GoodAndEvil
Good and evil are easily defined:
God is good. Satan is evil. Creation is good. Destruction it evil. Existance is good. Anhilation is bad. Information is good. Entropy is bad.
No reasonable being would choose darkness over light, hate over love, death over life, or destruction over creation. We are God's children.
If we can dismiss with ClassicalLogic and allow truth to manifest itself the ungood is not bad. If we choose Good, we encourage goodness and disourage badness, but the neutral we leave alone to enable CooperativeDiversity and even apply AffirmativeAction when our diversity is threatened. SkinnersLaw may doom the ungood as well as the bad.
But we are just DumbAnimals. We are lured to the dark side. We lust for taboo. We sometimes get great joy in breaking things and hurting people. We stand by idely while our brothers are starved and slaughered. We wage wars wirling indicriminate injustise and detruction. We are satan's army.
And, in the material world, there is no creation without distruction. We kill the tree to build a house. The life organism thrives by consuming itself. Our desires justify the destruction of all that there is.
So why should we fret over good and evil? The destruction of our planet will surely rid the universe of this human infestation. For evil ultimately destroys itself and only what is good will ultimately survive.
In the world of spirit, as in the world of ideas and economics, creation is not bound to destruction, unlimited FutureValue may be manifest without ties to physical limitation.
God did not leave leave fragile beings on a danerous planet without hope-- he sent us.
(See EvolutionaryGameTheory for a related scientific analysis. See Christian for the spiritual side.)
to err is human... ...to really foul things up requires a computer.
True statements in one algebra are not the same as true statements in another algebra. The axioms on the algebra define the logical context for what is true and what is false.
Budhism and Chrisianity represent independent logical contexts. Though they both work toward the same end, that we are not separate from God, they use different symbolism and analogy.
In mathimatics we use the algebra that produces our solution most easily or provides the most intuative analogy to the problem. Any general purpose algabra will do.
I am both a Budhist and a Christian, which is at times confusing. I cannot say what is true without providing the logical context. I cannot make statements that have any absolute truth value.
But I choose to speak rather than not speak wrongly. I plod one foot in front of the other though I might be killing millions of tiny creatures under my feet. By choosing I create the future. I become a creator just as my God is The Creator and do his work as well as I can for that is my purpose and destiny in spite of myself.
If you accept the existance of Satan, you give him power. I think it is good that people do not believe in him. As a spiritualist who has lived with witches, though, I can no longer deny the existance of Satan or any other spirit. There are many destructive spirits, some destroy on purpose while others by thoughtlessness, they are all evil as long as they destroy. Should you encounter them, you can laugh in their face as long as God is with you. Stand up against them and give them no power.
Jesus taught us about God's world, where the lion and the lamb lay together, where there is unprecedented individual freedom and wealth. In God'd world there is no evil. And Jesus prophesized that God's world would come to earth.
As an abstraction, we can envision a world like this. In fact my home is much like that. Cats, dog, bunnies, and people living in harmony. Where is the evil? Do we need to add evil to make it good?
I concede that we must suffer to know joy and you can't have hot without cold. But life is not a zero sum game. There are no limits on creation. Destruction can only destroy all that there is, but creation can continue ad infinitum.
This was the good news Jesus brought, a vision that breaks the mold of what humanity considered possible. A vision that I believe will come to be, and I did check his math.
-laugh-, so I have intellectualized a little. But the simple fact remains that there is no necessary tie between creation and destruction ultimately, except in our minds.
"Those that are not against us are for us"
It is not up to us to enslave those who do not choose not to participate in the battle against evil. If they live well we should applaud them. If they live poorly we should seek that they find help. We should invite them to join our quest but their indifference should never be despised.
If you choose to condone evil by declaring it necessary, that is your right, and though God expelled evil from heaven, he is still necessary here on earth. For unless we could see him clearly and in infinite detail, he can only be expelled by evolution, not by revolution.
Evil destroys people, relationships, cultures, and value in all things. To fight evil is to maximize value created. Evil exists everywhere.
If you choose crusade for truth against lies and for creation against destruction do not be self rightous about the cross you bear but stand firm against the condonation of evil and expel evil where ever you are welcomed. We are a mirror of the would and the evil out there is also in us.
"Seek first to clear the log from your own eye that you may see clearly to remove the speck from your brothers eye"
We must be firm in making choices for ourselves and not for others.
Budhism has three levels, personal, interpersonal and social. Judio-christian tradition exists primarily on the social level. Jesus re-introduced the personal relationship with God and a social front against evil. As Christian, Hindu, Islam, Budhist, or whatever I invite you to join the quest as we seek the same God. Speak out againt evil. Take action against it. Step carefully and seek fellowship that you do not become it.
"Do this in rememberance of me, let my blood be your drink and my body be your bread"
I'm all for synergy and would hate to waste food.
"Blessed is the lion that the man eats, for Lion becomes Man. Woe is the lion that eats the man for Man becomes Lion."
Indeed, I do not question the natural order.
What I do question is the carnage created by the rapists and murderers who have wiped out our genetic diversity to a greater extent than any other living creature including the buffalo.
Gengas Khan's bloodbath in the name of Buddha and the countless atrocities committed in the name of Jesus.
But first and foremost all the spirit and value I have hurt by my thoughtlessness and even the reckless sharing of the truth that has blessed me.
It is wise to understand how death can sustain life, but it is naive to think they are equal partners. The life organism, divided for one cell, continues grow in defiance of death. To consider death valuable before we have populated the galaxy and beyond is not an option for those of us who choose Life. The earth is rich in vast unused resources if we stop poisoning it and squandering its riches.
Someday there will be no war. There will be unprecedented wealth and freedom. Ideas have power. When their time comes they will be manifest.
It only requires that OneHundredMonkeys learn something usefull and the entire population of monkeys will use it.
"where did the mindset COME FROM?....from a cut-off mindset. prove to me otherwise if you can?"
I believe it is our nature as children of rapists and murderers (conquerers).
But you are correct, we are cut off, we are all alone ultimately. I went to live in the mines on Aspen mountain and Tailor national forest becaus I did not believe communication with other human beings was possible. After 3 weeks I was ready to blissfully accept death, I had no purpose alone I am a social creature. I decided to choose Life and rejoin humanity because something is better than nothing.
I am not a vegetarian. If you kill me, please eat me. But if I break your spirit for no good purpose than I am evil. Forgive me. I will learn from this lesson and hope to sin no more.
Truth is my only master, and my only companion.
I did not come to follow Jesus from the Bible. I denied him for many years even after becoming a spiritualist. It was reading the Gosphel of Thomas (not in Bible) that I realized he was as real as any other spirit and my denial was absurd.
And though he may speak for the Spirit of Life he is also just a Man.
I am a scientist, an information physicist. Information consists of truth values. I study the nature of Truth.
Science only addresses the objective and though it can enlighten us it can not address the subjective.
Humans like to be right, but in science, progress is discovering how we are wrong. I live to be wrong.
If I followed some book, or some philosophy, rather than Truth, I might not be so absolutely alone.
Even if you knew I was right, you could not concede to the truth unless it fit your mold of what the truth should be.
But just as in science, where nature stubbornly refuses to follow our old mathimatics and each new revolution reveals new mathematical systems. So too is Truth devastating to all that we knew before. It is much easier to deney it.
I used to hate the Christian church because of the Christian atrocities. Then I realized how mush worse it would have been if not for his law of love.
It could have been worse, and if the vision of the prophets is manifest we can expect it will be worse, much worse, unless we don't stop it.
Along with the vision of the new civilization goes the vision of the prophets of the destruction that will precede it which is just as clear but we do not wish to give it power.
If we know what things will encourage this destruction we will know evil and can stand firm against it.
"The purpose of prophecy is that it can be changed" Nostrademous
Context of the meaning of good and evil: 1. personal - evil is whatever you think it is (subjective) 2. interpersonal - love is good, hate is bad except in support of love. 3. social - value creation is good, value destruction is bad. 4. cosmic (finite) synergy is good, entropy is bad. 5. infinite - the choices of creation equal the destruction of possibilities. Everything is and is not.
The simple fact is that no reasonable being would choose destruction over creation, death over life, misery over contentment, darkness over light, or evil over good, (hum, repeating myself again..) but we sometimes choose it anyway or inadvertantly.
And knowing the difference between good and evil is not always easy or clear.
But there is much that we should be able to agree on.
1. acts are evil, not people or things. 2. evil is hurtful or destructive.
So why are we so wishywashy about the nature of evil? Is it not at least the simple and obvious? We can postpone judgement on difficult issues but can't we just call a spade a spade and stand firm against it as far as we agree about its nature?
The subjective beliefs that some spirit, person or object is evil, is outside our common understanding. You and I can act on those beliefs, but WE cannot. If we unite with respect to what we can agree on we can be a powerful force against evil.