My primary and only objection to the word 'evil' is that it carries a lot of baggage -- religious baggage -- and while a lot of bad in the world comes about as a result of religion, especially christianity and islam, there is also a lot of badness that comes about primarily as the result of human failure to communicate, greed, avarice, envy, laziness, and last but far from least -- fear!
But back to my primary objection. When the word 'evil' is put into play it connotes beelzebub, satan, lucifer, angel of darkness, antichrist, apollyon, diabolus, king of hell, mephistopheles, prince of darkness, archfiend, demon, the evil spirit, god of this world (II Corinthians 4:4), son of perdition (John 17:12, II Thessalonians 2:3), the wicked one (Matthew 13:19), abaddon (Revelation 9:11), belial (II Corinthians 6:15), and a thousand thousand other names, which in turn connote a thousand thousand names of of god. I could go on till you were all bored into a state of 'evil', but not wishing to belabor issue, evil connotes not good but god. There is plenty of badness in the world that comes about without the concept of a god. Being bad is an entirely human trait and weakness and to my mind it is born, not of god or the devil, but of the human ability to raise normal fear to heights heretofore unreachable. The world is slowly coming to a humanist point of view rather than a religious one, and though there is still far to go -- christianity has the most adherents (2+ billion) and islam has the second most adherents (1+ billion), non believers and atheists come in a very close third (1+ billion) -- you can bet the percentage of those who are bad among the latter is very close to the percentage of those who are 'evil' among christians and muslims. We do not need god to be bad. It's perfectly human to be so, and I firmly believe that until we stop connecting bad with evil -- the religious -- we can't stop using the concept of god and the devil in all their incarnations and we won't be able to assume responsibility for our own behavior. As long as people can blame the devil, they can escape that responsibility. I'm a frayed knot too. P.S. - I would NEVER burn a steak. On Apr 5, 7:18 pm, Slip Disc <[email protected]> wrote: > Why is evil always so hard to nail down or why does it seem that no > one really wants to identify it but simply dissect the potentiality of > what it may define. You don't consider anything on the video as evil > but do recognize it as bad, horrifying and obscene, which basically > covers the face of evil, but rather bypass evil representation to > bring attention to religious aspects, which by the way I agree with > 100%, don't burn your steak here. The dark ages are still upon us > brother and while technology creates a vision of advancement, > attitudes and behaviours create a different picture, the picture of > reality, of good and of evil. I feel we must somehow find resolve in > the issue of what is evil. We have here a collection of brilliant > minds, myself excluded lol, and so we can somehow be assertive in our > resolve. I find too many threads wind up as fray ends. Which reminds > me of a thread that walked into a bar, the bartender said "we don't > serve threads", so the thread walked out, shredded out it's end and > tied itself into a loop, walked back into the bar, the bartender > noticed and immediately and irately said, "damn, I told you we don't > serve threads in here", the thread responded "I'm not a thread" at > which the bartender scowled, "you are so" and so the thread having the > last word said "nope, I'm a frayed knot". --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Minds-Eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
