Never mind about that email could figure it out (only tried for about 30 secs:) heres the rest: “Neither is wholly evil, Elros. Evil cannot be measured, nor can it be absolute.” A fairly bold relativtistic statement, one I was surprised that Elrond says, though he is young. I you would prefere not to discuss it I understand but I find so few people I can rationally and pollietly debate on the subject that I usually can't resist the opportuntity (in no way do I intend it to reflect my respect for your work or you as an author). I am an Absolutist, and a Christian Evangelical Fundamentalist one at that (I think you implied in one of our early discussion that I would be well if I fully disclosed my beliefs) or at least that is how somone who likes to lump people in broad groups would put me in (though I will tell you that their is a great variety in that broad grouping in both what people believe, liberty temper by law). Bluntly I must say I think you got it wrong, but not are not far from truth. One saying that evil is niether quantifiable or measurable or absolute in some aspect of its being is very close to deny and existence of evil, it becomes an non tangible idea. Making evil relative lessens the effect that it has on the human condemnation of it because it becomes justifiable. The human experience in the last century has shown one thing demonstrates one thing clearly enough, bad things happen and need to be attributed to some outside force because while people aren't perfect they also are not intially totally evil. Just look @ Dachau or the Ragdan Road (a highway that Stalin had built in Eastern Siberia to gold mines, @ least a million people died in the construction). The people who oversaw the these events might not have been totally evil, nor were the leaders or policies that lead to them even though they certainly were as close to evil as one is going to find in man. Can you quantify evil by the way, or at least humans assign categories of wrongness to actions, such as murder, rape, ect. These things are heneious but again the problem comes from the fact whilst people are capable of evil they never start off wholly evil, merely capable. I am going to leave the argument of an external cause for evil for a second here and go to the second point. That evil cannot be absolute, why because every generation reveals new possibility of man to commit depravetity? I'll have to use some examples here so bear with me. One the question is the infinite absolute? There a hard question the meaning of the word means literaly not finite or bound. But that does not mean it is not absolute, as things can be absolutely infinte, ie the universe (at least according to many mainstream scientific theories). In fact it is constantly expanding in all directions and beyond where there any particulate, physical, material, or energetic forces are there is literally nothing except space and time (neither of which matter because those are things that only apply to areas in which stuff exists to be measure and is some debate whether they really exist out there because of the above reasoning). Absolute infinety: hard concept to grasp and I am no philospher or expert on the sciences.
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rosecarmine
Re: Do you write any happy stories?
Date: 2008-01-31 01:13 am (UTC)“Neither is wholly evil, Elros. Evil cannot be measured, nor can it be absolute.”
A fairly bold relativtistic statement, one I was surprised that Elrond says, though he is young. I you would prefere not to discuss it I understand but I find so few people I can rationally and pollietly debate on the subject that I usually can't resist the opportuntity (in no way do I intend it to reflect my respect for your work or you as an author). I am an Absolutist, and a Christian Evangelical Fundamentalist one at that (I think you implied in one of our early discussion that I would be well if I fully disclosed my beliefs) or at least that is how somone who likes to lump people in broad groups would put me in (though I will tell you that their is a great variety in that broad grouping in both what people believe, liberty temper by law). Bluntly I must say I think you got it wrong, but not are not far from truth. One saying that evil is niether quantifiable or measurable or absolute in some aspect of its being is very close to deny and existence of evil, it becomes an non tangible idea. Making evil relative lessens the effect that it has on the human condemnation of it because it becomes justifiable. The human experience in the last century has shown one thing demonstrates one thing clearly enough, bad things happen and need to be attributed to some outside force because while people aren't perfect they also are not intially totally evil. Just look @ Dachau or the Ragdan Road (a highway that Stalin had built in Eastern Siberia to gold mines, @ least a million people died in the construction). The people who oversaw the these events might not have been totally evil, nor were the leaders or policies that lead to them even though they certainly were as close to evil as one is going to find in man. Can you quantify evil by the way, or at least humans assign categories of wrongness to actions, such as murder, rape, ect. These things are heneious but again the problem comes from the fact whilst people are capable of evil they never start off wholly evil, merely capable. I am going to leave the argument of an external cause for evil for a second here and go to the second point. That evil cannot be absolute, why because every generation reveals new possibility of man to commit depravetity? I'll have to use some examples here so bear with me. One the question is the infinite absolute? There a hard question the meaning of the word means literaly not finite or bound. But that does not mean it is not absolute, as things can be absolutely infinte, ie the universe (at least according to many mainstream scientific theories). In fact it is constantly expanding in all directions and beyond where there any particulate, physical, material, or energetic forces are there is literally nothing except space and time (neither of which matter because those are things that only apply to areas in which stuff exists to be measure and is some debate whether they really exist out there because of the above reasoning). Absolute infinety: hard concept to grasp and I am no philospher or expert on the sciences.