Re: virus: Your God Sucks

Alvin Shih (acs@nupu.repo-dev.ml.com)
Fri, 19 Jun 1998 10:32:19 -0400


> From owner-virus@lucifer.com Fri Jun 19 07:03:06 1998
>
> [...] I don't know about the rest of you but I honestly have no idea
> whether this entity exists or not. None of us actually could be sure. I just
> know that when I lay my head on my pillow every night the one thing that I
> pray is that he does not. If I have to go through dying and then face an
> egomaniac like that I will find a way to live forever. Maureen
>
Just to play Devil's Advocate, I could say that Eve made Adam eat the
Forbidden Apple of Knowledge and thus forced mankind out of Eden... :-)

But, by the power of Occam's Razor, we can disregard the exitence of God
in this argument.

Those things that you may deem "good" or "evil" are byproducts of
free will. Man must hold himself accountable for his actions in
more ways than dollars and cents. That's the problem. Westernized
societies refuse to deal with the uncertainty of the qualitative.
One's misinterpretation of qualitative data may expose one to
complicated lawsuits. So we only judge things by numbers--usually
money.

If there were such a thing as a quantitative measure for one's moral
actions that everyone could agree upon, the world would change
overnight.

Imagine if you will, a "Morality Exchange". It would match dollars
to moral actions. For example (picking numbers at random):

Murder USD $10,000,000
Verbal Assault USD $ 100
Broken Nose USD $ 1,000
Broken Arm USD $ 10,000
Rape USD $ 1,000,000
Muscle Bruise USD $ 1,000

Instead of suing for damages and arguing back and forth, the
morality exchange would dictate the amount of compensation.

The problem with all this is that it would expose the incredible
disparity of power that the mega-rich have over everyone else.
This is not to their advantage. But I'm sure crime syndicates
and governments have spent USD $10M to have someone killed and
the evidence covered up...

There's also cost-of-living considerations. A starving person in
Cambodia would probably be overjoyed to have his nose broken to get USD
1000. Most middle-class people in the USA would probably balk at the
idea.

I think I'll just close by quoting a chorus by Depeche Mode:

I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours,
But I think that God has a sick sense of humour,
And when I die, I expect to find him laugh-ing.

ACS