Re: [Slate] American Religious fervor, by the numbers

Jeff Bone (jbone@activerse.com)
Thu, 01 Jul 1999 23:46:01 -0500


Tim continues to spew:

> Evil is not the opposite of good.

Hmmm... WWWebster Thesaurus, looked up "evil," it says Antonyms
"good." [1] I thought antonym meant "opposite of." Maybe I'm wrong.
Go to the dictionary, look up antonym, it says "a word of opposite
meaning." [2] Wow, evil is the opposite of good.

>> Destruction is the opposite of creation. (def. of "destruction.")
> Wrong.

Hmmm... same drill. Destruction: doesn't list any antonyms. Try
creation. No antonyms. Looked up the definitions. Pretty clear to me
that these things are antonyms, even if they aren't listed as such.
Judges panel says what?

> Destruction without warrent is evil.

Can't find "warrent" in the dictionary, am assuming you mean "warrant."
So that means if I have a court order it's okay? Where does that leave
all the lower animals that don't have a legal system? Does that mean
that when they destroy things, it's evil, but when we destroy things
it's good, as long as we have an order from a judge or other legal
authority? Seems like you're arguing against yourself, hoss...

>> Destruction occurs in nature. (empirical)
> I disagree with this.

Hmmm. Wow. This one's a mind-bender. Let's think about this.
Destruction could arguably be broken down into "de-structuring" --- the
process of moving from a higher state of organization to a lower state.
I kind of thought that's what the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics was all
about --- and surely you won't argue against the validity of that.

> Evil is to me the unnecessary expenditure of energy, mental, physical,

> or psychological.

It's always time to check out of the conversation when people start
talking about "energy." Unless you're talking to a New Age-y
hairdresser from Long Island and you *really, really* want to get laid.

:-)

jb

[1] http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/thesaurus
[2] http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary