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Wednesday, May 10, 2017

It's in the blood

I agree with the notion of inherent altruism, a quality that has been observed in many non-human species.  It's a good survival trait, something that may be encoded in the DNA.   But like many genes it may not always be fully expressed due to external factors, which can explain why some folks exhibit more evil behavior than others.  It could also be that there is a corresponding evil gene, also not always fully expressed.  We've all heard about people who were "just born bad."

But I have trouble equating sin with evil because it implies a religious context or a deviation from our moral center and may not be evil in and of itself.  What may be a sin for me may not be a sin for you.  If I am a recovering addict (whether gambling, drugs, or sex) and, in a moment of weakness, I indulge I will have committed a sin, if only to myself, but not an act of evil.  We all have certain "urges" and I consider the failure to control those urges a sign of sinful behavior.  Those are my thoughts of today on the subject, a topic which has been chewed over for thousands of years and yet, like Xeno's Paradox, we will never reach the end.  By the way, there is a good article on Wikipedia about evil; I like to read about the different schools of thought.  I haven't looked up sin yet.

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A while back Uncle Ken and I made a wager on how long it would take Trump to leave office (one way or the other), for the lofty sum of one dollar.  I said three months, so I lost the bet, dammit.  And just when you think it couldn't possibly get any goofier reality gets twisted into another dimension.  There were plenty of reasons to dump Comey as head of the FBI, but not at this time with such a flimsy pretext, especially after requesting more funds for his investigation.  The claims of "fake news" just don't carry any water, but I can take a little comfort in knowing that the higher Trump climbs the further he will fall.  If he falls; it's a scary notion if he doesn't.

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