"Is Ebola evil just because no cure for it exists?"
To a primitive society, lacking the crucial objectivity to recognize that diseases are caused by organisms which do not have a philosophical reason for doing the harm that they do, yes it is. In the 1600's an outbreak of St. Vitus's Dance caused, at least in some people's theories, the mass hysteria that culminated in the Salem Witch Trials. But did those people think that it was something as simple as rust on the rye that got into the flour they used? No, it was the work of the Devil. To many primitive societies disease is either the work of evil beings, or punishment from angry gods.
I have a pretty good idea that Peter was asking a question of objective
"good" or "evil", but I think that has little relevance. From a Praxian
or Sartarite frame of reference (I don't pretend to have looked at the
West enough to begin to guess what the Malkioni would have to say about
this) I think that diseases couldn't be viewed as anything other than
evil. Anything that kills indiscriminately would be viewed as evil or
the tool of an evil being.
Brian
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