I was present when this inquisitive young man asked the following question:

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. This saying has a great deal of merit in our society. We use it often,
and it has proved its worth of our breath used saying it.
This got me thinking though...If beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, then can't evil do the same.

The priest  left the young man with this comment.
"So are you claiming, in your final statement, that the virtue or vice of a particular action is merely a matter of one's perspective?
I would disagree with your initial premise and so must also disagree with your last. Taste is not the same a Beauty. The first is subjective the second is not."

And he walked off leaving the freshman adrift.  

So is beauty really just a matter of taste? ( I found this an odd answer as it pertained to some of the very core teachings of my faith)
Is beauty always subjective?
Is evil then never subjective?  ( evil/SIN  in and of itself is massively appealing to a destructive end, but if not for the appeal people wouldn't be drawn to it)

This is sending my Jesuit-educated mind into overdrive.

I think that the answer is both yes and no.

A persons beliefs dictate what they consider to be "beautiful" or "evil."
I believe that there are moral absolutes, even if I cant define all of them just yet.
For instance, I do not play into organized religions but most christians and I can agree that the Islamic practice of female genital mutilation is completely evil despite how the muslims try to justifiy it.
I believe that professing to know all about the afterlife and holding people's minds hostage is evil but that's pretty much the norm in every mass I've had to attend.

It's all relative...to a point. There are just some things that are purely evil.

Yep, beauty is a matter of taste.  It’s always subjective.  Some women, for instance, are considered beautiful by most men, but not all.  
Some men like skinny women.
Some men like “Rubenesque” women.
Some men like fat women.
It’s a matter of taste.  It’s subjective.

Evil is also subjective.  A girl in shorts and a tank top is great in Florida, but is considered evil in Iran.  
Stoning a rape victim is OK in Iran, but evil in the USA.

The priest was pointing out that beauty is not the opposite of evil.

I disagree.
A girl in shorts and a tank top may be considered evil in Iran but that is ridiculous because the people making that judgement are completely devoid of reason.
Stoning a rape victim is evil everywhere because you're taking an innocent life.

There are some things that are absolutly evil.

Everything is subjective.





 

evil is interpretted by its victims not its perpetrators

LOL... if you are a Jesuit this is going to be easy. They tend to be more existential.
Is beauty always subjective?
Is evil then never subjective?  I am referencing sin and evil synonymously here  in and of itself is massively appealing to a destructive end, but if not for the appeal people wouldn't be drawn to it)

There is a lot to truth in this statement. I have met pure evil.

On the other hand.
Here was argument. Weapons for example:
Guns themselves are not in necessarily evil. Some are master pieces of art: Swords with hand scrolling in the blades,  early guns that were hand made with intricate detail in the stock.
Even today Match grade barrels...  or black guns that we make ourselves, if accurate and done well can be considered a thing of beauty. Guns are not necessarily evil either. They are used to hunt for food, sport in competition and protection.
A gun is only as evil as the intent of the person pulling the trigger.
The same may be said about cars. The 1965 Ford Mustang a thing of beauty or in the hands of a drunk an evil deadly weapon.
Snakes the same way.
Some people don't like snakes. Rattle snakes if you were to take a close up picture of their scales you would marvel at how symmetric they are. It as if some one mathematically laid each one out. A think of absolute beauty!
Some would argue they are evil. But really a rattle snake is defending itself against a threat. It has no premeditated ideas of harming someone out of meanness.  It is defending territory.
Now someone who deliberately plants a snake in someone home with the hope or doing harm has used the snake to commit evil.

You can walk past a rock and never see the potential in it but the right eye would recognize it as an opal, an emerald, rubies. and other precious gems. All of them starting out as ROCKS.

If you see all people as children of God as we are called to do... is beauty really subjective.

And doesn't evil make itself incredibly attractive?
Why would be we drawn to it otherwise? Sin and evil and destructive... that is why it is sin or evil in the first place. right?

Was father saying one is a choice?  But I  think both are if you are called to follow in the footsteps of Christ.

For something to be beautiful there must be a standard that it is compared to.  The same with truth and goodness.  This is why our Faith teaches that God is Truth, Beauty and Goodness.  Thus, beauty is an objective thing.  Whether someone finds that beauty tasteful is subjective.  Beauty itself is objective and has an objective standard to compare to –– God.  The priest is correct:  the student's initial premise "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is wrong, as is his premise that virtue or vice is a matter of perspective.



Evil is not subjective –– that's called moral relativism.  Evil is a lack of goodness, and thus there is an objective standard to compare it to –– God.

