another problem of evil

[Alexiev]

The only good is that which is thought of as biologically good. If one wishes harm on another, of course, good would be for that person what is harmful to the target biological subject. Biology is the measure and the meaning of all things.

Bases on this principle, murdering a 50-year-old is not so evil as murdering a 20-year-old. Assisted suicide is evil -- but not SO bad, since it reduces life expectancy by only a few months. However, we should ban dangerous
activities like mountaineering. Maybe keeping everyone in safe, environmentally controlled, mandatory exercise prisons would work. Who cares about freedom? Who cares about quality of life? Only life expectancy is important!

Quality of life creates quantity of life.

That's often true, but not always, as the lives and deaths of martyred saints suggests. I'll grant that average life expectancy is one reasonable way to judge human well-being in a given society. But the correlation is far from absolute.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Bases on this principle, murdering a 50-year-old is not so evil as murdering a 20-year-old. Assisted suicide is evil -- but not SO bad, since it reduces life expectancy by only a few months. However, we should ban dangerous
activities like mountaineering. Maybe keeping everyone in safe, environmentally controlled, mandatory exercise prisons would work. Who cares about freedom? Who cares about quality of life? Only life expectancy is important!

Quality of life creates quantity of life.

That's often true, but not always, as the lives and deaths of martyred saints suggests. I'll grant that average life expectancy is one reasonable way to judge human well-being in a given society. But the correlation is far from absolute.

It's a start. Easy to judge any government on. One can then deconstruct where they're going wrong. The life expectancy of a handful of mythical people two thousand years ago is relevant how?

[Belinda]

The Trump regime are not Christians but pretend to be Christians to make themselves more popular with voters.

Yes. What is shocking is how many Christians support such a regime... 'evil' by their own standards. (Jesus would not vote for Trump or his agenda!) That's the sort of thing that seems to demonstrate (to me) how susceptible religion is to its own evils. Such followers cannot see or think clearly. They are intoxicated with their notions of separateness and evil. They would bring about Armageddon (so to speak) to fulfill their own demented prophecies... while blaming it on someone/something else.

Lately, I've been wondering how Bible prophecies might actually be warning the Christians about themselves... and where their creations lead?

'Faithful America 'is the name of a Christian organisation that is protecting Christianity in small peaceful ways.

That's truly wonderful. I appreciate any people who maintain clarity and open hearts.

I know there are wonderful people throughout the Christian traditions and teachings. But the larger movement seems like a monster to me, full of its own distortions, deception, delusions, and the power to destroy all that is actually and already naturally good and divine.

The surge to the right is gaining strength. Local elections here in the UK were dismal. Romania too.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

The Trump regime are not Christians but pretend to be Christians to make themselves more popular with voters.

Yes. What is shocking is how many Christians support such a regime... 'evil' by their own standards. (Jesus would not vote for Trump or his agenda!) That's the sort of thing that seems to demonstrate (to me) how susceptible religion is to its own evils. Such followers cannot see or think clearly. They are intoxicated with their notions of separateness and evil. They would bring about Armageddon (so to speak) to fulfill their own demented prophecies... while blaming it on someone/something else.

Lately, I've been wondering how Bible prophecies might actually be warning the Christians about themselves... and where their creations lead?

'Faithful America 'is the name of a Christian organisation that is protecting Christianity in small peaceful ways.

That's truly wonderful. I appreciate any people who maintain clarity and open hearts.

I know there are wonderful people throughout the Christian traditions and teachings. But the larger movement seems like a monster to me, full of its own distortions, deception, delusions, and the power to destroy all that is actually and already naturally good and divine.

The surge to the right is gaining strength. Local elections here in the UK were dismal. Romania too.

Yep, the race to the populist, xenophobic bottom is in full throttle here.

[Alexiev]

It's a start. Easy to judge any government on. One can then deconstruct where they're going wrong. The life expectancy of a handful of mythical people two thousand years ago is relevant how?

It's relevant as one of hundreds of potential examples. Others include assisted suicides, dangerous activities (like mountaineering), freedom of dietary choice, and even choosing to give birth at home instead of in a hospital (infant mortality is the leading cause of differential life expectancies). Some measures of societal success involve trade-offs. Authoritarian and fascist states often reduce crime rates, for example, at the cost of privacy, independence and freedom. I can see obsessing about average life expectancy doing the same. Ban sugar! No meat! No freedom of choice about health care! Etc.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

It's a start. Easy to judge any government on. One can then deconstruct where they're going wrong. The life expectancy of a handful of mythical people two thousand years ago is relevant how?

It's relevant as one of hundreds of potential examples. Others include assisted suicides, dangerous activities (like mountaineering), freedom of dietary choice, and even choosing to give birth at home instead of in a hospital (infant mortality is the leading cause of differential life expectancies). Some measures of societal success involve trade-offs. Authoritarian and fascist states often reduce crime rates, for example, at the cost of privacy, independence and freedom. I can see obsessing about average life expectancy doing the same. Ban sugar! No meat! No freedom of choice about health care! Etc.

