AllYou! wrote:
> In
> news:58a463ca-8e2d-4218-a360-8222d014f33c@1g2000pre.googlegroups.com,
> Erin <squig...@sympatico.ca> mused:
>> AllYou! wrote:
>>> In
>>> news:6775e4c0-b9dc-4c9e-9d4c-0e0555a6112a@p31g2000prf.googlegroups.com,
>>> Erin <squig...@sympatico.ca> mused:
>>>> Doug Laidlaw wrote:
>>>>> Reading Erin's troubles with the presence of evil in the
>>>>> world, I thought that the answer given by GROW (the
>>>>> Australian 12-step group network, started by a Catholic
>>>>> priest) was worth repeating:

>>>>> Most of us stopped asking that question long ago.  It stops us
>>>>> from getting better.  It shifts the blame to God, and absolves
>>>>> us of the responsibility of developing our characters to deal
>>>>> with it.

>>>>> No answer.  Just don't ask the question.  Taoism as expressed
>>>>> in "The Tao of Poh" is full of the same theme:  Don't ask
>>>>> unnecessary questions.  Don't waste government money on
>>>>> research which increases knowledge with no practical
>>>>> application.  Don't worry about "the world" being evil,
>>>>> because the world is something you can't change.  Yourself,
>>>>> you can change (within limits, but pessimism isn't one of them.)

>>>>> Doug L.

>>>> Hi Doug,

>>>> I am inclined to follow Camus on this.  It does bother me when
>>>> people do not follow and create happiness when they can.  But
>>>> I know that outside the personal level, as you say, "evil" in
>>>> the world does exist so much as a quality as indifference to
>>>> individuals. Concepts like good and evil belong to the human
>>>> realm, and not to the world itself.

>>> The word, itself, includes the human realm.

>> You mean people are evil?  The thing is sometimes
>> they are evil and sometimes they are good, and much
>> depends on their circumstances.  But when it comes
>> to choice, that's where the real dual nature man comes
>> out: to bomb or not to bomb, that is the question, for example.

> No, I don't mean that peole are evil.  People are people.  The very
> intellect which allows people to conceptualize good and evil, and to
> be able to judge people as such, is also what allows them to be
> either good, or evil, and so it's all kind of neutral, as far as
> nature goes.

> And I don not see any duel nature to people.