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From: garys@bunker.UUCP (Gary M. Samuelson)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Re: contruction/destruction
Message-ID: <734@bunker.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 25-Feb-85 17:12:25 EST
Article-I.D.: bunker.734
Posted: Mon Feb 25 17:12:25 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Feb-85 13:02:52 EST
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From me (Gary Samuelson):
> > Now I am puzzled.  Is this the same Tim Maroney who wrote "Even if I DID
> > believe...", in which said Tim objected to the God of the Bible
> > because of said God's destructive activities?  And this same person
> > is now saying that destruction is good?  There appears to be an
> > inconsistency here.

From Tim Maroney:
> Perhaps there does if your major concern is contradicting rather than
> comprehending.  Your twisting of my position is absurd.

OK, if I replace the "destruction is good" with "destruction may be good,"
is that still twisting your position?  Or if I add the phrase "in
some cases" after "destruction" ?

But in any case, I resent the implication that I (deliberately) twisted
your position, when it is just as reasonable to suppose that I either
misunderstood your position, or was unclear in stating my own (in this
case, the latter holds).

> I claimed that
> neither creation nor destruction is good or evil in itself; you are saying I
> claimed that all destructive acts are good.
  
I apologize if that is what I appeared to be saying, do the modifications
above make it clearer?

I understand that you claimed that destruction is not evil in itself.
But in claiming that God is evil because he destroys, you seemed to
be implicitly taking the position that destruction is evil.
But if destruction, per se, is not evil, why is God evil if he
destroys?

> Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor....

Sure, anyone who disagrees with you is obviously guilty of perjury.

> > Opinion time: whether destruction is good or not depends on whether
> > destruction is for its own sake, or for the sake of the anticpated
> > construction.

> That criterion fails.

Perhaps, if you are more interested in contradiction than in
comprehension.  (Oh, you don't like it when others use the
same rhetorical tricks you use?)

I will admit, though, that the above opinion does not provide
a complete analysis of the relationship between construction
vs. destruction and good vs. evil.

> When David Letterman smashes things in a hydraulic
> press, he is doing it for its own sake, but it could hardly be claimed that
> this is evil.  In fact, it's a lot of fun.

I must confess ignorance of David Letterman's use of a hydraulic press;
I will therefore make no other comment.

> Destroying smallpox was good in
> itself depite the fact that nothing was constructed to take its place.

Sure there was; smallpox itself was destructive.  Many people
were able to live because of the eradication of smallpox; they could be
said to take its place.  Or is there some other reason why the destruction
of smallpox was good?

> > In each of Tim's examples in which destruction is held
> > to be good, the destruction is good because it allows the construction
> > to proceed.  Therefore, destruction is "less good" than creation, in
> > that while creation may be viewed as good in and of itself, destruction's
> > goodness is contingent.
> 
> No.  It is possible to create and have that be an evil.  For instance, if I
> were to build an antimatter bomb capable of trashing the planet, that would
> be evil.  If you were to destroy the antimatter bomb, that would be good,
> despite the fact that you have no intention of creating anything.

Suppose I destroy it by setting it off? :-)  Seriously, the creation
of such a bomb is only evil if its purpose is to trash the planet
(or to threaten such trashing).

Most people would consider the trashing of the planet a great evil;
clearly, you are among those, or you would not be opposed to building
such a device.  But why is the destruction of the planet evil?
If you destroy the bomb, ostensibly to prevent the destruction of
the planet, then you are merely choosing the lesser of two destructions,
which indicates a preference for non-destruction, which you say you
do not have.

Note that the purpose of the bomb is distinct from the capability
of the bomb; suppose the bomb was created to destroy an asteroid on
a collision course with the earth, and was in fact used for that
purpose.  In this case, the bomb has the capability of trashing
the earth, but it would also have the capability of trashing the
asteroid; again, choosing the lesser of two destructions.  (Make
the assumption that the asteroid is unhabited, and any others
necessary to make it less valuable than the earth.)

> Destruction's good is not necessarily contingent on a later creation; I just
> used that as the most clear-cut example, and to show the interdependency of
> the processes.

And I am attempting to show that the interdependency is not
symmetrical.

Destruction's good may be contingent on facilitating a later creation,
as in your first examples, or on preserving a present creation, as
in your new examples.

> > Also, destruction cannot occur prior to creation, but creation can
> > occur prior to destruction.  Before anything was created (if you
> > accept the possibility of such a concept), it was possible only
> > to create, not to destroy, since there was nothing to destroy.
> 
> Meaningless.  If there was nothing, then there was no one to perform any
> creation.  If there was someone to perform creation, then there was
> something that could be destroyed.

Ok, posit a situation in which a being capable of creating something
ex nihilo exists, but nothing else exists.  Now, creation can occur
without prior destruction.  Posit furthermore that said being cannot
self-destruct.  Then, destruction cannot take place prior to creation.

> Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University Computation Center

Gary Samuelson
ittvax!bunker!garys