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From: gds@mit-eddie.UUCP (Greg Skinner)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Good and evil
Message-ID: <1139@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Jan-84 13:50:52 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.1139
Posted: Sun Jan  8 13:50:52 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Jan-84 01:59:06 EST
References: <208@wxlvax.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 41

	Okay, greg, I won't burn your mailbox, I'll just ask a couple of 
	questions:  if, ask you suppose, there once was a man who "lived
        on easy street" and made one mistake, why am I still being
        punished for it?  Why are all the babies who are too young to
        know what's going on still being punished for it?   

Again, why are the babies suffering?  Not because God is allowing it to
happen, but because man is.  And if you are suffering, it is likely that
someone is inflicting his own punishments on you, not because God is
directing him to do so but because he is exercising his free will to do
you harm.  (Read my earlier article about IBM & Exxon re: starving, I'm
sure you won't disagree with me.)

	Let me preface my last question with a story:  my
        aunt-in-law-to-be (my finacee's aunt) has a farm in Montana.  On
        this farm she raises chickens. 	One would think that she does
        not like foxes, for they steal chickens to eat (just like the
        bunnies and coyotes you talk of).  But worst of all, she hates
        minks.  Why?  Because if a mink gets into a henhouse, it will
        kill every chicken in there, eating one or none.  Now the
        question: what was the mink's "original sin?"  This seems a
        logical question to me, since you seem to blame the evil of
        mens' conduct on *their* original sin. 

I don't see what this has to do with original sin.  Original sin is a
result of Adam and Eve's fall from grace.  Even if (and I have yet to
meet any mortal who never sinned) there was someone who could
conclusively claimed he had never sinned (and yet did not profess his
belief in God) under definition, he is still outside of grace (... that
if you would confess with your mouth "Jesus is Lord", and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved ... --
Romans 10:9 NIV).  Most certainly I cannot call his lack of sinning
something to the greater glory of Satan (in case you're wondering where
I stand on that issue) because surely good can be done through a
non-Christian -- the point is that it's not the fact that he doesn't
sin, but why he doesn't that's important -- perhaps we should separate
sin from wrongdoing.  (a topic for my next article)
-- 
--greg
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