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From: kfk@ccien2.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Good and Evil
Message-ID: <220@ccieng5.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Jan-84 12:48:29 EST
Article-I.D.: ccieng5.220
Posted: Wed Jan  4 12:48:29 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Jan-84 02:26:14 EST
Lines: 53

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     From hou3c!ka Mon Jan  2 18:57:56 1984
                                                             ... In the
     Old Testament offspring are viewed as extensions of their parents, in
     particular of their fathers.  This viewpoint is alien to the concept
     of individualistic morality which I, and probably the vast majority
     of people on the net accept.

                    ... Each person is an individual and is responsible for
     their own actions, not those of his parents.
----------
Hmm.  I think the current state of the justice system in this country
would argue the point.  There are successful defenses being made by
persons on trial that they act they way they do because that's what
their parents did, or that's what they were taught by their parents.
For some reason which escapes me, this is considered a reason to let
a person off the hook for some fairly heavy-duty crimes.  (I would argue
the converse: defending yourself by passing the buck to your parents
demonstrates immense immaturity, and, if convicted, I would make the
sentence on the convict a bit more stiff.)  I won't argue which is more
correct just now (i.e., children are or aren't extensions of their
parents), but I don't think the blanket statement can be made that
children are not considered extensions of their parents, particularly
when questions of wrongdoing come up.  There are also the psychologists
who espouse that a person has thus-and-so a condition because of their
potty training or some such similar thing.
----------
     P.S. I'm not sure that there is Biblical support for the idea that
     people have free will.  Consider Exodus 10.1:
	     Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go in to the Pharaoh; for I have
	     hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may
	     show these signs of mine amoung them, and that you may tell in
	     the hearing of your son and of your son's son how I have made
	     sport of the Egyptians and what signs I have done amoung them;
	     that they may know that I am the Lord.
     This passage hardly suggests that the Pharoah has free will.
----------
Well, yes and no.  Insufficient context was supplied.  I discussed this
with an Orthodox Jew with whom I work, and his description was this: the
first 5 plagues were inflicted on the Egyptians with the Pharoah letting
his own will run the show.  Then, after the fifth plague, "the will of
Pharoah was known," which is to say that it had become obvious that Pharoah
wasn't interested in the least in letting the people go.  During this time,
Pharoah hardened his own heart.  Once his will was known, and he was in a
sense beyond hope, God continued to use the situation.  In this instance,
God maintained the hardening of his heart, but this was only after the
Pharoah's own free will had been fully expressed.  When the last 5 plagues
had come and gone, and Pharoah's son had died, his will was broken.  He
could have used his free will any time up to the fifth plague, but chose
not to; at that time, God took over the situation.

Karl Kleinpaste
...![ [seismo, allegra]!rochester!ritcv, rlgvax]!ccieng5!ccieng2[!:]kfk