Beauty is objective, but the term doesn't mean the same thing in Catholic theology as it does in common usage.

I'll have to find some stuff that expands on this.  The basic understanding is that Beauty is something that draws the soul, properly guided by will and reason, towards God.

From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

Definition of PROVINCIAL
1  : the superior of a province of a Roman Catholic religious order
2  : one living in or coming from a province
3  a : a person of local or restricted interests or outlook    
   b : a person lacking urban polish or refinement

I remember when my grandson was about 5 years old.  We were looking at a globe and talking about different languages spoken around the world.  
He thought about it and asked, “But they all think in English, right”?  
He couldn’t imagine any other way.  It’s the same here.  
You’ve been brought up to believe (quite correctly, in my opinion) that stoning, child rape, slavery and cannibalism are absolutely evil, not realizing that they’ve been normal, accepted practices in some cultures for thousands of years.  

The people who have, and still do, follow these practices aren’t “completely devoid of reason”.  They’ve been brought up in cultures that are very different from yours.  They’ve been taught morals that are very different from the ones you’ve been taught.  

You think they’re wrong.
I think they’re wrong.
They think we’re wrong.  

A person's definition of right and wrong depends on his culture, training, life experience, etc.  
It's subjective.

Angelfire, I think the priest had a good point.  Beauty is generally a matter of taste, and not the definitive opposite of evil.


As for evil, on an individual basis it might appear subjective as well.  I'm not convinced that it's a subjective matter in God's eyes, though.  Regarding good and evil, the best thing for you or I to do is to become in tune with God's perspective on the matter, so that it becomes a matter of educated judgement and not subjective.

I still disagree. I can see where you're coming from but understanding why they do it doesn't make what they do any less evil.
If a whole country believes that 2+2=7 and they've believed this for thousands of years without it being challenged, does that make it right? No. 2+2 = child rape is evil no matter who is doing it. end of story.

Does this make me intolerant? Fuck yeah it does. Who can honestly tolerate unjustified suffering? In my opinion it's the people who cant/dont think for themselves; It's a people devoid of reason.

Less evil to whom?  That’s the point.  It’s not evil to the people who’ve been taught it’s the right thing to do.  
They don’t care what you think.  They think you’re devoid of reason for calling them evil.  

Personally, I’m glad you’re intolerant of unjustified suffering.  Someday we might have a thread on what qualifies as “unjustified”.  

We should then have a thread on what constitutes "suffering". Because even if we have a clear definition of what suffering is it wont matter to the person who doesn't subscribe to that definition right?

Loonybin!!!!
It has been too long!
This will be passed on to the young Michael as a worthy perspective to consider and present to the young theologian
It will be interesting to see if this aligns with his thinking.
Thank you!!

"I pick tings up, then I putz dem down,'  then hulk smash.

When a Stand up  philosopher (bullshitter) asks why, respond with why not.

And Shane as a matter of practice I agree whole heatedly here.
As a matter of theology:
The statement that beauty is in the eye of the beholder in tandem with The priest referencing beauty as a matter of taste... creates a paradigm that conflicts with some
scriptural truths. As well as truth the church position on aesthetics. St. Bonaventure’s “Retracing the Arts to Theology”: which essentially delineates the chain of light in all things coming to us on all levels as a Gift from God. St. B was at the cusp of some of the greatest artisans to ever walk earth
and he began his discussing the mechanics of art in general but from their it became clear that the intellectual gifts and how one uses and views ( both mechanically and spiritually) is from God. St Thomas Aquinas in numerous documents spoke of aesthetics. Aquinas borrowed some of Aristotle's thought but defined beauty in three ways: integritas sive perfectio, consonantia sive debita proportio, and claritas sive splendor formae.
The first ( rusty so forgive me) I think mean integrity and perfection in beauty. ( But according to St. T A... this meant of the soul as well as to the eye and in art it meant to the man behind the brush as well. Artists have always been a tormented bunch of sinners)
The second ( hardshell is gonna get me) is consistency in proportion. ( Augustine not Thomas Aquinas spoke more toward the soul being balanced and the sin of gluttony or extremes robbing the soul of its beauty) In beauty there is a balance.
The third and again this is St. Thomas Aquinas hit Augustine up for this as well: clarity and splendor of form. Augustine spoke about this in terms of vanity and arrogance. Mostly about his own and where that took his soul.
The church has strong stances against moral relativism including OVER indulgence in vanity and beauty. Hence the surprising  statement by the priest who narrowed it down to beauty being a matter of taste. With respect to life ( all life at all stages)
is it then relativism for a woman to have  enhance her looks through plastic surgery to satisfy the eye of the beholder? To satisfy her definition of beauty or is that vanity and a sin of coveting?

