at least why it is the baby was killed in the first place.

Oh man that's the stuff. Preach on sister.

/Schindler hired thousands of Jews to work in his grimy factories, underpaid and underfed yet narrow definitions would say what he did was an evil.

Excellent point.

/A plan goes down on the Alps and a handful of Argentanians are forced to cannabalize their dead friends. It was the human flesh that kept them alive and yet what they did constitutes evil, according to tightassed definitions.

Yup, people hung up on themselves. While I'm conditioned or naturally find the idea of canabalism wholly disgusting, I'm a practical mofo when it comes down to survival. If you're not you're evidently unfit to survive.

/Motivation is the precursor of evil, if its to have any definition at all. Prologation of a selfish intent is the closest thing I can think of as evil, so long as that intent is for useless means.

Yeah that's pretty good. Are we sure evil is a good word? Certainly it's powerful and artistic, but is it practical? Is it descriptive of something necessarily a part of language?

 

Wes:

If she sits at home couchwarming and thinking 1+1=5 then you have no right saying this. Her time, her disease.

If she's up in my face purposely aiming to fuck my mind with her calculated ignorace of one and one being 5 than that's a sure evil she'll have to pay for. Prolonged intent based on uselessness.

 

You're right. (which paints evil as necessarily relative eh?)

 

Wes:

That's an always thing.

"Kidding".

This too is an always thing. Horribly cliched but true.

 

/That's an always thing.

/"Kidding".

Hah. :bugeye:

/This too is an always thing. Horribly cliched but true.

Yup uh-huh.

 

And how, may i inquire, have you arrived at this conclusion?

Love

Jan Ardena.

 

Makes sense to me.
First you say that the intentions behind the action are what determines whether it is good or evil.
Then, when presented with a situation in which an action that is distasteful and less than nice is undertaken for good intentions, you quickly switch positions and tell us that the action is evil.

You are trying to present yourself as one that holds themselves to a standard that is positively asisine.
So far, your position goes something like this.

Intentions determine good or evil.
Intentions can't always be know, even by the agent.
A lack of knowledge of the future cancels out good intentions.
BUT
There are some actions that Jan tells us are evil reguardless of intentions.

Conclusion:
Since we can't always know our intentions, we can't know if what we are doing is good or evil anyway.
Since we can't know the future, any good intentions we might have are cancelled out.
These two things pretty much tell us that we can never know if we are doing good or evil.

Then there is the last one.
That some actions are evil reguardless of intentions.
WHy?
'Cause Jan says so.
That means that you don't ask why, Jan. It means that you are just a closed minded bigot.
It means, Jan, that you don't think about issues. You don't have to. You all ready have your mind made up as to the answer, and nothing; not logic, not reason, nothing is going to change your mind.

She didn't need to arrive at that conclusion.
You've spelled it out, in black and white, for all to see.

Love

Mephura.

 

oh man the anticipation. you know she's gonna say something messed up or just never respond. i mean, you'd laid out her problem for her to see, so she has to pretend it isn't there by ignoring it or spinning it. I liked how spookz put it:

(paraphrasing)

spin or concede bitch.

you have been warned.

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She will probably just ignore it like she did my last reply to her. Why should she bother to actually try to support her position?

As for spookz, well...
It would seem one liners is about the best he has to offer.

 

WISMORRIS & GENDANKEN

Come on guys. You are smarter than that. You are playing with definitions! PMT

 

you should probably be a least slightly more specific so you don't look like an asshole, just throwing around unjustified accusations of desmartulation.