I don't want freedom of choice about health care. I just want to know that the nearest hospital is excellent. The same with schools, care homes. You know, like in Cuba. Freedom to be rich for the few comes at the expense of the many's freedom from poverty. That is the greatest institutionalized evil in democracy.

[Alexiev]

It's a start. Easy to judge any government on. One can then deconstruct where they're going wrong. The life expectancy of a handful of mythical people two thousand years ago is relevant how?

It's relevant as one of hundreds of potential examples. Others include assisted suicides, dangerous activities (like mountaineering), freedom of dietary choice, and even choosing to give birth at home instead of in a hospital (infant mortality is the leading cause of differential life expectancies). Some measures of societal success involve trade-offs. Authoritarian and fascist states often reduce crime rates, for example, at the cost of privacy, independence and freedom. I can see obsessing about average life expectancy doing the same. Ban sugar! No meat! No freedom of choice about health care! Etc.

I don't want freedom of choice about health care. I just want to know that the nearest hospital is excellent. The same with schools, care homes. You know, like in Cuba. Freedom to be rich for the few comes at the expense of the many's freedom from poverty. That is the greatest institutionalized evil in democracy.

So you want Big Brother forcing you (and everyone else) to eat only healthy foods, mandating an exercise program (off to the gulags if you don't walk your 10,000 steps!), and operating on you without your permission? Alrighty, then. Freedom involves the freedom to make dangerous and unwise choices. Maybe the Christians who were fed to the lions were unwise -- but maybe they weren't. Either way, shouldn't they have the right to decide?

Of course I agree that in rich countries, health care should be available to all.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

It's relevant as one of hundreds of potential examples. Others include assisted suicides, dangerous activities (like mountaineering), freedom of dietary choice, and even choosing to give birth at home instead of in a hospital (infant mortality is the leading cause of differential life expectancies). Some measures of societal success involve trade-offs. Authoritarian and fascist states often reduce crime rates, for example, at the cost of privacy, independence and freedom. I can see obsessing about average life expectancy doing the same. Ban sugar! No meat! No freedom of choice about health care! Etc.

I don't want freedom of choice about health care. I just want to know that the nearest hospital is excellent. The same with schools, care homes. You know, like in Cuba. Freedom to be rich for the few comes at the expense of the many's freedom from poverty. That is the greatest institutionalized evil in democracy.

So you want Big Brother forcing you (and everyone else) to eat only healthy foods, mandating an exercise program (off to the gulags if you don't walk your 10,000 steps!), and operating on you without your permission? Alrighty, then. Freedom involves the freedom to make dangerous and unwise choices. Maybe the Christians who were fed to the lions were unwise -- but maybe they weren't. Either way, shouldn't they have the right to decide?

Of course I agree that in rich countries, health care should be available to all.

The poor choose to be? They choose to consume highly processed - junk - food? Alcohol. Other drugs.

Let them eat cake?

Health care available as a publicly free good? Why? And why not education? Including physical. Cultural. Elder care?

Do the many choose not to have a stake in the land, in the means of production of wealth, while the few 'own' it?

[promethean75]

Don't go there, Clarke. These boys are no Historical Materialists. You're takin' em too far back in time and they're gonna get lost af.

[Alexiev]

The poor choose to be? They choose to consume highly processed - junk - food? Alcohol. Other drugs.

Let them eat cake?

Health care available as a publicly free good? Why? And why not education? Including physical. Cultural. Elder care?

Do the many choose not to have a stake in the land, in the means of production of wealth, while the few 'own' it?

Since you ask, yes. Poor and rich alike choose to live unhealthy lives. Why do you seem to think rich people can choose to drink too much alcohol, but poor people have no choice?

Your other questions are non sequiturs. Most relatively rich countries provide free (and often mandatory) education.

Of course public health care is important. However, Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico and more have longer life expectancies than Cuba (of Latin American countries). I suppose many of those nations' stats are diminished by political death sentences, imprisonments, and tortures. So I can't embrace life expectancy as the sin qua non of political and national success.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

None of them are embargoed are they?

[popeye1945]

Somewhere, sometime, someone was born just in time be covered in lava. Mysterious ways indeed.

There is no such thing as evil, there is that which supports life and that which disrupts life processes. Evil is the product of evil religion, systems of archaic misinformation.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Don't go there, Clarke. These boys are no Historical Materialists. You're takin' em too far back in time and they're gonna get lost af.

No you're right. Sorry it's taken over a month. How's your 50 year old liver? The deprived, the underprivileged, have only got themselves to blame; they should have chosen better parents.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Don't go there, Clarke. These boys are no Historical Materialists. You're takin' em too far back in time and they're gonna get lost af.

No you're right. Sorry it's taken over a month. How's your 50 year old liver? The deprived, the underprivileged, have only got themselves to blame; they should have chosen better parents.

I've had to un-Foe you for reasons that may become sustained. It was nothing personal. I wonder why I did it now.

[Walker]

Somewhere, sometime, someone was born just in time be covered in lava. Mysterious ways indeed.

Life is the measure of all things, and by that measure, lava can be measured as quite powerful.

No mystery there.

Oh wait. That's right. Someone died so it must be God's fault that lava is powerful and people die as a result.

In fact, God eventually kills everyone. Mystery solved.


Carry on.