I strongly disagree.  I realize that many cultures are raised to hold different standards of right or wrong, but that doesn't make them right.  Killing an innocent person violates their right to life, and is absolutely evil no matter where it is.  Morality is not dependent on location.  Rights are inviolable, and anyone who infringes upon them, regardless of location or religion, is evil.

Wow.  You haven't studied much world history, have you?  

"Morality is not dependent on location?"
"Rights are inviolable, and anyone who infringes upon them, regardless of location or religion, is evil?"

See #3 in the definition of PROVINCIAL I posted earlier.  The world is a big place and there have been many very different cultures with very different ideas about good and evil.  

By your definition, some of their ideas were wrong and I agree with you.  But those were different times with different standards.  Death was common and life was cheap.  Suffering was the norm.  

We still have cultures that consider most of the women at your local mall evil sinners who deserve death.  If you'd been raised in their culture and hadn't been exposed to "civilized" ideas, you'd agree with them.  

Morality is shaped by culture.  Hanging a suspected cow thief was moral 150 years ago.  Now it’s considered murder.  Slavery was moral in Georgia and evil in New York.  Now it’s evil all over the USA, except that some people still feel it’s their right to own other people.  Human trafficking is big business.  
In 150 years, some of the things we take for granted as moral may be considered evil.  

The problem with morality is that there must be a standard for those morals.
If God or a Creator has given us morality it stands to reason that he will hold us accountable for breaking his moral law.
This is why evolution and atheism are so popular....it's not what they give us....but what they let us get away with.
We hate God because he tells us that when we go our own way it always leads to death and separation from him.

So we like to pretend that he isn't even real and then sift through his moral law picking and choosing the ones that suite us at the moment...to build our own moral compass.
The problem here is that within not to many generations we not only forget Him ...but lose sigh of the basic morality that even separates us from the animals we see in nature.
Nothing can definitively be proven as right or wrong....moral or immoral.

Example;
We start by only aborting the unborn with birth defects then transition to the unwanted unborn under a certain age then we transition to the old people that no longer benefit society....before long life is cheap and worthless and nations become little more than something less than primates with pants on.
The beginning
and the end

The good news is that despite mankind rejecting God....God reaches out to man through Jesus Christ.
The most vile abortionist can find redemption.
The smallest but discarded life still has meaning.
Gods Love trumps mans hate and brings hope.

Ok this is really a loaded:
First.... Killing an innocent person... millions of innocents have died in war. Were the people ordered to kill evil? ( This has been strongly debated in the Catholic Church and I must say this very thing  gave my father a great deal of fear on his death bed.)
War is evil. Are the people who are chartered to protect the rights of our country evil. Were the men and women who put an end to the slaughter and genocide of the Jews in WWII evil or did they stop the evil?
If you kill someone in self defense and they are no capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong...are you evil?
Abortion.. is the girl who is dragged to the abortion clinic by a parent evil?
Who is considered innocent. ANY life is given by God and should only be taken by God.
Who defines innocent. We are all sinners except those who do not have the choice of free will.

ABSOLUTE evil is the absence of ALL HOPE! It is the ABSENCE of GOD.  I have met a person so devoid of God that he was pure evil and his actions we so based in self that there was no hope for him.

SIN is always based in selfishness. It is always destructive, ti robs people if good, hope and GOD.
Everything that is NOT sin is the will of God.

Back to beauty and subjective vs evil not being subjective. .... people justify their choice in doing wrong, committing sin, or choosing evil over good in subjective ways. One guy actually felt justified in cheating on his wife since she cheated on him with his best friend. She somehow OWED him that. I asked if he had forgiven her. The answer was yes. I told him there is not debt left and his sin is as bad if not worse and all the disparaging things he said about her are very true even more so of him. He said it was different. Well it was. ONLY IN HIS MIND.
It was a sin. It was evil. It was destructive. It robbed his relationship of hope and God.

As for beauty being measured against something. Divinity measurement remains a mystery. But rule of thumb... we are taught as Christians to view all humankind (even those who perpetrate some evil against us) as Children of God.
But we devalue that measure daily.
Monday
A woman at Wal-Mart fell hard in front of the store. There were 40 or 50 people and employees around. She was wearing shorts and a hoodie, older, a large lady and she hit hard.
I suppose she wasn't a thing of beauty... Not 1 person around her close by stopped to help, ask her if she was ok, or did more than give a glancing stare... a lot just kept going and she was struggling to get to her feet.
Several people honked for her to get out of the way! Even by the time I reached her from about 60 yard away: there were people walking  right next to her who walked past not a word. She was hurt and bleeding heavily. We got her up and got her groceries in the car. Do you know another person honked for her to move out of her parking spot?  I asked if I could call someone, if she needed a ride , if she could drive. Cleaned her wounds the best I could with what I had in my first aid kit and not ONE of the many Wal-Mart employees gave even a head nod.

I wondered if she had been  skinny, long flowing blonde haired, and beautiful instead of old and obese if people response would have been different. The third time the lady honked... i told her to park and walk because she wasn't moving until I was sure she was going to be ok.
Beauty doesn't need to be measured by any standard. Diamonds are pretty ugly out of the ground. It is what lies underneath that is the value.

Was she a beauty. Only in Gods eyes on Monday.

Here's the thing...I don't believe in your god or in jesus and yet I'm still a good person. I don't accept evolution because it allows me to "get away with" anything. I accept evolution because there's an overwhelming body of evidence to support it. Not only that, it's a fairly simple concept to understand that I can see actual evidence of every day.

IMO god doesn't make people good. From what I've observed from most christians (and believers in general) is that its a fear of hell and longing for cushy afterlife drives them to be a morbid version of good. I don't claim to know what happens after I die because I'd be lying. No one can know for sure what happens after death let alone tell you exactly how many angels are in heaven. For all I know, there could be absolutely nothing on the other side of death. What I do know is that being a good person will increase my survivability and enjoyment in this life. It makes me happy and it makes the people around me pleasant to deal with everyday.

I agree with your first statement about moral standards but I believe that the standards are set at a much baser level in the human animal. I believe that everyone is capable of being a good human, they just have to mature past their conditioning.

I disagree.
From birth,,, unless you are a sociopath... most humans, do things that are based in pleasing out of love. Infants will cry just sometimes to be held and nurtured or to feel safety and that turns into love. That is an innate hardwiring. And most parents nurture primarily out of this overwhelming sense of love they feel when a child is conceived and born and held.( we are hard wired to procreate for reason. It isn't to leave our mark on the world, or carry on the human race per se, or to leave a monument to ourselves: but to mature spiritually in understanding, as best we can,  this all consuming love... not to be confused with sick stalker love)
It is the only type of love that can remotely be compared, on a infinitely small level, to the love of God. Heaven is not some cushy life. It is getting to be in the presence of that much LOVE times a bazillion. Not floating around on clouds and playing Cloud golf with the Lord... that ain't it. Being in the presence of that much love is heaven. Never even having a shot at it is hell.

Lots of good rabbit trails we could go down.
God does not simply make people good....but perfect or forgiven through the atonement or payment of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
You see evolution because it is happening all around us. Through micro evolution things are changing within their own kind...but not for the better and never into other kinds.
The fear of hell or the desire for heaven can not save men... they may be part of the truth that points men to God...but simply believing or not believing in heaven or hell can ever replace faith in Jesus Christ.

But let’s stick with the topic at hand.
Based on what your saying “being a good person” is only relevant to your own interactions and personal life. We all enjoy dealing with pleasant people...but what about the unpleasant people. Like the neighbor who blows his grass clippings in your yard or the person of different ethnicity who underbids you for a job?
Wouldn’t it make your life better if their life simple ended? This is the concept the Germans of the 1930s bought into.
There are people who are making our lives “less pleasant” so we will simply make them go away.
How can we say they were even wrong....after all...they simply wanted to live pleasant lives.

I find your avatar very interesting in that you express the Desire to simply “Kill the Terrorists”...I'm assuming that desire isn’t based on any kind of moral standard but simply out of the desire to live a more pleasant life.

The problem here is what do we do with the well intentioned man whose own idea of a pleasant life is one that is not exposed to the American and Jewish influence?
His avatar may state “Crush the Foreign Influence and occupiers”....how can we give your opinion any more merit than his?
How do we take a moral High ground when the high ground is only culturally specific?

I also believe that everyone is capable of being a good human....in fact I believe that everyone thinks they ARE a good human.

Only Gods Word the Bible tells us that to some degree there are no truly good humans.
While many men think they are good ...even the best of us have hearts filled with lust, envy, hate and pride.
Even the best of us need to be reminded that God has a moral standard of right and wrong... a set of rules that measures men’s actions based on the attributes of God and his law.

