[OT] Good, evil and religion [WAS] Re: A way to compile 3rd party modules into deb system?

[Celejar <celejar@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 4 May 2007 18:30:32 +0200
Florian Kulzer <florian.kulzer+debian@icfo.es> 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?
> 
> -- 
> Regards,            | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
>           Florian   |

Good questions, certainly, and difficult to answer well in any context,
and certainly in an OT discussion on d-u. I'll pass, for now at least,
on your first. WRT to your second, one example of what I had in mind
might be the murders and other evil acts committed by some communists
in the name of communism. While Stalin was as evil as they come, I
would conjecture that there were communists that one might consider
'good' (without providing a definition, but something along the lines
of well-meaning, unselfish and generally following, or trying to
folllow, some sort of moral code recognizable as such - I know that's
not a very good definition) who nevertheless did evil in communism's
name. Anothe example, for balance, might be certain US military actions
in Vietnam or even WWII. I believe that there were good (as above)  US
military personnel who committed acts that one might consider evil.

Celejar
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