Walsingham

Gods and monsters! Can we go five freaking minutes without yapping on about how all spiritual people have to be dungheaps with moose for brains? It's getting pretty tedious.

Nonsense! *he continues affably* If you are sick with fever, and I kick a stone into a lake, that would be neutral.

I've not seen these (or similar) displays, but the people who enact them are 100% committed. Moreover they heal remarkably afterwards. My grandmother witnessed them in Bali, as did my great Aunt in Thailand.

Performance anxiety? GOD IS WATCHING YOU! Thanks, Cat. I do believe in 'positive vibes'. irrespective of where they come from and how. The prayers of a good man must count for something.

Results back on my mother's cancer. It seems like Jesus it has risen to fight once again. Like in that film.

I don't believe it is reasonable to describe an action as 'grey' or mildly good. Because acts are composed of discrete concomitants. If I move a mountain, and thereby ease one village and throw another into darkness then you could argue this is neutral. However, it is good and bad at once. The importance of this is that it leaves clear the fact that my act could be better if I were able to prevent one village being too shady. If we call teh act merely neutral then we diminish the evil and the good needlessly.

In Kosovo was the parliament who decided the independence, a parlament EMPTY of serbians You mean like the Quebecois assembly was empty of other Canadians? I don't know much about the period. Nop, Walsingham, I'm saying the Quebecois independentists could win the independence if the other decide not go to the elections and haven't anyone to talk for them in the parlament That's a rather mathematical view. If Quebec voted for independence Canada, being a keen democracy, would be sure to give it serious consideration. It's not teh case that there need be none against in Parliament. Look at the United Kingdom's regional assemblies.

If the Dems do beat McCain I guess I'd prefer Obama. At least there would be some chance of a change of culture at the top.

You'd be mostly correct. But you'd also be misleading. Why do people agree/disagree with an act? I think you'll find that the reasoning is startlingly uniform, which suggests something higher than human whim or selfishness. *nods sagely*

In Kosovo was the parliament who decided the independence, a parlament EMPTY of serbians You mean like the Quebecois assembly was empty of other Canadians? I don't know much about the period.

Do you know anything about how the chinese would view something like that? I'm asking because I don't know quite enough to say that it could be a good idea, Azarkon is right when he says that a lot of China's stability lies with them being Greater China and not just China. I doubt it would be a good ide of to relinguish a territory that they have made a big deal of, and any of the other territories aren't being troublesome in the same fashion. You're quite right. Their leadership culture wouldn't like it one bit. But it may be that it has to grit its teeth and bear it. A concession on some territories would permit it to counter by defining the remaining territories as 'heartland' if you like.

I would argue that China would do well to divest itself of some of its less useful regions by transitioning them to independence. It doesn't need Tibet for anything. Hell, when they invaded it was in a thoroughly desultory fashion, and if the Dalai Lama hadn't capitulated the Tibetan army might have frustrated them enough to make them withdraw! China does have a more pressing need at the moment and that is energy security. It gets a vast amount of oil from the Gulf, and this means taking it past a wealth of unfriendly powers. Indonesia in particular could strangle China by closing the Malacca straits to her shipping. India is also capable of using her powerful navy to blockade from her ports. It is more than understandable that they would want a navy as a consequence. However, it is the massive number of amphibious support craft which ought to worry people far more, including specialist amphibious command craft.

Sure, okay. But your original point was that entropy was evil, so... Guess we now agree? I disagree, firmly. Making words that describe things into nonsense words that mean nothing helps no one at all. 1. Touche. My argument has changed. Spank me sideways. 2.

All consumption of energy is ultimately entropic, particularly for living things. By eating a fruit/whatever, you consume chemical energy to continue your body's current structure. However, when you die, all massive quantities of energy spent keeping your body together over the course of your life are wasted, since it is rapidly disintegrated by the nearby environment. It's not wasted, though, in terms of it producing life. I've chosen to describe good as related to all possible life. I think. This discussion is stretching my brain.

You talking about countermeasures? I was, and I really ought to have made more clear that my query was made with due humility. I don't know a great deal about air warfare. Which is not to say I know nothing. Azarkon, you are quite correct to say geopolitics is a bloody business. When people from even tiny counttries have a go at Great Britain I am at pains to point out that no country has ever prevented blood staining its hands. However, to extend the metaphor, simply because an amputation involves blood-loss does not mean a surgeon cannot be criticised for splashing it about like champagne!

