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Which of these is the worst evil or wrong?
- Thread starter TricksterWolf
- Start date
Yusuf Evans
Well-Known Member
Also, if someone knows that Jesus is the truth, how can they possibly not believe??I don't know how to know something without believing it...
Trickster
It happens, and people go to their grave denying it.
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No, this doesn't make any logical sense. Please tell me how someone knows anything without believing it. Knowledge is generally used to indicate a stronger form of belief!It happens, and people go to their grave denying it.
Trickster
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Yusuf Evans
Well-Known Member
It's one thing to know it's the Truth. It's quite another to accept the Gift of Salvation.
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But if someone doesn't believe in X, then they obviously don't know that X is true! If they knew, they would necessarily believe. I still can't comprehend what you're saying.
Trickster
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Yusuf Evans
Well-Known Member
It's not a matter if you believe or not. It's the matter of believing and not willing to humble yourself before the Lord. This means dropping to your knees and acknowledging that you are a sinner and need salvation.
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Yusuf Evans
Well-Known Member
to this, too! The truth hurts, sometimes.
Yeah, that old sin of pride can have some damaging consequences.
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The valuation of the effects of an action - even if we assume a consistent set of standards for good and bad with the beholder - can vary greatly, depending on the perspective, on the factors considered and regarded relevant, and on the point in time the effect is looked at.
Since there is not only one effect to one action (but billions of things that it co-effects, and since there is not only one cause for any given result (but billions of them), the idea of determining the value of an action by the effect is highly questionable.
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I agree. But I would extend it to say that determining the value of an action in advance is also flawed.
I don't like genocide, mind you, and I employ logic to make decisions. But do I believe I have all the answers or that I can tell good fortune from ill? No. Most of the evil in this world is done by people who are inflexibly convinced that they are right and willing to try and shape the world to meet their vision. I think Hitler certainly fell into that category.
Trickster
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EnemyPartyII
Well-Known Member
And Stalin, and Pol Pot, and Ghengis Khan, and probably the kids at Columbine...
ALL morals are relative.
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MoonlessNight
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What Aquinas calls "Perfect Pride" is what I would class as the greatest of all sins. But it is a hard concept to grasp, especially since the meaning no longer lines up to the meaning of the words themselves. Perfect Pride is a sin commited in seeming strength, of essentially saying that one is and should be the center of all things. It doesn't necessarily deny that there is a God, but rather states that if one exists and is all-powerful, all-good and so forth, even then God deserves no obedience and that oneself is in fact greater than God. I do not think that this act of placing oneself at the apex of creation occurs very often at all, but certainly the vice of pride, which ultimately leads to it if left unopposed, is common to all of us and is very seductive.
Of what you had listed I couldn't pick an option. I think the offensiveness of many of them depend on the situation and the person (though the gravity of the act might be the same; an example of this class would be suicide) and in other cases the terms have more than one interpretation, some which are sinful some which are not.
Of what you had listed I couldn't pick an option. I think the offensiveness of many of them depend on the situation and the person (though the gravity of the act might be the same; an example of this class would be suicide) and in other cases the terms have more than one interpretation, some which are sinful some which are not.
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I think a lack of humility generally leads to thinking one is best equipped to make decisions for others, then disaster... So I agree in part with Aquinas' argument. I don't think someone needs to think of themself as better than God in order to be that corrupt, however; many who have seen themselves as God's vessels have been just as terrible, acting under the assumption that their actions and thoughts were directed by a perfect being.
Trickster
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Mister Emu
Emu Extraordinaire
In my view, a secondary effect on a 'bad' action does not reflect on the value of said action. Again in my view, an action must be weighed on its own merits, void of any such ripple effect. The ends never justify the means.
Edit: In answer to your poll, I picked the sixth option.
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What are the "own merits" of an action?
How do you distinguish its primary from its secondary effects?
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Mister Emu
Emu Extraordinaire
I am sorry if I didn't make any sense, I sometimes have a hard time putting my thoughts to word.
What I am saying is, the value(good v. bad, right v. wrong) of an action should be determined prior to any consideration of future consequences, whether beneficial or detrimental.
example:
A)Man A exists
B)Killing Man A is either a right or wrong, good or bad, etc. action.
C) a/ Killing Man A would result in x amount of other people living who otherwise would die.
C) b/ Killing Man A would result in the further deaths of x amount of people who otherwise would live.
D) The value of the act of killing Man A remains constant, it does not change relative to resultant consequences.
Logic and the sequence of events.
example: Earlier in this thread it was said that without the Holocaust, our civil rights may not be at the state they are... going with that statement(regardless of the accuracy of said statement):
Action: Holocaust(Genocide of the Jews, among others)
Direct effect: The cessation of life for millions of Jews, as well as others.
Secondary effect: Tragedy leads people to treat others right, leading to civil rights reform.
A direct result of the holocaust is the death of millions, a secondary result, derived from the direct, would be an increase in civil rights.
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