XPost: alt.paranormal.reincarnation   
   From: ssake@goldthread.com   
      
   Well, you've answered part of your question by mixing up a plethora of   
   "gods" (lower case). God is Reality itself (not what passes for reality with   
   us, with our current state of consciousness, which is a dim reflection). In   
   fact, our reality is neither good nor bad--it's a dream-state. It doesn't   
   exist, except in the sense a movie exists. It has no fundamental basis in   
   reality. Stop the film, and the characters and scenes in the movie never   
   existed. That's us.   
      
   So in the final analysis, what is good is what wakes us up from this   
   dream-state to Reality.   
      
   Here's the deal--if you had a friend in a coma, and he wasn't coming out of   
   the coma and was wasting away, wouldn't the main thing be how to wake him   
   up? If you had the ability to induce dreams, would it be more compassionate   
   to give him sweet dreams so that he stayed in the coma, or would it be more   
   compassionate to give him a brief, terrible nightmare that woke him up?   
      
   That's one way of looking at it.   
      
   Another, an insight I had personally once as an "aha" experience, is that   
   our world is like a photograph. It is not possible to have an image without   
   black, white, and shades in-between. Good and evil are like white and black   
   in a photograph. They are relative, and they come in shades of grey. For   
   example, when you match paint to paint your livingroom, you may think the   
   wall is white, until you try to paint over it with another white. Then you   
   see that the white on your walls was really an off-white. Most of what we   
   think is good is really grey, relative to the examples set by genuine saints   
   and spiritual masters. So there is an implied arrogance in assuming that one   
   is good. Don't be so sure you are more good than the guy on death row,   
   especially when one takes reincarnation into account. Remember what the   
   cartoon character Pogo said--"We have met the enemy, and he is us."   
      
   If we accept that it is not possible to have good without evil, if you want   
   to have a world at all--just as it is not possible to have a photographic   
   image without white and black--then the question revolves around why there   
   must be a world.   
      
   For that, I'd recommend going to "God Speaks" by Meher Baba. The depth of   
   understanding there is like looking down into a well that I can only see   
   about 10 feet into, but actually is infinite. So what I've written here is   
   the "10 feet" I can see.   
   Steve S.   
      
      
      
      
      
   "Dorian West"  wrote in message   
   news:412de8db$1@dnews.tpgi.com.au...   
   > We talk of God - Christian, Muslim, Hindu, pagan, Celtic, Nordic and so   
   on.   
   > Why must these gods be good? Why is God good and not evil? How do we know   
   > he's good? The world we live in seems a very, very brutal place and even   
   if   
   > evil were necessary as a logical complement to good, evil is still   
   hideously   
   > evil.   
   >   
   >   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)