Hidden Prior Assumptions of the Notion of Evil

The existence of Evil as anything beyond mere human disdain or repugnance, requires a prior belief in an ultimate perfect standard of goodness, however tacit and unacknowledged that belief might be.

The Value of You

"It's important to tell those dear to us how we feel.
The opportunity can too easily be gone forever."

Ms. Marple (Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library)

Harold and Nita: A Love Story

A letter I found today, inside the envelope containing my Mother's will:

Oct. 23, 1991

Dear Harold,

Had I many worldly possessions to leave you, they could never compare to the treasures of the heart that you have given me.

You'll never know how I depended on you for help and guidance, and you have never failed me.

You have graced every moment of my life and brought warmth to my heart.

You have eased every step and soothed every doubt. You have filled my days with joy beyond imagination and description. My strength was in your daily love.

I thank God for his gracious gifts to me in this earthly life, the most gracious of all, you, my life companion, my sustenance, my hope, my warmth, my one and only love.

Nita

The Operations Department of God's Mind

Without belief in God, reason becomes more clearly theistic.

Factual Intuition

Hastings: I've never known you to place much faith in intuition.

Poirot: "Intuition, Hastings, often describes some fact that is so deeply buried in the subconscious, that the subject is not aware of its existence."

Hastings: "What fact?"

Poirot: "Tres Biene, Hastings. If I knew that, the case---it would be solved."

(Agatha Christie, "The Underdog")

Definitional Ruling Factor Gone Wild

Any ruling factor used to claim evil as real beyond mere individual repulsion, is just as vulnerable to many atheistic objections as the belief in God itself.

Identify The Person

I already operate by believing in an Ultimate Personal Mind as the ideal for comparison to identify specific objects as limited and somewhat self-contradictory versions of that Ultimate Personal Mind.

That's how I know you're a person, even if you are only myself.

In order to group things into a category, that category must be there already.

Who says neo-kantianism isn't fun?!