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From: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Omnipotence, justice and suffering: a very long question.
Message-ID: <307@rti-sel.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Jul-85 14:11:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: rti-sel.307
Posted: Tue Jul 23 14:11:58 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jul-85 22:41:52 EDT
References: <1034@phs.UUCP> <501@scc.UUCP>
Reply-To: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC
Lines: 35
Summary: 

In article <501@scc.UUCP> steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes:

>	If you don't believe in god, then there is no question to
>resolve.   Good and evil become subjective.  What is good to me
>is good to me, what is evil to me is evil to me.  If someone
>gets eaten by a lion, it is not too good for the person,  but
>it is great for the lion.  If someone gets ripped off it is 
>not good for them, but it might improve the life of the person
>who did the ripping off (or his or her dealer). 

Why is it that so many of you always assume that `secular humanists'
always operate in a state of subjective self-interest? It seems to me 
you've got your minds made up about the reasons we nonreligious 
barbarians do the things we do. Of course, you don't just trash the 
secular humanists; I see someone has done a pretty good job on the 
followers of Islam, recently. Don't you just LOVE sweeping 
generalizations, folks?

I'm an agnostic. Most of you probably assume right off the bat 
that  life has no  meaning for someone like me, right? Wrongo,
Pentateuch-breath. And the meaning of the things I do in my day-to-day
living is NOT defined solely by the value of those things to me. It's
very simple, really; we humans are social animals, and any meaning our
lives have is defined by our status as social beings. We come into
this life with nothing, and inherit a rich culture from those around
us. The person who lives his life in selfish isolation from those
around him, choosing to act in his own self interest, has rejected the
very thing that makes him human: his cultural heritage. There is no
judgement at the end of life but our own; we must assess our
contributions to the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of our
fellow travelers and decide whether we lived our lives by the Golden
Rule before we pass on into the great dark. The good and bad effects 
of our actions are the only immortality we're sure of. 

                                -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly