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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (41039)	6/19/1999 11:37:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Depends in part on whether you evalutate the evilness of an action with hindsight or then-sight. To us now, it was certainly evil. But in many cases they actually believed they were saving souls; were in fact doing good works for those people, keeping them from the Devil. Not all cases, I agree, but some. From our perspective they were as deluded as the slaveowners who truly believed they were doing the black savages from Africa and civilizing them. And certainly we should learn from the wrongs of the past. But we also have to be careful about judgments made solely from the perspective of centuries away. Stalin and Lenin, on the other hand, barely even pretended to have good motives. They were out simply to consolidate power, and they knew it.

To: Ilaine who wrote (41039)	6/20/1999 2:51:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Respomding to your marvelous but incomplete list of religious based atrocities, I thank you for its small c catholicity. It is fruitless to rank the horrors of enforced belief. Hamlet (actually Shakespeare or Bacon or Southhampton or someone) said "If we all get what we deserve, who'll 'scape whipping." Anyone who acts on others will do evil. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Who knows anyone's intentions of will. No man can be a judge in his own cause. Kant said the only good was the good will. But when people injure others "to save their souls" I deny that is a good will. Some of the worst people I know of were conquerors and some of the other bad guys were priests. There have been rotten defenders and atheists too. Ideas are not responsible for those who claim to believe them. I believe Jesus had a loving good will -- and learned through the travels of his ministry to love gentiles as well as Jews. I believe the high priests who destroyed him viewed him as a blasphemer. Certainly they would not have killed the Son of God or the messiach. As Jews there will was good. As men, they were evil through and through. If God or Peter killed Sapphira and Ananias for their withholding something for their old age from the early church, they were evil through and through IMO. A good will is imponderable. We can only try to think good will to men. We may not always succeed.