Appearances of Inire

António Pedro Marques · 01 Jul 2010, 19:20 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gUGVkcm8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:20:36 +0100
Subject: (urth) Appearances of Inire
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Jerry Friedman wrote (01-07-2010 20:06):
> From: Ant?nio Pedro Marques<entonio at gmail.com>
>
> John Watkins wrote:
> ...
>
>>> 2)  Tzadkiel is a creepy insectoid alien thing and a liar.  The
>>> pretentions of religion are a means of controlling the human race.
>
>> Option 2 I think is untenable.
>
>> - If God is good, then it makes no sense to create a universe in which:
>> + God's creatures are toys in an evil power's hands
>> + God's creatures believe that the evil power is not evil at all and is doing God's work
>> + those who oppose the evil power are not, generally speaking, better people than the others, and in fact seem to be worse.
>
> Hasn't this been the situation in many dictatorships, especially
> theocratic ones?  In Europe when and where the Inquisition flourished?

I don't think so. I think it's very different if nothing else in terms of 
scale. You can hardly say the Inquisition had domain over the Universe, and 
whatever power dictatorships have is transient. Granted, sometimes evil can 
establish itself as the moral referent - cf. 'Stockholm's syndrome' - but so 
far, that I've seen, only in limited scale.

> I agree with those who say this theodicy is no worse than the one
> Christians face in the real world.

If the real world saw triumph of Evil perceived as Good in most parts and 
for most of the time, I'd agree. But I don't see the world that way.

> And what about /The Wizard Knight/?  The Aelf could be toys in the hands of evil humans if the humans realized it, just as humans sometimes are
> for Lothur.  (But then the whole non-Christian deism of TWK is strange.  Humans seem to be at the bottom instead of in the middle.)

Here I should disclose that I haven't read TWK yet.

>> - If God isn't good then by what standard can we call such an
> unfathomable being as Tzadkiel evil?
>
>> Keeping option 3
> doesn't mean that the acts of Tzadkiel need no atoning for, it just
> means they're done with
>> the best of intentions and knowledge. We have a saying here, 'Of
> [people with] good intentions is Hell full'.
>
> In English, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

Somehow I never remember that.

Still haven't had the time to answer to your reply on Agia.

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