"Actually I said 'right from wrong' but never mind."

You also said "evil doer", what's your point here anyway? Good, evil, right, wrong. Want to argue about vocabulary?

"If you can't tell the difference then why aren't you in jail. I just do not believe you."

So good is legal and evil is not? Is that it? A little simplistic don't you think? If I were a Nazi in Germany in 1939, would I thus be good by robbing a Jew (it was certainly legal)? I can legally buy (from the bank) the home of someone who has defaulted on their mortgage, is that good?

How do you know I'm not in jail?

Ryan
At the end of WWII the Nazis were condemned by the wider world community, so your logic is flawed and your example is ridiculous.
You say; I can legally buy (from the back) the home of someone who has defaulted on their mortgage, is that good"? Ryan, in that case you are buying the property from the lending institution, probably by way of an Estate Agent, and probably with no knowledge of the ownership history.
Again your logic is seriously flawed and your examples are quite irrelevant.

If you as, presumably, an adult do not have any conception of right and wrong, or good and bad by now then it is unlikely I can help you with regard to educating you about these concepts.

Dear Mr Smith,

You are quite right, I have made no arguments to support the existence of the concepts of good and evil. The fact that these concepts seem apparent in almost every society and culture makes them self evident to a great many people. They may not be apparent to you, but they are to many, if not most people.

I believe you have misinterpreted and drawn an incorrect wrong conclusion from my question "If you can't tell the difference then why aren't you in jail?" This question did not in any way imply that, as you stated; "what's legal is what's good". It did however imply or suggest that a person with no perception of the difference between right and wrong, or good and evil, would be highly likely to end up in a correctional institution. I have made the assumption that you are not in an institution because you obviously have ready access to a computer for what seems considerable lengths of time each day.

You claim that I did not address your examples. This is wrong. You said; "If I were a Nazi in Germany in 1939, would I thus be good by robbing a Jew (it was certainly legal)"? I addressed this most unsavoury example by saying; " At the end of WWII the Nazis were condemned by the wider world community" thereby pointing out that what may have been at some time legal is not neccessarily good. I went on to say that the logic you claim to be proven by your example was therefore flawed, and that I thought your example was ridiculous - not that YOU were ridiculous. If, however you were made to FEEL ridiculous, I do apologise.

I am very happy for you to ignore my posts, and for the thread to return to its original spirit "Why do so many Moslems hate the Western World". I was indeed exploring that question by way of responding to Inglish's question; "What is Muslim World doing when some people are wrongly misguiding and misleading the youth and children on the name of Islam?", (the core of that question being "wrongly misleading") when you saw fit to change the direction of the debate into a debate about the existence of right and wrong, or good and evil.

Anyway, I hope this thread gets back on track ... "Why do Moslems hate the Western World".

Good day to you sir, and I do hope you do not percieve this post as a "personal attack".

I agree that the morale of US troops in Iraq is low and the recent news is very depressing. For instance, This is from yesterday’s paper. I just don’t know what to think.

Beating Specialist Baker
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: June 5, 2004The
prison abuse scandal refuses to die because soothing White House explanations keep colliding with revelations about dead prisoners and further connivance by senior military officers — and newly discovered victims, like Sean Baker. If Sean Baker doesn't sound like an Iraqi name, it isn't. Specialist Baker, 37, is an American, and he was a proud U.S. soldier. An Air Force veteran and member of the Kentucky National Guard, he served in the first gulf war and more recently was a military policeman in Guantánamo Bay. Then in January 2003, an officer in Guantánamo asked him to pretend to be a prisoner in a training drill. As instructed, Mr. Baker put on an orange prison jumpsuit over his uniform, and then crawled under a bunk in a cell so an "internal reaction force" could practice extracting an uncooperative inmate. The five U.S. soldiers in the reaction force were told that he was a genuine detainee who had already assaulted a sergeant.

Despite more than a week of coaxing, I haven't been able to get Mr. Baker to give an interview. But he earlier told a Kentucky television station what happened next: "They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and unfortunately one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down. Then he — the same individual — reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, 20 to 30 seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn't breathe. When I couldn't breathe, I began to panic and I gave the code word I was supposed to give to stop the exercise, which was `red.' . . . That individual slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me. Somehow I got enough air. I muttered out: `I'm a U.S. soldier. I'm a U.S. soldier.' " Then the soldiers noticed that he was wearing a U.S. battle dress uniform under the jumpsuit.

Mr. Baker was taken to a military hospital for treatment of his head injuries, then flown to a Navy hospital in Portsmouth, Va. After a six-day hospitalization there, he was given a two-week discharge to rest. But Mr. Baker began suffering seizures, so the military sent him to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for treatment of a traumatic brain injury. He stayed at the hospital for 48 days, was transferred to light duty in an honor burial detail at Fort Dix, N.J., and was finally given a medical discharge two months ago. Meanwhile, a military investigation concluded that there had been no misconduct involved in Mr. Baker's injury.

Hmm. The military also says it can't find a videotape that is believed to have been made of the incident. Most appalling, when Mr. Baker told his story to a Kentucky reporter, the military lied in a disgraceful effort to undermine his credibility. Maj. Laurie Arellano, a spokeswoman for the Southern Command, questioned the extent of Mr. Baker's injuries and told reporters that his medical discharge was unrelated to the injuries he had suffered in the training drill. In fact, however, the Physical Evaluation Board of the Army stated in a document dated Sept. 29, 2003: "The TBI [traumatic brain injury] was due to soldier playing role of detainee who was non-cooperative and was being extracted from detention cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during a training exercise." Major Arellano acknowledges that she misstated the facts and says she had been misinformed herself by medical personnel. She now says the medical discharge was related in part — but only in part, she says — to the "accident." Mr. Baker, who is married and has a 14-year-old son, is now unemployed, taking nine prescription medications and still suffering frequent seizures. His lawyer, Bruce Simpson, has been told that Mr. Baker may not begin to get disability payments for up to 18 months. If he is judged 100 percent disabled, he will then get a maximum of $2,100 a month.

If the U.S. military treats one of its own soldiers this way — allowing him to be battered, and lying to cover it up — then imagine what happens to Afghans and Iraqis. President Bush attributed the problems uncovered at Abu Ghraib to "a few American troops who dishonored our country." Mr. Bush, the problems go deeper than a few bad apples.