Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site rti-sel.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!mcnc!rti-sel!wfi
From: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Re: Omnipotence, justice and suffering: a very long question.
Message-ID: <319@rti-sel.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Jul-85 13:18:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: rti-sel.319
Posted: Tue Jul 30 13:18:54 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 00:40:18 EDT
References: <1034@phs.UUCP> <501@scc.UUCP> <307@rti-sel.UUCP> <521@scc.UUCP>
Reply-To: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC
Lines: 38
Summary: 

In article <521@scc.UUCP> steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes:

>	I am amazed that you would believe that I am a Christian
>or something like that.  I am an agnostic too!    

I must have misread your posting, so I apologize. All I saw was the
old argument that nonreligious people can only base their ethical
system on pure self-interest, and felt obliged to point out that it's
not necessarily so (although many nonbelievers do, I realize).

> I think
>self interest is a wonderful mode of operation.  Some people
>get a lot of pleasure out of doing things for other people.
>There is nothing about believing that good and evil are relative
>that makes me a barbarian.  All it does is allow me to understand
>the points of view of different people, and save me from delemmas
>like "why did god create evil?"

It may work for you, but (as you can tell  from my posting) I've
chosen a different path. The danger I see in self interest is that it
can lead to behaviors that are detrimental to the well-being of my
fellow humans. Some people get a lot of pleasure out of doing things
for other people like killing them and causing them pain, after all. 
I find the argument for ethics from the 'social being' perspective 
much more likely to lead to humanitarian and egalitarian behavior 
than the argument from the 'self-interest' perspective. And it would 
seem to lead to a set of ethics everyone in society can agree on, 
which is not true of the self-interest argument. 

Proper and improper behavior is a matter of social consensus, not
individual choice. The definitions may change through time and across
cultures, but there's always a core that most people in a society will
agree on. The decision to act only in one's own self interest seems
barbaric to me because it runs contrary to that which makes us most
human: the social contract we sign with our fellow human beings when
we come into the world.

                 -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly