In CF land, you have to act good in order to be good. It's not enough to just decide that you're good, then go off and kill goodies.

Okay, this sort of gets to the heart of our disagreement. On the one hand, we have Odrirg's example of the guy who thinks its "good" to euthanize cripples and orphans. Clearly that guy isn't "good", regardless of how he views his actions. But why is that the case? Because he's killing powerless goodies in order to possibly achieve a small benefit for everyone else.

But is it always "evil" to kill goodies? Clearly not. Consider the paladin who intervenes on behalf of an elf invoker when the elf is attacked by a storm rager, then ends up killing the rager. Is that "evil"? After all, he was defending the invoker, who was attacked without provocation. It's not evil, then, because of the paladin's motivation. He intervened, and subsequently killed another good-aligned individual, but he did so in order to protect an "innocent" third party.

Now let's shift it around. Say we have two goodies. One is very prideful. He has a powerful magic item and is about to invoke it, thinking he can manipulate its power. In truth the item was crafted by various dark gods, and its invocation will usher in the era of Eternal Night. The second goodie knows this truth beyond a shadow of a doubt. Maybe it was revealed to him by his good-aligned deity. He's already tried reasoning with the prideful guy, but he refuses to change his mind. So the second guy faces a tough choice. Either he takes the prideful guy out, thus preventing him from invoking the item, or he lives with the consequences of not doing so.

Tough choice indeed, but if he decides to take out the prideful guy, nobody is likely to call him "evil" or "neutral" for doing so. Why? For the same reason the paladin's intervention above wasn't considered "evil". Namely, motivation. He did it in order to protect Thera from the terrible consequences that would result from his failure to act.

In my opinion, that is the exact situation in which good-aligned ragers find themselves. They "know" magic is bad. They "know" it's forbidden. They "know" it's dangerous, and that it has a significant negative effect on Thera and its inhabitants. They don't want to kill good-aligned mages, per se, but they are compelled to do so precisely because they (the rager) are good-aligned. They know magic is bad for Thera, and they feel "called" to do what it takes to ensure Thera's safety.

The question, then, is how are such ragers different from the cripple-killing guy Odrirg described? A few ways off the top of my head:

1. The cripple-killing guy has a lower level of certainty in the "positive effect" of his questionable actions. Ragers "know" bad things will happen if magic is allowed to continue; the cripple-killer just has a vague notion that things might be "better" if he saved money by eliminating undesirables.

2. The "postive effect" is much greater in the rager's case, since he's "saving the world". The cripple-killer is just raising some extra cash.

3. In the rager's case, the "victims" of the questionable activity (i.e. good-aligned mages) can choose to modify their behavior so that the questionable activity is no longer necessary. In that sense, the victims are willing participants in the violence that ensues, since they refuse to modify their actions. Not so for the cripple-killer. Cripples and orphans cannot "choose" not to be crippled or orphaned.