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Message: <blockquote data-quote="squibbles" data-source="post: 9533544" data-attributes="member: 6937590">I didn't explicitly state that, though it captures the spirit.Really, it's simpler: Unless you're a Evil jerk, why would you ever actively oppose Good? And can you (ENWorld poster) contrive a reasonable basis for someone to do so?Yeah, that's most of what the thread has come up with so far. I don't think those are the only solutions (and 1 is explicitly a cheat), but I'm not confident there are others.Maybe by incorporating incomplete information, even among divine actors, there are more possibilities. Lets say that an over-god declares that balance between good and evil is necessary for continued existence, then vacates reality forever. There have subsequently been some signs which suggest that the over-god's dictum is true. Good recognizes that there is a possibility it could, by dominating evil, destroy existence--but Good discounts this because preventing suffering important and the risk of doing so is unknown. Muscular neutrality sees this as irresponsible--because it doesn't discount the existential risk, and because it weighs the cessation of existence as more damaging than the counterbalance of any amount of benefit that could be gained by prevented suffering.But maybe that's just a species of 2).Another avenue (I can't recall who first noted this) is to posit something that muscular neutrals want, but that Good doesn't provide or insufficiently provides. That's what I attempted in post 174, and I think this tack leads to wierd answers--which is cool! But maybe it's just a fudge into the 1) category, and a Good world provides everything that could plausibly promote satisfaction and flourishing.But I think that may actually go too far in its characterization of Good.Ethics traditionally divides judgments of right and wrong into 3 groups.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Are the consequences good.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Is the action itself good.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Was the intention motivating the action good.</li> </ul>The Good absolutists in this thread (myself included in the first 5 pages) tend to state that Good is all three of these, all the time. But, well... it's trivially easy to come up with thought experiments where they conflict. Maybe Good vs. muscular neutral is just a difference in conception of Good. The easiest way to set that up is probably to have Good emphasize actions and intentions, and have muscular neutral emphasize consequences and intentions--so, you could call some specific thing the muscular neutrals are doing Evil, but really it doesn't belong in the same category as Evil Evil if they do it with Good intentions, if the act will have positive outcomes, and if the muscular neutrals are not moustache-twirling jerkwads as their general MO.Exactly! Making those assumptions requires us to come up with pretzel logic to explain the apparent contradiction. In an ideal world, that is what makes reading and posting in this thread fun.-----You're both generally thoughtful posters, I'd love to see what contrivances you can come up with.</blockquote>

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