OT: Religion, Good and Evil (was Re: A way to compile 3rd party modules into deb system?)
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Florian Kulzer wrote:
> On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 10:09:38 -0400, Celejar wrote:
>> On Thu, 03 May 2007 18:52:02 -0700
>> Kenward Vaughan wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>>> Kenward
>>> --
>>> With or without (religion) you would have good people doing good things
>>> and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
>>> things, that takes religion. --Physicist and Nobel Laureate Steven
>>> Weinberg
>> Even if true, there are different ways to interpret this:
>>
>> a) religion increases the number of people who do evil things,
>> extending {E:E does evil things} and causing it to overlap with
>> {g:g is a good person}
>>
>> b) religion increases the number of good people, extending {g:g is a
>> good person} and causing it to overlap with {E:E does evil things}
>>
>> In any case, I think Weinberg's assertion is ridiculous; no 'good'
>> atheist has ever done evil? Perhaps he means 'for good people to do
>> evil in the name of good', but it's still patently false; no 'good'
>> atheist has ever done evil in the name of a (secular) humanist ideal?
>> If Weinberg means that a 'good' atheist who does evil is by definition
>> not good, then this is sophistry; the same can be said about believers.
>> Apparently scientists, even great ones, can be as ignorant and shallow
>> as anyone else outside of their areas of expertise.
>
> What are, then, your definitions of "good people", "evil things" and
> "religion"? Which events in human history do you consider to be examples
> of good people doing evil things without religion being involved?
>
Well,
Good is a relative term. To some people something is good while other
people think the same thing is not good. For example good food.
Evil is generally considered a bad thing, but Evil is also the first
name of a good motorcycle stunt man.
Religion is a belief in something that cannot be proven by an objective
mind, but is surely true in the mind of the believer.
my $,02
Joe
- --
Registerd Linux user #443289 at http://counter.li.org/
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