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From: gds@mit-eddie.UUCP (Greg Skinner)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Good and evil
Message-ID: <1105@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 31-Dec-83 00:57:57 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.1105
Posted: Sat Dec 31 00:57:57 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Jan-84 02:06:10 EST
References: <447@ihuxq.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 38

You must recall that according to the Bible, man was the cause of
original sin and the fall from grace.  Before Eve ate the apple from the
tree, all of what Adam and Eve needed was provided for them.  (The
Bible doesn't say that Adam and Eve hunted animals for food, but it
doesn't either, so you can draw your own conclusions.)  What is
important is that all the suffering of the Israelites, their 40-year
trek in the desert, God's deliverance of the enemies of Israel into the
Israelites' hands, etc. is a cause of original sin.

To put it another way, man screwed up and got kicked off easy street, why
does he complain that God is unjust in his dealings of punishments?  If
one is to follow the Bible literally, one cannot blame God for man's
transgressions, except maybe to say that God should not have created man
to be able to screw up if he hadn't wanted him to -- then God would have
created robots not intelligent beings.  The other alternative would have
been for God to wipe out his creation again and again until he finally
had a crop of living beings left over who would propagate into a race
which lived according to His commandments.  But then, He would never
have been able to do this, because He created man to have free will --
there would always be some bad sheep which would give rise to worse
sheep, etc.

One more thing:  there is a big difference between a coyote eating a
rabbit and a human being hunting rabbits for sport.  The former is an
act of survival -- the coyote eats rabbits to stay alive.  Whether or
not he relishes the taste of rabbit is immaterial -- it is not a sin, or
evil, for the coyote to like rabbit -- he is behaving as he must to stay
alive.  On the other hand, the human who kills a rabbit is acting out of
selfishness -- it is not ok -- it is evil.  Whether it is a sin is
another issue, however, it is morally wrong to take a life (even if
non-human) unnecessarily.  So, when you talk about good and evil, you
must restrict your examples to clear cases of good/evil, not cases
involving survival (that includes people eating chickens, etc.)

Oh Please Don't Burn My Mailbox

--greg
...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!gds