Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: re: Humanism
From: <SECBH@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Date: Wednesday, 26 Aug 1992 16:11:00 EDT
Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center

In article <1992Aug25.221355.8517@newsgate.sps.mot.com>,
weaver@iam.unibe.ch (Dave Weaver)

>Do we think that humanity is evil?
>Lets look around a little. Ethnic groups are slaughtering in the        he
>Balkans...Somalian people may starve to death...                        ht and
>Racialhatred boils in Palestine...Iraq suppresses its Shiites and Kurds.
>Violent crime in the United States ...I believe we can assert that
>humanity is more than a bit evil...

An impressive and painful list of human savagry.  But is this
cited as an argument that man is not only not always good, but that
he is essentially evil?  This is not stated, but the article does
seem to point strongly in that direction.

We could add to the above list Yahweh's Chosen People massacring
all before them in the Old Testament and being incited against their
neighbors who practiced different religions by his prophets.  Or
the burning of the library at Alexandria by Christian mobs acting
with fervor for their god.  The Crusades, the Albigensian
extermination, the Spanish Inquisition, the various Tudor bloodbaths...
and so on, and this would seem to indicate that "God" and his
dedicated followers are Big Time Players in the evil game.  Do we
get a start on a quick fix and close all the Jewish and Christian
houses of worship, schools, etc?

What Mr. Weaver's citations and mine overlook (probably for quite
different reasons) is that most people are not involved in such
actions most of the time, and a large number of people probably have
little or no involvement in such things at any time -- be they
Christians or non-Christians.

>How hard is it to locate the latest atrocity?                           city?

Not terribly difficult at all.  But if that is all we look for --
and in Mr. Weaver's article that seems to be the case -- then it is
not surprising that that is what we find.  Evil is, of course, to
be found in the actions of humankind, but then so is good.

Is the opposite so scarce?  Don't most of those people we come in
contact with behave with decency and lack of ill-will most of the
time?  The overwhelming amount of the time I operate with the
assumption that I shall be treated in an evenhanded manner by
whomever I meet as I go about my daily business.  Even though I
live in NYC, considered to be one of this country's greater pestholes
by the chronically indignant and in an economically unstable area
in this city, I find that of the thousands of contacts I have in
a day most are uneventful to cordial and the good I witness is
greater than the evil.   It is, however, considerably less spectacular
than the evil I have to admit...perhaps this is part of the problem.

The world did cartwheels when Mother Theresa was awarded the Nobel
Prize.  A fine lady doing kind work to be sure, but far from
extraordinary in my estimation.  While I would not take any stars
from her crown, I would award a few more to some other folks.  I
would have no trouble pointing out fifteen people who do the same
type of works she does -- washing the sores and excrement from the
ill, comforting the dying, assisting the poor and disabled.  But they
do it in this very life, as it were, it is not a special vocation --
it is part of life in this world.  And I could as easily show you
where to find several hundreds more doing likewise.  And they
are people of all religions and no religion.

They are not spectacular.  They are very ordinary people.  And they
abound.

If, on the other hand, one subscribes to a viewpoint wherein man
is characterized as "totally depraved" or "the scum of the earth"
(two favorite expressions I see over and over again in TRM), or if
one believes that man has commited some primordial transgression
of such magnitude that he is irrevocably sinful without divine
intervention, then most surely evil is what one _must_ find.

>.... I, for one, do not share your faith in the
inherent
>goodness of mankind. Take off the rose colored glasses
>when you look at the world.

Taking off "the rose colored glasses" is excellent advice, but not
if the rose colored glasses are replaced with a blindfold.

That man may be inclined to ignorance and tend to be more or less
greedy and aggressive would be difficult to deny, but that he is
inherently evil is too facile a misanthropy.

Jack Carroll
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,talk.religion.newage,sci.physics,sci.anthropology