MIKE, on June 30, 1998, you posted in SabraNet,
Jake, you said that "badness" was created before man. "Badness," per your definition, is the use of others (other bodies, or others' molecules, or even other molecules) for the benefit of oneself. But does the attribute of badness belong here?
Mike, In a 'perfect' world, created by an Intelligence that is supposed to show us the way to 'moral' behavior, no living creature should perish at the hands or mouth of another. That organisms are predators for their own advancement, is either an evolutionary trait, or is the"Master Mind's" whim.
And there is one more prosaic lesson to learn. One sees the poor farmers, the felahim, toiling with primitive tools, even Archimedes' screws, to draw life's nectar, water . And, suddenly, one's mind understands that those human beings must remain poor, ignorant of the better life we ourselves enjoy, because...if they learned, they would want to work and produce goods. And then those goods would not find a world market, and there would be rebellion... It is not too difficult to understand the economic upheaval visiting countries in some parts of the globe. It is, Mike, a manifestation of those countries not having succeeded in their effort to be more bad than others.
Now think of Moses: he didn't argue whether it is morally 'bad' to eat the animals of land, water and air; no, he enacted, without nary a justification, which ones can be eaten by the Israelites...
It has been accepted lately that a free-market society thrives where a centralized, excessively controlled one fails. This is because free-market means allowing the 'bad' in man act for his personal advancement. Yet the result will be that each polity (countries, in this case) will have to demand a free-market world. Countries have to compete and even fight for their own advancement. I was in Egypt many years ago. One has to ride the train along the line following the sempitern River God, the Nile, to realize that a very few kilometers of fertile soil separates life from the desolation and death of dry sand. One then --suddenly, poignantly-- understands, feels, the pre-Arabian, timeless Egypt's concern with death. One follows the sun crossing the line of the train --of River God-- from East --Re's birth-- to West --Re's death. And then, next day, the miracle of Re's, --Amon's-- rebirth.
Such 'badness' is called competition.
Jake, let's say that the utmost form of "badness" is one organism devouring the other. From a biological and materialistic point of view, we have a group A of molecules using a part of a group B of molecules. Same thing happens in the universe all the time in the inanimate world. We don't call this "badness". Obviously, both "good" and "bad" are opposites that had to be "created" together. Like other necessary dualities, they were introduced so that man can exist: they are relative in nature.
We part ways when you insist in something being 'created' or 'introduced' by a supreme intelligence. There is an intrinsic contradiction, since a superior intelligence should have created a perfect world. In fact, I am so religious, that I do not wish to chide God, and therefore I choose make believe that an inferior intelligence created dumb physical laws. You know, Mike, There was a tribal god, a sort of Prometheus, who had a dumb brother, a sort of Epimetheus. Pro said to Epi, "Go down to Earth and tell the serpent to get wrinkles and die, and tell woman to molt her skin and stay young." Dumb Epi got it wrong...
Mike, you also bring up the subject of inanimate matter and, correctly --as far as accepted thinking goes-- state that moral laws do not apply to them. Yet unwittingly, you have touched on 'food for thought.' It so happens that the paradigm of inanimate matter is CLAY. In Hebrew, clay is practically equivalent to matter, right? The Universal God, Elohim --not YHWH, the Hebrew God-- creates Adam (Man) from clay... It's been quite some time that clay was found to contain complex minerals capable of replicating. And replication is the seal of life... And now some scientists postulate that life began, not in the sea, not in geo-thermal vents, but in some sort of clay...
The concepts of bad and good, as applied to morals, are man-made. When applied in a wide --utilitarian-- manner, good is what is useful, bad is damaging, for a specifically defined purpose. My analytical approach follows the principles of the D-NP: I take scientific discoveries, and attempt to dress them up with a well-woven think garb. And I do this just for my own intellectual enjoyment.