-- Tom Vogt:
Weird, a couple thousand years of history disagree with you. until the very recent past, pretty much everyone was sure that killing enemies, unbelievers or other people isn't "evil". probably isn't even "murder".
James A. Donald:
If you are confused about the difference between war and peace, you must be seriously confused about a lot of things.
Tom Vogt:
the above holds true for both, peace and wartimes.
James A. Donald:
Baloney. That is the "everyone else is doing it" excuse.
Tom Vogt:
not at all. it's the "who are you to believe you can pass judgement on all of human history?" argument.
The nearest equivalent in European history to the crimes of the the nazis and commies was the spanish inquisition,and that was a small scale operation: Handcrafted murder rather than mass produced murder. Each victim was individually identified and processed, rather dumped by the truckload. They murdered about 12000, and the world was horrified by their crimes. Tom Vogt:
1.) those you call "evil" will often see things the other way around. how do you resolve this issue without circular reasoning? (i.e. without saying that their judgement doesn't count because they're "evil")
James A. Donald:
Evil people are likely to do hurtful things (bad things) to me unless I get them first. Normal people will not do hurtful things to me unless I do bad things to them first. Hence my use of nazis, commies, and murder as illustrations and examples of evil. As I would point to the a particular piece of iron to define all iron, to define the category iron, in the same way I point to murder, nazis, and commies to define all evil, to define the category evil.
Tom Vogt:
you forgot intend. otherwise, innocent bystanders who get hit will always call the "good" guys who missed the target "evil" (according to your definition), and rightly so.
what about the israel/rest-of-the-near-east problem? both sides call
No they do not. Laws of war are universally accepted by except by those who break them. Those who claim to find it terribly shocking that innocents get killed when legitimate military targets are attacked, never seemed to notice when their favorite terror regimes murdered hundreds of thousands of peasants in peacetime. themselves good and the other side evil. This is the classic problem of pointing out the mote in the other's eye while ignoring the beam in one's own eye. Both sides use the murder of children as a deliberate tactic to get their way. The middle eastern Jews are likely to murder any non Jew, as their christian allies in Lebanon so painfully discovered, and perhaps the crew of the USS Liberty discovered also, and the arabs are similarly likely to murder friends and allies. On both sides, murdering scum are in charge with overwhelming popular support. When Clinton was organizing peace talks, he had one arm around a murdering terrorist, and his other arm around another murdering terrorist. This was the basic cause of the lack of success in the peace talks.
both sides have done and received their fair share of killing. both sides are convinced that the other will do hurtful things to them unless they get 'em first. is one or both of them evil?
Both. As is confirmed by the propensity of both to deliberately murder innocents and allies. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG VnfVmTL/7mDyU4XZLDyD8zHodb0mVKA5dpJX00hW 4JXyerH5M3ax3YbbOf/qwLzGgzhPd4cUFKH+FjVZr