Without that law there is no moral High Ground...without that law we can’t truly say that the suicide bomber is committing an act of terrorism over his own idea of patriotism.

You make the mistake of assuming that just because a group of people assume something to be moral, it is.  That would mean morality exists only at the whims of the majority, which would negate the concept entirely.  And while it's true that, on average, culture shapes the moral system held by MOST members of that culture, that doesn't preclude people from drawing their own conclusions, and it certainly doesn't mean it's right.

You're also wrong in the assumption that I would accept the morality of a culture that sought to impose death on free women.  I reject a good deal of the morality of the culture I was raised in, and have no reason to believe I wouldn't have done the same in another location.

I’m not talking about “a group of people”.  I’m talking about a culture.  


You lost me there.  “The whims of the majority”?  I don’t know what that means to you.  
Are you saying that morals are determined by the minority?  Give me an example.


Sure.  And how would you have expressed your enlightened outlook in Afghanistan when the Taliban was in charge?  They weren’t fans of free speech.  They’d have killed you for objecting to their interpretation of the Koran.  
If you lived near a Nazi concentration camp in 1944 and knew they were murdering people by the carload, would you have gone to the camp commander and objected?  
How do you think that would have worked out?
Yeah, it sounds great and noble in theory.  In practice, not so much.



News flash:  In Islamic culture, women aren’t free.  They’re under the control of their fathers, their husbands, their sons.  They can’t go outside alone.  They have to be covered in the presence of males they aren’t related to.  They can’t drive.  They can’t own property.  



Sure.  And how would you have expressed your enlightened outlook in Afghanistan when the Taliban was in charge?  They weren’t fans of free speech.  They’d have killed you for objecting to their interpretation of the Koran.
If you lived near a Nazi concentration camp in 1944 and knew they were murdering people by the carload, would you have gone to the camp commander and objected?  
How do you think that would have worked out?  

The idea that free people should control laws and morals is pretty new.  
For most of human history, morals were determined by the King, the Church, the landowners and you damn well did what the powers that be told you to do.  
That is, if you wanted to survive.  

Both student and teacher are committing what philosophers call a "category mistake." The student's argument and the priest's answer conflate aesthetics and ethics, two fairly discrete realms of philosophical inquiry. Aesthetics attempts to answer questions pertaining to the nature of beauty, ugliness, and how they are to be defined, understood, and applied to our perceptions of reality. Ethics concerns itself with moral paradigms and questions pertaining to right and wrong, evil and good.

Of course, if one is an Anselmian theist, beauty and morality share a common origin: God. That which is beautiful is defined simply as any state of affairs that is consistent with the nature and will of God; similarly, that which is right is defined as any action that is consistent with the nature and will of God. Of course, now the distinction becomes more difficult to detect. To take an intuitive approach to the problem, would it seem natural to say that a slug is "wrong?" Ought the slug to become not a slug (and of course we all recognize "ought" as being language almost exclusively used in discussions about morality)? On the flip side, do we generally say that an immoral action is "ugly?"

Granted, evil can often beget ugly (i.e., images of thousands of dead Jews piled on top of other during the Holocaust), and likewise moral goodness can produce beauty. So there does seem to be some abstract causal relation, but we still seem to intuitively distinguish between the aesthetic quality of beauty (or the lack thereof) and the seemingly more foundational ethical nature of righteousness and evil. The practical distinction is simply that good and evil relate to how things ought to be, whereas beauty relates to how things are, and how we perceive them to be (i.e., pleasing or distasteful). In other words, I can produce evil even though I ought not to, whereas a slug cannot be anything other than what it is, regardless of whether we deem it to be ugly or not.

So this then begs the question: if beauty is any state of affairs which is consistent with the nature and will of God, would this entail that the slug, being deemed "ugly", is thus evil? It could certainly be argued that our finite human nature prevents us from gaining a perfect understanding of beauty, so perhaps it is not really the slug that is ugly, but rather our own skewed perception of it. It is important to remember that our (subjective) assessments of beauty are simply attempts at tracking what is (objectively) beautiful.

That's actually not true. Altruistic behavior is defined specifically as any behavior that decreases your own chances of survival for the sake of another individual. If you jump on a hand grenade to save your buddies in Iraq before finding a mate, your genes do not get passed on. Evolutionary fail.

Also, I'm curious to know your theory on morality. You seem to imply that our genetic programming predisposes us to evil, and that we must overcome it in order to become "moral" individuals. At the same time, you espouse an evolutionary explanation for moral impulses. Isn't this something of a contradiction? Just some stuff to think about.

