From: Sonya Hipper (sonyalynn_at_earthlink.net)
Date: Wed Sep 15 2004 - 11:08:21 PDT
At the risk of causing a Holy War, this analogy is completely
spurious...more a poetic analogy than a logical one.
The commission of any act construed as "evil" requires activity on the
perpetrator's part. Also, from a real-world perspective, many who've
had God in their hearts have committed unspeakable acts of "evil" (the
Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, those who found biblical
justifications for slavery, the continued and systematic oppression of
women, gays/lesbians/bi-folk/trans-folk, and so on...). Like wise, many
have committed plentiful acts of "good" without the belief in an
Abrahamic (Christian/Jewish/Muslim) "God" as their motivation.
One could argue that none of the Crusaders, Inquisitors,
"Promise-Keepers", or "Left Behind" readers (and I challenge anyone to
prove that those books are anything other than a literary "evil" on a
scale with, say, Shatner's "Tekwar" series. :-P ) never *really* had
God's love in their hearts, but it would be an argument completely
unable to be proven or disproven by logic since no one can quantify
"God's Love".
Just my agnostic $.02.
-Sonya
Dale Raby writes:
> To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist, sir, or at least it
> does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is
> just like darkness and cold -- a word that man has created to describe
> the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith,
> or love, that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of
> what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart.
> It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat, or the darkness
> that comes when there is no light."
==
"I urge you all today, especially today during these
times of chaos and war, to love yourself without reservations
and to love each other without restraint. Unless you're into
leather. And then, by all means, use restraints."
—Margaret Cho
Sonya Hipper
sonyalynn_at_earthlink.net
AIM: SonyaLynn
Yahoo: thesonyalynn
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