Good point. But I wasn't saying 'order' for that very reason. A diamond is ordered. it is not, however, negatively entropic. N&S makes a better counter-argument by observing that life is sustained by entropically breaking down other things. My counters to this would be: 1. Not everything life breaks down is highly ordered. If a bacteria digests hot sulphurous water near the sea bed is that so entropic? When my cells turn glucose into ATP is that entropic? 2. Some entropic activity contributes to negative entropy in a higher order of dynamics. For example, when I eat a piece of fruit I am accelarating the entropy of teh fruit but assisting the lifecycle of the fruit tree. 3. Pursuing this line of reasoning we may observe that subsisting on lower and lower ordered systems can be considered morally superior. And, vice-versa, an animal that only ate philharmonic orchestras would be quite tiresome.

Is that why the West fought two devastating World Wars that nearly destroyed the world? Is that why the US went into Iraq, leading to a humanitarian crisis that rivals Saddam's ethnic cleansing? Politics have always trumped human lives. Few governments ever hesitated to make war when it is within their perceived interests to do so. Yet at the same time democracy, not slave revolt freed our slaves, emancipated women, gave us trade unions, socialised healthcare, travel to other heavenly bodies... What has the benighted undemocratic world done in the same timeframe to advance human good?

I would respectively suggest that discussing abortion would needlessly bog down the discussion. We shouldn't have to do more than briefly refer to specifics. Again, I'm NOT saying the discussion is pointless. I'm saying it is very worthwhile. But it is only worthwhile provided you accept that the result of our discussion has some extrinsic worth. If we are capable of establishing something of extrinsic worth then I argue we can establish what constitutes good and evil. It's a tall order, but it's possible. Speaking in these terms set me thinking back to an earlier discussino we had about chaos and order. I remembered that I argued that since all life is negatively entropic, we might regard entropy as the opposite of life. Therefore a universal definition of evil for any thinking (alive) being would be that which is entropic.

All statements are worthless in YOUR worldview. Because that is self-destructive it renders itself impossible. Hence in fact we can argue that human perception and reason is capable of establishing truth. Because if the inverse was true, coming from a human, it could not be true. "All humans are incapable of being correct. I am a human. Therefore that stament is incorrect." I'm not savagely against a frank discussion of what should and should not eb regarded as good or evil. In fact it is precisely because I AM in favour of that debate that I believe teh results of such a debate would be worthwhile. As an aside, and referencing the xbox question, we can debate what to call the colour of the xbox, but its qualities in reflecting the electromagnetic spectrum are more or less a constant and fixed truth.

More's the pity!

:0 After that unexpected coup, and assuming that human faculties deserve to be permitted an analysis, what else can we say about the subjectivity of good and evil? I certainly think that there's a massive divergence in cultures about what constitutes good.

You'd hate Tiny Tim if you thought it would annoy me.

But those acts are still not inherently evil, nor would they be if everyone on earth thought they were. I think you're becoming excessively philosophical. By which I mean debating beyond any useful purpose, even for the mental exercise. I say this because you are basically arguing that all thought and perception is arbitrary. While that argument is tenable it's as much consequence as a crepe paper space helmet. What does it mean? Nothing? Because in itself and by its own rationale the statement is also worthless.

You argue well, as usual. However: 1. Tibet was forcibly occupied in 1951 after a fully fledged war; at the same time as they were invading South Korea. To make teh sisue comparable, you'd have to be talking about what would happen if Mexico had been in invaded in 1950 and had been repeatedly attempting independence. 2. The civil power, any civil power, is obliged to use minimum force against its own citizens, even in defence of its national identity. Even one or two dead is quite a lot in such circumstances. However, the Chinese government/military seems baffled by this principle, viz Tianenmen. 3. As you yourself say, China is not a single polity, but an Empire. Yet you argue as if this entitled them to behave as if they were a single polity. By that rationale surely the British Empire could be cheerfully reimposed?

I think that in general I would be happier accepting moral relativism were it not for the fact that doing so would essentially equate torture with making soup, and thereby greatly confuse my leisure time.