Boris said: Thank you Alysia, for your attempts to deal with me. I am always asking the question, does Alysia know things that I don't know that I must learn? Yes, I think there is something to that.
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yes, I know this subject came up before. I appreciate you read my posts, and that u say I might know something you don't. I don't think I'd put it quite that way that I know something you don't, but yes you and I have a connection here. I want to give something away, but I'm not able to. Most of us here are just sharing ourselves within our experiences of life, and we agree or not, scroll on by or flip the channel selector. I'm trying to say that I had an "experience" with ACIM. I also had an "experience" with Monroe and Bruce's books. then I also got into Elias and another experience happened of great mind freedom. Elias is a sweetie. know what he said? lo and behold, he said have yourself a little fun, the day belongs to you. I think you need that too Boris, you try too hard to understand and get yourself up in a knot. I don't think it's possible  to provide answers to others when they ask as you desire to do. Elias and ACIM both say don't try to be a messiah, just work on your own stuff adding your drop to the ocean will be effective enough.  I think you have to involve your body, your mind and your soul and emotions to have an experience that changes your life, not just the intellectual browsing. you want a break through I'm sure you'll get what you desire because I've never seen anyone quite as earnest as you. comes a time when every day becomes a break though  at the same time a crash so the breakthrough can happen and the pieces to all the little puzzles begin to slide into place of everything you've ever read, so have some patience if you can hear me and be kind to us whom you perceive as completely off the deep end.
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But when I read that there is no good or evil, that is not a breakthrough at all.
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ok, so we're the kind of people won't look the other way if we see a kid being abducted..we'd get involved and do what we could to make the child safe again and we'd just do it automatically without stopping to think  that we were interfering in "a plan." when we  talk about no good or evil existent, we are not talking about the world you perceive around you in physicality; we are talking about a state of consciousness totally beyond those limited perceptions of the guy in the white hat and the guy in the black hat. it doesn't mean that we stop all actions like the court system and the social services agencies  do, we continue to work on improving the system. we will always be in a state of becoming just because we're naturals at it, so I see you in a state of expanding awareness too, with the inclination to try to understand society by lumping people into groups, such as new agers, cults, etc. but it's the same mindset as when they burned witches, some of them for merely using herb tea for a headach.
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This planet does not need the confusion that comes from astral exploration and the New Age. We will of course do the exploring.
But untangling it is a long journey. COnfusion will be an inevitable part of it.
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sure it's confusing but I see you read everything you can get your hands on about it, and I noticed you are one of our most proliferent internet surfers. so you're saying two things; you're saying you want a breakthru but you're a little tired of searching, yet you'll plod on until it happens. maybe. and from where you stand it looks like everybody is getting dessert and you're out in the cold. once in awhile you get a crumb thrown at you. I know the feeling. I used to read so many self help books and go to so many groups until I just threw up my hands and said it was all bologna. then I screamed out all my emotions to the universe and I gave up searching...and when you give up, you surrender..and when you surrender, that's when things can start happening..as you really have nothing to lose at that point, right? thats when the breakthru starts and you stop judging other people using comparison values, wondering why they seem to know something you don't.   you're right, that exploring takes an entire lifetime, no drive through enlightenment on this planet, that's for sure! no reason we can't be more sensitive to each other when expressing our disagreements. I thank you for trying to have an open mind. I hope you get a mind blowing experience very soon just designed for you. 

Bill, I like the simple way you put things but to the point. I must study your style. lol. I agree. these days I see the word ignorance to mean ignoring other's reference points, rather than stupidity. I often thought of those words Jesus spoke "forgive them for they know not what they do." it's just so true. I think we needed that pointed out. it doesn't matter so much to discuss where evil came from, it's more interesting to ask how does a person change to see it differently? and what makes them do a 180 degree turnabout? love, alysia

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I've been kind of following this post and I kind of liked your question and therefore, have a question for you.

If a man commits a sin, but doesn't know it's a sin should he be punished?   

For example, from what I know about serial killers, they usually see absolutely nothing wrong with what they're doing.   

Going back to Adam and Eve and I know you've heard this story a million times, I really think there's alot more to the story than what people perceive.   

Regardless, from the story we can still conclude that, in essence, one has to know sin in order to commit sin right?  I think this is basically the moral of the story of Adam and Eve even though it seems like since Eve ate the apple that we all should have knowledge of good and evil--I really think there's a whole lot more to the story than that.  I mean if this was really the case, then why the heck would they have the need to write the ten commandments?

Anyway, before she ate the fruit they could do almost anything they wanted to couldn't they?-- and not commit a sin?  Even murder someone?   

So what if some people's lives were pre-determined by the stars or something and they just weren't meant to know that what they were doing was wrong?  They say that you can predict serial killers based on their astrological birth charts.   