I found this a while back, an interesting essay on Aquinas' theory on natural morality and how it relates to evolution.

St Thomas Aquinas: Patron Saint of Evolutionary Psychology?



Also, the premise that altruism is 'evolutionary fail' is tendentious at best.  One could actually make a case that, in animals which live together in large groups, self-sacrifice and dedication to the greater community increases the chance of one's own offspring surviving by reinforcing devotion to the group as a whole.  Such a dynamic exists in wolf-packs, for example.

Social Darwinism isn't as self-evidently correct as it may seem superficially, once you see past the zero-sum interpretation of human social interaction.

From what you posted, the priest was not claiming that beauty is a matter of taste.  He was summarizing the student's claim as being that.  The priest stated the opposite, that beauty and taste are not the same thing.  Taste is subjective, beauty is objective.
It is entirely possible that it is a sin of vanity.  It is also possible that it is not.  Reconstructive plastic surgery to restore the body to how it was intended to be (say after a mastectomy or a disfiguring injury, or even to remove excess skin after a lot of weight loss) is not necessarily a sin.  Getting a breast augmentation or a face lift or a tummy tuck so that men will notice her more is more likely vanity.





 
 
 

Well I think that the parent/priests reply is flat dead wrong.  



If "beauty" is objective then who gets to decide what those objective standards are.  beauty, by its nature is a SUBJECTIVE trait.



Unless you can actually measure something, the notion of objectivity is problematic.  

Perhaps.  How do you determine what those things are?

Very pat answer.  And problematic.  It has historically been very difficult to get people to agree on what the standard is that the god you believe in sets.  

While Christians are good about avoiding it - but I think moral relativism and it's results were summed up pretty good in Genesis.  Eve looked upon the fruit and decided it was good.  Did not change God's opinion on the matter one bit.  

Evil is the absence of God. The absence of all good and all love.
Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day defined a good society as one that makes it easy for you to be good. Correlatively, a free society is one that makes it easy to be free. To be free, and to live freely, is to live spiritually, because only spirit is free—matter is not. To live spiritually is to live morally. The two essential properties of spirit that distinguish it from matter are intellect and will—the capacity for knowledge and moral choice. The ideals of truth and goodness. The most radical threat to living morally today is the loss of moral principles.

Relativism is the neutralization of factors that may guide the CHOICE between right and wrong. It diminishes guilt. It is how we take long established morality based on the ten commandments and by desensitization or means of justification we embrace something inherently evil such as ABORTION.

In many ways beauty when exploited... just read a good bit in the GD ... causes people to succumb to sin. Sin is attractive. Is it a matter of taste? if you look at porn all the time can you look at your wife the same way? Is that beauty or is it really something that is addictive and ultimately ugly. Is it destructive?
Yes.
There are reasons those ten things were identified as sins. Bottom line is the are centered in self. They are destructive to far more than sinner but to all those around them. ALL pay for those sins. And it prevents Spiritual growth.

The Sermon on the Mount was God measure of what He in his divinity finds beauty in.
And for that reason alone they are called the Beatitudes.

But we look down on the meek, the poor, the humble. We have our OWN measures. And the world is especially cruel to people who don't fit OUR idea. And that is evil... really not God's plan at all.


I may be very wrong... but you can be most beautiful and be completely devoid of all goodness.
I think you can be completely devoid of beauty measured by the societal standards we see in magazines but be completely beautiful

I find that personally offensive.  You seem to be inferring, if not stating outright, that I’m evil and can’t experience and give love and goodness because your particular god is absent from my life.  

I caution you not to make a statement like that face-to-face with an Atheist.  You might not enjoy what happens next.  

Rhetorical bullying is a cheap tactic, Japle. I would have hoped even you would be above this. Apparently not

Angelfire was saying that evil is merely the absence of good, much like darkness is defined as the absence of light. Without good or light, we could not know evil or darkness. Now according to Anselmian theism, "good" (which includes "love") has its ontological grounding in God. So yes, this does imply that we are all, in a sense, evil, since we are not God (however we DO have the freedom to reconcile with Him). This is called "the doctrine of sin." It shouldn't be all that mind-blowing.

Remember, Japle, that ANY belief system (including your own) that attempts to say anything meaningful about anything meaningful will include ideas that others find "offensive." How about the atheistic implication that we are mere animals, produced only to reproduce, guided purely by instinct and genetic programming, doomed to cease existing and be consumed by worms and insects? Or, on a fundamentally more offensive level, that torturing and killing a child for fun (and other similar detestable acts) cannot be said to be objectively wrong, but only distasteful to our evolutionarily acquired sensibilities, no more "wrong" than a section of errant coding in a piece of software? These all seem far more offensive to me than a theistic assertion that only tracks what we all know to be true of human nature.

