Good and evil
Quote:Introducing the concept of good and evil imposes human judgement, a variable and unreliable thing on top of such appreciation and wonder. Religion introduces the idea that we may judge and condemn various things and, depending on if they agree with us or not, pronounce them good or evil. Such judging isolates us from the thing we judge, removes further thought or investigation. It stops us. It removes the sense of wonder.
What is a selfish person but someone who puts his own interests ahead of moral considerations because he is indifferent as to the consequences of his behavior on posterity? It matters (at least to good people) how the world turns out, and realistically, the world will be a better place if people are just. And what is justice but in the right way rewarding the good and thwarting the evil and selfish by protecting others from their depredations? Is not that an effective way of ensuring that the world will become a more beautiful place, to especially love those who in your judgement seek to make it a more beautiful place? To use a blatant example, should we not have contempt for those who don't judge mates prior to loving them unselfishly? What do you propose, Code Borg? That a woman throw dice to decide whether she wants to sleep with someone? And just because it may be best in most cases to judge artistically, it does not follow that we can't refine our artistic sensibilities by trying to understand them, by making rational moral judgments (by making rational judgments, we don't force ourselves to go by these judgments as opposed to our artistic ones).
There is some truth in what you are saying, inasmuch as ideally judgments of others outside the mating sphere should be as limited as possible. That is why a court of law is such a big deal and law needs to be imposed very carefully. But even here, that can be carried to excess. For instance, surely it were best if the West had come quicker to a full realization of the extreme evil of Hitler. But you seem to be saying something even more untenable, namely that it is wrong to judge various
things. Some things you do will cause the world to turn out one way, other things you do will cause the world to turn out another way.
Every choice you make will ripple through eternity to affect all of God's creation. Sometimes by taking the bother to think about the consequences of your choices on others, you can predict some of these effects. In my philosophy, the good choice is the choice that makes the world more beautiful, the bad choice is the one that makes the world less beautiful. It is not a matter of indifference.
Religion's judgments may be simplistic, but it is not the fault of the "concept of good and evil." True, people use the words good and evil like there is no gradation, whereas good and evil comes in all sorts of gradations, but so what? Do you really expect people to indicate how their moral philosophy applies to every particular shade of good and evil? That would be both unwieldy and unnecessary (e.g., the same arguments that apply to very good people also obviously tend to apply to people a little less than very good, only less so). You can believe in good and evil without believing in a strict dichotomy between the damned and the righteous--go right ahead, I wouldn't blame you. In defense of dualism, though, dualism is kind of appropriate when dealing with the addiction and depravity religion is most useful in reforming. Not that I'm on a quest to make each of my posts reference sodomy, but being traditional by definition, religion is mainly useful in fighting sodomy, and sodomy is literally a matter of one hole versus another hole.
In reference to the original question, the worst thing about a religion is if it is not against depravity. The second worst thing about a religion is if it tries to impose its out-of-date excessively puritanical views on non-screwed up people by wrongly trying to make them feel screwed-up. It could be that I think the former type of religion is worse now only because our age is particularly screwed-up. Hard to say, both types of religion are bad, and it doesn't seem all that important to choose accurately which is worst.
Gates just has to sign a check for a library or some other thing. He does not have to go and live among the dying, the stinking sick, the poorest of the poor.
