[Buddha-l] Fighting creationism

[Richard Hayes]

On Wednesday 04 April 2007 17:17, SJZiobro at cs.com wrote:

> I did say that the spread of AIDS became a moral evil once it's origins and
> the ways in which it is spread were known.  It therefore becomes morally
> incombent upon any human being to cease engaging in the sorts of activities
> whereby he or she is exposed to AIDS, or, if s/he already has the HIV
> virus, exposing others to the illness.

In other words, it is morally incumbent on people to use condoms, despite 
their use being discouraged by many Christian communities. I quite agree with 
you on this. 

> You are
> absolutely right to draw our attention to there being an evil that is not
> moral in kind, and that I guess you could call a natural evil.

It's not my way to be absolute about much of anything, so I resent being 
accused of being absolutely right. Also, I am not at all comfortable with the 
phrase "natural evil." Evil, it seems to me is a moral term, and nature it 
seems to me has no connection at all with morality. Morality is a human 
artifice---a departure from nature, I would claim. Natural evil therefore 
strikes me as a category mistake.  

The rest of what you say about God is something that presupposes adherence to 
a particular brand of Christian theology and is really irrelevant on 
buddha-l. One could, I suppose make it relevant by referring to medieval 
Indian Buddhist arguments against certain Brahmanical theological claims, but 
why rehearse a bunch of arguments from 1500 years ago?

> Considering the millions of people who have HIV/AIDS, I suspect that the
> numbers where malice is operative are higher than you might grant.

My guess is that quite a few people on this planet are sexually active, many 
of them with more than one partner. That seems enough of an explanation to 
account for the spread of AIDS. In comparison with lust, I'd guess malice is 
a very trivial factor.

> Anecdotally, though, I know of instances where somebody
> knowingly, intentionally, willingly gave another HIV/AIDS.

I have heard of one such case. Offhand, I'd say that the number of people who 
deliberately spread AIDS is infiitesimal  in comparison with the number of 
people who deliberately fire bullets into the bodies of others or detonate 
bombs in the presence of others. On the list of moral concerns facing us in 
the world today, I think the issue of AIDS is close to the bottom of the 
list. Nearer the top would be war, consumerism and other forms of collective 
and individual acquisitiveness and greed and stupidity.

> I agree with you here, Richard, although I don't rule out the possibility
> (even the probability) there there are some who come close to willing evil
> as evil.

I have always subscribed to the view that every action is motivated by a 
desire to do some kind of good. I have never yet heard of a single instance 
of an action that does not seem like an attempt to do something good. My view 
is that what some call evil is better understood as a case of settling for a 
lesser good than one might have aimed for. This , of course, is not an issue 
that can ever be proved. It is just how I prefer to look at human affairs, 
because it makes it easier for me to forgive actions that annoy me. 
Forgiveness is very high on my list of priorities. I tend to agree with Lee 
Thorn's dictum: "Evil is an abstraction that enables you to look at someone 
and not see the person." (Read more about Lee Thorn at 
http://www.since1968.com/article/13/jhai )

-- 
Richard Hayes
http://home.comcast.net/~dayamati