Tcg wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 11:47 pm
Purple Knight wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 11:29 pm
Anyone who voluntarily puts themself into that state, even once, is imo, an alcoholic in that they have the tendency, even if they never act on it again.
This makes as much sense as claiming that anyone who once took a puff off a cigarette is a chain smoker.
If I'd said
drunk, yes, you'd have a valid analogy. If I'd said, someone was
a drunk, in that they were habitually drunk, sure. I admit I've had the AA model forced on me because my family is a bunch of drunks. Most of what AA says is bollocks and evidence they're not helping anyone but I have noticed that some people are intensely drawn to drink and others are simply not. And there is evidence that
some genes are associated with risk for alcoholism.
One thing that bears mentioning is that people in the ancient world don't get the full negative effect of any alcoholism they may have, because they simply can't get enough alcohol, or strong enough alcohol, to keep themselves falling-down-stupid-drunk all the time. It was only after alcohol began to be distilled into a stronger form that the full effects of alcoholism were apparent.
JehovahsWitness wrote: ↑Wed Sep 15, 2021 11:19 pmEvil is a concept, a notion. Evil did not "survive" the flood because
you cannot drown "evil" any more than you can get a bucket of water and push "happiness" in it . Evil, which does not need oxygen, exists as long as there are free moral agents that choose to act wickedly.
I agree. It would be slightly more difficult to get evil suddenly, if the entire world were completely sinless, but not impossible. I've seen enough children who start to hit before they can talk to convince me that you can't drown evil anymore than you can drown math. You could drown every mathematician and everyone who knew of such things as numbers, but someone would just originate math all over again.
Even if you had two perfect parents, a child is its own person and it knows that 1) people can get hurt and 2) people have stuff it wants, so nothing is going to stop the child from putting two and two together and bashing someone else over the head and reaping the spoils. If people had the kind of blinders on that would prevent them from seeing that possibility, I would venture to say they would lack Biblical free will.