Now this is totally different from someone actually committing a murder and knowing that it is wrong.  Usually that person would have some sort of motive.  Thats when it comes down to free will.

I guess what I'm saying is that some people have a purpose to come down here and commit murder without conciously knowing that it's wrong and the ones who do have a purpose to overcome it.

Anyway, I know how you feel.  I read a story about a little boy once, about 2 years old, who was tortured and brutally murdered.  This bothered me for a very very long time because all I could think of was my 2 year old nephew.  I still haven't found peace.

speaking of Playboy and where good and evil come from....

Some of the discussion of what good and evil is ignores that we have a very animal part. We live in bodies having pretty similar chemistry to what we call 'lower animals' but we do not attribute their actions to good or to evil but reserve that designation for ourselves. We expect more from ourselves.

The basic job of sex is to propagate the species. Yet we can invent far greater roles for it in our human lives. We are complex. Whether it is a vehicle for achieving a deeper and more complex relationship with another human or merely entertainment for men the procreative side seems to be just a side-effect for humans (except for those times you really want that baby! which I am sure represents a small percentage of all activity).

This is the one arena of human activity where you'd think we would be able to define good or evil easily, but we can't.

Now I am going to say some things that may be generalizations but I think they are generally true and I have a point. One thing you hear is that men are visually stimulated. What that means is that there is a physiological response to seeing women's bodies (I'm just sticking to the heterosexual majority because it is easier; I personally have no objections to homosexuality). It took me a while to really understand that this is analagous to thinking of pickles and salivationg. At a young age at least, this is not under concious control. (Young) guys don't decide to be 'good' and not think of sex, or to be "bad' and to think of sex. It is simply stimulus-response.

I think that because it is just stimulus-response, cultures teach men it is OK to do this. Certainly guys learn to restrain themselves (and in time Nature does some corrections too). In fact, it becomes a situation where it is not only acceptable but also considered almost necessary to sort of play with this impulse. Jeff Foxworthy has a joke about what are men really thinking: "Ladies, what men are really thinking is, I want a beer and I want to see something naked!" I assume there is some kind of rush analagous to an adrenaline rush when a guy views a centerfold and somehow we encourage continual repeat of this activity, of creating this rush. I understand the response will happen on its own but why do we encourage its constant happening? Women who can perform the service of titillating men are paid very well and honored with celebrity status. Otherwise we give women responsibility for not arousing men. I recall a local iman, when speaking of why teenage girls and boys should be separated in school and girls covered, as saying that if the boys were exposed to the temptation then of course they would react; you can't expose the boys to all that temptation. Of course not; it is biological and they are not responsible for their actions! We aren't so extreme in traditional Western  culture but the underlying idea is there.

So, men have this physiological response to visual images and if we define that as evil we are going to get alot of people upset, partly because evil is supposed to be a choice and this is obviously not a choice.

(I realize that the flip side is that some women exploit this but that isn't the topic for now).

So when does a biological urge become evil?

I was reading a new Temple Grandin book and in it she describes something that happened with some chickens. (Whew! we don't have to moralize with chickens!). Normally, when chickens go through their courtship behavior, the rooster does a little courtship dancebefore trying to mate. This is considered to be instinctual behavior called a fixed action pattern. The dance triggers a different fixed action pattern in the hen and she crouches down so the rooster can mate with her. Grandin emphasis that the hen doesn't crouch down til she sees the dance. Now, it happened that Grandin saw a rooster that had been selectively bred for another trait. Along the way, the selective breeding had made some other changes where the roosters somehow lost the genetic instructions to do the dance. They still had the biological urge to reproduce. What was happening was that these roosters became what Grandin calls rapist-murderers. The hens never crouched because the rooster didn't do the dance, so  "...(the rooster)  jumped on the hens and tried to mate them by force, and when the hen tried to get away, the rooster would attack her with his spurs or his toes and slash her to death." Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson.

Now we humans are in a precarious place. We have all the genetic material of the "lower" animals but we have another level to deal with. We don't allow using chemical reactions in the brain to justify violence or killing. Yet I stll find the question as to whether these people who claim to get sexual release from molesting children and killing them, or  torturing and killing as in the BKT situation, might be dealing with some wiring problems just as are the rapist-murderer roosters. What if that is really the case? We allow normal guys to act on some kind of human fixed action pattern and seek out pics of unclothed women. What if the urge for other things also feels like a fixed action pattern? I'm not trying to jusify behavior that I find "evil" I'm just wondering what we do if we find there is a genetic component to this stuff. In a post on the armed forces topic someone mentioned that it seemed like 10% of the people in the service enjoyed killing. What do you do with that? It is too easy to make pronouncements about what good and evil is but hard to deal with in the nitty-gritty. We still have to deal with the material world here. I don't think these people sit down one day and just decide to do these atrocious things. We can't solve this until we figure out why this happens.