No, that’s not what he said.  He said “Evil is the absence of God”, not “good”.  They aren’t the same thing.  One is obvious, the other is not.  

 
And we’re supposed to refrain from that kind of thing in this forum.  
I recall many times in the Glocktalk Religious forum, people insulted each other and called each other names.  I enjoy this forum because the moderators don’t allow that kind of garbage.  

No, she's not inferring that at all.  You are inferring that from her statement, and your assessment of what you think she's saying is off-base.  The fact that you can experience love means that there is not an absence of all good and all love in you.
Oh, quit the macho-man internet chest thumping.  It's pathetic.  You and I both know you wouldn't attack a woman for saying that to you (angelfire is of the fairer and stronger sex, btw)





Actually, they are.  The English word "god" comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for "good," referring to divine goodness.
Besides, angelfire did not say that evil is the disbelief in God.  Evil is the absence of God, who is truth, beauty and goodness.
Even atheists are made in the image and likeness of God, even if they do not believe it.  Can an atheist do evil?  Of course: Stalin, Lenin,
Mao, etc.  Can someone who believes in God do evil?  Of course.  It's
called sin, and that's why Christianity says people need to repent of
that evil.  The difference between an atheist doing evil and a Christian
doing evil is that the atheist uses moral relativism to rationalize it away and doesn't see it as evil, while the
Christian (if he is to truly be a Christian) acknowledges that s/he has
committed evil and repents of it.  Doing evil does not make a
person evil –– it does not change their nature.  We are not created with an evil nature.  Our nature is wounded by a lack of what God intended it to have from the beginning, but that does not change our nature to an evil nature.






Any exchange of ideas can lead to something others find "offensive."  That is a far cry from insulting someone.  



Using your logic, I can claim that you stating your atheistic beliefs is offensive
and insulting, so you better shut up so you don't violate
the RF CoC.



Or...



If I get offended because some atheist says they believe God is a fictitious manifestation of human imagination, then I need a thicker skin.  If an atheist tells me that I am an adle-brained idiot with no capacity to think for myself because I believe in God, then that atheist needs to re-read the CoC for the religion forum.  One is a statement of belief, the other is an insult.
 
 
 

Let's look at this and try to respond. God never ever said the fruit was evil, good, or bad. He said, 'This is the tree of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil (long title BTW) from which thou must not partake." It was never stated it was good or evil but ....like the earlier 'gun' example..."it just was". Eve saw it and determined 'that it was good". She understood it's purpose. It gave knowledge and understanding. The evil was in disobeying her God. Adam ate because he also knew what was going to happen. He would be alone again and 'part' of him was going to be cast out. Knowledge of good and evil was necessary but disobeying would cost them. They understood this and were ashamed. The 'serpent' at this time could talk to man and was beautiful - the woman was not scared of him. This brings a lot of questions to my mind about the nature of evil. It was also allowed to roam freely in the garden. Why?

In the original Post....

The priest said....

"So are you claiming, in your final statement, that the virtue or vice of a particular action is merely a matter of one's perspective?
I would disagree with your initial premise and so must also disagree with your last. Taste is not the same a Beauty. The first is subjective the second is not."

Taste for beauty is subjective- it IS in the eye of the beholder.

God's idea of beauty is different. He looks into the heart and minds and sees a soul of great value and worth. The outside has no reflection on the interior.

Evil is not subjective from our point of view for God defines what it is. We do not make that decision except that we are part of the problem or the solution and that sometimes we can identify it. We may have a particular problem but these problems (vices) do not mean they are sinful. Personally I have a vice about ice cream- does that make ice cream evil? No. Does that make it good? Yes, to my taste but you may not like bunny track ice cream. You my not even like ice cream at all. That does not make it good or evil.

This is what the priest meant.

OK folks, let me see if I can clear this up.  

First, I do consider Angelfire’s comment offensive.  “Good” and “God” are not the same thing.  It’s entirely possible to have one without the other.  Atheists can be good people.  Believers in God can be evil.  
A blanket statement like “Evil is the absence of God” is untrue and I find it personally offensive.  Just because it was said by a woman doesn’t mean I shouldn’t express myself.  

Second, some of you have jumped to the totally unwarranted conclusion that I suggested that an Atheist, maybe even me, would physically attack Angelfire for her comment.  That’s absurd.  Conversations can get very unpleasant very quickly when one person feels they’ve been insulted.  If the other person realizes they’ve said something offensive and apologizes, the problem goes away.   No need to slap leather.  

