[Buddha-l] Fighting creationism

[SJZiobro at cs.com]

In a message dated 4/2/2007 11:49:31 AM Eastern Daylight Time, rhayes at unm.edu 
writes: 
> I can just barely follow what you are saying here. No, I exaggerate. I 
> cannot 
> follow what you are saying here. Could you try rephrasing what you are 
> saying 
> and show how it ties in to your earlier claim that (if I understood you 
> correctly) AIDS has a purpose?

I'll rephrase, Richard.  My point about AIDS was a sort of counter remark to 
Erik's imputation of its evil to the Good.  In Erik's rhetoric God created 
AIDS and is morally responsible for the harm it causes.  Where Erik is correct is 
to point out that, should one accept that God is the transcendent Cause of 
all that is and nothing exists without that Cause exercizing its power, one must 
also affirm that God is in some manner operative in all that happens.  Where 
Erik is mistaken is to attribute a moral evil to that Cause.  There is nothing 
inherently morally evil in the fact that the HIV virus exists and that it was 
originally and naturally confined to some species of non-human animals, or 
even that it jumped species.  The only way it was able to span that divide was 
through some sort of contact.  Whatever the contact, once the virus jumped 
species and entered the human sphere it was naturally propagated through different 
kinds of contact.  Once the origin and result were understood its continued 
spread became a humanly moral issue, because humans propagate it among their 
own.  So the moral evil is ours, not God's.  You are absolutely right to point 
out that the HIV/AIDS virus has no purpose, and I thought my earlier remarks 
were in agreement therewith.  But the virus can be purposely propagated by some 
human beings, for whatever reason.  So it is proper to say that a human being 
has a purpose for propagating it.  It does not seem in my understanding 
difficult to hold this view.  The real question, it seems, is whether one intends 
and wills something evil precisely because it is evil, or whether there is some 
good that is sought to which the evil is somehow allied.

Stan   
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