Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:17:59 -0700, Tim Attwood wrote:
> 
>> I didn't say that belief in God makes you good. I said that good people
>> do good things, and that love motivates you to do good things.
> 
> Well, I think Patrick might've been saying that the rest of you wrote 
> just feeds the trolls.
> 
> But I don't think love motivates you to do good things.  I think 
> selflessness does.  Love comes with the baggage of some sort of 
> expectation for your efforts.
> 
> But I guess that also depends on how you define "love".
> 
> Jim

Ultimately, all acts are selfish ones. The people that say otherwise are 
in denial, or have been taught to say otherwise, and almost manage to 
believe it. The difference between good and evil is how "inclusive" you 
are of others in your view of what serves "you" best. Those that find 
other people an inconvenience, want the world to give them everything, 
imagine they are owned for existing, and see other people as merely an 
ends to a means, are "evil", whether they are the nice church lady who 
never would hurt a fly physically, but is *always* managing to get 
people do fix her house, mow her yard, give her things, and looking to 
marry rich, because people are just "means" by which she gets the things 
she imagines she needs, or some insane political leader, who imagines 
themselves "saving the world" from capitalism, or otherwise making the 
world "better" for themselves, with no clue, conscience, or 
understanding of the people they step on to get there. Stalin or Pol Pot 
are what the poor church lady becomes when they "convince" themselves 
that they know what is right for the entire rest of the world, and they 
have both the political power, and the military strength, to kill people 
to get it.

That is what evil is. Blind need to serve "self", without regard for the 
rest of the tribe, or, to a lesser, but no less despicable degree, those 
"in the other tribe". Good is realizing that you need to give something 
up, sometimes, to get most of what you want, and that the cost of 
getting "everything" might lose you more in the long run than you either 
a) imagine, b) can predict, or c) can reasonably comprehend. It requires 
a willingness to look at *why* you make choices, not just what "seems" 
like the best one at the time, and, not confusing, "because its always 
been this way", with, "its right to keep doing it that way, even we you 
can 'see' some people are injured by it", which is one of the *biggest* 
problems many religious followers have when confronted with new things. 
They look at "past" solutions, even when they don't apply, or never did, 
but where easier to overlook, and commit evil anyway, because its 
"traditional".

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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