Did I overreact?  Maybe.  If I offended anyone, I apologize.  

You did overreact, IMO - the idea that all good preceeds from God is fundamental to Christian theology.

The reason and will of even an unbeliever is rooted in God's creation of man in the image of Himself and thus testify to His eternal goodness - at least in the eyes of a believing Christian.

Telling a Christian that they have to accept goodness apart from God is an intellectual version of making them deny their faith.

Folks, there is a difference between ideas that offend and being offensive.

Example:
I place my Faith in Jesus Christ and believe that he is God in the Flesh, the only atonement for sin and the only way for men to be reconciled to God.
Salvation is not by effort and works but by simply placing ones Faith in him…that through Faith alone in Christ repentance matters and redemption takes place.
That statement offends all of the non-Christians world and about a 3rd of the Christians.

Our friend Japle tells us that there is morality without God…while we are telling Him that morality can only come from God.
We have to recognize that our differing ideas by nature are offensive and still engage in conversation or there is no point to this forum.
True conversation of differing ideals can respectfully offend without resorting to being disrespectfully offensive.( not that I always pull that off myself)

PS: This is a principle found in the Scripture.
Jesus is not offensive when it doesn't matter Mat 17
Jesus offends when it does John 6

I came personally face to face with absolute  pure evil. I would not have made the comment lightly.
Has this person done good in his life?  I am going to assume in his case that there are things he has done in his life that are good. The question is the motivation behind those things.
And I can say with the same assurance that all he does  extrinsically  "good" is to maintain  professional appearance, which he mimics in order to hold down a job. All "good" in his life
is a cover for a  public profile that hides ultimate intrinsic self centered nature of this person. He only allows the hate to be seen by the weakest. He hold most people in disdain and hate.
He cannot LOVE past himself as everyone is less than he is. This robbed me of the belief that ALL people
He especially hates females. There were captured moments of his overall vitriol towards others.
 I also know plenty of atheists who are good people. And we have had in-depth discussions. For the most part they have a varied sense of where
they learned their sense of right and wrong from. They don't necessarily see it as in intrinsic function. Most are people who simply consider believing in things they can't prove within the boundaries of physics or math fiction.
But none of them ever derided me for my profound belief in  my God. And I am as curious about their journey as they have been about mine. With the exception of the purely evil person I know. I call these my friends and am surprised by your response.

I quantified it by saying the ABSENCE of ALL GOOD AND ALL LOVE
And that is the absence of God.
I did not attack anyone. Case in point... an amazing person to talk to is Steyr Aug about this very thing.
We have what I would consider very divergent beliefs bases.
And we have discussed these things passionately never attacking or offending but debating an opposing views.
I never disrespected him nor would I.  He has studied a multitude of faith beliefs and can speak intelligently to them.
For someone to be offended in this way I  have to wonder what the root of your disbelief is? What drives that?
But that really detracts from the purpose of this thread.
Start another one.

And telling an Atheist that he has to accept God as a necessary component of goodness is an affront to his integrity.  

I don’t recall ever insisting that anyone accept my views when it comes to religion.  At least I hope I haven’t done that.  
My purpose on this forum is to point out what I consider fallacies in reasoning from the point of view of an Atheist.  I’m sure all Atheists don’t agree with everything I say.  
That’s a good thing.  Imagine how boring the world would be if everyone agreed with me!!

On the other hand, when someone says that good can only come from someone with Christian ideals, I get a little annoyed.  After all, Christians can’t even agree with each other.  
How many varieties of Christianity are there?  How many major disagreements do they have?  Whose standards am I supposed to accept?  

So when a Christian tells me he knows the truth, I have to wonder about which “truth” he’s referring to.  I have to wonder how he knows.  I have to wonder how many other “Christians” consider his beliefs heretical.  Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I have to wonder about his sanity.  

I’m pretty darn sure I know the truth about religion.  Could I be wrong?  You bet!  
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again; I’d be very excited and happy to be shown proof of the existence of a supernatural being.  That would be extremely cool.  It would lead to a whole new branch of science.  Think what we could learn!!

But so far I’ve seen nothing.  Zero.  Faith and mythology.  

If you can accept faith without proof, that’s your decision.  I can’t, and so I’ll continue to stick my nose in whenever I read something that, in my opinion, doesn’t pass the sniff test.  

No offense intended.    

Nowhere in my post did I even imply such a thing.