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And if there is a good and an evil then there is clearly a god and an anti-god.

That reminds me of some circular arguments found in Plato's Phaedo, illogical arguments that sound good -- much like popular cliches that push nonsense.

Looking back several hundred years before Plato and Aristotle's time, to Homer and the Hades he describes in "The Odyssey," there was no heaven and hell, all souls went to Hades. And those that were heroes had special treatment, and some others were condemned to perpetual punishments. Aristotle's ethics builds on Homer's thinking regarding virtue and vice.

Good and evil -- Heaven and hell -- that seems to have come from biblical cultures. Cultures that have proven themselves to be far less cultured than -- seemingly -- that of ancient Greece.

I think your real problem is not with good and evil, but with good and evil as objective realities. If good/evil exist as objective realities, then whatever is good or evil, is good or evil despite what you or I have to say about it. Furthermore, if they exist "without", they were of a logical neccessity, pre-existent to, and separate from, humanity.

It all but spells GOD.

It is for this very reason that atheistic thinkers are forced into denying the existence of evil. What is more troubling [and dangerous] is that this is the godless motive behind the indoctrination school-children with values neutral training.

They are on a mission to produce functional atheists.

Brian.

You cant be serious.

First of all you reveal yourself with your constant negative references to religion..you are a religious bigot. Fine. I will continue to debate with you.

Your assertion that classic greek culture was more "cultured" that a judaeu-chritianic culture is utterly ludicrous. You have been reading too many of the classics and romanticising abit too much. Either that or you are smoking something.

The Ancient "cultured" greece that you talk about was filled with city-states that constantly warred upon one another. There were by contemporary accounts utterly barbaric tribes that practiced canibalism and performed acts such as beastiality and pedophilia regularly.

They waged constant warfare and practiced slavery. While there were clearly some "thinkers" that came out of classic greece. It was hardly a paradise of intellectual pursuits. So spare me the BS propoganda. The greeks may have been the founders of what we consider western cultures but they were hardly shining examples of everything good and pure.

Your comment about all souls going to Hades. is essentially the same philosophy of an afterlife and those who behave "properly" are treated better than those that dont. Of course what they ascribe as good behavior can sometime be dated but it nevertheless boils down to the same thing.

But your notion that there was no evil in the world of the greeks is not accurate. Every culture that has any sort of deity reference has good and evil. The representation of good is that which makes the gods happy and evil is that which makes the gods unhappy. Thus you get stories like
Orestes being chased by the furies for slaying his own mother. But of course the crime was mitgated by the fact that he avenged his fathers murder. Even the greek for all of their often time befuddling moral relativism differentiated between killing and murder as the difference between good and bad. Pleasing to the gods and displeasing to the gods...something for which divine punishment could be meeted out.

So your attempt to raise the Greeks as a sort of pantheon of atheism just doesnt wash..interestingly enough it was the Greeks who first embrassed Chirstianity by the way. That happens to be where most of Paul's work was done as well.

As for your complaint that if there is a good and evil then there is a god and an anti-god as being a circular argument.

That is not a circular argument but a valid philisophical argument that has been posited and argued by better thinkers than either you or myself. It is not circular to say that because their is good therefor there is a god.

It comes from a logical progression of thought that essentially argues that you can not have a central guiding judgment of what is right and what is wrong unless there is an determining force that specifies what is right and what is wrong. Rigthness and wrongness being thus determined by a supreme being/entity actually does stipulate that something would be good and evil. That which is for him is good...that which is against him is evil.

Your dismissal of this argument as circular just once again reveals your animosity towards religion. If you want to be an athiest that is fine. But spare me your prejudices when you are trying to make a point. You do not win arguments with me by dismissing as nonsense superstition religious philosophy and holding up long dead semi-barbaric cultures as shining examples of intellectual virtue.

Your position that religious cultures are far less cultured than that of ancient greece is such utter nonsense I dont know whether to laugh or just stop wasting my time with you. Factually modern western culture is more heavily influence by Judaeo-Christianic belief systems then it is by "Classic Greek" culture since arguably after the fall of the roman empire as the world disolved into utter chaos the development of "civilization" was closly tied with the spread of christian "kingdoms" Ther advanced and devloped their culture and societies almost in relative isolation of Greek influence save for the remnant influence of the Romans until the Renaisance. But that influence did not SHAPE the western nation is simply transformed its thought processes (nevertheless chirstian). Like it or not the greatness that is WESTERN CULTURE can NOT be seperated from its Judaeo-Christianic origins. For myself I will take modern day America over 200 BD Greece any day.